126: Leadership From WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, with Col. Thomas Fife

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:02 - Col. Thomas Fife. WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. 2:02:12 - Final Thoughts and take-aways. 2:07:12 - Support. 2:36:28 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 126 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. And tonight also joining us is Mr. David Burke. Good evening Dave.

• 0:13Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:16Jocko Willink?

  On September 27th, 1950, approximately 60 American prisoners who had been confined in prison were taken into the prison yard in groups of 14 with their hands wired together.

• 0:33Jocko Willink?

  These men were forced to sit hunched in hastily dug ditches and then were shot by North Korean troops at point blank range with American M1 rifles using armor piercing ammunition.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  Of the two seriously wounded survivors, only one lived to recount the gruesome details.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  Unnumbered civilians estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000 as well as soldiers of the Republic of Korea were also slaughtered between September 23rd and September 27th, 1950.

• 1:13Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Kerry H. Y. Nell, formerly with the 23rd Infantry Regiment, 2nd Division Korea, was the sole survivor of the infamous Taekwon massacre. And he testified at a congressional hearing and I'm going to read some of that transcript. Here's Sergeant Y. Nell.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  "Toward the last, they was in a hurry to leave Taekwon, to evacuate Taekwon, so they took approximately the last three groups pretty close together. I witnessed the group right in front of me shot. After they was shot, we was taken to the ditch and sat down in the ditch and shot."

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  And then Senator Potter asks, "What happened to you when you were shot?"

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  And Sergeant Wynell replies, "I leaned over against the next man pretending I was done for. In firing, they hit my hand."

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  Senator Potter, "How were you, sitting in the ditch?" Sergeant Wynell, "They was aiming at my head. I have a scar on my neck, one on my collarbone, and another in my hand. They hit me three times." "And you played dead?" "Yes, sir." "After they thought everyone was dead, they started burying us. I came pretty close to getting panicky about that time, but somehow or another, I figured as long as I had some breath,

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  there was hope."

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  "In other words, you were buried alive?" "That is right, sir." "I might add, in that whole group that I was with, there was not a man that begged for mercy, and there was not a man that cracked under the ordeal."

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  "Sergeant, how long were you buried alive?" "That is hard to say, sir. As I say, I was shot around 5 o'clock in the morning, and I stayed in the ditch until that evening, until what time it was dark? I would say approximately 8 hours, 7 or 8 hours."

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  Now that is from a report on Korean War atrocities written by the Subcommittee on Korean War Investigations, and I want to repeat one line again from Sergeant Wynell.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  He says, "In that whole group that I was with, there was not a man that begged for mercy, and there was not a man that cracked under the ordeal."

• 4:05Jocko Willink?

  So think about that.

• 4:09Jocko Willink?

  Think about the will and the discipline of those men to be facing certain death at the hands of a murderous enemy, but to face death with solemn silence and show no signs of breaking.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  And I've said before that war brings out the worst in people, but it also brings out the best. And that is but one of thousands upon thousands of examples of the dedication of our military fighting men. And I'm gonna read you another example from the same war around the same time, but this one is an award citation. And it reads, "The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to First Lieutenant Armor Thomas Wilford Fife, United States Army for

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  gallantry in action as a member of Company B, 72nd Tank Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division, in action against an armed enemy on 19 September 1950 in the vicinity of Yongsang, Korea. On that date, Lieutenant Fife was in command of a platoon of tanks charged with the support of infantry elements in the defense of Yongsang perimeter. The enemy attacked his position with superior numbers and a fanatic determination to penetrate through to the division main supply route. The enemy attack was successful in routing the friendly elements and inflicting casualties to the extent that the organization and combat effectiveness of the positions was completely

• 5:57Jocko Willink?

  disrupted. Realizing the seriousness of the situation, Lieutenant Fife disregarded the heavy enemy fire and dismounted from the protective armor of his tank to reorganize the foot elements. After reorganization, he remained on the ground and successfully reestablished the positions by controlling both the foot elements and his tanks by means of radio communications. During this same date, while engaged in a friendly attack against the enemy, Lieutenant Fife again displayed gallantry by refusing evacuation after being wounded.

• 6:38Jocko Willink?

  The leadership, loyalty, and gallant actions demonstrated that day by Lieutenant Fife are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service."

• 6:53Jocko Willink?

  So Lieutenant Fife was under attack from devastating enemy fire. But he did not remain in the protection of his tank. In fact, he did the opposite. He exited his tank to organize troops and stop the enemy attack. He risked his life to lead his men. And he would continue to lead even after wounded. Now, Korea was not the first war for Lieutenant Tom Fife, nor would it be his last. Lieutenant Fife had actually already fought in World War II. He fought in Korea. And he fought in Vietnam.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  He also received three Purple Hearts for each of the three times he was wounded, once in each war. And in addition to the Silver Star from Korea, he also received another Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. And a Legion of Merit and a distinguished flying cross. And survived all that and served our great nation for 25 years. And I will say that it is my absolute honor to have retired Colonel Thomas Fife on the podcast today. Sir, thank you for coming on.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  It's nice to be here, I think. I listened to that story. It brought back tears. Quite frankly, I'm upset just because of the memory of that. It was a horrible experience, but one that had to get done. And I still remember getting out of that tank and wondering why in the hell I was doing it. But something had to be done.

• 8:57Speaker 02

  When you see thousands of people coming at you and you have nothing but your weapons and the guys needed some help, they just, they were willing to.

• 9:16Speaker 02

  I guess run, I don't know. That was what they were... They needed leadership. And that's the only thing I could think of. To get out and try to be there with them. And thank God we turned them around. And we were able to stop the enemy. You can't understand what it's like to be there and having thousands of people come rushing at you. And the best you can do is shoot your tank guns and your machine guns. And they just kept coming. It just kept coming. I mean, talk about discipline. Those guys were disciplined too. And we had to get our guys together, and we did.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  And it was... I think I was lucky. I was damn lucky. By the way, my wounds weren't that serious. I got shot in the ass. And it closed up. The wound closed up. And so it stopped bleeding. And for all practical purposes, I was as good as new for a while. So, I mean, it wasn't that serious a wound. I mean, I'd hoped to be evacuated to Japan, but it didn't work.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  So your million dollar wound turned out to be like a 50 cent wound?

• 10:42Speaker 02

  At least. It was, it was a... You know, when you... When I got wounded, I felt the blood rush into my pants. And then it stopped. So, why not keep going? So, as far as I was concerned, the wound was dead over. And when I finally got to the MASH hospital, the doctor said, "Nothing we can do for you. It's gonna work its way out, or stay there forever."

