122: "Fortunate Son", by Lewis Puller Jr.

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

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 122 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And if you have not listened to episode 121, the previous episode to this one, go listen to it before listening to this episode or even the next episode. They are all linked together and that's why we released them all at the same time. This episode picks up where the last episode left off. This episode is about the story of Chesty Puller's son,

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  Louis B. Puller Jr. And we will be learning about Lou Puller Jr. from his autobiography, which is entitled Fortunate Son.

• 0:59Jocko Willink?

  It is a Pulitzer Prize winning book about his life, growing up with his father and his experiences when he joined the Marine Corps, served as a platoon commander in Vietnam, and about his life upon his return from the war and the struggles that he faced.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  And let's go to the book.

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  "I first noticed my father's tattoo the summer he returned from the Korean War. We had just moved from Virginia to the Marine Base at Camp Pendleton, California. Mother had asked me to awaken him from an afternoon nap. And as I entered their bedroom and stood beside his sleeping figure, my eyes were drawn to the blue globe and its anchor on his right upper arm. When I extended my hand to trace the outline with my finger, he awakened. And acquiescing to the curiosity of a five-year-old, he playfully flexed his bicep and tussled my hair with his free left hand. I had no idea that the object of my fascination was the emblem of the Marine Corps,

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  the organization to which my father had already dedicated more than 30 of his 53 years."

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  I did know that it must be important because my mother had a piece of gold and silver jewelry in the shape of my father's tattoo and she wore it frequently when she got dressed up.

• 2:31Jocko Willink?

  Later, I learned that mother loved the gold and silver pin and despised the tattoo.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  There were other things I noticed about my father in the summer and fall of 1951, a time during which he made a special effort to be accessible to his only son and to make up for his absence during the war.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  My father had been promoted to the rank of brigadier general after leading the first marine regiment of the first marine division in the retreat from the chosen reservoir through Kotory just before Christmas 1950. The breakout came to be regarded as a classic in the annals of modern military, modern American military warfare for his role in holding together the rear guard during some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. My father was recognized for his heroic leadership and his elevation to flag rank was assured. After the engagement ended, mother told me father had escaped from a trap set by the red Chinese, but I could not envision his being caught in a device similar to the one I baited with lettuce

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  in the apple orchard behind my grandmother's home in Virginia where we waited out the war. He had sent me war mementos, two Korean swords, an enemy helmet and bugle and several medals, which arrived in silk lined blue boxes. Affectionately known among his beloved Marines as the old man or chesty for the way he carried himself when marching, he must have known that combat taking place on the frozen wasted, waste and ridges of Korea would be his last and even then he was passing on to me the proud traditions of his profession.

• 4:14Jocko Willink?

  For my sixth birthday, near the end of the summer, he gave me a 22 caliber single-shot rifle which he had modified by sawing the stock in half to accommodate my narrow shoulders and short arms. On the butt, he had stenciled my name, Louis B. Puller Jr., and added, and the added touch filled me with pride of ownership and a certainty that I had the best father in the world. After we had practiced on paper targets and tin cans, he took me into the brown hills around our home in search of California jackrabbits. At first, I struggled to match his long-legged gait, but after he realized that I could not

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  keep up, he slowed his pace and began circumventing the steeper hills. Even then, I tired easily, and my aching legs diverted my attention from our elusive quarry.

• 5:08Jocko Willink?

  Throughout the several months that we hunted together in Camp Pendleton countryside, I never once came close to hitting a rabbit, but my father puffed silently on his pipe each time I missed, and on those occasions when he bagged game, I was allowed to carry our trophies the last hundred yards back home.

• 5:29Jocko Willink?

  In early February, as my twin sister Martha and I were beginning the second half of our first year of grade school, and our older sister Virginia was seemingly an adult sixth grader, a parade was held to honor my father's heroism at the Chosen Reservoir. I was permitted to go along with mother, and she held my hand as we stood at the end of a sun-drenched parade ground and waited for the ceremony to end. When the last drumbeat sounded and the standard bearers had retired the colors, my father strode from the field on which he had just been honored and knelt briefly to let me view the object of the morning's pageantry. A gold star in lieu of his Fifth Navy Cross, the most ever earned by any one Marine and our country's second

• 6:13Jocko Willink?

  highest award for valor, now joined the panoply of ribbons that covered most of his left chest.

• 6:22Jocko Willink?

  The moment of that frozen instant more than three decades ago is as fresh and firmly fixed in my mind today as any of my most vivid boyhood recollections. At Camp Pendleton, Father commanded the 3rd Marine Brigade and was charged with training fresh troops for the denouement being played out along the 38th parallel in Korea.

• 6:50Jocko Willink?

  On several occasions, he and his drape driver Sergeant Orville Jones took me with them to observe war games and field exercises in Pendleton's scrub dotted boondocks. I was naturally fascinated by the maneuvers of khaki clad Marines and the smoke and thunder of mock warfare.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  It's a beautiful picture. It's a beautiful picture. And he's home from war. Luckily, they must have had their kids pretty late because he's young and, you know, Chesty's, I think, 45 at this point or something like that, 45 or 46. So had the kid, had at least Louie Junior when he was, I don't know, 40 or something like that. And this is like every kid's, you know, would be stoked on this dad. And, you know, I know when my son was like this age, I would bring him sometimes to our training sites and he would shoot machine guns and hot grenades and stuff like that. And he'd watch all the maneuvers.

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  So he's, let me tell you, six-year-old boys, they like that kind of thing, I promise you.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  All right, back to the book. In August 1953, when the Korean War ended, Father was promoted to Major General and the sign in our front yard was repainted to reflect his new rank. We had to mute our celebration because the general who lived across the street was not selected for promotion. But all in all, times were good and our lives were happy. Father had sufficiently decompressed from his Korean War experience that he was no longer making the kinds of inflammatory statements about the conduct of the war that had gotten him into so much trouble in the past, including one that haunted him for years to the effect that whiskey and beer would make troops fight better than ice cream and soft training.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  The promotion to Major General was proof that he was on track toward at least a possible shot at becoming Commandant of the Marine Corps and fulfilling a lifelong ambition. So the Commandant of the Marine Corps is the senior ranking Marine and that's, I guess, obviously his goal, or was his goal.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  He was ordered by the Commandant, now, you know, I covered some of this in the first book, but he was ordered by the Commandant of the Marine Corps to report to Bethesda, Maryland Naval Hospital for further evaluation. After two weeks in the hospital, he was found unfit for duty and scheduled to go before a retirement board in early August. He returned home angry and bitter, and perhaps because he couldn't discuss the perceived unfairness of his situation with his fellow Marines, he vented his frustrations on mother. He had felt, from the time of his illness, that a courtier of senior officers in the Marine Corps was jealous of his celebrity and would use the stroke as a pretext to

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  end his career, and that's what is not mentioned in the first book, is that it was a minor stroke that he had had. He viewed his summons to Bethesda after a board had already passed on his fitness report as part of a conspiracy to do him in and was even critical of the Commandant of the Marine Corps. "I was never told what words passed between my father and the Commandant while he was away from us in Bethesda, but given father's outspokenness and his sense of injustice being done to him, I'm certain that they were less than cordial. General Lemuel C. Shepherd, the Commandant, had also been my godfather, and prior to

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  Father's stroke, he regularly sent me birthday presents. After Father came back from Bethesda, I never received another gift or communication from my godfather, and for years, I did not understand if or why he had abandoned me." So, I'm sure Chesty, I'm sure Chesty let the Commandant know what was up and what he thought about what's going on.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  So, as we know from the first book, Marine, The Life of Chesty Puller, that after he was retired from the Marine Corps, they went to...

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  To Chesty's wife's hometown. Here we go back to the book. "The sleepy little Virginia town of Saluda, although straddling a major north-south thoroughfare, was no more than a crossroads with a dozen or so small businesses and 50 or 60 houses. Had it not been my mother's birthplace, it would have seemed strange, it would have seemed the same strange setting for a man famous as my father to have picked to spend his retirement years. There was so little industry and so few business opportunities that most of the young men and women moved away as soon as they finished school, and the inhabitants who remained were either old or unenthusiastic about moving on. Without a support staff, our lives become, became much less pampered.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  And for the first time, Martha and I were faced with household chores. Prior to father's retirement, I never made my own bed or shined my own shoes, and now I was expected to help maintain a home. There were times early on, as I struggled beneath a load of firewood or raked leaves into a pile for burning, when I thought what a downward turn of our fortunes had taken. Gradually, however, I began to take pride in my responsibilities, and as the house and grounds began responding to our nurturing, I felt real accomplishment. We never talked about father's stroke after we moved to Saluda, but there was an unstated premise that he was unable to do any strenuous work around the house, and I tried to step into the void.

• 12:46Jocko Willink?

  I puffed with pride to think that I was, in a sense, becoming the man of the house." So, little boy stepping it up.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  as, as in the first book, we talked about the trial that took place in the end, where the recruits were killed and drowned, and Chesty Puller was called to the witness stand from retirement to talk about Marine Corps training. And this is when he comes back from that. Back to the book, "We met him at the airport in Richmond when he returned home, and I knew by the way he confidently strode through the crowd of cameras, photographers, and newsmen on his way to the car, that he was pleased with his performance at Paris Island. Apparently, most Americans agreed, for in the weeks and months that followed, he received hundreds of phone calls, telegrams, and letters praising him for coming to the defense of the Marine Corps."

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  I realized then that bitter as he was for the way he perceived himself to have been treated by the higher ups in the Marine Corps Headquarters, he was incapable of sitting idly by while his beloved Corps was under attack. His testimony also reinforced the perception that he was a Marines Marine who cared far more about the enlisted men than he did about high-ranking officers.

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  We also hunted together, as we had five years earlier in the hills of Camp Pendleton. By now, having moved up from a 22 to a 12-gauge shotgun, I could easily keep up with my father as we stalked through the woodlands and open fields around Saluda looking for rabbits and squirrels. In California, I had been amazed that my father could walk so fast and so far, while I seemed to always be out of breath or trying to ignore the woodenness in my legs. Now, however, as he neared 60 years of age and I was moving into adolescence, the roles were reversed. And he was the one who needed frequent stops to renew his strength. He still had a good eye and quick enough reflexes to be able to bring down a flushed quail or

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  moving rabbit. But I was beginning to understand that when he paused to listen for game or check his bearings, he was really buying time against his encroaching, against the encroachments of old age. So, that's the way it is. That's the way it works.

• 15:19Jocko Willink?

  Good manners were an element in our upbringing that mother and father considered important. I was taught early to stand when adults entered, adults entered a room and help ladies out with their chairs or with car doors. We were, we never interrupted grownups in conversations and when addressing them, we always ended our responses with sir or ma'am. Father taught me to squeeze a man's hand firmly when I shook hands and to look people straight in the eye when we were talking. He valued personal appearances and good grooming and until I left for college, I never went more than a few weeks without a haircut. When I was in 7th grade, he taught me how to tie a necktie and from then on, I was expected to be properly dressed in a coat and tie for special occasions.

• 16:00Jocko Willink?

  I was equally aware of how I looked to others. In 7th grade, I was fitted for braces by an orthodontist in Richmond. And on the way home, in the car, my teeth hurt and I was depressed. I had gotten eyeglasses only a few months earlier to correct my nearsightedness, and the braces were coming so quickly after the glasses were more than my fragile psyche could handle. Father noticed my despondency and suggested that we stop on the outskirts of Richmond for cheeseburgers and ice cream. With my sore teeth, I could manage neither, so while mother and father were finishing their meal in the drugstore where we stopped, I wandered over to the magazine stand and began browsing. Before I had gotten two pages into the magazine

• 16:45Jocko Willink?

  I had selected, a burly, white-collar druggist appeared at my side, snatched the magazine from my hand, and began browbeating me for reading the magazine without paying for it. I was totally bewildered by his attitude, but before I could retreat or apologize, I saw to the corner of my eye that my father had risen from his booth and was advancing towards the druggist. His teeth were tightly clenched, as were his fists, and there was fire in his eyes as he came to rest, with his face not six inches from the druggist's. Before he spoke, I looked at my mother, who, with her eyes closed in the vinyl booth,

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  appeared to be praying. And then I looked at the druggist, who was at least 50 pounds heavier and 30 years younger than my father. "Leave the boy alone," my father growled, in a voice gone hard, "or you and I can go outside and settle this." For a moment, the druggist said nothing, as his face blanched until it was the color of his collar. "Excuse me, sir," he finally stammered, and then retreated to the safety of his cash register. Mother had reacted as if she had seen my father behave similarly on other occasions.

• 18:09Jocko Willink?

  At Christchurch, so this is where he went to school, at Christchurch I threw myself into studies partly to compensate for not being a capable athlete. I did well academically and quickly gained a reputation as one of the bright boys. So in the book he talks about how, you know, he's just not, not a great athlete and his sister's a better athlete than him and she kind of, it's his twin sister, she kind of does better in things, so he focuses on his academics.

• 18:33Jocko Willink?

  As I grew older, I began to sometime, the sometimes painful process by which a son distances himself from his father in preparation for striking out on his own, I began to realize that my father, the man, and my father, the legend, were not always one and the same.

• 18:50Jocko Willink?

  The legend was all-powerful, fearless in the face of any challenge or adversity, and incapable of mistakes in judgment or un-fearness in dealings with lesser mortals.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  The man, like most men approaching their twilight years, was not as strong as he had once been, occasionally showed signs of self-doubt, and made his share of errors when interacting with other people. From the time I was a little boy, he had delighted in bawling up his fists and playing, and playfully going several rounds with me. He continued the game after I started high school, but by the time I was 15 or 16, my reflexes had become sharper than his, and I became uncomfortable exchanging mock punches with him.

• 19:37Jocko Willink?

  The, the, it's, it's interesting, and I watched a few interviews with, with Lou Puller Jr., and he's not, it might sound like he's being disparaging by saying there was the legend and then there was the real man, but he, it's, he comes clear in the book, he's not being disparaging at all. He's, and he definitely, in, in some of the interviews I watched with him, he's explaining, like, no, it's not a negative thing, it's just that everyone thought Jesse Puller was this legendary thing, but it was the man that he knew as his dad, and that man was more important and a better human being and all that, so he's not being disparaging by

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  saying that there was a difference between the two, he's just stating that there was a difference.

• 20:26Jocko Willink?

  But as, you know, as Lou Puller is going through this rebellious stage, back to the book, I also began to be bothered by my father's, by the waste of my father's considerable talent and an inordinate amount of time he spent on trivial undertakings. My father spent hours sitting at the dining room table, playing solitaire, or rereading books that he had owned for many years. Mother was busy running the house and raising Virginia, Martha, and me. While there were days during which my father did nothing more than make an occasional trip to the corner store or fetch a, fetch the mail. He was easy to have around the house and was almost totally undemanding of his children.

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  But it seemed to me that this living legend should have more important things to do than serve as an errand bor- errand boy for my mother.

• 21:15Jocko Willink?

  I did not realize that the Marine Corps had been his whole life. And that in committing himself so totally to its mission, he had never had the time for hobbies or other outside interests. I also did not see until I was much older that my father's stroke had taken a physical toll on him that he would never acknowledge.

• 21:38Jocko Willink?

  In the middle of my junior year in high school, my father awakened one night in intense pain. And they took him to Portsmouth Naval Hospital and on the way there, my father held tightly to my hand for most of the trip. And I could tell that he was in agony, although the only complaint was that he was not allowed to smoke in the ambulance.

• 22:00Jocko Willink?

  And when he returned home,

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  Lou Puller finally realized that he wanted to talk. And so now they're kind of, they kind of connect here. For perhaps seven or eight days in that winter of 1962, I was able to communicate with my father as I never had before. He told me that he was fearful about aging and the inevitable declining state of his health, and about how he never wanted to be a burden to his family. I listened as best I could to an old man reveal feelings that he had never expressed before. He also told me that he was counting on me to carry on when he was gone, and how proud he was to have a son to continue the Puller name.

• 22:44Jocko Willink?

  We did not talk about the military or my attempting to follow in his footsteps. But even then, there was some unstated assumptions about the course my life would take.

• 22:55Jocko Willink?

  Several years earlier, shortly after his retirement, we had gone to the William, gone to Williamsburg for an outing, and he had taken me to see a short film about the American Revolution called The Story of a Patriot, which was shown continuously to tourists visiting the new information center. At the conclusion of the film, the main character watches a group of young men who have just enlisted to go fight the British, and he swells with pride when he sees his son among the ranks of the newly enlisted. My father's enchantment with that scene registered powerfully on my young psyche, and without ever saying another word, I knew that someday I would be enlisting in some, as yet undetermined

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  cause. Now, five or six years later, I shared the dining table of our home with the man I loved like no other in the world. I wanted desperately to be what he expected me to be. It took me years to realize that I could never hope to emulate the legend that was Chesty Puller. But I knew even then that I loved the man far more than the legend.

• 24:06Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, it's reality. It's life. And as I mentioned in the beginning of this whole thing, this, a story about life, you carry it through. All stories about life end to death, and you can see some deterioration starting to occur. Back to the book, in the autumn of 1967, with the lengthening shadow of the Vietnam War spreading a chill across America, I moved on from the carefree pursuits of undergraduate life at the College of William and Mary and joined the Marine Corps. Like my father, who had enlisted 50 years earlier, during the war, to end all wars, I traveled from rural Virginia to the Marine Corps recruiting

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  station in nearby Richmond in search of something larger than myself. I had drifted through previous four years drinking beer and chasing girls with a singleness of purpose that belied my lack of meaningful direction, and now on the threshold of manhood and with war as a backdrop, I realized the time had come to put my frivolity aside. So, obviously, he goes to college, he gets done with college, and he says, "I'm going in the Marine Corps."

• 25:17Jocko Willink?

  William and Mary in the months prior to my departure was still the sleepy southern campus whose quaintness had attracted me four years earlier. The carnage taking place in Southeast Asia had remained a distant and non-intrusive reality for all but the most perceptive of us, insulated as we were by youth and inexperience. So even with the Vietnam War going on, like, they weren't even paying attention to it. Even Lou Pullman wasn't paying attention to it. There were, however, signs of a more ominous nature. The networks had begun reporting the rising casualty tolls on the nightly news. I viewed the graduation that ended my student draft deferment and qualified me for the Marine

• 26:01Jocko Willink?

  Corps Officer Candidate Program as an opportunity rather than a burden. As I entered the recruiter's office, I was acutely aware of the impact that my name would have on the sergeant whose duty it would be to convince me of the golden opportunities that a hitch in the Marine Corps could provide. "The Marine Corps builds men," the decal said on his office divider, and I, in my youthful exuberance, never paused to consider that the Corps might do the opposite. When he realized who I was, the sergeant dispensed with his usual sales pitch and concentrated on the mechanics of becoming the recruiter who signed up Chesty Puller's son. The recruiter also telephoned Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington DC to obtain a

• 26:45Jocko Willink?

  waiver for my poor eyesight and the authority on the other end of the line at first demurred, but then acquiesced when he realized that if he stood firm, the Corps would fail to sign up the son of its most famous Marine because of a technicality. I returned to Saluda to await orders to Quantico for basic training. My older sister's husband, Captain Bill Dabney, was already serving a tour as a Marine Infantry Company Commander in Vietnam, and she too was back at home sitting out our generation's initial venture into the war.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  After a childhood diet of Hemingway novels and John Wayne movies, along with my father's example, I viewed my own prospects, if not with eagerness, at least with equanimity. The camaraderie of the fraternity, he talks about how he's in a fraternity and whatnot when he was at college, the camaraderie of the fraternity now seemed almost trivial. And although I often drank myself to the point of oblivion, I could not escape the feeling that for me, the carefree celebrations of youth could not be recaptured. Of all my acquaintances at William & Mary, only one had been touched by war for which I was headed, Brian Spear, the president of a neighboring fraternity, whose dreams

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  of manhood I had been privileged to share in frequent late-night bull sessions, had preceded me into the Marine Corps and had been killed within months of his arrival in Vietnam the previous June. His death saddened me and brought home the intimations of mortality with which most of my circle were blessedly unfamiliar. During this, you know, you remember Charlie Plum talking about when they were at the Naval Academy and they weren't even talking about Vietnam? It's crazy, isn't it? Very similar. It must have been, I guess they didn't have the 24-hour news cycles like we have now

• 28:49Jocko Willink?

  and the internet and the stories and the clickbait and all that stuff going on and those things could be a little bit more isolated.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you gotta choose to follow it.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you have to seek out the story a little bit. During this waiting time, my father had remained characteristically closed-mouth about my future in the Marine Corps. I, of course, knew that he was immensely proud of me for having chosen to follow his example, but a tacit understanding between us made words unnecessary. I felt an urgent and compelling need to prove myself worthy of his name and key in the twilight of his military career that had spanned almost 40 years wished that he could go in my stead. As I said my goodbyes and prepared to leave for Quantico, he kissed me squarely on the lips and held me tightly in his arms. I reported to Officer Candidate School as late in the day as was acceptable.

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  I overheard two large sergeants conversing animatedly about who among this miserable collection of pukes could possibly be Chesty Puller's son, and I wondered if I had taken on more than I could handle. So they got a, uh, person that's in charge of it, running it, running the, the, uh, basic training here. OCS, named Captain Greter. The next morning Captain Greter began interviewing each candidate in the platoon in his office adjacent to our squad bay. Candidate Puller, he began, "You will receive no preferential treatment while here because of your relationship to your father. If anything, I consider your presence in my platoon to be an irritant rather than an

• 30:27Jocko Willink?

  honor because it will require additional effort on my part and because every swinging dick in this green machine is going to be eyeballing you. I am personally going to take it upon myself to see that you meet the qualifications of an officer in spades. Do I make myself clear?" So, not getting any love from Captain Greter. And OCS, here we go. Once the routine of OCS became familiar and we learned what was expected, it became more tolerable. Each day started before sunup with five minutes of calisthenics followed by morning formation, chow in the mess hall, and endless series of classes, both indoors and outdoors. There was a considerable time spent in physical conditioning and in drilling on the parade

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  ground, but the real goal of Officer Candidate School was testing of our physical, mental, and psychological limits rather than grounding in military fundamentals. Check.