• 11:16Speaker 02

  It eventually worked its way out, which is how I ended up being evacuated when we were up in North Korea. And got to a hospital ship, Navy hospital ship. And they took the piece of metal out of my butt. And then MacArthur just said, General MacArthur had said, "We're gonna be home by things, by Christmas." So my objective was get off that hospital ship as fast as I could and get back to my unit. And, of course, the Chinese hit.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  And so, I was now trying to get back to my unit, and the Army was totally screwed up. We didn't know where, who was where. So I ended up flying to Pyongyang, landing in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea. And the airfield was totally surrounded by fire. We were destroying all of our equipment and whatever else. We landed our plane, the plane landed, and I had to go find my unit. And nobody knew where it was.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  So I got on the road and started hitchhiking. And a guy came along, happened to be a classmate of mine, who was in Signal Corps. He stopped, saw me, picked me up, took me back to where he was, which was Corps Headquarters. And they didn't know where in hell my outfit was. So finally, they took me back to the MASH Hospital, another MASH Hospital. And the MASH Hospital knew where my unit was. And they took me back to my unit in an ambulance. And I wasn't wounded, it was just a way to convey, get me back to my unit. I still remember those days. Terrible experience.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  But fun.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  It's hard for people to understand that, and I have that discussion with people a lot. When you're saying, hey, this is the worst time of my life. And also the best time of my life at the same time. Let's uh, let's, I mean, we'll, let's get into Korea, but let's talk a little bit about sort of where you came from, how you grew up, um, starting with, uh, I guess Sioux City, Iowa.

• 13:54Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Well.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  I was a

• 14:03Speaker 02

  a kid growing up, uh, in the middle of the United States.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  I was reminded on the way over here, I was talking, uh,

• 14:16Speaker 02

  when Pearl Harbor happened.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  I was sixteen, almost sixteen years old, and I was in a movie theater. And they stopped the movie. And they announced that Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. Now, I knew where the Hawaiian Islands were, but I didn't know Pearl Harbor was in the Hawaiian Islands. When you're in Iowa, there's no oceans. Nobody, nobody, you don't, you don't think about oceans. And so here we were, uh, in this movie. I was almost sixteen, as I said. And I said, well, hell, the war will be over before I ever get called in. Well, that turned out to be wrong. So, uh, as I said, I was going through high school.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  My whole objective while I was in high school is going to become a chemical engineer and go to Cornell University. Why? Because my best friend's

• 15:25Speaker 02

  oldest brother-in-law was, was a chemical engineer working in Sumatra. Well, I mean, you're growing up in Iowa. Sumatra sound like a pretty good thing to be doing. So, that's why I wanted to be a chemical engineer and I was going to go to Cornell, because he went to Cornell. And that was going to be what I was going to do. Well, the war happened.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  And I suddenly became 18, and you get drafted. It's hard for people to realize today. Every place you go, people were in uniform. It weren't people walking around in surveying clothes. The only people who were in surveying clothes were those who couldn't qualify because of physical disabilities. So everybody was in uniform, no matter where you were. So I got drafted. And fortunately, my dad was smart enough to send me off to Iowa State before I was 18. And I got two quarters in as an engineer.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  So the Army, in its great wisdom, decided to make me a combat engineer, which was a hell of a lot better than being an infantryman, as far as I was concerned. So I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Now, when you're from Sioux City, Iowa, Columbia, South Carolina is eons away. It took us five days on a damn train to get there. So we got there, and all of us soldiers get off the train, and the first sergeant got us all lined up there.

• 17:20Speaker 02

  And he's calling the roll. And he says, "Fifif." And I yelled, "Five." And from that moment on, I was fifif in this organization. So, anyway, that was in March of 1944. Forty-four.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  And so we went through basic training and learned to be a combat engineer. And I became a demolition specialist. Now, it's hard for people to realize, here's a kid who grows up in Sioux City, Iowa, and suddenly is handing explosives. I had no more idea of doing that in A Man in the Moon. So in the training, we were primarily learning to build bridges and take care of roads. That was our primary mission.

• 18:29Speaker 02

  But we also were taught to be instrument. Combat engineers have a secondary responsibility. And so we ended up, fortunately, going to Europe. When we were in training, we had no idea which direction we were going to go. But in retrospect, I've always felt that we were lucky to go to Europe rather than to the southeast. However, when I got to Europe, it was cold and hell.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  I wasn't so sure that was a really great decision, but it worked out all right. But our primary role was to go to Europe and become a, take care of the roads and all the things that engineers do.

• 19:28Jocko Willink?

  And so you showed up there, were you right around the Battle of Bolgs timeframe?

• 19:33Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, the Battle of Bolgs was, as I remember, right around Christmas time of 1944. Forty-four, yeah. And we got to the continent right at that time. But our unit went to Luxembourg. It primarily was helping...

• 20:03Speaker 02

  General Patton's army turned, make a ninety-degree turn and go north to help stop the Germans. And so, the roads had to be taken care of, and that's what our unit was doing. So we were, during the actual combat at Bastogne, we were working on roads and keeping the roads open for the Patton's army to get up there.

• 20:37Speaker 02

  Our unit eventually eliminated the Germans, the last Germans from Luxembourg, in the little town called Vionden, which is on the Arre River, right across from the Siegfried border, Siegfried Line. And so, the 1250th Infantry Combat Battalion turned into an infantry outfit for a brief period of time. February 12th, 1945, we got rid of all the Germans, the last Germans in the country of Luxembourg.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  The combat engineers, we always, I always have to, always want to give them their due, because they continued to keep roads open. And when we were fighting in Ramadi, it was the combat engineers primarily that, they had the duty of mine clearance. And it was a brutal, and I mean, obviously, a highly dangerous job for them to be out there clearing those mines and keeping those roads open. That's a hell of a job.

• 21:43Speaker 02

  Well, as a demolition specialist, one of my other, one of my jobs was mine clearance. And I was operating a minesweeper on this road down into the valley at Vionden. And behind me were the, were two tanks from the cavalry unit. And the Germans could see the tanks, I guess they could see us too, but they sure as hell were looking at the tanks and shooting at the tanks. And...

• 22:23Speaker 02

  A lot of their machine gun fire would ricochet off the tanks and that's how I got hit. It was ricocheted off the damn tank, got into my leg and arm. But superficially, I mean, all I did was go back to the aid station, get bandaged up and back into my unit. There wasn't any hospitalization at all, that kind of stuff.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  Another 50 cent wound for you.

• 22:50Speaker 02

  Exactly. I mean, I had a lot of those.

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

  So how long were you, so did you stay over, over in Europe until the war ended?

• 23:00Speaker 02

  No, actually, actually, in March, the unit got orders for me to return to the United States because I had an appointment to the United States Military Academy. And so, my very first airplane ride was from Liège, Belgium to Paris. And I was, I remember going into this office in Paris and I was dressed in my battle gear, so to speak. And they looked at me and they said, and I had still, I was still wearing my steel helmet. I can still remember this sergeant saying, "We've got to take care of this guy, we've

• 23:44Speaker 02

  got to dress him up." And so they put me in all brand new clothes. Two days later, I was on an airplane flying back to the United States. 27 hours later, and five stops en route, we ended up in Washington DC. So, and so I ended up, my first time ever visit the Pentagon.

• 24:14Speaker 02

  Here is this nineteen-year-old PFC, dressed in brand-new clothes, walking into the Pentagon. And I can tell you, I wasn't sure what the hell I was doing. But I finally got orders to go to Cornell University. Cornell University, what for? To get re-academic, uh, get re-oriented towards academics.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  So wait, so you had orders to West Point, but they were gonna send you to Cornell for a little while to prepare for it?

• 24:51Speaker 02

  Well, no, I had an appointment to the academy.

• 24:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  And if you had an appointment with the academy, in fact, this is still true today. If you have an appointment with the academy, they'll take you out of combat and bring you back someplace, safe. And, but they brought us back. There was about three hundred of us at Cornell, all from different parts of the service, whether it be Army, Air Force, back those days it was US Army Air Corps. And we were there for the, to get re-acclimated to academia.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  Turn your brain back on.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. Thank you. And so that was...

• 25:45Jocko Willink?

  At this point, did you know, did you know you wanted to stay in the Army as a career? Had you enjoyed your time in Europe and you said, "You know what? I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna go the distance," or?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  No. I had no, I had no idea. It wasn't until after, well...

• 26:05Speaker 02

  Very quickly, my appointment to the academy was an alternate appointment. And the principal, if he qualifies, the alternate doesn't get to go. And my principal qualified. So, now what did they do with me? And the Army, in its great infinite wisdom, decided to send me to Officer Kennedy's School. So, they sent me down to Fort Belvoir to the Engineer Officer Kennedy's School. The Army knew they were going to need a lot of second lieutenants over in the Southeast Asia.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  And, so, anyway, in the middle of Officer Kennedy's School, the war in Japan ended. Now what? Well, they stopped Officer Kennedy's, they slowed it down, I guess is the right word. But I continued on and graduated in the January of 1945, and here I was now, a second lieutenant.

• 27:08Jocko Willink?

  So you got your commission.

• 27:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I had a, and now I also had a principal appointment to the Military Academy. So, what did they do? So, they kept me at Fort Belvoir, training recruits. And then in July, they discharged me from the Army to enter the Military Academy as a cadet on July 1st, 1946. It was somewhere in there that I sort of liked the Army.

• 27:43Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 27:45Speaker 02

  But I knew if I wanted to be an engineer, I damn well had to get a college education. Well, we're better to go than to a place that's supposed to train you to be an Army engineer, which is, in this case, West Point. So, I went on to West Point and spent four years there, obviously, and graduated in 1950.

• 28:08Jocko Willink?

  So you got commissioned, they took your commission away for four years, you got, and then they gave it back to you at the end of four years?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  Yes. The only rank I've ever had was, in the Army, was twice, was second lieutenant. Yes, that's right.

• 28:23Jocko Willink?

  And West Point, at this point, is being run by just all WWII veterans, I'm sure.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yes, in fact, our tactical officers were all lieutenant colonels, who had been battalion commanders of some sort in WWII in Europe, or in the Air Force. In fact, tactical officer of my company, the first two years was an artilleryman, and the second two years was an Air Force, well, it was US Army Air Corps, became Air Force Lieutenant Colonel. So, and then the superintendent was Maxwell Taylor,

• 29:15Speaker 02

  and the commandant was a guy named Paul D. Harkins, who was Colonel Harkins. He was General Patton's hatchet man. And the deputy commandant was a guy named John K. Waters, who was General Patton's son-in-law. So, they were all WWII veterans, yes.

• 29:44Jocko Willink?

  And as were you at the time. That had to be, was that fairly unique? Or was there a lot of other guys that were prior enlisted that were coming to West Point?

• 29:52Speaker 02

  Of my class, who started, about 1,100 of us, I would guess several hundred were veterans of some sort. Navy, Army, Army Air Corps, yes.

• 30:18Speaker 02

  I would say about two or two hu- two hundred to three hundred. I don't remember exactly. Yeah.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  Now, when you're going through West Point, the war ends. Are you, is, is war on the horizon for you? Or did you guys have an attitude kind of like, well, you know, we're gonna go and be peacetime army officers for the next however many years? Or did you see trouble brewing?

• 30:43Speaker 02

  No, saw no trouble brewing. I mean, I was, I don't think anybody really saw what was gonna happen in Korea. In fact, the, the only thing that was trouble, if you would, was the Berlin airlift was happened while we were cadets. And so we saw that kind of thing, but I guess in our, maybe in our naivety, we figured that nobody was gonna pull the plug and really have the Russians attack or vice versa. Were we gonna do anything?

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  So, so when you graduate, what's your next move? What was your next move after you graduated?

• 31:31Speaker 02

  Well, it wasn't my move. North Korea invaded South Korea and General, President, President Truman decided to send US troops to Korea. Now, one of the things when you, when you graduate,

• 31:55Speaker 02

  by order of rank, you're allowed to choose your branch and then where you wanna go. Well, my experience was being in front of that tank and getting...

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Shrapnel. I decided I didn't want to be out in front of the tank. I wanted to be in the tank. So I chose not, I chose not to be in engineers again. I chose to go into armor. So I chose to go to, once again, growing up in Iowa. State of Washington was somewhere, who knows where. So I chose Fort Lewis, Washington as a place I'd want to go visit. So that's my first post was to go to Fort Lewis, Washington. It turned out to be the 29th, no, the 72nd Tank Battalion,

• 32:54Speaker 02

  which was part of the 2nd Infantry Division. President Truman, while I was on my honeymoon in Canada, decided to send the 2nd Division off to Korea. So in my infinite wisdom, not knowing this was happening, well, I was in Canada and I called home to wish my mother and dad happy 4th of July.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Oh, the Army had sent a telegram to my parents' house saying for me to get my ass to Fort Lewis as soon as possible. Well, I'm halfway there, I'm up in Alberta, Canada. So we drive off to Fort Lewis. And so I arrive at Fort Lewis, middle of July. Now you've got to, I'm now a tank platoon leader. Never been in a tank before.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Let me tell you, that's an experience most people don't want to have.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  The only thing I had going, by the way, many years later, my platoon sergeant told me, he said, at that time he was my gunner. He said, "We felt really fortunate, we had a guy who'd been in combat in World War II,

• 34:35Speaker 02

  not knowing that I didn't know a damn thing about a tank. But the good news is, the sergeant was smart enough to teach me how to be somewhat of a tanker

• 34:47Speaker 02

  on the ship on the way over to Korea."