• 31:23Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of physical limitations, so at one point they're doing a forced road march into a hump and Lou Puller falls back. And

• 31:36Jocko Willink?

  here we go. They got, they get, they get separated from the people that, that kept up. And he says, "I felt an almost visceral humiliation and resolved never to straggle on another march." Captain Gretter did not design so much, did not deign to so much as look at us, no doubt considering a personal insult that we had disgraced his platoon. And I would have preferred by far the profane tirades that were his usual stock in trade.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  Although our training schedule made no allowance for Thanksgiving. That autumn, we were given liberty a couple of weeks later, Saturday at noon until Sunday night. My sister's roommate, Toddy, picked me up in the parking lot outside the barracks.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  So he's meeting this woman and that's his girl. You're gonna find out. They go out to a movie, um, they go see Bonnie and Clyde and isn't it, is it weird? Like you know the movie Bonnie and Clyde, right?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Isn't it like I was thinking about the movie Bonnie and Clyde? And I'm just thinking about the timeframe that it came out and it's, it's weird when you think of the movie and you think of everything that's going on when that movie came out. Like this was happening with that movie. It doesn't seem that long ago and then it does seem a long time ago, but I don't know.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's funny. I think about that all the time. Like when they say dates, I remember what I was doing on that date. Meanwhile, this was going on, whatever it is.

• 33:02Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's what I was kind of thinking during that. "As I went to sleep on the couch in the apartment living room that night, I sensed that the softness of this incredible woman was going to give me the strength to make it through the rest of officer candidate school. I kissed her goodbye on Sunday evening in the same parking lot where she had received me only a day earlier and woefully realized that I was falling in love at a time when emotional independence might well be the more prudent course."

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  Now they go back, he's back at OCS. Staff Sergeant Brown taught us to try and divorce our minds from the pain in our bodies while navigating the hill trail by simply, by the simple expedient of sucking lifesavers and imagining ourselves in a more pleasant situation.

• 33:47Jocko Willink?

  And he kinda takes that. "I never again allowed Gretor, Brown, or Sorg to read the exhaustion on my face. By the end of OCS, I had developed a hardness and a confidence of which I had not thought myself capable. On the last march prior to commissioning, I practically ran from start to finish, and my defiant gaze at Captain Gretor at its completion was, of course, exactly the reaction he'd been trying to elicit from me for 10 weeks." I thought that was very cool. You know, he's all thinking like, "Yeah, I'm showing you." He's like, "No, actually, you're doing exactly what I wanted you to do."

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  So, um...

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  That was their last forced march. They're spending their last night. "As we slumbered off to our bunks for the last wake-up at OCS, I overheard one drunken staff sergeant from another platoon tell Brown that 75% of us who chose the infantry would be dead or wounded within six months of arriving in Vietnam. But even his somber words could not dull my elation."

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  And after that, he ships off to the basic school, which is where all marine officers go to... In OCS, you kinda get your military indoctrination, but the basic school is where you're actually learning to be a combat leader.

• 35:09Jocko Willink?

  This is interesting. At the basic school, the entire course in the winter of 1968 had been shortened from nine months to 21 weeks.

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  With about one Saturday free each month, the reason for the concentration of the course was obvious, if seldom talked about, as we toiled through fourteen-hour workdays attempting to master the skills that would be matters of life and death on our next assignment. Since casualties were so high among our graduates, our own hectic training schedule was largely dictated by the staggering attrition rate among the young lieutenants already in Vietnam, whom we were being groomed to replace, and whom we groused at the frantic pace, we recognized its necessity. So that's pretty ominous. You're just getting pushed through this training because they need you on the battlefield because casualty rates are so high.

• 36:04Jocko Willink?

  Over and over again, our instructors reminded us that the road to hell was paved with the bones of young lieutenants who had made mistakes, and while their admonitions were perhaps unnecessary, they were keenly effective as attention-getters.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  The Tet Offensive had begun, and the ancient citadel of the city of Way fell into communist hands, with the attendant massacre of thousands of innocent citizens, the magnitude of what we had signed on for registered ominously to my classmates. My fellow Marines responded to it in different ways. Some saw the stepped-up pace of war as a challenge, and in their youthful exuberance welcomed the chance to prove themselves worthy of the uniform. Others surveyed the situation with an eye toward the number of junior officers being killed or wounded each week, and began scrambling for military occupational specialties that offered insulation from combat.

• 37:04Jocko Willink?

  I began to notice, for the first time, the graffiti that had been carved into classroom desktops by anonymous students from earlier classes. "Why die? Go supply!" one admonished, while another advised, "Motor T and out in three." A third put it simply, "What the fuck? Drive a truck."

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  The opposite viewpoint was made by some gung ho student who wrote for more, for the more bloodthirsty of us. War is our business and business is good. So you remember what book we read where the guy's like, you have to put down your three selections that you want to do in the Marine Corps. The guy puts, yeah, infantry platoon commander, infantry platoon commander, infantry platoon commander. Here are these guys now, Vietnam's going on. They're like, you know what? I want to be in the motor transport, meaning working on trucks or I want to be in supply. So you have a different attitude that's already starting to creep up.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  Somewhat ironically, as our concern over the military occupational specialties into which we could be channeled grew with the rising casualty toll, our options became more and more limited until for some classes at the height of the war, they were non-existent. The Marine Corps had a duty to field combat officers, and if that duty required that every officer in a basic school class become an O3 infantry officer, that is precisely what would happen.

• 38:28Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's crazy to think about. Your, your whole class, like, we, we need you all to be infantry officers. That's what's good. That's where you're going. I had joined the Marine Corps with the intention of becoming a combat platoon leader and nothing that happened during Tet in any way altered my determination. I could have faced, I could not have faced my father or lived with myself if I had chosen an easier way. For me, therefore, there was no moral dilemma or soul searching agony when it came time to list my preferences. My choice of specialization was infantry. My choice of duty was Vietnam and the Marine Corps was more than happy to oblige me.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's even though he talks about in the book and, you know, it's always hard to pick out what parts I'm going to cover and what parts I'm going to skip through.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  Even though he

• 39:19Jocko Willink?

  kind of has, he talks about how, you know, being in the Marines was his thing. He definitely, when he was going to college and senior years in high school, he wasn't really thinking about it. So it wasn't until he was graduating from college, it was a pretty, pretty quick decision that he made. He went from like, okay, I don't know what I'm going to do to like, okay, I'm joining the Marine Corps. I think the answer revealed itself to him, but it wasn't something that he was thinking about all the time. He, he wasn't, and you know, he talks about him not being athletic and he's wearing glasses and he's got braces. You know, he's, he's definitely.

• 39:52Jocko Willink?

  Not your stereotypical gung ho guy. That's my point. He's not your stereotypical gung ho guy. He's, he's just not. And yet, he's following the footsteps of his father, and that's what he decides to do, so.

• 40:09Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Late Saturday afternoon, in the long shadows of what had been a brilliant winter sky, Toddy and I strolled hand in hand to the edge of the river, and there, beside the gnarled trunk of an old oak, I for the first time in my life told a woman that I loved her, and I did not think I could live without her. We held each other closely, and from that point on the caref- and from that point on, the carefree part of our relationship was over. For the first time, we acknowledged that there was no turning back without irreparable damage to each of us.

• 40:43Jocko Willink?

  Soon after our trip to Williamsburg, Toddy showed up unexpectedly one day in the middle of the week at the basic school bachelor's office quarters. And although I was delighted to see her, her unannounced visit was completely out of character. I was summoned from my quarters and could tell immediately by her worried look as I met her in the lounge that something was wrong. She held my hands tightly and told me that she had just come from the doctor's office, where she had tested positively for pregnancy.

• 41:14Jocko Willink?

  Our country outing on the shores had had an unintended result. And although I was taken completely by surprise, the news did not upset me. I knew that I loved her and believed that she loved me. Her pregnancy simply meant that we would marry now rather than when and if I returned from Vietnam. After my initial shock, I asked her to marry me. The smile that replaced her worried look was all the answer I needed. We retired to the Hawkins Room, where I bought several rounds of drinks, and we began to ponder my rapidly changing circumstances. We were going to be a family, and even if the timing was a little off, I still considered myself a very fortunate young man. So, there you go.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  The succeeding Friday night, we were married by the Quantico-based chaplain in a simple ceremony in his quarters. Boom, we're done. It's on. There was no formal graduation from basic school. Some of our class went on to Pensacola, Florida for training as pilots, some to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for training as artillery officers, some to Monterey, California for language school, but the vast majority of those of us who had been selected into infantry were given 20 days' leave to be followed by a report date to the West Coast for processing to Vietnam.

• 42:34Jocko Willink?

  I was one of the privileged majority who would be leading troops in combat in just a month. I felt a keen sense of irony when the Lance Corporal Clerk who processed my orders turned out to be one of the officer candidates who had flunked out of my OCS class. His reward for failure would be safe stateside tour of duty behind a typewriter, and although I would not have traded places with him for anything, he was living proof of the Marine Corps axiom that the shitbirds get the easy assignments.

• 43:13Jocko Willink?

  We were in agreement, he's talking about with his wife, we were in agreement that the child would be named for my father if it happened to be a boy. On the fly leaf of the copy of his autobiography, Marine: The Life of Louis B. Chesty Puller, that he had given me when it was published years earlier, my father had written that he was the last of his line and that he wanted at least two grandsons from me.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  I had also written a standard will while at basic school, as virtually all my classmates. And although writing it was an unpleasant reminder of our uncertain future, I was glad the Marine Corps insisted that we plan for the very worst. I remember doing that for the first time. Have you even written a will? No. Yeah, like, just, it's a weird thing, because we're in the military, like, they make you write a will. Yeah, yeah. And then, before you go on deployment, you gotta update your will. So it's...

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't make it sound like it was some kind of like, um...

• 44:15Jocko Willink?

  Dark thing.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  But it's.

• 44:17Speaker 01

  It's something.

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  It's it's just a I I kinda I remember when I was younger, I kinda was like almost comical about it.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:24Jocko Willink?

  And then, you know, when I got older and I I actually, we were going to war, wasn't quite so comical.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, no kidding.

• 44:38Jocko Willink?

  They're

• 44:40Jocko Willink?

  at a wedding, not theirs, but someone else's in the officers' club. I saw a young captain whose leg had been so badly deformed by a war wound that I found it remarkable that the limb was still capable of bearing weight. I said nothing to Toddy about the anatomical miracle I'd witnessed when I returned to my seat. But unnerved by the sight, I also wasted no time in tossing down several glasses of wine. And again, I skipped over some of this stuff. Uh, he likes to drink. And you can see even with that right there, he's, you know, he drank a ton when he was in college with his fraternity brothers and whatnot. And when something unnerves him a little bit, he takes a lot of comfort in drinking.

• 45:23Jocko Willink?

  Now he's leaving for Vietnam. He's first gonna leave his parents, saying goodbye to them. And here he is with his father. As we stood facing each other beneath the spreading boughs of a weeping willow tree in the backyard of my boyhood home, the alarming thought crossed my mind that I might never see this suddenly fragile old man again. Not because I might die in Vietnam, but because he might not survive my tour.

• 45:53Jocko Willink?

  He tried to tell me for the thousandth time, the parable of the Spartan mother, who on sending her own son off to war, advised him to come back with his shield or on it. But he was unable to complete the quote.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  His final words trailed off and his shoulders shook and he took me in his arms and we both tried to take from each other the solace and strength that had suddenly abandoned us. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, we broke our embrace and my mother led him back into the house with tears streaming down both their cheeks.

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  It was the first time I had ever seen my father cry.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  On the trip up Route 17, I began to have the distinct feeling that my psyche was unraveling. I had not seen my wife smile in days, could not stand even to be near those few people in my life to whom I had the most intense attachments, and my father's tears had completely unnerved me.

• 47:05Jocko Willink?

  He goes through the scene, saying goodbye to his wife, and he says, "When Shakespeare wrote that parting is such sweet sorrow, he had obviously never left a pregnant wife with whom he was deeply in love to go off and fight in a war."

• 47:22Jocko Willink?

  As soon as my plane became airborne, I ordered two Scotches on the rocks and finished them in rapid succession.

• 47:31Jocko Willink?

  Now they're making stops along the way. All of us were Marines in uniform and now on our way to war. We were all young and scared, but as green as we were, many affected a swagger to cover self-doubt. Seattle was the last home stop. For all my self-doubt and insecurity, I was beginning to feel like John Wayne in a World War II movie, as I, a Marine lieutenant in uniform and on his way to war, bellied up to the bar in Seattle Airport Cocktail Lounge.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  "Welcome to Vietnam," the stewardess is called, after us as we left the plane and boarded the trucks for the short trip to the main terminal. They were the last attractive, round-eyed women I saw until my odyssey was completed and I was headed in the other direction. As we filed through the gate into the terminal, a group of Marines and soldiers standing woodenly at the edge of the tarmac caught my eye. They were rail-thin combat veterans on their way home, some just a few days away from battle. Most wore several rows of ribbons on their chest. There appeared to be no interaction among the group of about two dozen, and the majority

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  had expressionless faces with fixed, unfocused eyes set in hollow sockets.

• 48:57Jocko Willink?

  A chill danced its way up my sweat soaked spine and I felt fear for the first time since entering Vietnam.

• 49:12Jocko Willink?

  He's sort of getting his welcome aboard, I guess you'd call it, from the regimental commanding officer. The briefing was the same basic pep talk I'd received at division, including an allusion to my father's illustrious name. The Colonel pointed out that my father had commanded the 1st Marine Division 17 years earlier during the retreat from the Chosen Reservoir and that it was fitting that I now serve in the same division. And talk about like, thinking about time going by and now imagine you're in the same unit that your father was. It's only 17 years, that's not that long. That's not that long of a time. Hell, I've been retired for almost 11 and that does, that seems like it went by in two weeks.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  So this isn't a long time.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  No, I've been retired, sorry, not almost 11. I've been retired since 2010, so 8 years, that's still.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:13Jocko Willink?

  That, that seems to have gone by very quickly.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:17Jocko Willink?

  I, of course, had already grasped this historical implication of my assignment although my father and I served in vastly different capacities. When he assumed command of the regiment, he had 32 years of service and 4 Navy Crosses. He had earned his 5th for the retreat from the frozen Chosen, a bittersweet culmination to a career that had included more than 26 years of foreign service. On the other hand, I was a brand new 2nd Lieutenant with a year of service who had never commanded anything larger than a Boy Scout troop. And while I appreciated the personal reference, I did not feel up to any sort of comparison with my father. I wished desperately that I could simply assume command of my platoon without any more references to him.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  Now he shows up on the ground. My own unit golf company had been out for several days, so I did not know, really know what to expect, but I did pick up two pieces of disturbing information about third platoon from the top sergeant. He was presently being led by a staff sergeant who had assumed command several months earlier when the lieutenant in command had accidentally shot his radio operator in the back while cleaning his pistol. The radio operator was wearing a flak jacket and the wound was superficial, but the young lieutenant was relieved of duty on the spot, according to the top sergeant who's filling me in. Three days earlier, in the course of a night patrol, the man walking point for the third platoon had been killed. Third platoon was a surly bunch of teenage misfits who were

• 51:49Jocko Willink?

  mildly curious, but completely unimpressed with my arrival.

• 51:55Jocko Willink?

  I could see that months of living in the bush had sharpened their reactions to a fine edge. There was very little wasted motions in their movement.

• 52:04Jocko Willink?

  And while all their faces appeared boyish, most had a cast that made them seem years older.

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  The platoon was predominantly white with a handful of Hispanics and blacks, and if there was a common thread that united them, it was their lower middle-class background. The biggest problem in leading patrols, other than making certain that we stayed on course and hit our checkpoints, was keeping the men properly spaced. They tended to bunch up when the terrain was rough or visibility was poor, and to get too far apart when we were moving quickly, or they were tired. If they were too close together, one booby trapper moored around would cause multiple casualties, and if they were too spread out, they tended to lose contact and were difficult to maneuver. The reason I highlighted that is because that is absolutely true today. It's the same thing that happens with a SEAL platoon, same thing that happens with any military group. You people start bunching up.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  And it's a fine line. There's a, there's a balance that you have to maintain all the time because as you just said, if you're too far apart, you can't see each other. You lose contact. You're too hard to control. If you're too close together, one bomb or one mortar round can take out a whole bunch of people. So for those of you that are troop leaders out there, work on your spacing, pay attention to it. Don't bunch up. The tendency is generally don't bunch up. Usually you don't have a problem of too much spacing.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:27Jocko Willink?

  The tendency is bunch up.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. It seems like when you're in the situation, it's more obvious when like, oh, I'm losing everybody. You know, it's like way more obvious when you're bunching up, you're like,

• 53:36Jocko Willink?

  There's a level of security.

• 53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 53:38Jocko Willink?

  Mental security, like bunching up next to someone. That's a lot of where it comes from too.

• 53:45Jocko Willink?

  Late one afternoon, toward the end of my second week, near where the last casualty had incurred, we came across the badly decomposed corpse of an NVA soldier. I could tell that my men felt somewhat vindicated by our grisly trophy and some of them would have mutilated his body further, but for the fact that there was so little of it left. As it was, I had to restrain one young Marine from urinating on the corpse. I was shocked by the vehemence of their hatred toward a now inanimate object and their lack of respect for the dead. Sergeant Leslie, that was the guy. Sergeant Leslie is the guy that was leading the platoon before Puller showed up. Sergeant Leslie told me, after we had buried the corpse in a shallow grave that I would soon understand,

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  but shaken by the experience, I did not want to lose that much of myself. I could not help thinking that somewhere that NVA soldier had a family who, who, who would never know what had happened to him. But I naturally kept my feelings to myself.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 54:49Jocko Willink?

  they spend a few weeks and the, the first few weeks of patrolling are, are, it's good experience for him, relatively uneventful.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  He makes a joke in here that something like our confirmed kills at this point were two bushes and a pig, because that's what they had shot at. And now they move from Dong Ha, which is where they were before. And now they're getting into a tactical area of responsibility.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  That's around Da Nang. And here we go back to the book. The patrolling here was considerably different from that at Dong Ha. As our unit found out the first time we went on a joint night patrol with the platoon from the 27th. My counterpart was a staff sergeant rather than lieutenant. A bad sign write-off since it indicated officer attrition. And we all sensed that the Da Nang T A O R was a bad news sector. Even more ominous, the point man, the platoon leader, and many of the other men carried probe sticks, long slender poles with which they tentatively poked the ground ahead of them. This indicated not only the threat of numerous booby traps and landmines, but also the fact that we were operating in an area that belonged to the enemy most of the time.

• 56:07Jocko Willink?

  Although our first patrol went smoothly, we returned to our base camp in the morning. The other platoon's point man took Sergeant Leslie and me aside and told us if we learned nothing else from our time with him, we would be well served to always remember the probe sticks. He had been assigned to his platoon for nine months, most of it in the Da Nang area. And in that time, had seen all but a handful of his comrades killed or wounded by small arms and booby traps.

• 56:36Jocko Willink?

  Same thing Roger Hayden was telling us about with the sticks, looking for tripwires. Crazy.

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  Of the locations within our tactical area of responsibility, one was viewed with dread by all but the insane among us. Both areas involved constant patrolling, a populace that seemed overwhelmingly sympathetic to the communists. But the area known as Riviera was the worst.

• 57:05Jocko Willink?

  And gave the third platoon its rudest introduction to the Da Nang area.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  So they're stepping up these patrols and here we go. About 10 meters from the intersection of a paddy, dyke, and our path. was paralleling with another that ran perpendicular to it. I saw Barton's back stiffen and the air was suddenly filled with the sound of an automatic weapons fire. Barton had heard the click of an AK-47 safety being turned off only a few meters away. And as he and the enemy soldier facing him opened fire at each other simultaneously. And at the point, at point blank range, I realized that we had walked head on into a Vietcong ambush. As I dropped to my knees, a string of bright red tracers like the length of neon tubing passed waist high down the berm beside me. It was obvious that if I had been on the berm instead of in the paddy beside it, I would have been eviscerated.

• 57:59Jocko Willink?

  Within seconds, the rest of the ambush team somewhere off to our left directed its fire across the path to the of the tracer rounds and into our flank. But Barton and I were shielded from the lethal barrage by the paddy dyke we had dropped behind. The fire from our left subsided, but a ball of flame suddenly burst in the paddy between me and the marine behind me. And I thought momentarily we were under attack from the right flank as well. When I realized that the explosion had been a grenade lobbed into our position by enemy soldiers to our left, who could not hit us with direct fire, I pulled a grenade from my belt, yanked out the pin and heaved it from my knees with a hookshot motion in the direction of the enemy. After what seemed like an interminable amount of time during which I thought I had thrown a dud,

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  the grenade finally detonated and was followed by silence.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  For the first time, I heard moaning from the marine behind me and realized that he had been hit. My cries of "Corman up, corman up" were answered almost immediately by Doc Ellis, who ran in a crouching position, medical kit in hand to administer first aid to the wounded marine. The man had been hit in the head by grenade shrapnel and Ellis bandaged his head and told me that the fragments had struck a glancing blow and that the wounds appeared superficial. Probably not five minutes had elapsed between the time of the first shots being fired and the enemy breaking contact in response to my grenade toss, but it seemed like an eternity. Sergeant Leslie by now had worked his way up to my position and regain and as I

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  regained my wits, I had him pull all three squads into a tight perimeter facing outward and using the natural protection of the paddy dikes as insulation from whoever might still be lurking in the dark. After the wounded man and Doc Ellis assured me that a medevac was unnecessary, I called in a situation report to Captain Woods, that's the company commander, who gave us permission to sit tight until first light. The squads placed claymore mines in front of their positions and we passed a sleepless and soggy night, but the Vietcong had apparently had enough and did not attack our perimeter. We had been in the Riviera one day. The platoon had been hit fore and aft and I was not at

• 1:00:13Jocko Willink?

  all certain that I was going to be able to take this kind of action on a regular basis. At some point during the night, I became aware of how close I had come to being killed and I made my way over to a badly shaken Barton, who was wide awake also, and thanked him for saving my life. That's day one in the Riviera and I didn't, there was another part where they got, they got hit twice that day, their first day out. And he's already thinking, I don't know if I can hack this. And I'll tell you what, on that, it's just like anything else. You know, it takes some getting used to and I bet there's a lot of

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  people that feel like their first situation they get in, like, I don't know if I can do this, but you'll, your, your perspective will open up and you'll begin to see more and you'll regain confidence over time. So, don't fret too bad.

• 1:01:20Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. I had probably not written my father a half a dozen letters in my previous four years of college, but now that I embarked on a rite of passage that was not only fraught with peril, but also similar to the one he had undertaken as a fledgling lieutenant fifty years earlier in the jungles of Haiti and Nicaragua, I felt an urgent need to share some of my experiences with him. Oddly enough, after having been under fire and forced to react in several life or death situations, I now felt much closer to my father, though geographically I'd never been further from him. It was almost as if a door had been opened up to a world that I had often heard discussed, but had never experienced, and the experience of combat now freed me to pour my soul out to the one man I most wanted

• 1:02:05Jocko Willink?

  to emulate.