• 34:50Jocko Willink?

  So you had no, you showed up, you get done with your, or you cut short your honeymoon, you go straight to Fort Lewis, and then you immediately load up?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Yes. My first tank ride was from the port, no, from the motor pool at Fort Lewis to the port of Olympia to put the tank on the ship and goodbye. That was my first tank ride.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the point you made about, you know, not just that your sergeant was smart enough to teach you, but equally important is that you were smart enough to listen. And I get all kinds of young officers, and I'm sure you saw them through the years, that they're not smart enough to listen to the people that have the experience. And that's a huge lesson learned that seems to always need to get learned by people.

• 35:38Speaker 02

  I wish, I've told more people, when asked, "What do you do to be successful?" I say, "Listen to your sergeants. Listen to your sergeants. Ask them. Don't be afraid to ask. Because they'll tell you. Their job is to make you successful." And unfortunately, there are too many people who don't have egos that can allow them to do that.

• 36:07Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it. They think it's going to make them look bad when it actually makes it. It actually elevates them in the eyes of the sergeant.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  So your trip overseas, you're on the ship, and you show up in Korea?

• 36:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  You can't understand what it's like to be several miles offshore and begin to smell what's going to be, turned out to be the Port of Pusan. You could smell it before you ever got there. And we knew we were pulling into, and I've never, I've never been to that far of the world in my whole life. And we offloaded ourselves from the troop ship, waited for our tanks to come on the other ships. And we spent four days in Pusan, waiting for the equipment to come, and then offloading

• 37:12Speaker 02

  it and getting it ready to go into battle.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  Then, at what point, this is, this is like the Battle of Pusan. This is the Pusan perimeter.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:24Jocko Willink?

  And this is the beginning of it right now. This is, for those of you that don't know, this is North Korean troops coming down, 100,000 North Korean troops coming down, and have you guys basically squeezed onto, it's almost a peninsula, it's like a little knot of land that sticks out.

• 37:40Speaker 02

  Thirty-five miles radius from the city of Pusan was the Pusan perimeter. That was the last territory held. Everything else was held by the North Koreans.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  And so when you landed there, that's the situation they were in?

• 37:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  How did you guys, and how did you and your troops feel about that?

• 38:01Speaker 02

  I don't think we were even cognizant of how serious it was. After we'd loaded the tanks onto the rail cars, if you go to the railhead of Marying, which is, I don't know, 20 miles, 25 miles from Pusan, where we offloaded the tanks, is where I first went into combat in Korea. I don't really know that we thought how serious it was.

• 38:45Speaker 02

  I got the impression several days later, when the division, assistant division commander, called all the officers and senior NCOs together in a place, and he said, "Men, we live or die here." And I thought to myself, "What in the hell did I get myself into here?" But that's what it was. I mean, we would, I, you know, in hindsight, I've read books about what happened in Korea. And we really didn't understand that.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  I mean, we were just there doing a job, and I don't think we really understood how perilous the situation was.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  And at any point while you were there, did you understand the peril of the situation? Or were you just in your particular battles, day by day, trying to hold the line where you were, and didn't, was the communications kind of not effective enough to really, for you to understand the bigger picture?

• 39:58Speaker 02

  We, we had no idea what the bigger picture was. I mean, honest to God, we were just doing our job, and as I said earlier, watching these waves of people come across the Nahtong River will never, ever go away in my memory. I mean, people were just coming, coming, coming, and all we were doing was shooting, shooting, shooting. And they would just keep coming. And we managed to hold the line. And they didn't penetrate.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  So, no, the answer is, we didn't understand the perilous of the situation.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  As you're, were you holding the line specifically, you guys, you were holding the line on that river?

• 40:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 40:55Jocko Willink?

  And so they were gonna have to try and cross that river to get through the line?

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  Were they swimming? Were they taking boats? What were they doing?

• 41:03Speaker 02

  They were wading. It was, it wasn't that deep. It wasn't that, it was a pretty wide river, but it wasn't that deep. So they were able to wade across.

• 41:15Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they would just keep coming. I mean.

• 41:18Jocko Willink?

  And then how long, how long did that particular, how long were you under intense waves of attacks like that? It was like a, was it like 20 days or something of the whole, the whole thing I think lasted, I don't know, 20 days or something like that?

• 41:36Speaker 02

  I, I don't know.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  It seemed like forever, but I think it was probably over in two or three, a couple of weeks.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  My first

• 41:57Speaker 02

  involvement,

• 42:00Speaker 02

  we got off, the tanks off the flat cars.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  And then we rolled into action and my

• 42:11Speaker 02

  lead tank

• 42:14Speaker 02

  in front of my very eyes exploded.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  And I will never forget watching the tank commander go sailing out into the ditch to the right and the tank exploding.

• 42:30Speaker 02

  We rounded a curve and unbeknownst to us, there were two Russian tanks manned by Koreans

• 42:42Speaker 02

  up this draw and they fired at this tank. And we had, my platoon was M4s, Sherman tanks and gas

• 42:58Speaker 02

  engines. And they fired and as soon as they fired into the gas tank, the whole thing exploded. And so my first day in Korea combat,

• 43:12Speaker 02

  one tank destroyed.

• 43:15Speaker 02

  Five people, at that time, the tank had a crew of five. Four of them were killed in the tank. The tank commander was back in the United States less than two weeks after we left, or three weeks after we left. And that was my first day in combat in Korea. And so, from then on, we got into the perimeter and spent a couple of weeks there. I don't remember. You read earlier the citation, it was on September 19th, which was when I was...

• 43:57Speaker 02

  The only reason I know that was September 19th is because of what you read. I didn't remember what exact dates it was. Because it wasn't too long after that happened that we had the Incheon landing and everything broke out and we were heading north. So, it was a couple of weeks, I don't know.

• 44:20Jocko Willink?

  When you were, from a leadership perspective, dealing with losing guys in comparison to when you were in World War II, and you weren't necessarily in command of guys, but you're seeing people get wounded, you're seeing people get killed, what was your mindset? What was your perspective as a leader when guys were getting wounded, guys were getting killed? And then, you had a bunch, you know, you were saying that your sergeant, they felt they were lucky to have someone that had been in combat before. And then, all of a sudden, I know that they were looking to you, saying, "Okay, well, what do we do now, boss?"

• 44:56Speaker 02

  Well, one thing about in a tank, the crews are inside the tank. And as, with the radio, you could direct people to do this and do that. And so, I just told them what they should be doing. And they did it. I mean, I didn't... Leadership is just telling people what they should do, and they're trained to do it, and they do it. I mean...

• 45:37Speaker 02

  I learned, actually I learned, I talked to, growing up on Iowa leadership, I didn't even know what that was. I learned what leadership was all about at West Point. And that's the major difference. When I was in World War II, I was just taking care of myself. I wasn't really too concerned about the other guy, what was going on. We were all just doing our job. That's very different when you're in a combat situation.

• 46:22Speaker 02

  And you got people depending on each other. And we were all dependent upon each other when we're at a tank platoon. And each of us were trained to do a job, and they did it. I mean, one of the things, my platoon didn't exist prior, I mean, on paper it existed. It didn't exist physically. So what happened when we were reactivated? The guardhouse was emptied out, and we got replacements from Fort Hood, Texas. And that was my platoon.

• 47:05Speaker 02

  One of the best soldiers in my platoon was my loader, who had spent most of his Army career in the guardhouse. But you can't believe what a great soldier he was in combat. I mean, because he knew what he was doing, and he was trained to do it, and he did it. I will never forget those young men. I mean, I'm still in email contact with my former gunner, who's now retired as a Command Sergeant Major, but he still calls me Lieutenant.

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Because he was, he kept my ass out of trouble, I'll tell you that. I mean, he, he taught me more about how to be a platoon leader than anybody will ever understand. And I guess the leadership training I had at West Point, combined with what these young men were teaching me, allowed me to become a pretty effective leader throughout not just my military career, but my commercial career too. I, I'm a strong believer in that leadership works, not just in the military, but in commercial business.

• 48:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:32Speaker 01

  You talked about leadership inside a tank. What did you see and how did you see what was going on that got you to get out of that tank and tell you that you needed to get out of that vehicle and start directing what was going on in the ground?

• 48:46Speaker 02

  I wish I knew the answer to that. I mean, I just did it. I mean, I knew something had to be done. And my radio communications with these guys on the ground wasn't working. So you've got to, you've got to communicate. And the only way you can communicate, if the radio isn't working, you've got to get your butt off the, off the tank and down there so you can talk to these guys. Because they weren't trying to talk to me. I was trying to talk to them and get them figuring out what the hell they should be doing. So I just did it. I don't know what prompted me to do it.

• 49:34Speaker 02

  It's a good question because I have no idea.

• 49:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I talk about that sometimes. I talk about as a leader, being able to identify what I would call, I just call it the void of leadership. And it's very easy to see when you are used to seeing leadership filling the void. When you see a void of leadership, if you're aware to look for it, it's really easy to see when it's there. And you go, wait a second, someone needs to step in here and take charge. And so you had that instinct of, hey, there's a void of leadership here. I gotta do something and here we go.

• 50:08Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 50:09Jocko Willink?

  As much as you said to yourself at one point, I'm going to be inside that tank. And then the damn time you needed the tank, you got out of it.

• 50:17Speaker 02

  Well, in hindsight, you had to do what you had to do.

• 50:21Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. And then what, once you guys held the line, and you know, it's funny because I use that expression a lot, just talking about, you know, holding your line with your personal discipline and holding the line with your, your subordinates, and we use it metaphorically, and it's incredible to see, hear and talk to you about actually, literally, holding the line.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  When you guys got done holding the line, and you had defeated that, that onslaught from, from the North Koreans, what was the next phase?

• 50:59Speaker 02

  Move out and move north, and we...

• 51:08Speaker 02

  The first weeks, we moved four or five miles at the most. The next couple of weeks, we moved hundreds of miles, and I remember going as fast as we could, north, to marry up with the guys who invaded at Incheon.

• 51:32Speaker 02

  And we just kept going.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  I, and I don't remember how many opportunities we had to really get into combat, after we cleared the Busan perimeter, until after we got north of Seoul. I mean, we, the invading, I mean, the invasion force invaded, pretty well cleared that stuff away, and so the city of Seoul was open when we, we went right through it, and we kept going north.

• 52:18Speaker 02

  The enemy was retreating pretty fast and we were just going as fast as we could, driving up the roads and, in fact, our unit got almost to the Yalu River, which is about the time they decided to take the stuff out of my butt. So I was sent back to the hospital ship in the harbor of Kim.

• 52:46Jocko Willink?

  So that's when you got shrapnel, was when you were up by the Yalu River?

• 52:50Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 52:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that had already, that's right, that had happened earlier and now was coming back.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  The stuff was working. Now, one of the things you've got to remember is this piece of metal is in my butt. Now, in a tank, the tank commander sits, has a little thing to sit his butt on while he's riding around in the turret. Well, you don't do that when you have a piece of metal working its way out. It is painful, to say the least. And so I couldn't hardly wait for that to happen, but they wouldn't let me go back to the hospital until it got reasonably close to the surface. So when it got close to the surface, they evacuated me.

• 53:38Speaker 02

  And it was in November of 1950 that they sent me back to the hospital ship.

• 53:45Jocko Willink?

  And then, I think you covered this, but then you got done, the metal comes out, and then you go back again, because you're thinking you're going to get home by Christmas if you can get back to your unit.

• 53:57Speaker 02

  And I got back to the unit eventually, but I didn't get home by Christmas. In fact, by the time I got back to the unit, we were, the 2nd Division had already moved back south, almost to the Han River. And so I found the unit again somewhere south of, somewhat north of the Han River, but still, we were still in North Korea, but it was the south part of North Korea.

• 54:32Jocko Willink?

  And were you in a situation, did you guys get dug in? Because I know part of the Korean War was like, they dug in and it was almost like trench warfare. Did you enter that phase? Or were you still, guys still moving north and south?

• 54:48Speaker 02

  As tanks, we never dug in. Now, later on, I think the line stabilized pretty much around the 38th parallel. And there was a lot of digging in defensive positions as well. But that was more infantry, not the tanks.

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  So how did you, how did you end up? What was the last phase of you being over there? Like, and what ended up bringing you back to the States?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  Well, the line sort of stabilized around the 38th parallel. We would go forward, and then we'd come back. We would go forward, come back. Oftentimes, we would do patrolling, I guess is the right word. Patrolling in force. A tank company with an infantry company attached riding on the tanks would blast forward

• 56:05Speaker 02

  to some enemy position, get into a firefight, take the ground, and then we'd move back again. We were just going back and forth around that so-called, it now turned out to be the 38th parallel, but it was generally that sector. Oftentimes, the infantry would get into a lot more heavy firefights than the tanks would.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  I spent a lot of time supporting infantry attacks with my tank guns and machine guns covering their advancements forward, but dug in, no, we never, the tanks were never dug in.