• 1:02:13Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The following dawn, as we prepared to break camp, one of the men discovered a booby trap at the vertex of the draw where the two hills came together. The device consisted of a C ration can, holding a grenade with its pin removed, so that when the grenade's spoon was held in place by the side of the can. The can was rigged about knee-high and located just to the side of the trail with a tripwire crossing the trail to anchor on the other side. It was the first booby trap I had seen since coming into country, and although rigged crudely, it was fully as lethal as a more sophisticated device. If we had proceeded through the draw on the previous day's twilight rather than stop to make camp, my point man and perhaps several others would probably have been maimed or

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  killed. I reminded myself that the platoon had to become more disciplined at using the probe sticks and staying off trails. I had our demolition man rig a time charge to blow the booby trap in place as we exited the draw.

• 1:03:16Jocko Willink?

  As the last squad cleared our bivouac area and the platoon spread out across the terrain in patrol formation, the booby trap detonated harmlessly. Almost simultaneously, we began taking fire again from an adjacent tree line to the area we had just left. Once more, most of the rounds were short, but the volume was heavier than it had been the night before and included automatic weapons fire. Obviously, whoever had been shooting at us yesterday had gone for reinforcements during the night and had lain in wait for us, having figured out our probable route of march for the next day. I picked up the pace as the rounds nipped at our heels and the lag squad returned fire, but the enemy firing did not stop until one of the men in the squad fired a rocket into

• 1:03:59Jocko Willink?

  the tree line, which burst into an orange ball of flame and ended the contact from that quarter. By now, those of us in the front of the patrol were almost running to get out of the range of the marksmen in the tree line. As we approached another hedgerow that paralleled the main road back to Camp 413, I was panting and out of breath, but relieved that our adversaries had miscalculated the range.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Just as we slowed pace to allow the rest of the unit to catch up, another explosion just in front of me rent the air, and my point man and the marine behind him collapsed into the sand. In our haste to get away, we had tripped another booby trap, and I watched helplessly and in horror for a moment as the two wounded marines writhed in agony on the ground before me. The man who had triggered the booby trap was wounded worse, and he bled from a half a dozen shrapnel wounds, including a mean-looking gash in his neck. The second man was stunned by the explosion and had several minor nicks and cuts, but for the most part, he had been shielded from the grenade fragments by the body of the man in front of him. Within minutes,

• 1:05:03Jocko Willink?

  the corpsmen were busy staunching the flow of blood, administering morphine shots, and applying battle dressings. So this is, you know, this is now he's what, 36 hours into his first day in the Riviera?

• 1:05:24Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, this is a different patrol. As I ground out my last cigarette of the day and gave the order to saddle up, the men began getting to their feet and donning their packs and flak jackets. Almost simultane- simultaneously, the sickening whoosh of mortar rounds interrupted my mechanical direction and suddenly our hilltop was the center of a firestorm. The first four or five rounds were long and impacted harmlessly on the reverse slope of the hill behind us, but as we dropped to our hands and knees, I sensed that the enemy mortar men would quickly adjust their fire to compensate for their miscalculation.

• 1:06:01Jocko Willink?

  The firing seemed to be coming from a tree line near the leper colony and directly across the valley from us, and as I pondered our predicament, machine gun fire began to sweep down, down slope in front of our position. We were pinned down on the flat area atop a hill, but the angle was such that the automatic weapons fired could not reach the men unless they rose from the prone position that by now, most of the platoon had assumed. One young marine who had joined the platoon just prior to our operation in the DMZ suddenly stood up and began firing his rifle John Wayne fashion from the hip. Before I could pull him down beside me, a well-aimed round from the tree line leveled

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  him and made further effort on my part unnecessary. Within seconds, Doc Ellis was beside the wounded marine, medical kit in hand as he quickly affixed a battle dressing to what turned out to be a minor head wound.

• 1:06:57Jocko Willink?

  Now, just to make sure everyone's clear on this, mort- firing mortars is difficult to be accurate, and you do something called bracketing, which is you fire one round or maybe two or three rounds and you see where they land and then you make an adjustment from it. So the first rounds hit long. Anybody that knows anything knows that the next rounds are gonna be shorter. They may not be directly on you, but it's only, it usually takes, you know, you go long, then you go short, and then you split the difference and you're in a hit. So that's the situation they're in.

• 1:07:30Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, as I refocused my attention on the activity in the tree line, I realized that while the enemy machine gun was ineffective in reaching us, it would keep us from counterattacking. I also knew that the mortar fire was going to decimate us if we stayed put and allowed the enemy soldiers time to adjust it. As if in response to the thought of the next barrage began, and I could feel the whistling rounds working their way up the hill behind us. By now, many of the Marines on the forward edge of our line were returning fire from their prone position, and because we were above the enemy soldiers, we could fire directly into the trees. Not long after the second barrage had begun, however, the tree line from which it was being directed suddenly exploded into balls of fire.

• 1:08:14Jocko Willink?

  So, the position where the enemies was, all of a sudden, just explodes into balls of fire. And I belatedly realized that my own mortar team was laying down its own barrage of suppressing fire.

• 1:08:27Jocko Willink?

  Looking over my shoulder, I saw one of the team members on his knees holding the mortar tube against its base plate, while his two comrades were furiously shoveling rounds into its open end. Within seconds of our return fire, the enemy unit broke contact, and as we lay there in stillness, I could hardly believe how desperate the situation had been just moments earlier. My mortar section's quick action had probably saved us from wholesale casualties, and I was horrified to realize that in the course of the firefight, it had never occurred to me to order them to commence firing. So, huge lesson learned there, it's decentralized command. And going beyond decentralized command, if he would have been a micromanager,

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  and trained guys to only do what he said to do, they would have been dead. So, that is why, this is a classic example of why decentralized command is so important. Actually, someone just asked me on social media, and I will probably answer this in a Q and A, but because it's a long answer, why, if decentralized command is so good, then why doesn't everyone do it? Well, decentralized is command is the only way that works. And I've answered that question or talked around it many times and it's in the book Extreme Ownership. But here's an example of what happens if you don't use decentralized command. And luckily, they had it. Not, not really by Lou Puller's guidance either, just like by chance.

• 1:09:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Like the Marines were trained.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:09:58Jocko Willink?

  They were ready. And I'll tell you what, if you see, and I, I, I don't know if I've ever seen an army mortar team work in the field on immediate action drills. I'm sure they're outstanding, but I have seen the Marine Corps and it's beautiful. The Marine Corps on mortars, like they're, they're just awesome. All right. The next day, we headed back to Camp 413. We passed Lieutenant Zier and his patrol, who had taken sniper fire as they crossed the big rice patio on their way out to replace us. We gave our respective platoons a 10-minute break and as we paused to exchange intelligence and smoke cigarettes together.

• 1:10:39Jocko Willink?

  At one point in our conversation, we simply looked at each other and said, as if on cue, this shit has gotta stop. So Lieutenant Zier is the other platoon commander and this is horrible. This is horrible and this is what they're do, this is their life, going out there. You notice they don't even see the enemy, like they know where they're shooting from, but they don't even see them. They're getting booby-trapped, they don't even see the enemy and this is what's happening. And they're thinking this shit has gotta stop. When we got back to base camp later that afternoon, Ward was waiting for us. That Lieutenant Zier's platoon had just stumbled into a minefield. Two men had been wounded initially and when the com, and when their comrades went to their assistance, they had detonated another mine.

• 1:11:23Jocko Willink?

  And three more, including Zier, had gone down. All five had been medevaced and although preliminary reports indicated that John Zier, the Bull, whom I'd come to regard as invincible, was in no danger of losing his life. It was uncertain if he would ever return to his unit. His twin brother, another Marine lieutenant, had been wounded a few weeks earlier and sent back to the States. And I thought that John could have easily picked a better way to visit his brother. The more I thought about John Zier, the way in which he had been wounded and the way in which we always seem to be responding to an unseen enemy rather than initiating action on our own, the more depressed and frustrated I became.

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  This was not long. It's like, he hasn't even been on the ground that long. This isn't like some draining thing, but how many times you need to go out? And get shot up from an unseen position and have guys get wounded from booby traps? It's a nightmare.

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  Because of our previous losses in the area, the platoon was in no mood to waste time, winning hearts and minds. And when the villagers, so they're on another patrol, sorry. They're on another patrol. And when the villagers realized that we were going to be in their midst for several hours, they became inhospitable. In anticipation of contact, I'd instructed the lag squad to fire a rocket directly into the village if so much as one shot was fired in our direction. We were allowed to depart in peace, perhaps because the villagers could sense our resolve and were reluctant to press our, their luck. I realized as we continued our patrol that I, at least, was becoming calloused and indifferent toward the very people we were supposed to be trying to liberate.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  But it seemed to be the only way to assure our own survival. So this is the classic thing that you hear about the war in Vietnam.

• 1:13:23Jocko Willink?

  Moving on, they continued to patrol. There was another smaller ville, a half a dozen, of a half a dozen thatched huts, several hundred meters north of us. And Leslie and I thought it would be best to strike out in its direction since we had a pretty well worn out our welcome in our present location. Heading north, we were fired on by snipers before we even cleared the ville. And although no one was hit, it was an unmistakable sign of worse to come. Turner was so, is one of his guys, Turner was so angry that he grabbed an old man and his young granddaughter and placed him in the column on the theory that the enemy would not risk firing at us with civilians in our midst. It made no move, I made no move not to stop him.

• 1:14:04Jocko Willink?

  And since the snipers stopped firing, I decided to keep our unwilling additions until we reached the next ville.

• 1:14:12Jocko Willink?

  The old man had lost an arm years before and waved his stump furiously at me as if he thought that the missing limb would give me a change of heart, but the little girl seemed to realize that we were resolute, taking her grandfather by his remaining hand, led us at double time into the smaller village. When we reached the outskirts, Corporal Turner removed his gold earring and gave it to the little girl, who pocketed it without a noticeable change of expression, turned abruptly on her heels and headed back in the opposite direction. The thought crossed my mind that I was losing whatever decency I had brought with me to Vietnam, but I was too tired and frustrated to entertain it for long.

• 1:14:54Jocko Willink?

  Besides, just ahead of us, there was another village that had to be disrupted and bent to my will if we were going to survive another day.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  Continuing. We moved directly into the high ground and set up in a rough perimeter around the crest of a hill. As we had anticipated, the view was unobstructed in all directions, and I was pleased with my selection as our command group set in on the summit. Turning towards Sergeant Leslie to comment on our choice, I could see the Marine nearest to me on the periphery slipping off his pack. Just then, an explosion broke the silence and a red flash filled the darkness in front of me. The force of the explosion spun me around to the ground and I scrambled back to my knees. I could smell the smoke and hear the young man moaning. When I attempted to refocus my vision on the wounded Marine, my eyes were blurry and

• 1:15:54Jocko Willink?

  I touched my hand to my face, I realized that my glasses had been blown off by the blast. My face was also wet where I had placed my hand, and I again brought my hand back toward my face. Blood trickled between my fingers. At first, I thought I'd been hit in the head, but when my hand began to throb, I realized that my luck had been much better and I'd only taken a piece of shrapnel in the hand.

• 1:16:18Jocko Willink?

  The marine who had set off the booby trap had been much less fortunate and his body absorbed most of the impact. One of his legs had been broken by the blast and a piece of bone protruded obscenely from his pants at mid thigh. His arm on the opposite side was riddled with shrapnel as he was, as was much of his side. And by the time he had, I had recovered enough to worry, to work my way over to his position, Ellis already was working frantically on him. Within minutes, he had applied battle dressings to stem the bleeding, immobilized the broken leg, and injected the man with a dose of morphine. I ignored his offer to bind my hand, which by comparison, looked like a razor neck,

• 1:16:59Jocko Willink?

  and turned toward Watson, my radio operator, who was already on the medevac net. When Ellis got our casualty stabilized, he informed me that there was a real danger of losing him if we did not get a prompt medevac, and I summoned the chopper as forcefully as I could. It seemed fitting that I had lost my glasses and was losing my perspective on the war at about the same time. And although several men congratulated me on having earned my first Purple Heart, I was in no mood to respond to their remarks. So they get him medevac'd, and they patrol back to camp. As we entered the camp and headed to our company area, we passed a group of rear echelon cooks

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  and bakers who had just finished watching a movie on the outdoor screen they had rigged to help them with their boredom. The movie screen had been a sore subject with my men since it had first been erected because we had to, we had to troop directly by it on our way out to and from the bush. On this occasion, one of the hapless cooks started to make a comment about grunts returning from war games, and several of my men pummeled him to the ground before he had finished his sentence. Leslie and Turner quickly ended the fracas, but even the most dim-witted among us shared the frustration that had triggered, triggered the outburst.

• 1:18:28Jocko Willink?

  We had just lost another casualty in defense of the domino theory, and there was nobody among us who was going to let a slight by a rear echelon motherfucker go unanswered.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Woods gave us news that our casualty was going to live, but his time in the bush and the Marine Corps was probably over. I felt like crying and wondered how my father had handled these kinds of situations. I sensed that I was going to have to get over feeling personally responsible every time one of my Marines was wounded, or I would go mad. But for now, all I wanted, all I wanted was the oblivion that another gallon of beer would bring. Leslie proposed a toast to the Green Machine and its proud traditions, and after several more beers, I understood with remarkable clarity, the meaning of the expression, eat the apple and fuck the Corps.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Now, they are out on another patrol. And there's a contact, and they actually get an airstrike coming in, some multiple aircraft come in, putting down suppressive fire. Back to the book, so intent were we on watching this display of aerial wizardry, that I did not even notice that the firing had begun behind us in the tree line we had secured earlier until several rounds screamed overhead and redirected my attention. The squad closest to my position reacted immediately, and after turning to face the threat behind us, laid down a volume of fire that saturated the tree line and badly damaged the house between it and our position. The enemy stopped firing

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  soon, as soon as our return fire began, and after both sides had stopped shooting, a woman emerged from the house, carrying a small child. The little girl's arm had been blown off by one of my men who had fired into the house when he detected movement. We watched in horrors, the woman made her way to the road with her tiny girl moaning in her arms. Both mother and daughter were covered in blood, and Watson began radioing frantically for a medevac as a corpsman went to their aid.

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  The Marine who had shot the little girl looked on in stunned disbelief for the rest of the day and was not able to respond to the simplest of commands. The little girl was not evacuated until half an hour later when the enemy unit had retreated back through the cover of the partially destroyed village and when the platoon at the bridge had begun evacuating its half dozen casualties and it was a simple matter to send a little girl and her mother with the wounded Marines. My platoon had taken no other casualties other than the young man who had shot the little girl. It was apparent that his psychic wounds would probably never heal.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  I wrote my father a fifteen-page letter full of information about the military aspects of my tour and the life-or-death situations we faced. Given this strong new bond, I could probably have gone on for another fifteen pages, but I stopped writing when I realized that my fifteen pages exceeded the combined length of all the letters I had written to him in four years of college. As I wrote, I looked inward at the way I had responded to the biggest challenge of my life, and my soul-searching convinced me that I did not want a military career. As a young man in college, I had poorly defined but high expectations of myself, but now

• 1:22:29Jocko Willink?

  in the midst of chaos and uncertainty, I developed enough insight to realize that I could be happy teaching school or plying a trade if only God would permit me to survive the war.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  I knew that I definitely did not enjoy the mantle of leadership that had been thrust upon me and I agonized over the life and death decisions regarding my men that I was forced to make. In the process, I began to develop mixed feelings toward the Marine Corps and my country, alternatingly between loving and despising both. And I was confused by the ambivalence of my feelings toward both Corps and country. A part of me had already begun to regard the enemy as some sort of inhuman cannon fodder. I realized that my reaction was a defense mechanism that allowed me to accept and dispense

• 1:23:23Jocko Willink?

  death and mutilation more readily, but I also knew that I was going to lose part of my soul if that thinking progressed much further.

• 1:23:34Jocko Willink?

  When I could no longer bear the reality of my own situation and the incivility of war, I took refuge in daydreams. I also drank beer, usually in solitude and late at night, and although the alcohol did not raise my spirits as it had when I was a teenager, it freed me temporarily from the albatross of command. Corporal Turner noticed the amount of beer I was consuming and alluded to it briefly and good naturedly, but I was running an efficient operation and paid no heed to his comments.

• 1:24:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so he's having a hard time. He's having a real hard time. And again, this is a book that I'm reading a fraction of the book and there's a lot more detail of where these feelings are coming from.

• 1:24:34Jocko Willink?

  And it's coming from situations like this. The point man had gotten thirty meters in front of me by the time we reached the foot of the hill. And I knew that once we had reached the crest, we would be back in control. As I called to him to slow his pace and allow the rest of us who were strung out behind him to close the gap, an automatic weapon opened fire from the top of the hill. The point man dropped immediately as we all did, but I could see as the enemy fire raked the sandy area between him and me, that he had already taken a round in the leg. He lay there exposed and vulnerable as the fusillade tattooed the earth around us. And in the confusion, I realized clearly that he was going to die if I could not alter their pattern of fire. I pulled myself to my feet and headed toward him.

• 1:25:18Jocko Willink?

  But the enemy gunner shifted his fire to meet my charge. And I dived behind a rotting log only ten or fifteen meters from where I'd begun. And then abandoned my only John Wayne style feat of the war.

• 1:25:33Jocko Willink?

  My movement had distracted the Viet Cong soldier on top of the hill from the wounded point man and he poured round after round after round into the base of the log shielding my body. As I attempted to burrow into the sand behind the log, I looked down and saw a colony of red ants going about their business as if nothing were happening. I was fascinated by the little creatures only inches from my nose and knew that I must be losing my equilibrium to be thinking about ants while the terrain around me was being pockmarked with lead.

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  I forced myself to refocus on the threat of the hill. And by now, the Marines behind me were returning fire. Within minutes, it was over and the enemy gunner used the reverse slope of the hill to make his getaway, while one of my fire teams scrambled up the near side.

• 1:26:23Jocko Willink?

  When we had secured the hill, I hurried over to the point and watched helplessly as Doc administered an injection of morphine and Watson called up the second helicopter medevac of the day.

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  It was life in the Riviera for all them. And it was...

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'll go to the book. Captain Woods devised an ambitious operation as a way to settle the score in the Riviera. He knew that it would be unacceptable from a political standpoint to simply level VM Dong, the hamlet at the edge of the Riviera, known Viet Cong stronghold, from which we had been taking increasing amounts of hostile fire. But he also knew that our South Korean allies were free to operate without political constraints that figured so heavily into all of our planning. He therefore seized on the idea of a joint operation in which our company would be lifted at first light into the Riviera. We would then form a cordon around VM Dong and a South Korean company would sweep through

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  the village and drive the unsuspecting enemy into our fields of fire. Whatever else the Koreans did in the village was their own business, but their reputation for brutality, we all knew that the village would be loath to support the Viet Cong so openly in the future. If our timing was right, the operation could turn out to be a turkey shoot. Beyond that, we would be on the offense for a change and the boost to morale would be of immense value.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  So, they're conducting this big operation and they're inserting by helicopter and Puller gets in on the ground, inserted from the helicopter, everyone's on the ground now, and here we go. "I concentrated as best I could on making certain that the two squads to my left were online and in position to hook up with the platoon adjacent to them. But in the confusion and noise from the other helicopter around us, control was almost impossible. The skipper's position was to be atop the high bluff to our right overlooking VM Dong, where we had camped the night before."

• 1:28:45Jocko Willink?

  After I had gotten my men online, my next assignment was to connect with his location. Watson followed closely in my tracks with the radio, but the two nearest men to us were at least twenty meters away on the other side and for all intents and purposes, out of hearing range. As we maneuvered, I scanned the area to my immediate front, which I had been neglecting in my effort to maintain platoon integrity. Suddenly, I saw a squad of green-uniformed North Vietnamese soldiers begin running out of the village and in my direction. They had apparently panicked when the helicopters began landing and were now probing for a way out of the noose we were drawing around them.

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  As they advanced toward me, I was unable to get the attention of the Marines near me, and it dawned on me, to my horror, that I was the only obstacle between them and freedom. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and attempted to draw a bead on the lead soldier, but my first bullet was off the mark, and when I pulled the trigger for a second time, my rifle jammed. By now, the North Vietnamese soldiers had spotted me, and several of them fired wildly in my direction until they abruptly altered their advance and veered off to my left. Standing alone with a malfunctioning weapon and seven enemy soldiers bearing down on

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  me, I was at once seized by a fear that was palpable and all-encompassing. My throat became dry as parchment and beads of perspiration popped out on my forehead before coursing down my face. I turned abruptly with Watson in tow and ran as fast as I could toward the safety of the bluffs above Viem Dong, where the company headquarters party was to be located. A narrow trail led up the hill to the headquarters group, and as I approached, it never occurred to me that the thirty meters between my course and the commander's position... Had not been secured. I knew only that the firepower advantage of the NVA squad I had just encountered would be

• 1:30:54Jocko Willink?

  neutralized if I could reach the men milling at the crest of the hill. With only a few meters left to cover in my flight, a thunderous boom suddenly rent the air and I was propelled upward with the acrid smell of cordite in my nostrils. When I landed a few feet up the trail from the booby-trapped howitz around that I had detonated, I felt as if I had been airborne forever. Colors and sound became muted, and although there was now a beehive of activity all around me, all movement seemed to be in slow motion. I initially thought that the loss of my glasses in the explosion accounted for my blurred

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  vision, and I had no idea that the pink mist that engulfed me had been caused by the vaporization of most of my right and left legs. A shock began to numb my body, I could see through a haze of pain that my right thumb and little finger were missing, as was most of my left hand, and I could smell the charred flesh which extended from my right wrist upward to the elbow. I knew that I had finished serving my time in the hell of Vietnam. As I drifted in and out of consciousness, I felt elated at the prospect of relinquishing

• 1:32:23Jocko Willink?

  my command and going home to my wife and unborn child. I did not understand why Watson, who was the first man to reach me, kept screaming, "Pray, Lieutenant, for God's sake, pray." I could not see the jagged shards of flesh and bone that had only moments before been my legs, and I did not realize until much later that I had been forever set apart from the rest of humanity.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  For the next hour, a frantic group of Marines awaited the medevac chopper that was my only hope of deliverance and worked at keeping me alive. Doc Ellis knelt beside my broken body and with his thumbs kept my life from pouring out into the sand until a tourniquet fashioned from a web belt was tied around my left stump and a towel was pressed tightly into the hole where my right thigh had joined my torso. My watch and rifle were destroyed by the blast and my flak jacket was in tatters. But I did manage to turn my undamaged maps of the command, of, and command of the platoon

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  over to Corporal Turner during one of my lucid intervals. I also gave explicit orders to all the Marines and corpsmen hovering around me that my wife was not to be told of my injuries until after the baby was born. There was, of course, no possibility of compliance with my command, but the Marines ministering to me assured me that my wishes would be honored. Because we were on a company-sized operation, there were six corpsmen in the immediate area around Viem Dong, and each of them carried a supply of blood expanders, which were designed to stabilize blood pressure until whole blood could be administered. As word spread of my injuries, each of the company's corpsmen passed expanders to Doc

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  Ellis, who used up the last of them while my men slapped at my face to try and get me to drink water and held cigarettes to my lips in an attempt to keep me awake. When the chopper finally arrived, I was placed on a stretcher and gently carried to its entrance, where a helmeted crew chief and medevac surgeon helped me aboard. Someone had located my left boot, which still contained its bloody foot, and that too is placed on the stretcher with me.