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  And then how long did that last for? How long was your unit deployed over there? Was it the whole unit that ended up going home?

• 57:08Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 57:13Speaker 02

  At a certain point, they decided that people who'd been there a year would come home, and we started rotation. And I was one of the first ones to rotate out of my unit because I had some decorations and because I'd been there a year and etc. I had a lot of points. And so I was sent back, I guess, I got back to the United States

• 57:50Speaker 02

  Labor Day of 1951. So I was evacuated. The word evacuated is probably not the right word. I was just sent back home.

• 58:02Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you get back home, you know, here you are coming home from Korea. It's obviously, you at least experienced some pretty intense stuff. And you know, you hear a lot of times, especially nowadays with guys coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, with guys struggling to readapt to, to life back in America. And I think it's a little bit different because when you came home, you were still in the Army. And I think that's the best thing for veterans, you know, if you're still in, I think the veterans that have the hardest time are veterans that get out and all of a sudden, the brotherhood that they are used to is gone and the mission that they're used to is gone. But is that, is that what you experienced and you came home and you, you still had your mission

• 58:45Jocko Willink?

  of moving forward in the Army?

• 58:48Speaker 02

  Yes. I mean, I had no feeling of not being appreciated. I mean, obviously, when I came back, I came back, I had a daughter born while I was in Korea. Scared the hell out of me. I mean, I, I still remember this.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  Four-month-old child I held for the first time. First time I've ever held anybody that size. Scared the hell out of me. I was more scared about that than a lot of the things that happened to me. But anyway, I came back, went to Fort Knox.

• 59:37Speaker 02

  They sent me, now they sent me to school to learn to be a platoon leader. And so, and then they asked me if I wanted to stay there at Fort Knox and run an officer candidate company. And I did. And so, we spent several years running an officer candidate company. And then, they decided they didn't need any more officer candidates at Fort Knox. So they closed that down. And I got selected to be an aide to John Waters. John Waters was General Patton's son-in-law.

• 1:00:22Speaker 02

  And a wonderful experience. Learned a lot from a real gentleman. He was, he ended, he is, he was a brigadier general at that time, became a second star. But he eventually retired as a four-star general. And, but he taught me a lot about being, being an officer.

• 1:00:53Speaker 02

  Not so much about leadership, but being an officer and a gentleman.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  He was an outstanding person. And I learned from him.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  You know, when you're working as an aide, you get pretty close to somebody. And I always feel very fortunate that I was able to be his aide and learn. I don't know if you know, he's the one in the movie about General Patton sending troops in to rescue somebody in a prisoner war camp. He was the one who was in the prisoner war camp. And he was wounded very seriously there. And it was quite an experience working for him for several years.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  That was multiple years?

• 1:01:51Speaker 02

  Pardon?

• 1:01:52Jocko Willink?

  Multiple years as an aide?

• 1:01:53Speaker 02

  I spent two and a half years as his aide. So, and then as he went on to his assignments, I went on to my assignments. And one of the experiences I had, in 1956, I was a company commander of a tank company in Baumholtzer, Germany. Yes. And he, at that time, was running the Military Systems Command in Yugoslavia. And he decided to come up and visit me.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Now, he's the major general, and he's coming to visit this captain in Baumholtzer, Germany. And it was, you can't believe all the other stuff that went on. What the hell is the general coming to see you for, et cetera, et cetera? But anyway, we got through all that. But he was a, he didn't come to visit me in Vietnam when he was Pacific Commander, but he was, took care of watching what I was doing.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  So it was it was experience, wonderful experience and a great learning experience to be his aide.

• 1:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was actually an aide too for the Admiral that was in charge of all the SEALs and it was a very similar situation for me. He was a great guy and I I learned a ton about about the way the whole big machine worked, which you have no idea when you're a young lieutenant. You have no idea what's going on behind the scenes and and I definitely got to learn a lot about that and the same thing you just talked about, you know, I had just had a great relationship with him and and uh he took care of me and my guys on many occasions, uh which was great and since he was the Admiral, I one time we we were, he was a surfer and I was organizing a trip for us to go to Hawaii and we were gonna see some of the SEALs that were stationed out in Hawaii and

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  the big thing I had to do is get organized so that when we got picked up at the airport, there were surfboards in the vehicles, ready to take us directly to surfing as soon as we showed up and it's the same. You know, people say, what do you want these surfboards? You just get the surfboards ready. That's what you need to do for the boss.

• 1:04:26Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you did that, you end up, you you end up, so fifty-six, you're over, you're a company commander and what happens in between then and?

• 1:04:36Speaker 02

  And then, uh

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  I was in a um a unit, Second Armor, Second Armor Division and at that time, uh in fifty-seven,

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  they had something that were gonna rotate the Fourth Division, which, Fourth Armor Division, which I'd been in Fort Hood, rotate it to Germany and the Second Armor Division was gonna rotate back to Fort Hood.

• 1:05:09Speaker 02

  However, I'd only been in country a little over a year, and I wasn't eligible to rotate back. So they, in their decision, for those of us who weren't eligible, had to be reassigned. And I was reassigned to be at the Secretary of General Staff at Heidelberg, which is U.S. Army Europe. So now I'm going from being a company commander in Baumholtzer, Germany, which is the end of the line, all the way to the very senior Army Command in Europe. And I'm working now for a four-star general

• 1:05:52Speaker 02

  in his General Staff Organization. And I had, once again, a chance to go from learning, knowing what's going on down here, to watching what's going on, very senior leadership. And it was another opportunity. For a year and a half, I had that job. And it was just a great experience, learning, if you would, the other extreme of where you'd been. That was my... And then rotated back to the United States in '59 to become a math professor at West Point,

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  where I spent four years being a math professor. And then went to the Army, the Command General Staff College out at Fort Leavenworth. And then the Army decided that they needed to have people counteracting McNamara's Whiz Kids. And so...

• 1:07:06Speaker 02

  They figured that somebody who'd been teaching math probably could not. So they sent me to the University of Michigan to get a degree in. It turned out to be operations research, but the Army sent me to be, get a degree in automatic data processing, which they didn't have such a thing at Michigan, but the closest thing to it was industrial engineering operations research. So I spent two years there getting a degree. And then I, rather than go back to the Pentagon for utilization tour, I volunteered to go to Vietnam. So I, and.

• 1:07:51Jocko Willink?