• 1:35:04Jocko Willink?

  As the chopper began its race towards the triage of Naval Support Hospital in Da Nang, I was only moments from death, but I remember thinking clearly before losing consciousness that I was going to make it.

• 1:35:19Jocko Willink?

  I never again saw the 3rd Platoon of Gulf Company, a remarkable group of young men with whom I had had the most intense male relationships of my life, and I felt guilty for years that I had abandoned them before our work was finished.

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  I was to feel even worse, that I was glad to be leaving them, and that in my mind, I had spent my last healthy moments in Vietnam, running from the enemy.

• 1:35:50Jocko Willink?

  I came to feel that I had failed to prove myself worthy of my father's name, and broken in spirit as well as body, I was going to have to run a different gauntlet.

• 1:36:05Jocko Willink?

  In the Naval Support Hospital triage in Da Nang, located just down the road from the CB compound where I had feasted on frozen strawberries and ice cream only a few days earlier, the remainder of my clothes were cut away, massive transfusions were started directly into my jugular vein, and my severed foot was discarded.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  On arrival, my blood pressure had failed the register, but once it was restored and I was stabilized, I was reeled into the operating room where my left stump was debrided and left open, and the femoral artery, which was all that remained of my right leg, was clamped shut.

• 1:36:47Jocko Willink?

  The procedure was fairly simple, because there was so little left to work with.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  I remember thinking, before I succumbed to the anesthesia, how clean and shiny the tiles in the operating room appeared, how cold the room was, and how worried the eyes all seemed above the green masks of the doctors and nurses who labored over me.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  When I regained consciousness, I was in a clean bed with white sheets. An assortment of tubes carried liquids to and from my body, and when I reached up to remove the annoying one affixed to my nose, I found that I could not do so because both my hands were wrapped in bandages the size of boxing gloves. I understood the reason for my bandaged hands. I had seen my right hand with its missing thumb and little finger earlier, and I also knew that my left hand was now retained only a thumb and half a forefinger. The word "prehensile" no longer applied to me.

• 1:37:54Jocko Willink?

  I did not yet know, or knew only vaguely, that I had lost my right leg at the torso, and that only a six-inch stump remained of my left thigh. In addition to the damage to my extremities, I had lost massive portions of both buttocks. My scrotum had been split, and I had sustained a dislocated shoulder, and a ruptured eardrum, and smaller wounds from shell fragments peppered the remainder of my body. Only my face had been spared.

• 1:38:30Jocko Willink?

  It remarkably contained only one small, blue line across my face from a powder burn. Communications from both the Army and the Marine Corps were badly garbled in the first days after my wounding. My wife was at first told that I had lost only one leg, and later that I had lost one leg below the knee and one above the knee.

• 1:39:06Jocko Willink?

  When she first got the message, she went straight to her father's pantry, poured a double shot of bourbon, and tossed it off in one motion. Already furious that she had been last to receive the news, she spent a sleepless night after Walter Cronkite reported my injury on the CBS evening news. The next morning, she traveled to Saluda to be with my parents. By the time she arrived, they had received a more accurate assessment of my injuries. And my wife was soon to discover that if I survived, which was doubtful, I would do so with a bilateral above-the-knee hip disarticulation.

• 1:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Numb with fear and exhaustion and seven months pregnant, she took solace from the only male puller who was still capable of standing on his own two feet. So this is just a, just a, the most savage imaginable injury, uh, just, and they talk a lot in the book about how it, it, the fact that he survived this was just unbelievable.

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable, the lost blood, the severe trauma to, to him, but just, it was just a completely savage wounding. While I was still in Da Nang, a parade of young officers who had been my peers in the basic school made the obligatory trek to the hospital to see me. And the concern on each of their faces so alarmed me that I finally requested and was given a bottle of whiskey to help them through the experience. For my part, I was becoming dependent on massive injections of morphine to quell the phantom pain in my missing limbs and postpone the inevitable acceptance of my loss, so my visitors were forced to drink alone.

• 1:41:17Jocko Willink?

  Mike Downs, my future brother-in-law, who was on his way back to the States, rerouted his homeward path to spend a few minutes with me, and he told me years later that he had resigned himself to never seeing me alive again after he had completed his visit.

• 1:41:34Jocko Willink?

  Now he's starting to head home. He gets to Japan. In Yosuka, I developed a stress ulcer as a result of the shock of being wounded, and two-thirds of my stomach had to be removed.

• 1:41:46Jocko Willink?

  The pain was excruciating, and I was not expected to survive the operation.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  The operation exposed a second ulcer once the surgeons got inside.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  When we were underway again, I was assigned a nurse who's sole duty was to be available in case the exposed femoral artery in my right side ruptured.

• 1:42:12Jocko Willink?

  A day later, my plane set down at Andrews Air Force Base outside Washington DC. I had, in keeping with the parable of the Spartan soldier, returned on my shield.

• 1:42:26Jocko Willink?

  My temperature was 105 degrees, and I had not had a dressing change since leaving Japan.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  I was transferred to the base hospital near the terminal, where my wife and family had gathered and had begun steeling themselves to meet me.

• 1:42:45Jocko Willink?

  There was no brass band to greet me, no rousing renditions of stars and stripes forever, and no politicians to offer their support for a job well done.

• 1:42:59Jocko Willink?

  I was home, though, back in the United States, after a splendid overseas tour that had not quite reached its third month.

• 1:43:10Jocko Willink?

  And I had avoided, for whatever reason,

• 1:43:14Jocko Willink?

  the fate of those casualties who were returning home

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  in aluminum boxes.

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  By the time I had been made as presentable as possible, it was late in the evening, and a nervous hospital commander, justifiably concerned that I might die on his watch, reluctantly agreed to let me receive visitors.

• 1:43:52Jocko Willink?

  In my precarious state, it was decided that I should only see one family member at a time, and my father was the first to enter the room.

• 1:44:03Jocko Willink?

  He stood quietly at the foot of my bed for a few moments, surveyed the wreckage of his only son, and then, unable to maintain his stoic demeanor, began weeping silently.

• 1:44:17Jocko Willink?

  He moved to my side and grasped my shoulder as if that simple act of communion would stay the convulsions that now racked his stooped frame. And in my helpless state,

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  I was unable to reach out or otherwise console him.

• 1:44:37Jocko Willink?

  It was only the second time in my life that I had seen my father cry, and as the nurse led him from my room, I felt an aching in my heart that all but eclipsed the physical pain from my wounds.

• 1:45:05Jocko Willink?

  That's chesty puller.

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  In the fall of 1968 and throughout my hospitalization in Philadelphia, the government had given no thought to the temporary lodging for families of wounded servicemen, and my family checked into a motel near the hospital for that week. In what was the first of many agonizing and expensive stays, they were so concerned initially about my condition that the expense of the accommodations was simply regarded as a nuisance. But as time went on, the economics of the situation became intolerable, and they began to double up on rooms or planned day visits from Washington.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  It was bad enough to be shot to pieces in the service of your country, but it was outrageous then to be expected to sustain heavy outside costs associated with recovery. And Toddy and I were doubly sympathetic to the plight of the enlisted wives for whom the extra costs were often an unbearable hardship.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  By the end of my first two weeks in the intensive care unit, the odds favoring my survival had improved considerably.

• 1:46:25Jocko Willink?

  Although the unpracticed I, the reverse must have seen the case. Several times a day, my bandages had to be changed. And without morphine, the ordeal was so painful that I quickly reduced to the level of a snarling animal.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  For a period of time, I became convinced that the staff as well as my family had entered into a conspiracy designed solely to increase my torment. And I lashed out at all who dared enter my room.

• 1:46:54Jocko Willink?

  Because I threw up so much of what the corpsman tried to spoon into my mouth, I simply began to refuse food. And my weight dropped to less than 60 pounds. Orders were issued that I be fed through a tube in my nose.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  I was also completely immobile and had to be rotated from my back to my stomach and vice versa every three hours in a special bed that employed two thin mattresses on a circular track and resembled a sandwich board more than a resting place.

• 1:47:33Jocko Willink?

  Despite the constant turning, I developed bed sores from the pressure and the perspiration with which I was constantly soaked. And by the time I had completed my stay in intensive care, I had open sores the size of quarters all the way along my backbone and pelvis.

• 1:47:55Jocko Willink?

  A decision was made to wean me off the morphine, on which I had become psychologically, if not physically, dependent. And I begged them and then screamed for my shots at a time between injections, as the time between injections was lengthened and the dosage was decreased. Without the morphine to dull my senses, I had to face both physical pain and the reality of my loss. And for several days, I was nothing more than a bundle of jagged nerve endings, as my wife stood by to wipe my brow, feed me lime lifesavers, and hold cigarettes to my lips.

• 1:48:37Jocko Willink?

  It was a period of my life during which I lost all self-respect for not having the strength to carry myself with dignity. And I loathed my country and the Marine Corps for having brought me to such depths.

• 1:49:00Jocko Willink?

  During the first month of my hospitalization, I was confined to the electrically-powered bed that rotated me as if I was on a roasting spit. And the combination of my injuries and the lack of mobility left me as weak as a newborn baby.

• 1:49:16Jocko Willink?

  I deteriorated to a point where I could not lift my head from the pillow.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  And I developed a dangerous-looking bald spot on the back of my head, where a bed sore was beginning to form.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  By the time the boxing-glove-sized bandages on my hands were removed, at the end of the month, the muscles in my arms had atrophied to the extent that my elbows appeared huge in comparison with my forearms and biceps.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, obviously, this is just like beyond wretched. And, again, I'm not even covering it all. I'm not even going into the details that he goes into.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  So they need to transfer him once he gets a little bit more stable. On the Monday following my transfer to SOQ 12, many of the patients who were far enough along in the recuperation process to get weekend passes returned from liberty, including my roommate Lieutenant Paul Barrentz, a double above the knee amputee. Lieutenant Barrentz had been raked across the knees by automatic weapons fire while setting up an ambush in Vietnam 18 months earlier. And his wounds were so severe that both his legs had been amputated surgically. He had made remarkable progress, however, at adjusting to the wooden prosthesis that the hospital's limb and brace shop had outfitted him with.

• 1:51:00Jocko Willink?

  And when he walked into our room that first Monday morning with only a cane to steady his balance, I was amazed to discover that a man with so little remaining of his legs could ambulate.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  Later, I lay awake and mulled over the events of the day and the utter lack of control I had over my life. Prior to being moved into the room with Paul, the certainties of my life were finite and unappealing. I was turned in my bed every three hours, and in the mornings a corpsman shaved, bathed, and fed me. My dressings were then changed, and for the rest of the day, various doctors and nurses poked and prodded at me as if I were a side of beef in a meat market. I no longer had any idea of my own capabilities, and whatever dignity I once possessed had abandoned me as surely as my missing limbs. For weeks, I had been brooding over the idea of asking Toddy for a divorce, since I did

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  not feel it was fair to force her into a lifetime of caring for a helpless cripple. I had, in fact, considered suicide, but I now laughed, despite my melancholy, when I realized that I was incapable of throwing myself out of the partially open window only a few feet from my bed.

• 1:52:32Jocko Willink?

  As I watched Paul sleeping peacefully in the bed across the room from me, I wished desperately for one night's rest, free of pain or discomfort.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  It then occurred to me that Paul must have been through the same hell I was now experiencing. And he had survived the ordeal. He had also redefined his relationship with his wife in a positive manner. In a few, and in a few weeks would be putting the Marine Corps and the Vietnam War behind him and looking for a job.

• 1:53:03Jocko Willink?

  By the time blessed sleep finally came, I had begrudgingly come to realize that I must undergo a drastic change in attitude to avoid spending the rest of my life as a miserable, lonely freak.

• 1:53:22Jocko Willink?

  As Paul's roommate, I was privy to many of the conversations he had with the other patients of Esq Q12, many of whom stopped by that first week to wish him luck on his operation.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  They were a diverse assortment of young Marine and naval officers who entered our room in wheelchairs, on crutches, or using unfamiliar prosthetics that for many were to become lifelong companions.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Varied in their backgrounds and personalities, they bore the scars of a war that, whatever its devastation, produce a bonding among them far more powerful in some ways than the ties of family kinship.

• 1:54:05Jocko Willink?

  Some, like Lieutenant Joe Belzer, who had been wounded three times, treated their disabilities as affirmations of manhood and where it wore their wooden legs and eye patches as badges of honor. While others were truly shattered by the wounds they had suffered. Lieutenant Cleve McClary,

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  who had lost an arm and an eye to a Vietcong satchel charge, turned to Christ to restore wholeness to his life. And Lieutenant Cal Goodman, who is now missing his legs, his testicles, and his right thumb, cursed God and anyone who was foolish enough to cross his path.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  In mid-November.

• 1:54:59Jocko Willink?

  And he was wounded on October 11th. "In mid-November, I still had open bed sores along my spine and barely healed skin grafts across my buttocks and I was so weak from my wounds and inactivity that the first few times I was placed in a wheelchair, my head flopped over on my shoulder as if it were connected to my torso by a slinky."

• 1:55:22Jocko Willink?

  At less than 60 pounds, I was so emaciated that I did not recognize myself the first time I was wheeled by a mirror and I automatically reached for my face to make certain that it was mine.

• 1:55:41Jocko Willink?

  One night, a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, I was paid a surprise visit by an old fraternity brother who had graduated the previous year and was in Philadelphia for a business seminar.

• 1:55:53Jocko Willink?

  Jeff and I had been close in college, but our shared experiences had been carefree and joyous, and I was ill-prepared for the tears that streamed down his face when he first saw me, as he was for my gross grotesque condition.

• 1:56:13Jocko Willink?

  Later, I was able to understand that if the sight of my own body was shocking to me, it had to be even more so for those whom I had been close. And I wondered anew why Toddy would want to remain with me. On the Friday before Thanksgiving, my father-in-law called from Fort Belvoir with news that Toddy had given birth to our son, Louis Burwell Puller III, whom she was affectionately calling Loopy.

• 1:56:44Jocko Willink?

  We were a real family, and despite the rocky start, I could tell as I talked to my wife that this child was God-sent and destined to solidify our marriage.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, everything that we take for granted, she's not, he can't even go to the birth of his child, he's...

• 1:57:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, he meets his, uh, I guess I'd say, physical therapist. Female, "My name is Commander Shaughnessy." She said, extending her right hand to grip my forearm, "You must be Lieutenant Puller. I'm in charge of physical therapy, and we might as well get started." "Balance and strength, Lieutenant, balance and strength," she said, "we must increase your strength and improve your balance if we are ever going to get you up and walking." Occupational therapy was far less demanding for me compared with most of the upper extremity amputees because the damage to my hands was minor. On my left hand, I still had a thumb and half a forefinger.

• 1:57:59Jocko Willink?

  On my right hand, although missing most of the thumb and little finger, I still had the middle digits. Combined, they amounted to almost a whole hand, and what I could not do with one hand, I could sometimes accomplish when I put them together. I mean, you think about that, his hands are just devastated, and he says that the damage to his hands is minor.

• 1:58:32Jocko Willink?

  One of his doctors, Dr. Cabot, "When Cabot put me on a beer ration to try and increase my weight, I drank several cans a night and topped them off with the prescribed sleeping pills. My resulting incoherence so alarmed the staff that the sleeping pills were discontinued. But I continued to drink beer, and by Christmas I had added five pounds to my 60-pound frame." I had weighed almost 160 pounds when I entered the Marine Corps, and although I never came close to weighing that again, I still needed to gain another 40 pounds.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Here's some thoughts. In Vietnam, I had the power of a god. With lightning and thunder only as far away as the nearest artillery battery. My commands may have been questioned, but they were always followed. And although I came to despise the life and death decisions I was forced to make, I had learned to make them professionally and competently. All that was taken from me at the moment I was wounded. And it was difficult to adjust to being totally powerless. Many times, I struck out blindly and irrationally at the corpsmen and nurses who were trying to help me, and it only increased my frustration

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  that in my weakened state, I was unable to inflict any damage on them. I now had to ask for everything. And it was dammably difficult to maintain a self-image when I was still soiling my bed.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  Shortly after New Year's, I also had the first of many identical dreams. In it, I was back in Vietnam, and my platoon and I were preparing for a combat mission. As I gathered up my gear for the engagement, I could not find some of the equipment I needed: an ammunition clip, some socks, or a helmet. The particular lost item varied with the dream and was not nearly as important as the life-or-death situation we would be facing shortly. But frustration over its loss, rather than apprehension of impending danger, was the dominant emotion associated with the early part of the dream. The middle sequence was hazy, but as the dream ended,

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  we had engaged a unit of enemy soldiers, and I had become separated from my men. The soldiers chased me through the surrounding area, and as they closed in on me, I awoke, covered with perspiration, and certain that I had barely avoided that last look into my soul that will surely precede my death.

• 2:01:23Jocko Willink?

  I've had the dream many times since it first roiled up from my subconscious in the winter of 1969, and each time it is seen, it has been as terrifying as if I was experiencing it for the first time.

• 2:01:37Jocko Willink?

  I am able to see now that the dream is a reenactment and playing out of the events leading up to my wounding, but my understanding of the dream's origins does not ease the terror associated with it.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  In fact, it only serves to remind me anew that had I chosen to confront the enemy on that now distant battlefield where I almost died, I would perhaps have come to know myself better, or to have proved myself my father's son.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Now, he ends up, the roommate Paul leaves, he ends up getting a new roommate, and his wife, Toddy, is able to move up to Philadelphia, close to where he's in the hospital, and eventually, he starts spending some time in the apartment. Unfortunately, it's a second-story apartment, so it's not, he can't just live there.

• 2:02:48Jocko Willink?

  But he escapes and goes there for the first visit, and here we go back to the book. It was the first time in more than six months I had been in a car, and the initial experience of transferring from a wheelchair to a car required all my strength. Years later, I learned from Jeff and Dave Ware, these are the people that were giving him a ride, who had not seen me since before my wounding, had cried for most of the way to our apartment. When we arrived, Jeff and Dave carried me up the steps into the wheelchair to our new digs on the second floor.

• 2:03:18Jocko Willink?

  After they had gone, Toddy sat me on the bed. I sat on this bed beside me and cradled Loopy in her arms. The three of us were finally alone, and as I reached for her hand, conversation seemed completely unnecessary. I did not know how I was going to get back down the steps Monday morning for my first day on outpatient status at the hospital, but then again, I didn't really care.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  When I first got home, I was unable to sit on a commode alone and Toddy had to assist me with my most basic functions. Degraded though it was, we developed an intimacy rare in a couple who had been together such a short time, and we learned together to diffuse our tensions with laughter rather than tears.

• 2:04:10Jocko Willink?

  For a while, Toddy was wiping the rear ends of everyone in the apartment. And when I got to the point that I could go to the bathroom unattended, it was a close question as to who was more thankful.

• 2:04:29Jocko Willink?

  One night in early February, as Toddy prepared Loopy for bed, and this is when he's now sort of living in the apartment as a outpatient.

• 2:04:40Jocko Willink?

  One night, early in February, as Toddy prepared Loopy for bed, and I scanned the newspaper for news of the war, our routine was interrupted by a hysterical phone call from Linda Zier. Toddy answered the phone, and after trying to calm Lindy down for several minutes, she handed the receiver to me. John had been seriously wounded by a landmine, and Lindy had just received word that he was going to be medevac to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. He was not critical, but he had lost one leg and was in danger of losing the other, and had multiple shrapnel wounds to his upper extremities. I tried to reassure Lindy the best I could, and I repeated Toddy's invitation to Lindy to stay with us after John arrived.

• 2:05:22Jocko Willink?

  All I could think of when we finished the conversation was that it must have been a hell of a large landmine to bring down John Zier.

• 2:05:31Jocko Willink?

  He had almost completed his time in the bush when he was wounded, and I was reminded that the first month and the last month in the field were the most dangerous times for infantrymen.

• 2:05:48Jocko Willink?

  I was fitted for my artificial legs at the limb and brace shop located in a cluttered building adjacent to physical therapy. Since I had no right stump, the procedures for my right prosthesis was more complicated. They required that Eddie make a mold of my lower torso that extended halfway to my armpits. When it had almost hardened, he cut it down the middle with a cast saw and I wriggled free. Eddie explained to me that when the upper part of the right prosthesis was completed, it would resemble a rigid corset with a hinge on the bottom to which my artificial leg would be attached.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  I could not imagine being comfortable, much less walking with such a device. My sister Martha and Mike Downs were getting married that weekend at the Quantico Marine Base and Toddy and I were going down to stay with her parents at nearby Fort Belvoir. During dinner, one of the groomsmen, a major with a degree from Harvard, suggested to me that I consider a run for political office as part of my future plans and that's sort of an indication of foreshadowing of his future.

• 2:07:15Jocko Willink?

  So, this is again, this is his older sister getting married, or no, sorry, his twin sister getting married. And it's the wedding. Martha appeared radiant on our father's arm and his metal bedecked chest put to shame the meager by comparison decorations of every other uniformed man in the chapel. I caught- I got caught at the entrance to the ballroom. This is after the wedding. I got caught at the entrance to the ballroom, trading chit chat with some of the early arrivals. And by the time I was able to excuse myself, the room was half full. Suddenly, I was surrounded by a sea of outstretched hands. And as I tried to work my way across the room, I felt completely alienated from my family and friends I had known most of my life, who were now crowding in on me.

• 2:07:59Jocko Willink?

  As I was about to explode, Bev Williams, one of Martha's old boyfriends and my best boyhood friend, saw the expression on my face and ran interference for me until I found a safe corner. Shaken, I downed several quick drinks and mechanically returned to the greetings of the guests who continued to press in. As I continued to drink, the emotion I had felt downstairs eased, but I had learned that I was not prepared to deal with social situations so quickly on the heels of my war and hospital experience.

• 2:08:32Jocko Willink?

  Later in the evening, a colleague from basic school told me, almost as an aside, and without any change of inflection in his voice, that Terry Pencino had been killed just before Christmas and that Ken Shelman had been killed at the beginning of February.

• 2:08:50Jocko Willink?

  The casual revelations of their deaths so numbed me that I was able to only repeat their names and nod my head in acknowledgement.

• 2:09:09Jocko Willink?

  Later that week, I went back to the limb and brace shop to get my stubbies,

• 2:09:14Jocko Willink?

  which are the short legs that you first get when you're working on learning how to walk again. Eddie was busy at his work table when I wheeled in, and he motioned me to pull my chair to the parallel bars in the center of the room while he brought my legs over. They looked more like tree limbs than legs, but Eddie was proud of his work, and I did not comment as he placed them between the bars in front of my chair. For the right side, he had me remove my shorts and put on a body sock before wiggling into the plastic bubble that was on top part of the prosthesis. When I had gotten it around my waist, he helped me fasten it into my body by two leather belts attached to the bubble. I then pulled myself up into an upright position between the bars.

• 2:09:56Jocko Willink?

  And as the hinge connecting to the bubble to my lower part of the device locked into place, I found myself standing for the first time in five months. Eddie then wrapped my left stump with an ace bandage guided the stump into the socket of my left stubby. And pulled my stump down to the socket by pulling the elastic bandage off the stump and through a small hole in the bottom of the socket. When he finished, I was standing wobbly between the parallel bars, leaning heavily on them for support and soaked in perspiration. I was only eighteen inches from the floor. Although the distance seemed more like ten feet for the rest of that session, I did nothing more than balance on the stubbies and point out to Eddie the pressure points.

• 2:10:40Jocko Willink?

  That needed sanding for a better fit.

• 2:10:44Jocko Willink?

  Once or twice I experimented with letting go of the parallel bars on either side of me, but each time I did so, I almost toppled over. And quickly had to grab the bars to restore my balance.

• 2:10:56Jocko Willink?

  You can see like not, not only is this whatever thirty, forty years ago. The technology wasn't there, the stuff that they're creating, we got leather straps. It sounds like a freaking medieval torture device more than anything else.

• 2:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Now we're moving forward a little bit now that my pain was manageable, I became less self absorbed. And began to focus on external realities. And I was discomforted by my perceptions. It seemed that the entire country was at odds over Vietnam. And as the debate raged, students, students demonstrated and politicians rallied, I became more and more confused.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Had I not been wounded, I would still be putting my life on the line in defense of foreign policy that many were now calling misguided or even immoral. And if they were correct, my sacrifice and the sacrifices of my fellow servicemen were worthless. A month after I began living out of the hospital, Jim Crotty got a new roommate, and the seemingly endless cycle of admissions and discharges of war casualties was repeated. When I first met Lieutenant J.G. Bob Carey, he had just been assigned to the bed space I had formerly occupied, and the doctors were evaluating his injured right leg to determine the level at which it would be amputated.

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  Bob, who had been a Navy SEAL team leader in Vietnam, was wounded by an enemy grenade in a firefight in which his team had destroyed a North Vietnamese Army squad. He had continued to lead his men for several hours despite his injuries, and the scuttle butt in the hospital had it that he was about to be recommended for the Medal of Honor.

• 2:12:47Jocko Willink?

  The morning I entered my own room, my old room, and discovered Bob, he was listening to Aretha Franklin tape, played several decibels above what war rules allowed. And he was trying to take pictures of his mangled leg with an Instamatic camera. He seemed oblivious of pain, and after I introduced myself, he handed me the camera and asked me to snap a few pictures of his leg for the American Legion folks back in his home state of Nebraska.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Jim and I exchanged glances, but neither of us could tell if Bob was delirious or just marching to the peat of a different drum.

• 2:13:25Jocko Willink?

  I took the pictures while Bob joined Aretha in singing "Respect," and I sensed immediately that life on SOQ 12 was about to undergo a rejuvenation. So, here we have a guy from the SEAL Teams. Obviously, it's Bob Carey, who is Bob Carey. He's awarded the Medal of Honor for actions during Vietnam that they just briefly discussed. You can see he brings a little bit of the, I guess, the SEAL Team ethos.

• 2:13:59Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Within days Bob was taken to the, taken to the operating room, and when he returned, his leg had been removed at mid calf. During the first few days after the amputation, he fought taking the kind of pain shots for which Jim and I had begged. And his stoicism, though unnerving, was a source of amazement to us all. Jim and I had learned how to dull the pain with narcotics, and though Bob's wounds were not as severe as mine, or his pain as great as Jim's, we wanted to see him more comfortable. And to have our view confirmed that morphine was indispensable to recovery. Instead, Bob asked for a fungo bat with which to beat back the phantom pains in his missing limb.

• 2:14:40Jocko Willink?

  And Jim and I were left to conclude sheepishly that some people had higher tolerances to pain than others.

• 2:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Get some Senator Kerry.

• 2:14:58Jocko Willink?

  One day when I arrived at therapy, Commander Shaughnessy was waiting with my new crutches. They were similar to the standard under the armpit support crutches, except that they had been designed for, for a four and a half foot tall person. As we adjusted them to my exact height, she ignored my comments about donating the crutches to the circus after I got regular length legs, but she stood close to me as I attempted to take my first step outside the bars. I was amazed at how much more difficult it was to swing each leg forward without proper support and stability of the parallel bars. And as with my initial venture between the bars, I managed only a very short walk my first day on crutches.

• 2:15:38Jocko Willink?

  I was tired and sore by the time I had crossed the room and returned, and as I lowered myself back into my wheelchair, I heard a familiar refrain, refrain from Commander Shaughnessy. Balance and strength, Lieutenant. Balance and strength. And I think balance and strength is something that I'm going to continue to tell myself. Applies to everything.

• 2:16:04Jocko Willink?

  Fast forwarding a little bit here, during the time that I was undergoing the restoration of my left hand, Bob Carey and John Zier had begun to enhance morale in SOQ 12. Carey, irrepressible to begin with, had a freer hand than most of the other patients because of his status as a war hero. When some of his antics began to outrage the staff, the rest of us urged him on. To monitor possible internal bleeding, he was put, he was on an output input status, which meant that all fluids entering and exiting his body were checked. To counter what he considered a gross invasion of privacy, he stole a pair of forceps from the dressing cart, bought a bag of jelly beans, and began inserting

• 2:16:49Jocko Willink?

  different colored beans into his bowel movements. The corpsman whose job it was to strain the fecal matter was incensed when he realized what Bob was up to. And he complained loudly that Lieutenant Carey was setting a poor example for the Navy enlisted personnel for whom he should be a role model. When confronted by the head nurse, Bob threatened to encase his car keys in the offensive matter, and until the monitoring was halted, the ward made bets on what would pop up next in Bob Carey's stool samples. So, Bob Carey. Team Guy antics.

• 2:17:33Jocko Willink?

  In early June, just before the reconstructive surgery on my right hand was to begin, Phil and Sally Leslie came to Philadelphia to spend, that was his platoon sergeant, Phil and Sally Leslie came to Philadelphia to spend a night with us. Phil had recently completed his tour in Vietnam, and was anxious to, and I was anxious to see him and get word from the platoon. Phil told me that Corporal Morgan, the young squad leader had written me at Christmas, had gone berserk and killed several Vietnamese women while patrolling in the Riviera. When Phil rotated out of country, Morgan was being charged with murder, and it was expected that he would do time in the Portsmouth prison. I was not surprised by the news, and although I could not forgive the atrocities, I felt I could understand

• 2:18:17Jocko Willink?

  the feelings that had caused him to lose control. Phil also told me that Captain Woods had been wounded and medevaced, but that he was able to remain in the Corps after his recovery.

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  I was distressed to hear of the skipper's wounding, but his injury completed the circle. Every officer I had known who had spent time in the Riviera had been wounded there. And I once again thanked the Lord. My time in that God-forsaken wasteland was over.

• 2:18:54Jocko Willink?

  In early June, I checked back into the hospital for reconstruction of my right hand. There was not enough remaining of my thumb or little finger to be useful. Doctor Sanzen was, had decided to remove the little finger and attach it to the thumb in an effort to give me a little additional length and more of a grip. He explained that the operation was not always successful, but he did not think that we had much to lose since the stub of my little finger was almost useless anyway in its abbreviated state. After he had explained the risks to me and I had signed the consent form, he paused for a moment and then told me that he wanted to show me something that had nothing to do with my surgery, but that might affect the future course of my hospitalization. He then handed me a letter from the Navy Surgeon General in Washington

• 2:19:39Jocko Willink?

  to his subordinate commands that stressed the need to retire as quickly as possible all active-duty Vietnam casualties who are no longer, who no longer met the physical or mental qualifications for retention. The letter went on to state that these injured servicemen could be better cared for by the Veterans Administration, but it seemed clear to me that the military departments, having no further use for men like me who had almost died in the service of our country, now wanted to get rid of us as quickly as possible.

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  I had just been confronted with the stark evidence that I was merely refuse to be discarded, and I was uncomfortable with the growing feeling that I had been used by my country.

• 2:20:32Jocko Willink?

  He gets that surgery where they try and make his thumb longer and it doesn't work.

• 2:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Turns black.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  A disappointed Sanson finally accepted failure of his surgery and had the staff release my hand from the sling. He apologized profusely to Toddy and me and wrote me a refillable prescription for Darvon capsules and sent us home for weeks of convalescent leave. He told us that he did not intend to remove the blackened thumb for at least a month when the rest of my hand would be fully healed and he was and I was stronger. So again, they're just, hey, sorry, we're gonna drug you up now.

• 2:21:12Jocko Willink?

  Carrie.

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  Carrie had already been discharged and was about to be awarded the Medal of Honor in by President Nixon in a White House ceremony. Legitimate heroes from my generation's war were rare and often unrewarded, and it was good to see Bob get the recognition and honor he deserved. I confessed to Toddy that I was a bit jealous of Bob's success, but at the same time, I felt enormous pride when he stood in the White House and received his medal. He would a sense be representing all of us who had served honorably. Toddy's response to my admission was to suggest that we schedule a party for Bob at our apartment after his trip to Washington, and I quickly agreed.

• 2:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Now, the different scenario here. When I got home later that day, Toddy told me that her brother would be driving down from Princeton the next day. Rob, which is Toddy's brother, arrived for dinner the next night and in the course of the meal, filled us in on the anti-war campus unrest. I had been reading about draft card burners and takeovers of administration buildings for months, but when he told me, when he told us that nobody seemed to get upset when American flags were burned and that students wore American flag patches on their rear ends of their blue jeans, I was appalled.

• 2:22:42Jocko Willink?

  On July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on the moon. On our black and white portable television, Toddy, Rob and I were watching footage of Neil Armstrong walking on the surface of the moon and making his now famous comment to the world: "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

• 2:23:03Jocko Willink?

  We all had wondered what he would say to mark such a historic occasion, and though we knew that the words were carefully planned and rehearsed, they seemed appropriate, and we lifted our glasses in tribute to him.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  It seemed incredible to me that Armstrong could walk on the moon,

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  but that I could do, but that I could not do the same on Earth. Such an ordinary task that most of humankind did without a second thought.

• 2:23:40Jocko Willink?

  In August 1969, as Philadelphia's summer humidity reached its zenith, and I was recuperating from surgery, that's the hand surgery that I'd been having, I began to look more closely at the Vietnam War and leadership in Washington that had shaped its course so profoundly and so profoundly altered my life. Before Vietnam, I had been essentially apolitically, accepting without question the judgment of our elected politicians. Now I was not so sure of the infallibility of the democratic process, and the closer I looked, the more it seemed that something was terribly wrong.

• 2:24:16Jocko Willink?

  On a more personal level, it seemed to me that the Vietnam veteran was being made the scapegoat for everything that had gone wrong with our foreign policy. And each time I read a story of another returning veteran being spit upon or being similarly ostracized by those same Americans he thought he had been serving, I recoiled in disgust.

• 2:24:43Jocko Willink?

  And he's got a little more social commentary. The following week after a half a million young men and women gathered at a farm in Bethel, New York to listen to Joe Cocker and Joan Baez smoke dope and embrace the concepts of peace and free love, I ended my convalescent leave and resumed physical therapy at the hospital while I envied the Woodstockers' freedom. I felt a generation removed from them, even though most were my age or only a few years younger. I mean, talk about a contradiction. You're watching Woodstock take place and you're just going in for more rehab.

• 2:25:27Jocko Willink?

  So he's continuing on trying to

• 2:25:31Jocko Willink?

  learn how to walk on his prosthetic legs. I tried to wear the legs while sitting in my wheelchair between sessions, but they were uncomfortable and severely restricted my mobility. They also added 30 pounds to my weight. And at the end of each day at the hospital, I needed no coaxing to store them in my locker until the next morning.

• 2:25:52Jocko Willink?

  He's with his wife and they happened to go into a restaurant. The restaurant was packed with young men and women wearing blue jeans and army field jackets. Many of them wore red bandanas, over-shoulder length hair, and peace signs were prominently displayed on all but a few.

• 2:26:14Jocko Willink?

  I had seen firsthand the calculated acts of cruelty and vengeance of which men were at war were capable. And if nothing else, I knew that there were very few lofty ideals at the level of conflict I had experienced. It made me angry to see these college kids with no frame of reference outside a classroom second guessing the decisions that had almost cost me my life. And it made me angrier still to think that they might be right.

• 2:26:44Jocko Willink?

  That night, I again had the dream in which I was separated from my men and was pursued by a unit of enemy soldiers. This time, however, I was wearing my wooden legs and I was running as fast and as effortlessly as if they were real legs.

• 2:27:02Jocko Willink?

  On November 10th, 1969, just a week after President Nixon's silent majority speech, Toddy and I went to a ball at the Officers Club to commemorate the 194th anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps.

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Big deal in the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps Ball, and he's at the ball. I was envious of the sea of uniformed men who could glide about the ballroom so effortlessly. But I was grateful that Toddy and I got a chance to dance. As I sat on the sidelines and watched, however, I began to get the uneasy feeling that despite the pageantry and hoopla, what was taking place bore almost no resemblance to my own Marine Corps experience. Almost all the Marine officers assigned to the Philadelphia Naval Base and its support activities were in supply and logistics, and as I scanned their medals, I was struck by the lack of combat decorations.

• 2:28:03Jocko Willink?

  Once again, I was reminded that I had been taught, both as a boy and as a young officer at the basic school, that a Marine, that Marine officers were combat platoon leaders first, and that whatever else they did was incidental.

• 2:28:18Jocko Willink?

  I could see now that the lessons I had learned were only partly true, and I brooded over my perception.

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  To make matters worse, young Marines were still dying in Vietnam, and I suddenly felt guilty to be feasting on prime rib and drinking chilled wine while real Marines were trying only to make it through another day in the arena I had just left this time a year earlier.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  And I wondered how I was going to handle myself in civilian life if I could not even be comfortable with my fellow Marines.

• 2:28:54Jocko Willink?

  In mid-November, there was another anti-war march on Washington with the media described as being larger and more successful than the one a month earlier. The following day, November 16th, it was reported that Lieutenant William Callie had been indicted by the Department of the Army for the massacre of South Vietnamese civilians at My Lai. And as the details of the atrocity began to unfold, "I felt both sickened and tainted by the revelations." Americans from all walks of life now seem to be saying that the war was immoral, and Callie, in addition to allowing innocent women and children to be slaughtered, had

• 2:29:32Jocko Willink?

  validated the stereotype of Vietnam veterans as bloodthirsty killers and misfits. I waited in vain for any report about American servicemen in Vietnam who had actively helped preserve the lives of civilians. Indeed, that was the major premise for our being there, but examples of humanitarian concern I had witnessed were almost never to be read or seen. As Christmas approached, I began to see that I was never going to attain a level of proficiency with my new legs that could even remotely be described as normal walking.

• 2:30:12Jocko Willink?

  I eventually reached a point where I could walk for 50 or 60 feet on the flat, smooth surface of the PT room, but any distance beyond that was outside my range. In addition, there were surfaces on which I could not walk at all, such as sand, gravel, and grass, and the slightest variation of slope in a terrain caused almost insurmountable difficulty. So not only is the technology ancient, but it's just harder to work with. And, and his wounds are severe. I mean, he has no articulation in, in the leg that he lost at the hip, so just extremely challenging.

• 2:30:54Jocko Willink?

  And he's starting to realize that it's not gonna be, it's not gonna be an advantage for him. It's not gonna be a step up for him to be using the prosthetics. Goes, they have a little Christmas celebration. After we finished the traditional Christmas turkey, candied, sweet potatoes and plum pudding, I told my father that I wanted him to see me walk. And my brother-in-law helped Toddy bring my legs and crutches from the car. I made the rest of the family wait in an adjoining room while Toddy helped me on with my legs. And when I was ready and standing, she summoned my mother, father, and two sisters. For the next 10 minutes, I paraded up and down the length of the room while my father looked on and held Toddy's hand.

• 2:31:36Jocko Willink?

  After I had finished, he came over to my side and put my arm around his shoulder for support.

• 2:31:43Jocko Willink?

  I put my arm around his shoulder for support as Toddy took pictures of us standing side by side. Not a word had passed between us, but I could tell by the tenseness in his back muscles and the way he set his jaw that he was moved.

• 2:31:59Jocko Willink?

  I knew and had known for some time that I would never be able to fill his shoes, but it was gratifying to be able to look him in the eye.

• 2:32:09Jocko Willink?

  For my part, I felt that even if I never walked again, I had gotten sufficient payoff for the months of physical therapy that led up to that one moment when my father and I stood together on Christmas Day of 1969.

• 2:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Everywhere I looked, it seemed that Vietnam veterans were being shunned and reviled. And again, I could not reconcile my father's generation's triumphal return from World War II with my own experience.

• 2:32:46Jocko Willink?

  When I finally came to understand that my contemporaries did not want to share the pivotal experience of my life, I learned to keep my silence.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  I also attempted to ease my own frustrations and insecurities about my future by turning more toward alcohol.

• 2:33:04Jocko Willink?

  And for a long while, my overindulgence allowed me to postpone coming to grips with the war.

• 2:33:16Jocko Willink?

  On her last day, Commander Shaughnessy, his physical therapist showed up for work in her uniform. I want you to know lieutenant, that even if you never make it out of a wheelchair, you've come further than any of us expected, and you have given meaning to my work.

• 2:33:35Jocko Willink?

  Dr. Willette conferred with me about the neck, the last series of operations on my right hand. He sensed my discomfort, and before turning to the surgery, he asked if he could speak frankly. At my nod, he told me that he had been monitoring my progress since I had become his patient, and that in his opinion, I was never going to be able to walk well enough, that my prosthetics would become a practical means of locomotion.

• 2:34:04Jocko Willink?

  He then told me that the ultimate decision to stick with the wooden leg, the wooden pins, was of course mine, but that I should not harbor any guilt, if I took the path that every similarly circumstance amputee he had ever treated, had taken.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Now he gets another operation on his hands. In order to accomplish his objective, he'd have to split the tissue between my thumb and forefinger in toward my palm, sew the exposed hand to the left side of my abdomen for a two-week period, then use the flesh from my torso to increase the web space. The operation was called a pedicle flap graft, and would be followed up a month after the flap was detached by a much shorter and simpler operation to revise the graft.

• 2:35:00Jocko Willink?

  Apart from the possible, and here's the, here's the doctor giving him some thoughts on the surgery. Apart from the possibility of an operative mishap, or a post-operative complication lieutenant, the principal drawbacks being extensive scarring at the donor site of your left side, and more tender flesh where the graft is to be applied to your hand. Also, you will probably have to shave your hand every couple of days if the donor flesh is here suit.

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  No breaks.

• 2:35:39Jocko Willink?

  Midway through the ordeal of having my hands sewn to my side, I received an urgent and alarming call from my older sister. She had just gotten off the phone with our mother, who had called to report that our father had awakened that morning confused and disoriented.

• 2:35:54Jocko Willink?

  The family doctor had come out immediately and made a preliminary diagnosis of a minor stroke or cerebral accident.

• 2:36:05Jocko Willink?

  But I decided to leave my father at home for the present.

• 2:36:12Jocko Willink?

  When Virginia hung up, I could not get back, could not get the phone back onto its cradle with my one free hand and frustrated at my helplessness and the news about my father, I let the phone fall to the floor and sank back onto my pillow. At a time when my father was most in need of help, I was unable to do any more than lie on my back like a turtle and wallow in my own self pity. I felt guilty and useless.

• 2:36:39Jocko Willink?

  As I thought about the bad news, it seemed ironic that my own son was gaining an ability to speak, just as my father was losing his. And I wondered if they would ever converse together.

• 2:37:01Jocko Willink?

  On the day that Dr. Willette performed my final surgery, April 30th, 1970, President Nixon had made a televised speech to announce that the United States and South Vietnamese forces had attacked communist sanctuaries across the border from South Vietnam in Cambodia.

• 2:37:19Jocko Willink?

  I wanted the war to end and was fearful that Nixon's decision could expand and prolong our involvement, but I still had a small unit leader's perspective. I knew that the troops along the border, if they could not come home, at least wanted to be able to respond to enemy attacks. What bothered me the most, however, was the shift in the mood of the country. Increasingly, the war seemed to be regarded by more and more Americans as just not worth fighting. And if that were so, I had lost my legs and several good friends for nothing.

• 2:37:54Jocko Willink?

  Four days later on May 4th, 1970, National Guardsmen activated to monitor anti-war protests at Kent State University in Ohio, shot and killed four student demonstrators.

• 2:38:07Jocko Willink?

  It was not made clear why the Guardsmen had responded to a student protest with such deadly force, but the graphic footage of the shootings aired on television screens across the country, and they galvanized the protesters and shocked the conscience of America.

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  I too was appalled by the senseless killing, but I could not understand why my countrymen seemed to react so much more heatedly to the forced Kent State killings than to the killings of more than 50,000 Americans in Vietnam. As summer arrived in 1970, I began to distance myself from the hospital and look toward the future. I continued to go to regular PT, but by now I had accepted the fact that barring some miracle of modern medicine, I was going to spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair.

• 2:39:03Jocko Willink?