  When you say that they were, that the Army knew that they needed someone to counteract the WizKids, and I've talked about the WizKids and I've covered them somewhat because the, a lot of the people operational on the ground said, hey, these, these statistics that you're coming up with don't take into account the human aspect of these, of this conflict in Vietnam. So was that something that was felt and, and understood inside the Army at that time? I mean, clearly it was.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Yes, and that's, the whole idea was to take somebody who knew something about the Army and give him some education to, these kids, so-called kids had, and statistical analysis and all that stuff. And so to be the other part of, of the, of the board. And that was to be my utilization tour. So.

• 1:08:49Jocko Willink?

  There's a great example of that, and it's, it's the Battle of the Hydrange Valley, and Colonel Moore talks about it. The fact that, that what the WizKids basically said, well, one of the things that they said was, okay. We can kill 170 Vietnamese soldiers for every one of ours that that they kill. So statistically, we'll just keep running that problem over and over again, and we'll end up winning. And I always point out, and which which everyone points out, and I'm sure you had pointed out as well is, what they didn't take into account is the fact that number one,

• 1:09:27Jocko Willink?

  170 Vietnamese killed to the Vietnamese was not as big of a deal as we thought it would be. And we also didn't take into account that one American dead is a lot bigger than the statisticians thought it would be to us. And that's just a huge tragedy to go into that situation like that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Well, in fact, I've many times thought the body count was the dumbest thing we've ever come up with as a measure of success in combat. And I have said that I don't know how many times. And I am still convinced that was the dumbest thing we've done over the time. And I was there participating in it, and it was terrible.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So let's let's go to Vietnam. So you you volunteered for Vietnam in, what, 1966?

• 1:10:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:10:29Jocko Willink?

  Or 65, 66?

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  66.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay. And did they automatically say, okay, well, you're a lieutenant colonel. That means you're gonna you're gonna take over a squadron or a battalion?

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  I wish that was the case. In fact, in fact, give the army more credit than this do. Now, they, along with everybody else, I was a lieutenant colonel, arrived in country. And I was assigned initially to be the executive officer of the Combat Operations Center of Mac Fe, which was the headquarters of all. And the Combat Operations Center was Westmoreland's Operations Center. And it was run by a Marine Brigadier General, Bill Jones by name.

• 1:11:21Speaker 02

  And he was a great man. I mean, and I was his exec. And and we

• 1:11:30Speaker 02

  "ran the war," so to speak. The word "we" is a very loose term. From the COC. And that was headquarters right there in Saigon. And it was a cushy job. I mean, I went to work on a regular hourly basis. I used to go in at night once in a while because President Johnson was going to talk to some of the action officers, trying to find out what was happening to these patrols that we were sending out. Wow. That's a serious sign of micromanagement, huh? Well, let me tell you.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  It was micromanagement of the first order and I saw it, absolutely saw it, and happening more often than I care to remember. And, but, I had, one of the evenings, I met one of my former colleagues, Armour, who was commanding the 1st, the 4th Cavalry of the 1st Infantry Division. And he told me he was going to rotate home in December. I said, "Can I get that job?" He said he'd take me up and introduce me to General Depew, who was the division commander. And I went up and I passed the test.

• 1:12:59Speaker 02

  You'd have to know General Depew, and he was a no-nonsense guy. He would, people thought I was crazy because General Depew was relieving battalion commanders for incompetence, right and left. And I figured, you know, if you go up and do your job, you're going to be okay. So I went up and General Depew introduced, interviewed me, and General Hollinsworth did. He was the assistant division commander. And Hollinsworth was an old cavalryman.

• 1:13:36Speaker 02

  I mean, and he couldn't, the two of them passed on me, said it was okay. And so I got reassigned to command of the 1st and 4th Cavalry in December of 1966.

• 1:13:56Speaker 02

  Which was a plum job. That was, it was not only a plum outfit, but it, General Depew used the cavalry squadron like it should be used. Many times later, my successors were all not as lucky as I was. I mean, I was able to fight my unit as a unit. I had three ground troops, one cavalry, I mean, D Troop was a helicopter troop.

• 1:14:41Speaker 02

  I had thirty-one helicopters in it. And I had, the division commander would assign B Company of the Tank Battalion that was assigned to my unit. And then, since there wasn't any real enemy aircraft, he assigned several of the batteries of the anti-aircraft unit to my unit. So, I had a unit that was unperiled in history because General Depew believed the cavalry was supposed to go find the enemy and keep them there until his infantry could show up. And we did it more often than not.

• 1:15:23Speaker 02

  And one of the stories I tell people, I'm self-styled king of the Michelin Rubber Plantation, which is, you know, seventy square miles of trees. And historically, there's little communities of workers throughout this place. And...

• 1:15:53Speaker 02

  It became, these little towns became havens for the North Vietnamese. And so, we took it upon ourselves to evacuate everybody out of the little villages to the perimeter of the plantation. And then, took it upon ourselves to destroy the villages. Because the North Vietnamese were coming in at night, using these places and shelling our units. So, we were destroying all these little hamlets. In fact, I had an engineer company assigned to me.

• 1:16:36Speaker 02

  And one of the contests was between the captain, who was the engineer company commander, and myself. I'd be up on my chopper, and he'd be down on the ground. And he was going to implode these villages. Now, if he imploded them all, he won. If any of the villages' buildings would still be standing, I won. Now, what did we win? A beer. And more often than not, I won. He didn't win them, he didn't lose many, but we got, so... In the spring of 1967,

• 1:17:20Speaker 02

  Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker arrives in Vietnam. The first unit he wants to visit is mine. There is, everybody is, what in the world is, why did he pick this? And why is he coming to see you? Well, he gets out there and all the, now he's got a four-star general, a three-star general, and then division commander, all with him. And then, we're out in the middle of nowhere. I'm briefing the ambassador. I get emotional, I say this.

• 1:18:01Speaker 02

  He says, Colonel, I got more correspondence on my desk from the French about what in the hell you're doing up here destroying their village and all the people and causing all this commotion. What are you doing and why are you doing it? And I explained to him that why we were doing it, because these villages were being havens for the North and they were coming in and shelling our, killing our troops. And I will always remember him, I say, Colonel, you just keep doing what you're doing and I'll take care of the French. And I said, God bless you. I mean, I still get emotional with that

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  man, that gentleman understood what the hell was going on. And here we talk about State Department people not knowing what's going on. He knew what was going on and he told me to keep doing what I was doing and I did it. But I will always remember him. I think at the time, I'm not sure of this, he was either the oldest or next oldest ambassador we ever had in the State Department, but he was out there trapping around in the boonies with me. And it was a rare experience. But anyway, it was, it was one of those days, you know, when you really think you counted. Yeah.