  When the Philadelphia Naval Hospital concluded there was little more it could do for me, a three-doctor panel led by Dr. Willett was convened to document my disabilities. The findings of the physical evaluation board filled three typed written pages. Willett told me he had never seen a more extensive narrative of combat sustained injuries in one individual. Most patients hoped to be rated for as high a degree of disability as possible because their retired pay or disability compensation would be based on the physical evaluation board's findings. In my case, the combination of my injuries was enough to qualify me for

• 2:39:44Jocko Willink?

  total disability several times over, and there was never any question that the government was going to compensate me at the maximum rate. I was, of course, found unfit for further military duty and ordered to the retired list effective August 31st, 1970.

• 2:40:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's it.

• 2:40:11Jocko Willink?

  That's it. It's over. Gets his retirement papers. By noon, we were on our way. As we cleared the sentry box on the way out of the base, a young marine on duty saluted the officer sticker on the bumper of my car, and I absentmindedly acknowledged him by touching my hand to my brow. I was a civilian for the first time in our marriage. And she was two and a half months pregnant with our second child.

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  In Williamsburg, they moved down to Williamsburg. In Williamsburg, we settled into our rented bungalow on a tree-lined street adjacent to William and Mary campus. I had been accepted into law school, class commencing in the fall, but once in Williamsburg, I quickly realized that I was not yet emotionally ready for the rigors of law school, and I arranged with the dean to begin taking classes in January 1971 rather than in September. For the first several months, I felt completely adrift and cut off from the support I had while I was at the hospital. No one in the world outside the hospital had experienced the Vietnam War the way I had. Alone and isolated, I began to bottle up my feelings rather than try and share them

• 2:41:30Jocko Willink?

  with others. I raged inside at the unfairness of my situation. Having fought a war that cost me so dearly while leaving virtually all my new acquaintances untouched, I was now told in countless subtle ways that I could not vent my grief and frustration by talking about the war because it made society uncomfortable.

• 2:41:55Jocko Willink?

  I frequently chose to stay at home rather than venture out. My reclusiveness meant that there were fewer occasions to subject myself to the stares of curious onlookers, but it also made me a prisoner in my own home and increased my despondency. I remembered with despair my earlier student days when I trod barefoot on the hot bricks of the campus walkways and the only checks on my freedom were self-imposed.

• 2:42:22Jocko Willink?

  I had begun to take solace increasingly in drink and by the time the second semester classes began, I had to curtail a daily routine of a half a dozen drinks between the cocktail hour and bedtime.

• 2:42:37Jocko Willink?

  So he's heading down the path of

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  alcoholism if he's not already there.

• 2:42:49Jocko Willink?

  So

• 2:42:54Jocko Willink?

  my father had survived his October stroke and as with the earlier ones, there was no damage to his brain other than a marked worsening of his aphasia, which is the losing the ability to communicate and a new tendency towards outburst of the temper.

• 2:43:14Jocko Willink?

  He was in the hospital for several months and when he finally came home, he required constant supervision, which took a heavy toll on mother.

• 2:43:22Jocko Willink?

  At first we tried round the clock nursing shifts, but the logistical problems associated with getting skilled practitioners in remote saluda proved to be a nightmare.

• 2:43:34Jocko Willink?

  He talks about his mother here, she devoted all her time to my father in his final months at home, often reading to him until late in the night, lighting and relighting his pipe and trying desperately to understand his garbled words. The attention that she lavished on him was the most noble endeavor I had ever seen her undertake.

• 2:43:57Jocko Willink?

  So now he's going to law school. The first time I was called upon to brief a case, the professor unaware that I was in a wheelchair asked me to stand to recite.

• 2:44:07Jocko Willink?

  For a long moment, the class became completely still and I could feel the color rise in my cheeks while I struggled for a response. When I finally managed to reply that nothing would give me greater pleasure than to comply with his request, but that I was in a wheelchair, he quickly apologized and I briefed the case without further distraction.

• 2:44:31Jocko Willink?

  You're talking about some of the people he's around in the college. There were students who had obtained medical deferments, some of which were legitimate and some of which were, if not fraudulent, at least questionable. There was, in the academic environment in which I found myself in 1971, a prevailing attitude that American involvement in Vietnam War was, if not downright immoral, certainly a mistake of epic proportions.

• 2:45:02Jocko Willink?

  From that premise flowed a corollary that any effort to avoid involvement in the war was justifiable or even laudable.

• 2:45:13Jocko Willink?

  As I came to believe in the spring of 1971 that this attitude was representative of the thinking of an increased percentage of the American people, I also began to feel that my own sacrifice and that all of us who had fought in the war were meaningless.

• 2:45:31Jocko Willink?

  Unable then to discover any higher purpose for the wasted lives of the dozen men whom I counted as friends who had not come home, I began to despise the government and the Marine Corps, which had asked of many of us everything and we had given back, and we had been given back almost nothing.

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  I felt discarded and used up and as I tried to dispel with alcohol the magnitude of the obscene fraud of which I had been a willing victim, I was assailed by conflicting and unresolved emotions. On the one hand, I wished that all the unscathed young men whom I was now hearing a different view of the war had been forced to endure the war firsthand. On the other hand, I wished there none, that none, had been called to serve and that the insanity still unraveling in Southeast Asia would simply stop.

• 2:46:36Jocko Willink?

  With this, they actually buy a new house. Have a new, healthy baby girl that they named Maggie.

• 2:46:46Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:46:48Jocko Willink?

  shortly after Maggie was born, we invited my parents for a day visit so that they could see our new house and their new grandchild. After we had visited and Maggie went down for her nap, Toddy took my mother shopping. And Mrs. Gillen and I tried to entertain father. He seemed agitated after we were left alone. And his faltering efforts to begin sentences made it obvious that something was bothering him. As usual, he had more difficulty finding nouns than verbs. But I gradually became aware that he was trying to discuss the war with me.

• 2:47:28Jocko Willink?

  When I realized how important the conversation seemed to him, I tried desperately to fill in the gaps in his phrases. And to anticipate what his questions were, but the effort was so heart wrenching for the both of us.

• 2:47:43Jocko Willink?

  He seemed to understand that the United States was not winning the war, a situation he found bewildering. And he wanted to know how I was handling our lack of any positive results.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  I tried to assure him that I was fine. But my words had a hollow ring even to me. And I realized that this dear, sick old man knew the agony in my heart. And what trouble I was having finding meaning in my experience.

• 2:48:25Jocko Willink?

  By the time my mother and wife returned, we were both emotionally drained. And as I exchanged hugs with my father and then watched Mrs. Gillen help him down the front steps and into the car. I was relieved to see him go.

• 2:48:44Jocko Willink?

  It was the only conversation my father and I had had about the war.

• 2:48:50Jocko Willink?

  As I look back on it, I find it excruciatingly sad. That while my father was ready to talk about it, he was unable. And while I was able,

• 2:49:03Jocko Willink?

  I was unready.

• 2:49:26Jocko Willink?

  Can't help but think about what

• 2:49:29Jocko Willink?

  Chesty probably wanted to tell his son. And you just, the amount of wisdom that he had and what he'd been through and he probably could have put things in such good perspective for him.

• 2:49:41Jocko Willink?

  And he couldn't do it.

• 2:49:47Jocko Willink?

  The third week in the April of that year, more than a thousand Vietnam veterans gathered in Washington to protest American involvement in the war.

• 2:49:57Jocko Willink?

  On Friday, the 23rd, in a culmination of the events of the week, the protesting veterans were scheduled to mark on the steps of the Capitol and discard their medals in a symbolic gesture of their feeling of having been discarded themselves by the nation.

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  These were my brothers, not starry eyed intellectuals or malcontents dedicated to the overthrow of our form of government, but soldiers and Marines, many of whom had paid for their perspectives with shattered lives and shattered limbs.

• 2:50:32Jocko Willink?

  They were now saying that their sacrifices had been meaningless, that my sacrifice had been meaningless, and that the precious blood spilled by our dead and maimed fellow veterans had been meaningless.

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  For years I had been hearing similar rhetoric from anti-war spokesmen whose ideology was foreign to me. But I was now hearing it from those young men whose kinship with me had been forged in the bloody crucible of Vietnam and its impact, like a lifting fog from a shrouded landscape, stripped me of my remaining self-delusions. On Thursday night before the climactic last days events in Washington, I took my medals from our bedroom closet and debated whether I should drive to Washington and throw them away.

• 2:51:29Jocko Willink?

  As I sat silently in the dimly lit closet, feeling the weight of the bronze and silver in my hand and studying the red, white, and blue stripes of my Silver Star and the majestic cameo of George Washington on my Purple Hearts, I knew that I would never part with them. They had cost me too dearly. And though now, I clearly saw that the war in which they had been earned was a wasted cause, the medals still represented the dignity and the caliber of my service and of those with whom I had served. I could no more discard them than I could repudiate my country, my Marine Corps, or my fellow veterans.

• 2:52:13Jocko Willink?

  As I put them away, I was very sad and very tired but grateful nonetheless that my children were asleep in their beds in America, rather than anywhere else in the world. One Saturday night later that spring, I drove up to Saluda for a visit with my parents.

• 2:52:44Jocko Willink?

  As I wheeled down the hall toward their bedroom, my mother went ahead to tell father that I was there, and I heard him excitedly call my name as he came out to meet me. When I reached to take his outstretched hand, his face suddenly contorted for a moment. He stood motionless in front of me while his head jerked spasmodically. Mother realized immediately that he was having a stroke, and we managed to ease him into the chair. But all animation had gone out of his face, and a thin line of spittle formed in the corner of his mouth and made its way down his chin.

• 2:53:26Jocko Willink?

  After several minutes the episode passed, but his head lay heavily against his shoulder as he sat slumped in the chair and we stood him up against, then moved him into his bed, he urinated helplessly on the floor. After we got him into bed, he seemed to rest easily, either because he had lost consciousness or because the warring forces in his head had completely exhausted him. And mother called the family doctor while I stood watch. This stroke stripped him away of his last vestiges of dignity.

• 2:54:11Jocko Willink?

  When I saw him again several days later, he did not recognize me. He was incontinent and had become verbally abusive to most of the staff on the ward. As with previous strokes, his physical impairment was not as great as was the change to his faculties. But he now took short, hesitant steps, and he was frail, sallow-looking, and oddly bent at the waist when he stood. When I entered the room and moved toward him to kiss his cheek, he became convinced that I was trying to run him down with my wheelchair, and he climbed onto his bed and curled up into a ball to shut me out.

• 2:54:58Jocko Willink?

  For an hour, I tried to communicate with him. But when I left his room, it was obvious that my visit had been meaningless to him.

• 2:55:07Jocko Willink?

  And that I would never hear him call my name again. As he had only moments before this last terrible stroke.

• 2:55:20Jocko Willink?

  And at this point. They're trying to decide if they're gonna keep him at home, which obviously, there he's at a point health-wise where he can't stay at home anymore. They need to make a decision and someone's gotta make that decision and the decision falls on.

• 2:55:36Jocko Willink?

  On Louis Jr.

• 2:55:41Jocko Willink?

  I felt that by committing my father, I would be turning my back on the only man whose love for me had been boundless and unqualified, but in the end, I realized that I had no real choice.

• 2:55:56Jocko Willink?

  When I signed the paperwork to have him transferred to the Hampton, Virginia VA Hospital, I used my left hand to steady my right and keep it from shaking.

• 2:56:07Jocko Willink?

  My decision, though time has proved it wise, was among the hardest I ever had to make.

• 2:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Then he goes to visit him and the visits are just. I mean, it's more of the same. After several more such visits, I began to wish the end would come. And as his deterioration quickened through the spring and summer, it began to appear that my wish would soon be granted.

• 2:56:41Jocko Willink?

  Now, he ends up doing an interview with a newspaper guy and. It's seems like a.

• 2:56:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, he hadn't been interviewed very much at this point. And here we go. Toward the end of the interview, the conversation became focused on my feelings about having served in an unpopular war. And I gave, and I, and as I gave vent to my frustrations, there seemed to open within me an emotional floodgate that surprised us both. While I was talking, I knew that I would probably be misquoted, or that my words would be taken, taken out of context. But I had remained silent and introverted about how I felt for so long that I now spoke unguardedly and from the heart. I told the young man that if my son were older and about to be sent off to a combat unit in Vietnam,

• 2:57:35Jocko Willink?

  I would do everything in my power to keep him at home. And I rashly concluded by saying that knowing what I now knew, I myself would refuse to go if called again.

• 2:57:50Jocko Willink?

  When the article appeared in the paper a day or two later, it was picked up by the wire services and run in papers across the country and even abroad

• 2:58:00Jocko Willink?

  with headlines like "General Puller's Son Would Not Go."

• 2:58:06Jocko Willink?

  Now I was cast as a wild-eyed radical, and I felt that my willingness only a few years earlier to sacrifice my life for my country and my hideous disfigurements were cheapened by the about-face ascribed to me.

• 2:58:23Jocko Willink?

  It also made me suspect in the eyes of many career Marines, and in doing so increased the disenchantment that I was feeling toward the organization to which I was so strongly bonded.

• 2:58:44Jocko Willink?

  By the time the fall session of law school began, my father's condition had worsened to the point that he could not walk. And he had to be shifted to the main part of the hospital because he could no longer communicate. It was impossible to gauge the frequency or duration of the small strokes. And mother had warned me before my first visit to his new quarters that I should be prepared for the worst.

• 2:59:11Jocko Willink?

  There was little resemblance to the man who had once been so widely regarded as a tower of strength. He had lost a lot of weight since my last visit several weeks earlier. He now wore a metal brace on his left arm. And he was blind.

• 2:59:33Jocko Willink?

  The only stimulus that he responded to was the feel of the feeding spoon against his lips.

• 2:59:50Jocko Willink?

  On the morning of October 11th, 1971, three years to the day after I was wounded in Vietnam, I received a phone call from my mother saying that father had developed pneumonia.

• 3:00:03Jocko Willink?

  And had been transferred to the intensive care unit of the hospital. He was not responding to treatment and the doctors expected the worst. I drove to the hospital as soon as I got off the phone and my sisters and mothers. And my mother joined me later in the morning.

• 3:00:26Jocko Willink?

  His doctor took me aside and told me that he was dying.

• 3:00:31Jocko Willink?

  But that it would probably be at least nightfall before the pneumonia had run its course.

• 3:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Mother was distraught and tried to hold herself together by talking nonstop about any topic that entered her mind as long as it did not relate to her husband. My sisters were far better able to console her than I. And at their urging, I drove back to Williamsburg in the afternoon to shave and shower and have Toddy make arrangements for standby babysitting for Loopy and Maggie.

• 3:01:05Jocko Willink?

  When I returned to the hospital in the late afternoon, father's breathing was again becoming labored despite the oxygen mask and my mother, sisters, and I sat in a small room together and waited as darkness began to fall. After what seemed like an eternity, father's doctor came in to say heroic measures were now pointless. And mother, sensing the doctor's next request, told my sisters that she wanted to be taken home.

• 3:01:42Jocko Willink?

  I sat in the hallway outside the ICU with the doctor while my mother and sisters went to my father's bedside to say their last goodbyes. Their visit was brief, and when my mother emerged, balled up, handkerchief in hand, she was supported on either side by Martha and Virginia. Choking back tears, she came over to me, brushed my cheek with her lips, and without saying a word, turned to leave the hospital.

• 3:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Father's doctor saw them to their car, and while he was gone, I sat smoking a cigarette and wondered how my mother was going to get by without her husband. When the doctor returned, he asked me for permission to remove my father's oxygen mask. I nodded my assent and continued to sit by myself in my wheelchair in the hall.

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  My father was dying in the next room, and other than being glad that I was going to be alone with him when he passed away, I felt numb and emotionless.

• 3:03:14Jocko Willink?

  After a few more minutes, the doctor came out of the unit and beckoned me to go to my father's side.

• 3:03:23Jocko Willink?

  When I wheeled up to his bedside and locked the brakes on my chair, he looked frail and delicate in the dim light and deepening shadows around him. And holding his unresponsive hand,

• 3:03:39Jocko Willink?

  I saw that his reservoir of strength, once seemingly inexhaustible, was now almost used up.

• 3:03:51Jocko Willink?

  At the other end of the room, two nurses busied themselves with a logbook. And feeling that they had no business sharing this last moment of intimacy with us, I fought back an impulse to scream at them to get out of the room and leave us alone.

• 3:04:08Jocko Willink?

  Instead, I reached up and pulled the curtain around my father's bed as far forward as I could reach.

• 3:04:16Jocko Willink?

  After several more minutes, he struggled to take a few shallow breaths. His chest rattled through one last exhalation.

• 3:04:31Jocko Willink?

  And he was still.

• 3:04:36Jocko Willink?

  As I watched, a single tear formed in the corner of his right eye and trickled slowly down his cheek.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Although I knew it was involuntary,

• 3:04:52Jocko Willink?

  I saw the tear as his parting gift to his only son.

• 3:05:01Jocko Willink?

  And I laid my head on my dead father's chest and wept for a lifetime of missed opportunities to get to know him more fully.

• 3:05:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's

• 3:05:37Jocko Willink?

  chesty puller.

• 3:05:44Jocko Willink?

  On my way back to Williamsburg

• 3:05:48Jocko Willink?

  on the interstate.

• 3:05:52Jocko Willink?

  I went over the day and tried to analyze the relief I was feeling.

• 3:05:59Jocko Willink?

  I knew that part of it stemmed from the culmination of a long and protracted ordeal.

• 3:06:06Jocko Willink?

  But I also hoped that now that he was dead, I could stop feeling as though I were living in his immense shadow.

• 3:06:16Jocko Willink?

  Already, I missed my father terribly.

• 3:06:22Jocko Willink?

  But I missed the man who had nurtured me through my youth and my early manhood, not the legend against whom I had measured myself for so long.

• 3:06:40Jocko Willink?

  The funeral took place at noon on a crisp fall day, whose chill was softened by a high overhead sun. Every seat was taken.

• 3:06:53Jocko Willink?

  With my mother seated on my left and Toddy on my right, I bowed my head for a moment's prayer before the service began and risked another look around the church. Church. Across the aisle, there was seated a contingent of Marine Corps generals, three dozen strong, many of whom had come down from Washington on a specially arranged helicopter to honor one of their own.

• 3:07:20Jocko Willink?

  Most of them were contemporaries of my father, still ramrod straight in their retirement and now assembled to mark the end of an association that for some had spanned five wars and 50 years.

• 3:07:36Jocko Willink?

  At the conclusion of the indoor part of the service, an honor guard of four marine sergeants from the marine corps barracks at the Eighth and I Streets in Washington DC bore my father's casket from the chancel. And as they passed our pew, my mother clutched my hand and we followed the procession to the family burial plot adjacent to the church. Outside, the wind stirred the stately elms and oaks of the churchyard. And as we passed through a cordon of marine standing at attention with their white gloved hands raised to the brim of their hats, I watched the brown and gold dying leaves of

• 3:08:21Jocko Willink?

  autumn skip merrily across the route to my father's grave. After the family members were seated in the folding metal chairs parallel to the grave and the honor guard had placed the casket on the lowering device, the crowd from the church filed in around us and the minister began. "Man that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like a flower.

• 3:09:00Jocko Willink?

  He fleeth, as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one's day." Before Toddy and I returned to Williamsburg, I drove down to the churchyard alone to visit my father's grave one last time. The grave site was ablaze with floral arrangements of every size, shape, and color, and its gaudy patchwork of vivid hues contrasted starkly with the dying leaves of the surrounding trees and the brown autumn grass.

• 3:09:44Jocko Willink?

  I was at last alone with my father, my God, and my thoughts, but I was as yet unable to sort out the conflicting strands of a desolation that had been building within me. Since that last tear had run its course down my father's cheek, he was gone now, and I was grateful that Toddy had gotten to know him, however briefly, and to see the kindness in him before he died.

• 3:10:12Jocko Willink?

  I knew that my children would have their lives touched by the recognition that history had given him, and I wished that they, particularly my son, could carry some memory of him that was more than vicarious.

• 3:10:26Jocko Willink?

  I also wished that I had been more like him. And I wondered if I would always find myself inadequate when I compared myself with him. He had been a wonderful father, and I was fortunate to be his son.

• 3:10:42Jocko Willink?

  But it had not been easy living in his shadow.

• 3:10:46Jocko Willink?

  As darkness fell, and I took leave of his grave,

• 3:10:52Jocko Willink?

  I wanted him back.

• 3:10:55Jocko Willink?

  And I wanted him gone.

• 3:11:00Jocko Willink?

  After we got to Williamsburg that evening, I looked in on my sleeping children, and then at last fixed a drink.

• 3:11:10Jocko Willink?

  For a long time after Toddy had gone to bed, I sat in the darkness of our family room, periodically going to the kitchen to replenish my glass and waiting for the blessed numbness that would wash away the turmoil.

• 3:11:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, unfortunately, the turmoil was not over.

• 3:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, at the end of January, just as I was beginning examinations, John Zier died of cancer.

• 3:11:44Jocko Willink?

  After having been diagnosed only a short time earlier, in dying, he took part of my experience to his grave. And I felt cheated and betrayed that the man could no longer bear testimony to our ordeal.

• 3:12:10Jocko Willink?

  In early June of 1972, I awoke one morning and read in the newspaper

• 3:12:18Jocko Willink?

  that Captain Fred "Subtle", a highly decorated Army Combat Veteran and college fraternity brother, had been killed in Vietnam.

• 3:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Later that summer, I got drunk at a cocktail party and embarrassed Toddy's parents and my mother by loudly announcing that I thought that President Nixon was up to his crotch, if not to his ears, in the shit from Watergate.

• 3:12:43Jocko Willink?

  I had already decided to support Senator George McGovern, but I was baffled that my family seemed more upset by my cocktail party accusations than by the carnage in Vietnam over which the President was presiding.

• 3:13:00Jocko Willink?

  January 1973, an agreement ending the Vietnam War had been reached in Paris, and on January 28th, an official ceasefire ended the longest war in American history.

• 3:13:15Jocko Willink?

  In February, the first POWs, led by Captain Jeremiah Denton, began coming home. And for the next seven weeks, a jaded and cynical public had its pride in its country rekindled by the sight of almost 600 American servicemen and civilian POWs being reunited with their families and expressing their joy at finally coming home.

• 3:13:45Jocko Willink?

  I confess to being almost resentful that the POWs were recognized so positively for their sacrifices, given automobiles, appliances, and free sports tickets. And as I watched them being showered with confetti, I wondered what had happened

• 3:14:05Jocko Willink?

  to my parade.

• 3:14:08Jocko Willink?

  That's an interesting contrast. I mean, you know, obviously having Colonel Reader and Charlie Plum on here, and they came home. That's when they came. That's them that he's talking about. And, you know, clearly you see the footage of them coming home, and it was this big welcome, and like he said, parades, and here he was, you know, in his situation, and you didn't get a parade.

• 3:14:32Jocko Willink?

  I worked as a summer intern in the General Counsel Office of the Veterans Administration. And when he, when we returned to Williamsburg, I realized that I was deeply depressed. And that I had been dealing inadequately with my feelings and drinking far too heavily. Toddy and I talked it over. And when the fall term of my last year in law school began, I sought out Dr. Adams, an Army psychiatrist at the hospital where Maggie had been born. And began weekly therapy sessions. I was beginning to feel as if I were an observer of rather than a participant in my own life.

• 3:15:13Jocko Willink?

  By late spring, Toddy and I were feeling more optimistic about our prospects than we had at any time since the beginning of law school. I had passed the Virginia bar exam and the General Counsel's Office at the Veterans Administration where I had worked a previous summer, had offered me a permanent position after graduation in June. I was looking toward my future as a young Washington lawyer. Now, there's a guy shows up. Who he knows and his name is Tiny Hutton. He says, Tom Downing is gonna retire someday. Tom Downing was a politician. And when he decides to step down, I would like you to take his place as the next Democratic

• 3:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Congressman from Virginia's first congressional district. So that's just another little foreshadowing of this guy who was a politician that at some point was gonna retire. Within weeks of the time I started to work as an attorney at the Veterans Administration, President Ford instituted a clemency program for Vietnam military deserters and civilian draft evaders. So they set up this board where you're like, oh, you, you avoided the draft? That's okay, we're gonna, we're gonna forgive you for it. And they put like a group in place to go through case by case to figure out.

• 3:16:36Jocko Willink?

  What kind of, who would get the clemency? And he gets a job doing that. Back to the book, I felt humbled to be part of such an important endeavor, but a little lightheaded to be meeting in such a grand setting. Despite my good fortune and surroundings, however, I was also saddened over the news coming out of South Vietnam. In March, the communists had begun a major offensive in Vietnam's central highlands. And on March 11th, they took the key city of Baomu Thought was captured. By the end of March, cities where American Marines and soldiers had fought and died were toppling like dominos. On April 30th, Saigon surrendered without a fight.

• 3:17:19Jocko Willink?

  And for the first time in three decades, there was no fighting in Indochina. The American war effort had cost us in excess of 140 billion, had produced more than 200,000 American casualties, including more than 50,000 deaths. And it created a grotesque scar on the American people that was as palpable and would be as long lasting as the scars I would carry to my grave.

• 3:17:48Jocko Willink?

  So this has just gotta be, you know, that, I mean, I've, I obviously, when, when we, when we saw ISIS take Ramadi back and just thinking of all the sacrifice that had made by my guys, by the soldiers and Marines that fought in the Battle of Ramadi and seeing the ISIS flag, it was sickening. And here you have even more sacrifice and even longer war. And Saigon goes down without a fight.

• 3:18:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:22Jocko Willink?

  Back to the clemency situation. We granted clemency in almost 95% of the cases we evaluated. And in those cases where we required a period of alternative service, the average length stipulated was a little less than six months. So they were very lenient in, in giving out clemency, very lenient of the whole situation. And, well.

• 3:18:47Jocko Willink?

  Looking back, and I was about to explain with the way he felt about clemency, but here, I'll give it to you. Looking back, I think we may have done some good for the applicants whose cases we heard, but that good was insignificant when weighed against the irreparable harm caused by the four administrations that mired us in Vietnam and then refused to acknowledge any of the wrongdoing or culpability. To this day, I think we as board members were in the business of determining the guilt of the wrong people. And it was for me as shattering an experience as the loss of my legs and a dozen good friends in Vietnam to discover

• 3:19:27Jocko Willink?

  face to face the arrogance and the blindness that so often passed for leadership during the Vietnam era. So, you know, he was saying like, look, we're giving clemency to these people, but we should be going after the politicians that got us there in the first place. When the clemency board was disbanded in the summer of 1975, I returned to my old job at the office of the general counsel of the Veterans Affairs Administration. But after having been back at the VA a few months, I began to feel like a pawn in a game over which I had no control. Sometime after the first year, Tom Downing, the congressman

• 3:20:12Jocko Willink?

  from Virginia's first congressional district unexpectedly announced that he would not be seeking reelection. I had been keeping an eye on Congressman Downing's seat since Tiny Hutton's surprise visit, but his announcement in early 1976 caught me, most of the political junkies around the state, and even Tiny Hutton himself totally unprepared. So, here we go. We're going into a political race here. And the guy he's gonna end up running against is a guy named Paul Tribble. And he starts gathering some intelligence on Paul Tribble. I also, I discovered that Tribble, who was one year younger than I, had obtained a medical deferment from his local draft board

• 3:20:57Jocko Willink?

  that insulated him from any of the fallout of the Vietnam War. I had no doubt that Paul Tribble, who was now loudly proclaiming the necessity of a national defense second to none, and a hard line towards communism, had engineered a questionable deferment to avoid the war that had killed a dozen of my friends.

• 3:21:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he said with something about his range of motion in his arms or his elbows or something is why he was deferred the draft.

• 3:21:33Jocko Willink?

  This is an interesting thing. So now he's starting to spin up and starting to get, go forward in this election. Back to the book, many of the people with whom I conversed were unequivocal in their belief that Paul Tribble was making all the right political moves and as an incumbent would be difficult to beat. Nevertheless, I was undaunted in my enthusiasm to take him on. And like many political novices, I paid more attention to the encouraging words I heard than to the discouraging ones. I knew in my heart that I could not get an accurate reading of my own chances until I entered the race. So that's a very important thing to think about. Is that, and I, I, again, I skipped through the book a little bit, but I, I think, Lou had taken two years.

• 3:22:18Jocko Willink?

  The, the guy, the guy gave up the seat. This guy Trimble had won and Lou didn't run against him. Now, two years later, this is when he's running. So that's why the guy that he's going against Trimble is an incumbent. But it's just interesting that he was, he would listen to the people that were telling him, yeah, you should do it. And anyone that was telling him, hey, look, the guy's an incumbent. The guy's got, got a good politician. He's got a good base. It's not smart. He didn't listen to them. The only, what's that kind of bias? You always talk about these biases, right? Confirmation bias. He's basically, yeah, it's confirmation bias. He's hearing what he wants to hear.

• 3:22:52Jocko Willink?

  So, Toddy and I began to assemble a staff to formulate a campaign plan and began raising seed money. So, there we go. He's, it's on. He's, he's running. "I thought the contrast between Paul Tribble's background and my own would speak for itself in terms of our respective sacrifices. He, however, proved far more adept than I at wrapping himself in the American flag, and the local media never once in the course of the campaign made any reference to the circumstances surrounding his draft deferment. I came face to face with Paul Tribble for the first time in the early spring of 1978.

• 3:23:34Jocko Willink?

  In his early 30s, with blond hair, light complexion, and almost delicate features, Tribble appeared even younger, although he and his wife worked the tables around them like seasoned professionals. I could see no evidence of any disability in either of his arms, and from the way he was shaking hands and slapping the backs of diners around him, he apparently had rehabilitated himself quite well." So, you know, he's very suspect of the guy skipping out on the Vietnam War. "On one occasion, a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post," and I, again, this is all in the

• 3:24:16Jocko Willink?

  book, but he's a very savvy political player, Tribble, and he's got very good relationships in a bunch of different areas, including the press. So, the press reports things, you know, they'll, they'll report what Tribble does and they won't say anything about, and he just, he's getting, it's a tough, it's a tough, tough campaign, and he's, and Tribble's a professional. He's doing a very good job. And this is one situation, he's got some friends at the Veterans of Foreign Wars. "On one occasion, a local Veterans of Foreign Wars post gave him its Man of the Year Award, and I was invited to the banquet where he was to be honored. I accepted on the condition that I would be recognized and allowed to speak. But after I arrived, it was obvious that there had been a misunderstanding.

• 3:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Tribble, who was seated at the head table, was the center of attention throughout the evening, while I was seated at the back table." After the meal was concluded, he gave his standard speech on national defense and then had his picture taken for the newspapers as he accepted a plaque from the post commander. My recognition consisted of having my name read from an alphabetical listing of invited guests in the room and I was not permitted to do anything more than raise my hand when named. In a room full of summer soldiers and sunshine patriots, I was probably the only man who had ever experienced combat or shed blood for his country and they gave their highest

• 3:25:44Jocko Willink?

  award to a boy who did not even meet their own lax requirements for membership. This is burning him up. His campaign, so this is again, this is all detailed really well in the book and it's actually interesting because to hear a little bit about the behind the scenes of a political campaign, it's all in there, all the things that go on in a political campaign. And his campaign manager is a guy named Dennis and they're finally getting towards the end. It's like the last week of the campaign and they're having a little sit down and his campaign manager says, "Dennis tribbles ahead with solid support in every area of the district",

• 3:26:26Jocko Willink?

  he said, pointing helplessly at the tangle of papers on his desk. "I'm going to run a negative ad attacking him for taking so much political action committee money, but at this point it looks pretty hopeless." So his campaign manager says, "Look, we're going to run some negative ads against him." Back to the book, "I nodded my understanding and for an awkward moment neither of us said a word. Finally, I put my hand on his arm and told him that it was important that we ride out the remainder of the campaign with the dignity that we had aimed for. As I prepared to leave, he handed me a letter from a contributor and told me that he had been saving it for an appropriate occasion." So, you know, loophole is like, "I'm not going there. We're not going to go negative.

• 3:27:11Jocko Willink?

  We're going to keep the dignity of the campaign." And then he gets handed this letter and the letter which had been mailed in Florida was from a doctor who had treated me when I was brought in from the battlefield in Vietnam. "Never," he wrote, "had I seen more severe traumatic injuries in a patient who had lived." And I wondered at the time if I was doing the right thing by allowing you to live.

• 3:27:36Jocko Willink?

  Your survival had seemed to me a miracle of dubious value, which severely tested the moral imperative of my Hippocratic oath. Your running for the House of Representatives 10 years after our meeting in Vietnam reaffirmed the worth of my service and is a source of great personal satisfaction to me.

• 3:28:01Jocko Willink?

  Pretty powerful.

• 3:28:04Jocko Willink?

  Um, so then we get to election day. Election day with one precinct reporting. I was in the lead. And for an instant, a flicker of hope stirred inside me. Tribble quickly took the lead as other precincts began reporting. And I watched in fascination as my slim lead became a rout.

• 3:28:28Jocko Willink?

  And I think I looked at this, the results of the election and Tribble beat him with 72% of the vote. So it wasn't even close.

• 3:28:38Jocko Willink?

  The morning after election night, I awoke with a hangover, having stayed up half the night drowning my sorrows. Because I had not worked in well over a year, that's while he was campaigning, had maintained two homes for much of that time and had incurred a personal loss of $10,000, Toddy and I were financially strapped for the first time in our marriage. When I began looking for a job, the process was laborious and with no concrete prospects in sight, my depression over the campaign was compounded. I felt worthless because I was not working and with my time on my hands, I brooded over the meaning of my political defeat and drank heavily most nights.

• 3:29:22Jocko Willink?

  As I looked back on my run for Congress, it seemed to me that my reward for having served was that I was forced to challenge an incumbent who, because he had been spared the military service, was able to enter the political arena well ahead of me and to stack the deck against any political success on my part.

• 3:29:40Jocko Willink?

  In my depressed state, I began to despise Paul Tribble and his victory with the intensity I'd never felt towards any other man, and my contempt for him expanded to encompass most of the young men of my generation who had found ways to avoid the war experience. To make matters worse, Toddy came home from running errands one day shortly after our return and breathlessly announced that the Tribbles had bought a house just around the corner from us. The cruel irony of having to watch him drive around the neighborhood with his congressional license plates was almost more than I could bear.

• 3:30:17Jocko Willink?

  In a bad place, I now began to isolate myself from meaningful contact with all but my immediate family. I avoided special occasions and seized on any pretext to maintain my self-imposed exile. I also became more obsessed with the Vietnam War, and I dwelt endlessly on the unfair treatment and lack of respect that my fellow veterans and I received from the media, from society, and from our government. By late winter, it was not an uncommon experience for me to open a new bottle of Scotch every other day, and while my drinking did nothing to improve my melancholy, I continued to

• 3:30:59Jocko Willink?

  search for the blessed oblivion I seemed to be able to find only at the bottom of a bottle. I could see that the pace of my drinking was accelerating, and on numerous occasions, I told myself that I was going to have to give up my crutch before my children realized that their father was becoming a lush, but I always found some excuse to continue drinking. At the end of the summer of 1979, I was offered with some help from the White House, a position as an attorney in the Office of the General Counsel at the Department of Defense. I was also drinking heavily almost every night, and my dependence on alcohol had become

• 3:31:40Jocko Willink?

  so fixed that my primary goal on rising in the morning was to make it home in the evening so that I could been, begin, drinking again.

• 3:31:51Jocko Willink?

  After six months on the job, I could tell that I was becoming powerless over my ability to control my drinking. And though terrified by my situation in a way I'd not felt since Vietnam, I dared not reveal my dark secret to anyone. For years, I had used alcohol to numb the pain of my Vietnam experience and the loss of my legs. And now, in what I regarded as a cruel irony, alcohol was failing to bring the relief of oblivion. Angered by the realization that my old companion was turning against me, I drank more heavily and became even more depressed and withdrawn. Toddy sensed that something was severely wrong, but since she did not realize the extent

• 3:32:32Jocko Willink?

  of my dependence on alcohol, she attributed my darkening moods to depression and waited for me to pull myself out of it. Within six months of beginning my new job, I had reached such a state of despair that an especially difficult work assignment precipitated a crisis. Unable to complete the task on my own and too isolated to ask for help, I decided that I was a failure as a lawyer, a husband, and a father, and I began contemplating suicide. One morning, when Toddy was away from the house for several hours with the children,

• 3:33:12Jocko Willink?

  I began drinking straight shots of vodka to get the courage to take my own life. After half a dozen shots, I wrote Toddy a brief note, telling her that I loved her and the children, and that what I was about to do was not her fault. I then drank another half dozen shots and called a prominent Vietnam veteran in New York whom I barely knew to tell him what a rotten deal we veterans had gotten from our country. After the phone call, I had one more drink, went out to my car, tightly closed the garage and kitchen doors.

• 3:33:55Jocko Willink?

  I put the key in the ignition. For what seemed like an eternity, I sat behind the wheel with my hand on the ignition key and tears streaming down my face. And I thought about never seeing my family again.

• 3:34:13Jocko Willink?

  Unable to turn the key and suddenly feeling the effects of so much vodka, I decided to put my head down on the seat for a few minutes before getting on with my plan.

• 3:34:24Jocko Willink?

  When I came to several hours later, Toddy was standing over me, screaming and slapping my face.

• 3:34:32Jocko Willink?

  And all I could think was that my suicide gesture, like my life, had been a failure.

• 3:34:43Jocko Willink?

  After being sedated in the psychiatric ward of the nearest hospital, I awakened sometime the next afternoon at Bethesda. I was stabilized, diagnosed as clinically depressed, and introduced to a regimen of individual and group psychotherapy for the next week, while strangers plotted the course of my future.

• 3:35:11Jocko Willink?

  And again, there's, I tried to give the hints of the alcohol use and how it escalated, and the book goes into more detail of how it does escalate, and that's kind of the climax of that situation.

• 3:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Over the 4th of July, so he gets out, over the 4th of July holiday, Toddy and I were invited to the White House for a reception and an evening of patriotic music and fireworks. And I again drank to excess and behaved badly.

• 3:35:44Jocko Willink?

  My drinking seemed to be reaching a point where I would sporadically become unpredictable and then blackout.

• 3:35:54Jocko Willink?

  Over the course of next fall and winter, I drank myself into near oblivion almost every night. And while there were no obvious signs of my dark secret at work, I was becoming moody and withdrawn. I would awaken in the morning, shaky from overindulgence and badly in need of a drink. Once again, my main goal on rising was to make it to the end of the day so I could resume drinking. Ashamed of myself, I walled out my friends and family, and alone and isolated, I became increasingly bitter at the injustice I thought life had dealt me.

• 3:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Within six or eight weeks, I was fixing myself a large glass of wine in the middle of the night, almost every night. By spring, I was fast on my way toward needing alcohol in my system at all times just to feel normal, and I frequently had to resort to wine, to the wine bottle, an hour or so before I shaved each morning in order to steady my hands. Once at work, I tried to do all my paperwork and take care of everything that needed my signature in the mornings before the tremors returned. I then spent the rest of the day fixated on the thought of that first drink after I got home in the evening, and in terror that I was going to be found out.

• 3:37:12Jocko Willink?

  By summer, I had exhausted my defenses against the encroachment of alcohol. I knew that I was in serious trouble, and that despite my best efforts, I could not stop drinking on my own. I tried switching brands, drinking only beer or wine, drinking only after a certain time of day, or no later than a certain time of day, or not drinking at all. No matter what new and feeble approach I seized on, I always seemed to wind up drunk and out of control, and my self-esteem plunged to such depths that I no longer considered myself fit company for friends or family. Toddy knew that I drank too much, but she had no idea of the extent of my drinking,

• 3:37:53Jocko Willink?

  and she tried to hold on to the illusion that my problem was depression, out of which I would eventually emerge. On the Monday before Labor Day of 1981, I stopped off at a liquor store on my way to work and bought a pint of vodka. I had never before drunk at work during the day, but I had now gotten to the point that I seriously questioned whether I could last eight hours without a drink. On Monday and Tuesday, I took small drinks from my pint throughout the day, and no one at work seemed any the wiser. On Wednesday lunchtime, I went back to the same liquor store and purchased another pint,

• 3:38:38Jocko Willink?

  and by Friday evening, when I got ready to go home, all but a couple of ounces were gone.

• 3:38:46Jocko Willink?

  By now, I was leaving for work drunk every morning, staying drunk all day, and returning to my family drunk.

• 3:38:55Jocko Willink?

  I dreaded the weekend. I did not know which way to turn, but I knew I needed help badly. Somehow, I managed to make it through Friday evening without giving myself away, and on Saturday morning, Toddy had a political meeting that kept her away from the house for most of the morning. While she was gone, I drank the better part of a half gallon of wine. And when she returned home, she found me incoherent, and back in bed, my drunken state was no longer a secret. And she immediately called the psychiatric unit at Bethesda Naval Hospital, where I had been a patient almost two years earlier.

• 3:39:35Jocko Willink?

  On the way to the hospital, Toddy, steering the car with one hand and wiping away tears with the other, asked me over and over why I was drunk and out of control on a Saturday morning. It was a fair question, for which I had no answer, and when we got to the emergency room, the admitting doctor very wisely chose to separate us as soon as possible. Toddy was told that there was nothing more she could do to help, and she was sent home to await a prognosis on the miserable wretch she had married.

• 3:40:07Jocko Willink?

  I remained in isolation for another two days, and went through the by-now-familiar shakes and cold sweats associated with withdrawal. And I was then assigned a bed in the main part of the unit. With alcohol out of my system, I actually began to feel pretty good physically. Except for that first two weeks of being alcohol-free, I was able to sleep for no more than an hour or two a night.

• 3:40:35Jocko Willink?

  Mentally, however, I was a complete wreck and was convinced I would never be able to hold my head up.

• 3:40:43Jocko Willink?

  I also knew that I would never be able to drink again.

• 3:40:52Jocko Willink?

  And he's kind of doing an assessment of where he's at. Things had gotten so out of hand that I was now a virtual prisoner in a psychiatric ward, and the next step was four weeks in a rehab unit. I knew that my life was at a crossroads and that I badly needed directions or alcohol

• 3:41:11Jocko Willink?

  was going to take everything from me. Already my self-respect was gone and it was a miracle that I still had a job and the love of a wonderful woman and two fine children.

• 3:41:24Jocko Willink?

  "God help me," I thought as tears began to roll down my cheeks. I said the words aloud for the first time in years in a desperate plea for help.

• 3:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Later that night, as I lay wide awake in my bed at the psychiatric institute while Bob snored across the room, I could hardly wait for dawn and the start of a new day.

• 3:41:50Jocko Willink?

  I felt suffused with energy and alive in a way that I had not felt in years. I also knew I was being given a third chance at life.

• 3:42:01Jocko Willink?

  And although apprehensive that I would not avail myself of it, I longed to succeed. I suddenly realized that the compulsion to drink, which for years had occupied most of my waking hours, had miraculously been lifted from me.

• 3:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Now if I could just get some sleep, I thought, I would truly be a new man.

• 3:42:28Jocko Willink?

  And now he goes into a group treatment center, rehab.

• 3:42:35Jocko Willink?

  And self-conscious of being signaled out, I could feel the color rising in my cheeks, but before I knew what I was doing, I had blurted out, "Hi, I'm Lou and I'm an alcoholic."

• 3:42:50Jocko Willink?

  For years, I had known what that was, but until that moment, I had never acknowledged my alcoholism.

• 3:43:01Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't own the problem, you're not going to fix the problem. So that's the point where he's at. It's the first time in his life he's actually recognized that and owned up to it so that he could actually start addressing the problem. Now he's actually gonna leave rehab. And when Toddy picked me up on Friday afternoon, I was eager to put my time in rehabilitation behind me, but mindful that I needed to keep using the tools I had been given. During my first week back at work, I opened the newspapers one morning to discover a troublesome controversy had surfaced over the design of the Vietnam Memorial. A disgruntled combat veteran had testified in a public forum

• 3:43:46Jocko Willink?

  that he viewed the memorial as a black gash of shame, which instead of honoring those who had died in Vietnam, called their sacrifice into question. So where this comes from is the Vietnam Memorial Wall was there was a guy that was driving to make it happen and they had approved the design, which it is the design that it is right now. The big marble wall or granite wall, I think it's granite. Is that design had been created, but then, and Pollard really he really got passionate about it and he really wanted to help it.

• 3:44:26Jocko Willink?

  He didn't want to cross the line and become too public about it, but he was very happy that it was happening. He felt that it was gonna help him and it was gonna help all the veterans and it was what they deserved. So he was passionate about it and then, you know, some people didn't like it and it was designed by a, it wasn't designed by a veteran. It was designed by an Asian American, like a girl in school, in college. And some people didn't like that. Or some people just didn't like the design, right? The design, I mean, when you see it now, it's really easy to say, yeah, it's amazing and powerful, but I could see where maybe some people wouldn't perceive that if they didn't understand the impact it was gonna have.

• 3:45:08Jocko Willink?

  So he gets a little concerned about that. Back to the book. In the ensuing weeks and months, I was relieved to find that the negativism about the memorial expressed in the news account was not shared by the majority of Vietnam veterans who expressed their views. As my recovery progressed, I focused my attention more sharply on events leading to the construction of the memorial. And in a sense, I came to believe that its progress and my own progress were twin facets of a divine plan and not mere circumstance. So there you have it. He relates his recovery in the building of the wall. Now, he's in one of these recovering meetings at the Pentagon. He's actually going to recovery meetings

• 3:45:50Jocko Willink?

  at the Pentagon. And there's a female there named Karen, and she seems to be pretty, she seems like a really good mentor to him. So when Karen's, so when they're in one of these meetings, when Karen's turn came, her comment came, she told me that the recovering alcoholic gets well first physically, then mentally, and finally spiritually. She went on to say that the spiritual aspect of recovery is the most difficult, but also the most precious, and that without a spiritual component, at least for her, serenity would be impossible. Karen's words, however, continued to echo in my mind as I thought about the three aspects

• 3:46:34Jocko Willink?

  of recovery she had cited. I knew that I was improving physically. After all, I no longer shook or threw up in the toilet. And I had even begun working out and lifting weights. Mentally, I was alert and able to concentrate once more, although that was sometimes a mixed blessing since Vietnam was of late so much in my thoughts. I was stumped, however, by the idea of a spiritual recovery. And she gives him a little bit more guidance on that. She says victory is only possible through surrender. When I first heard her words, I was incredulous. I had been raised never to back away from a fight, to view surrender as the ultimate dishonor, and the

• 3:47:16Jocko Willink?

  Marine Corps had reinforced those childhood lessons. When I protested, she pointed out that I was not able to begin recovering from alcoholism until I recognized that alcohol had beaten me.

• 3:47:32Jocko Willink?

  So, the same thing. He has to own, he, he, he has to own it. He has to be humble enough to say, "Yeah, I, I lost this one. And what, what do I need to do to fix it?"

• 3:47:46Jocko Willink?

  "On March 26th, 1982, three weeks after I celebrated six months without a drink at my Pentagon meeting, ground was broken for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The ceremony itself was brief. Chuck Hagel, the Deputy Administrator of the Veterans Administration and twice wounded Vietnam Veteran himself, spoke movingly about a patrol he had participated in, during which several members had been killed, and how they would now be remembered.

• 3:48:19Jocko Willink?

  "It seemed altogether fitting to me that the principal remarks had been delivered by a Vietnam Veteran who had shed blood in my war, and that in speaking, he had stressed the suffering, rather than the glory of war."

• 3:48:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, he still had some, you know, unresolved feelings about Vietnam, and we'll go to the book. Applying his comment, there's, there's a, there's a speaker. At one meeting, a speaker commented that when recovering alcoholics are troubled by a situation, the source of the trouble is usually internal, rather than external.

• 3:49:08Jocko Willink?

  So that's what one of his people at one of his meetings say. Applying his comment to my Vietnam experience, I realized the Vietnam War had been over for 10 years. If I were going to come to grips with it, I would have to change because events happening a decade earlier could not change. I think this is very important. You can't change the past.

• 3:49:28Jocko Willink?

  "When I looked at it in that way, it became easier for me to accept the fact that I had lived while so many of my comrades had died, and even eventually to take pride, rather than feel guilty about having survived."

• 3:49:43Jocko Willink?

  I also came to see that while the Vietnam War was a tragic mistake and never should have been fought, my role in it had been as honorable as circumstances would permit. I had not performed perhaps as well as my father might have, but I had done the best I could. And it was time to move on to new challenges.

• 3:50:07Jocko Willink?

  I had finally discovered that a war that had ended for most Americans 10 years earlier could continue to be waged in my head only as long as I would allow it.

• 3:50:20Jocko Willink?

  The next time I saw Karen at a meeting, I told her that I was thinking about writing an autobiography in which I would surrender the Vietnam War. She looked quizzical and I did not pursue the conversation, but I saw myself like some of the Japanese soldiers who remained hiding on deserted islands for years after World War II had ended.

• 3:50:43Jocko Willink?

  If I could now summon the courage to forgive my government, to forgive those whose views and actions concerning the war differed from mine, and to forgive myself,

• 3:50:53Jocko Willink?

  I could perhaps move into the present and attain a degree of serenity and find the reason for which I had been spared first in Vietnam and then a second time from an alcoholic death.

• 3:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Now they're getting closer to the dedication of the memorial.

• 3:51:19Jocko Willink?

  On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday night before the dedication, there was to be a candlelight vigil of names at the National Cathedral. During the vigil, as part of the dedication, volunteers working in shifts were to take turns reading in alphabetical order the names that would be memorialized in granite on Saturday as part of the dedication.

• 3:51:41Jocko Willink?

  I had not made plans to participate in many of the weekend activities, but when I learned of the vigil, I asked for and was sent a roster of names to read on Thursday afternoon.

• 3:51:55Jocko Willink?

  As I wheeled to the front of the chapel, and here he goes to read the names. As I wheeled to the front of the chapel, a portly black woman with graying hair seated in the front row caught my eye. And I knew from that moment's contact that I would be reading the name of her flesh and blood.

• 3:52:16Jocko Willink?

  As I began reading from the list, an unexpected calmness settled over me. And I was able to complete my reading without breaking down. When I finished, I looked up and spied one of the regular attendees at my Pentagon Noon Meeting.

• 3:52:36Jocko Willink?

  But the woman in front pew was gone. I had gotten outside myself in reading the names, I realized.

• 3:52:46Jocko Willink?

  But I now prayed devoutly that I had not mispronounced the names of that unknown woman's loved one.

• 3:52:56Jocko Willink?

  Before I relinquished my space to the next reader,

• 3:53:01Jocko Willink?

  I called out in one final act of requiem the names of all the men I had personally known who had died in Vietnam.

• 3:53:12Jocko Willink?

  Lee Tilson Clark, Michael Robert Barton, Ronald Walsh McLean,

• 3:53:22Jocko Willink?

  Michael Maurice O'Connor,

• 3:53:26Jocko Willink?

  Terry Pensino, Kenneth Hyde Shelaman, Byron Morrow Spear, Frederick N. Suttle,

• 3:53:40Jocko Willink?

  Cornelius Herbert Ram.

• 3:53:49Jocko Willink?

  By Friday evening, Washington had become a staging area for Vietnam veterans from all walks of life and all parts of America who had come together to honor their dead, validate their own service, and help the rest of the country atone for nearly two decades of neglect.

• 3:54:10Jocko Willink?

  They came singly, in pairs, in groups, alone and with families, on foot, by motorcycle, car, truck, and bus. Some wore the uniforms they had worn in Vietnam or stateside, some Vietnam memorabilia they had purchased more recently, and some three-piece suits to demonstrate the success they had made of their lives despite the odds against them.

• 3:54:37Jocko Willink?

  The majority of them had been in their late teens and early twenties when they were called upon to give service in Vietnam. Healthy, young men with smooth faces and full, though closely cropped, hair.

• 3:54:50Jocko Willink?

  In their thirties and forties now, they were again gathering to serve. But many of the healthy young bodies had been disfigured by war or were showing the effects of approaching middle age, and the once-smooth faces in many cases now sported beards or mustaches to compensate for the encroachments of baldness.

• 3:55:13Jocko Willink?

  They were older and wiser than they had been when they were called to serve. And the hard lessons of war and years of public disavowal may have dulled their expectations, but in most cases, their love of country was stronger than ever.

• 3:55:35Jocko Willink?

  On Saturday morning, I had watched most of the morning's activities on television and by noon was badgering Toddy to get me to get ready so that we could go and be on time for the 2 o'clock commencement of the dedication ceremonies.

• 3:55:51Jocko Willink?

  The day was cold and windy, just as it had been eight months earlier for the groundbreaking. But it was now also cloudy, and the November chill cut through my suit and overcoat. We'd arranged to meet Lindy Zier across from the Lincoln Memorial. And while she and Toddy caught up on each other's activities, I turned toward a crowd of 150,000.

• 3:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Back to back in reverential awe, they stood, forming a huge half circle facing the memorial and pressed against the temporary fences separating them from the rostrum and the monument.

• 3:56:32Jocko Willink?

  I had never been a part of a crowd so large and yet so orderly. And as I made my way to an area reserved for wheelchairs, hands reached out over and over to touch my arms and shoulders. And the refrain "Welcome Home Brother" echoed and re-echoed.

• 3:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Like the service at the groundbreaking, this one was Spartan and brief. Almost as if we could only go so far with our collective grief and ultimately had to make our peace individually, alone, or at best with the help of our own personal gods.

• 3:57:13Jocko Willink?

  When it was over, after the invocation, speeches, and singing of "God Bless America", Jan Scruggs, and he's the veteran that drove this thing, Jan Scruggs pronounced the memorial dedicated. And the crowd came to life, roaring its approval and surging toward the black granite panels.

• 3:57:41Jocko Willink?

  And then, in one of the

• 3:57:46Jocko Willink?

  areas of downtown Washington Hotel, they're having a little reunion, a Marine Corps get-together. And Lou and Toddy show up and they get to the reunion and here we go. The room was so crowded with former Marines, most of whom were wearing uniforms, that my first reaction was to turn around and go home. Then suddenly a pathway opened up in the sea of bodies to allow me access. And again, as in the afternoon, hands reached out to my arms and shoulders.

• 3:58:21Jocko Willink?

  Although the words "Welcome Home Brother" were repeated as Toddy and I made our way to the sitting area near the bar, no response seemed required of me.

• 3:58:32Jocko Willink?

  I was at last back among the men who had fought with me and protected me in the now distant rice paddies and jungles of Vietnam, and I felt safe and at ease in their company.

• 3:58:46Jocko Willink?

  For the next two hours, we sat and received the attention and love of men who, through those strangers, shared a kinship with me that surpassed time and place.

• 3:58:58Jocko Willink?

  Forged as it was in the bloody crucible of Vietnam, it was unnecessary for me to give my name or to offer justification for my physical condition. This blessed band of brothers and I had shared the worst and best that life had to offer. And in reaffirming our connectedness, words were, for the moment, superfluous.

• 3:59:23Jocko Willink?

  The night went on, and as the event drew to a close, I'll go back to the book. As we were leaving, Toddy, who was now, by now feeling comfortable with the group, turned to one of the Marines and told him that I was Chesty Puller's son.

• 3:59:46Jocko Willink?

  "Yes, ma'am," he replied without batting an eye, "and I'm John Wayne."

• 3:59:56Jocko Willink?

  Later, in what became an oft-repeated rite of homage, I returned to the memorial with a single red rose, and seeing my reflection in its polished stone, came to understand how inextricably linked the memorial and I were by the bloodshed of my brothers.

• 4:00:22Jocko Willink?

  I, an insignificant speck on the continuum of history. The memorial, panoramic in its sweep, eternal, dark, silent,

• 4:00:39Jocko Willink?

  embracing all who would pause before its outstretched arms, in the end, comforting, spiritual, rooted in the present, but like me, looking both backward in sorrow and anger,

• 4:00:57Jocko Willink?

  and forward in hope.

• 4:01:03Jocko Willink?

  And exultation.

• 4:01:12Jocko Willink?

  And that

• 4:01:16Jocko Willink?

  is the end of Louis Pollard's book, but

• 4:01:25Jocko Willink?

  but the story doesn't end there.

• 4:01:31Jocko Willink?

  The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize.

• 4:01:37Jocko Willink?

  It became a best seller.

• 4:01:41Jocko Willink?

  And he balanced the media attention

• 4:01:46Jocko Willink?

  with his job as a lawyer at the Pentagon and eventually moved and accepted a teaching position at George Mason University.

• 4:02:03Jocko Willink?

  But unfortunately, he continued to battle depression.

• 4:02:09Jocko Willink?

  After the release of the book,

• 4:02:14Jocko Willink?

  he and his wife, Toddy, who had gone through so much,

• 4:02:21Jocko Willink?

  more than is even imaginable.

• 4:02:27Jocko Willink?

  They separated.

• 4:02:36Jocko Willink?

  And

• 4:02:38Jocko Willink?

  Louis

• 4:02:41Jocko Willink?

  actually fell down and broke his hip. He was admitted to the hospital.

• 4:02:49Jocko Willink?

  And of course, there's a lot of pain and in order to ease the pain from the engine, from the injury, he was

• 4:02:58Jocko Willink?

  he was given painkillers.

• 4:03:03Jocko Willink?

  And that apparently opened the door to addiction once again.

• 4:03:13Jocko Willink?

  And once again, he went down that dark path, only this time,

• 4:03:22Jocko Willink?

  he did not emerge.

• 4:03:26Jocko Willink?

  And on May 11th, 1994,

• 4:03:33Jocko Willink?

  at the age of 48,

• 4:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Louis B. Puller Jr.,

• 4:03:42Jocko Willink?

  son

• 4:03:46Jocko Willink?

  of Chesty Puller,

• 4:03:52Jocko Willink?

  killed himself

• 4:03:56Jocko Willink?

  with a gunshot to the head.

• 4:04:15Jocko Willink?

  His wife, Toddy, made a statement after his death.

• 4:04:25Jocko Willink?

  She said simply,

• 4:04:30Jocko Willink?

  to the list of names of victims of the Vietnam War,

• 4:04:38Jocko Willink?

  add the name of Louis Puller.

• 4:04:44Jocko Willink?

  He suffered terrible wounds

• 4:04:51Jocko Willink?

  that never really healed.

• 4:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 4:05:06Jocko Willink?

  as I said when I started this series of podcasts,

• 4:05:13Jocko Willink?

  this is a heroic story, and this is a tragic story, and the tragedy...

• 4:05:23Jocko Willink?

  The tragedy is heartbreaking.

• 4:05:28Jocko Willink?

  And I watched some videos

• 4:05:32Jocko Willink?

  of Louis Puller Jr. online and it was just, it's so hard to watch because he's there and he's smart and he's well spoken and he's genuine and he, he just seems together.

• 4:05:53Jocko Willink?

  But behind that, it is clear that he was not. And he talks about in some of those interviews, just like he talks about in the book, the fact that he had never had an outlet to talk about what was happening. He, he didn't have a place to express his feelings. He didn't get to talk about with, with his father or with the other students at school that didn't understand. There was no one to talk to.

• 4:06:27Jocko Willink?

  And this tragedy that we see in the story of Louis Puller Jr. is something that we see repeated all the time. This problem continues.

• 4:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Veteran suicide is a dark reality that seethes in the undercurrents of our country, taking the lives of our nation's heroes

• 4:06:54Jocko Willink?

  after they have served and sacrificed so much.

• 4:07:05Jocko Willink?

  And to help me talk about that subject

• 4:07:11Jocko Willink?

  and to help our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines overcome those dark places. I have another podcast in this series.

• 4:07:24Jocko Willink?

  And

• 4:07:27Jocko Willink?

  on the next podcast, which I will make available immediately, it'll be podcast number 123. I have a guest on.

• 4:07:39Jocko Willink?

  And the guest's name is Jacob Schick.

• 4:07:45Jocko Willink?

  And Jake's grandfather was a Marine in World War II. Who fought in Iwo Jima, and his father was a Marine in Vietnam, and Jake was a Marine who served in Iraq, and he was gravely wounded.

• 4:08:03Jocko Willink?

  And he will talk about what he's been through.

• 4:08:09Jocko Willink?

  And the lessons that he learned that got him to the other side of that darkness that can consume your soul, got him away from that darkness.

• 4:08:22Jocko Willink?

  And back to the light.

• 4:08:27Jocko Willink?

  So please, listen to Podcast 123 next, to hear his story and learn those lessons.

• 4:08:51Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 4:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:08:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, as I said when I started this series, man, I

• 4:09:08Jocko Willink?

  I just didn't, I didn't, I don't know. I didn't know if I was gonna be able to, uh,

• 4:09:15Jocko Willink?

  properly get through this, I don't know if I have.

• 4:09:20Jocko Willink?

  But, you know, like I said, the, the fact, and I was actually talking about, talking with Jake about this on the phone, um, and just talking about the fact that, you know, every, every Marine knows about Chesty Puller, every, uh, every Marine knows about Chesty Puller, not every Marine knows about his son.

• 4:09:43Jocko Willink?

  Not every Marine knows what happened to his son.

• 4:09:48Jocko Willink?

  And, in my mind, that's, that's not right.

• 4:09:55Jocko Willink?

  And if you don't know history, you're doomed to repeat it, obviously, we know that.

• 4:10:03Jocko Willink?

  And so I'm looking forward to talking to Jake about this.

• 4:10:07Jocko Willink?

  And getting the word out.

• 4:10:12Jocko Willink?

  So with that.

• 4:10:18Jocko Willink?

  Echo, I don't know if you've got anyone that wants to support this podcast, if you want to maybe let them know how they can do that. I know it's a little of a rough transition. I gotta kind of decompress over on my side a little bit.

• 4:10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, fully.

• 4:10:32Speaker 01

  Make it brief. So we'll start with Jocko Store. That's where you can get the shirts. Hoodies, rash guards. Beanies, pretty soon, if they're not up already. Hats, whatnot. Anyway, go on there, jockostore.com. And if you like something, get something. It's a good way to support. Also, originmaine.com. Origin is the company. Stuff all made in America. Gis for jujitsu. When you start jujitsu, even if you already started jujitsu, get an origin gi. Made in America. Good gis too. My favorite gi by far. Also, they got rash guards and, you know, sweat stuff like sweat suits and whatnot. Most comfortable ones I've ever had.

• 4:11:17Speaker 01

  I went into that last time, or maybe not last time, but a few episodes ago. I'm not going to go into it this time. But really good stuff. Originmaine.com. Good way to support and support yourself also. Also on Origin Main is Jocko Supplements. Support yourself big time with this one. New supplement called Molk Protein Drink Powder. Is it protein powder? Right? Yeah, yeah, protein drink.

• 4:11:42Speaker 01

  It's a good one. It is mint chocolate chip. If you're concerned about the flavor, chocolate's favorite flavor, from what I understand. Also, Discipline, which is kind of a nootropic, but we call it a pre-mission cognitive enhancing supplement. On top of physically.

• 4:12:01Speaker 01

  Enhancing Supplement, for lack of a better term. Also, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare. These are for your joints, omega 3s, and general antioxidants, too, by the way. So, that's an important one, I think. Good way to support and support yourself, of course. Also, on it.com/jocko. This is where I, we, get our fitness gear. Really good stuff. If you're starting kettlebells, get the cool ones. That's what I did, the Primal Bells. There's other stuff on there, like cool jump ropes and, what do you call them? Steel bells. You can get creative with your workouts on that one. They've got some really, really good equipment on there.

• 4:12:40Speaker 01

  Also, when you buy the books, The Fortunate Son and Marine, The Life of Chesty Puller. I got all the books organized by episode on jockopodcast.com. So, you go on the top, you click on books from the episodes. Got them all organized. Click through there, take it to Amazon and, you know, get your book, get your book from there. Good way to support. Also, if you want Jocko White Tea, that's on Amazon as well. But I'm putting it on Jocko's store, so you can check there, too. Actually, just go to jacotee.com. That'll be, that's kind of the depot, the online depot for where you can get Jocko White Tea. But it's pretty, it's available in a lot of places, kind of everywhere on the internet.

• 4:13:23Speaker 01

  Probably being like 7-Eleven, that'd be a good spot, so you can get it that night, whatever. Either way, good way to support yourself and support the podcast if you want to. Also, subscribe if you haven't already, Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play, you know, however you listen to podcasts, just subscribe. Seems easy, seems obvious, but, you know, easy way to support. Also, on YouTube, we do have a YouTube channel, video version of this podcast. Also excerpts on there if you want to share little tidbits, like little messages or clips from the podcast with like your friend or whatever. So, you don't have to share the whole three hour, four hour, in some cases, podcast, you know? Also, Psychological Warfare, if you don't know what that is, it's an album on iTunes.

• 4:14:10Speaker 01

  Google Play, wherever you buy MP3s, it's an album with tracks where each track is Jocko telling you how to fight past these weak points in your campaign against weakness when you're on the path. So you can skip the workout, you feel like skipping the workout, you're not in the mood. Psychological Warfare has a track for that. If you're gonna slip on the diet, you have enough craving, or something like this. There's a track for that too. Jocko will tell you why you shouldn't skip on the diet. Hundred percent effective. It's a good one. It's called Psychological Warfare. Jocko will link.

• 4:14:43Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of subscribing, we have a new podcast out. It's the Warrior Kid Podcast, Ask Uncle Jake. It's aimed at kids, so it's completely age appropriate for kids. But I'll tell you that Uncle Jake has lessons for everyone. Parents, teachers, coaches, that type of situation. Check it out. Subscribe to it or whatever. There's a new Warrior Kid book coming out. The first Warrior Kid book was Way of the Warrior Kid, From Wimpy to Warrior, The Navy SEAL Way. The new book is called Mark's Mission. If you want it,

• 4:15:23Jocko Willink?

  order it now. Tell your bookstores to get it now, so that the publisher prints enough for you to get one. If you wait, you won't get one when it comes out. It'll be backordered like has happened with all the other books that I've put out. The other books that I've put out, and you can still get, are Extreme Ownership, Leadership, Combat Leadership, Discipline Equals Freedom, Field Manual. That's a field manual on Discipline Equals Freedom. That's pretty self-explanatory. Also, Leif Babin and I have a new book coming out. Leif is my brother, who I wrote Extreme Ownership with, and we have a new book coming out in September. It's called The Dichotomy of Leadership. You can preorder that now

• 4:16:06Jocko Willink?

  as well. And again, if you want to get it when it comes out, preorder it now, so you don't have to wait because the publisher doesn't print enough copies, because they don't understand what's happening.

• 4:16:23Jocko Willink?

  Also, I have a leadership and management consulting company. It's me, Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke. It's called Echelon Front. If you want some of that, go to echelonfront.com. We also have the muster, which is our leadership conference. There's two of them this year. If you want to come to it, go to extremeownership.com. We also have the roll call, which is military, law enforcement, firefighter, paramedic, other first responders. It's a leadership conference specifically for you, one day. That's going to be in Dallas, Texas. Both those, or all those events, the muster and the roll call, you can register at extremeownership.com. They're all going to sell out.

• 4:17:05Jocko Willink?

  I think actually one of them's pretty close to selling out right now, the first one. So, register now if you want to come. And again, this is the first time we've done closely related series of episodes. So, the next one will be 123. We're releasing them all at the same time, so you'll be able to listen to that one immediately when you're done with this one, so that you can hear Jake, what he's been through, what he's learned. And it's available now. And until then, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.