• 1:19:30Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 1:19:31Speaker 02

  And he was, to me, that's leadership too, you know. He was, he knew what the hell was going on and he was able to tell me to keep doing what I was supposed to be doing. Yeah. He was, he was a great man.

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  So those operations that, was that the primary type of operation that you'd be doing is going into areas and basically disrupting what the enemy was up to?

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  Basically, we, the mission was search and destroy.

• 1:20:07Speaker 02

  And what we did was go find, try to find the enemy and then destroy them. So, in that, in the Michelin Plantation, we thought the enemy was not there. But we spent, there was something called the Iron Triangle, north of Saigon, about thirty miles north of Saigon, which was our operational area. And it was traditionally a haven for the north

• 1:20:51Speaker 02

  and/or the whoever. Anyway, the guys that were shooting at us. And you never know whether they're North Vietnamese or they're conscripted South Vietnamese, but they all looked the same to me and they still do. I've never, in Korea, I couldn't tell the difference between a North Korean and a South Korean. I still couldn't, never tell the difference between a South Vietnamese and a North Vietnamese. And maybe there's a way, but I never figured it out. And so, we just went in and constantly were searching and destroying. And if we, if we find the enemy in strength,

• 1:21:34Speaker 02

  our job was to hold them there until General Le Pew and could get his infantry into helicopters and bring them in and really defeat the enemy. On occasion, we got in more of a firefight than we expected to be, but we, we generally were pretty good at finding them. And the tanks would roll right through this forest and knock the trees right down and it was, it was no problem at all. And, and I was in my helicopter directing. And you, you could see and you could tell the tanks where to go.

• 1:22:17Speaker 02

  And the tanks and the ACAS, which were primarily what the unit was all about.

• 1:22:24Speaker 02

  And so we, that was our job.

• 1:22:29Jocko Willink?

  So often I read about units that were over there that never, or very, very seldom would they see the enemy. They would lose guys to sniper fire, they'd lose guys to mortar fire, they'd lose guys to booby traps, but very seldom would they see the enemy. You know, obviously there's units that are different than that, but it sounded like you were able to find the enemy on a fairly regular basis.

• 1:22:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yes. Or they found us. I, I, I, you know, who finds who is, is not sure there's an answer to that, but yes, we, more often than not, we got in, we had contact. Uh, uh, I had, uh, more than I would like to admit casualties, uh, which didn't happen because they, uh, couldn't find the enemy. I can tell you, they could find us, you know, and, and often remember, uh, somebody a long time in my, go in my career, tell me something about reconnaissance by fire.

• 1:23:36Speaker 02

  And I remember with a tank, you had a lot of machine guns and you could do a lot of reconnaissance by fire. And in the trouble with reconnaissance by fire is you never know whether they see you or not. You just know there's somebody shooting at you. Well, that's good enough. That's, that's, that's good enough. You don't need any, know whether he's aiming at you or not.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, um, when you, one of the things that also I, I talk about and I've read a lot about is the Vietnam War being very difficult from a leadership perspective for some leaders more than others, but because you had draftees and, and you had draftees, not just draftees that got drafted and okay, I'm going to go do my duty, but draftees that got drafted that literally did not believe in what was happening and barely even believed in America as a country. How much of that did, did you see? And what, what was your, what was your leadership approach to those troops?

• 1:24:42Speaker 02

  I saw zero of that. I mean. I don't know, I was just absolutely lucky. I know I'm not that naive. I mean.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, I, the last few guys I've been talking to and reading about this and, and there's something that I've noticed a trend. So have you heard the term millennials? About the, the new up and coming kids?

• 1:25:02Speaker 02

  I know what millennials are.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  So people complain about, and you know, especially from a leadership perspective, people talk to me about, well, you know, I've got my company and we've got these new, these kids checking in, they're millennials, they're different, they're entitled, they don't want to work as hard. And I, I, I started thinking about in my head, well, basically you've got a, a workforce that's a little bit different. And this is very similar to the draftees in Vietnam who had a different attitude. And what I've found from good leaders is it didn't matter. It didn't matter that they had draftees. As a matter of fact, uh, General Mukuyama, who I just talked about, when I talked to, when I asked him about draftees, he said, I, I didn't even know who was a draftee and who was a lifer. I couldn't tell the difference.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and Colonel Hackworth wrote in his book, he wrote, "I loved the draftees because they were straight shooters. They didn't, well, they weren't trying to protect their career. They tell you what they thought and you could take their input and you could do something good with it."

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  I've said all along, the soldiers I served with in three different wars got better and they were all draftees. I mean, I didn't ever serve with an all volunteer outfit. They were all, no matter where I was, they were draftees. And they all did their job. I mean, I've never had anybody tell me, uh, it wasn't their job, it wasn't, this wasn't what they wanted to do, or it was, they just did it. And I don't know if that's leadership or I don't, it was just,

• 1:26:45Speaker 02

  it was just the way it was. And, uh, they were all proud to be in our outfit. I mean, uh,

• 1:26:56Speaker 02

  Now, I'm sure other people later on, I mean, I've heard of people later on in Vietnam having little problems with drugs and all that. We didn't have any of that. Now, fortunately, I left in 1967, so I'm not sure how things got worse, perhaps. But I think drugs are an issue, period. But I don't know, I didn't have any of that kind of a problem. And as I said earlier, I'm not naive. I believe in knowing exactly what's going on.

• 1:27:42Speaker 02

  The way you find out is walk around and talk to people. You don't sit in your tents or in your helicopter. You've got to go down and talk to the guy on the ground and find out what the hell's going on. And that's, you know,

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  there's a fellow who wrote a book, his name was Peters. This is many years later. And he wrote the book, it's called "Management by Walking Around." There's a guy made a fortune just doing what I used to do.

• 1:28:15Speaker 02

  It's scary. But it's true, that's what leadership is all about, is find out what's going on. And then use it some common sense to tell people this is what you're supposed to do, or give them some guidance. But, I mean,

• 1:28:37Speaker 02

  people who used to tell me, "Well, you know how to do things because you could order people to do things." And I'm saying, "Let me tell you something. Ordering a guide to get out of a tank to fix the track when somebody's shooting at you is not anybody willing to just do it." He's going to do it because he knows if he don't get the track fixed, we're going to get our ass killed. I mean, we're going to get going. He's going to do it because that's his job. And if that, that may be leadership. But I'll tell you, it's discipline that comes from people being trained right and taught right and treated right.

• 1:29:19Speaker 02

  You don't, if you don't treat people right, they deserve to treat you wrong. And I'm a great believer in treating people the right way.

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm just from hearing you talk about treating people the right way and listening to people. You you're you know, you say when when I told people to do stuff, they did it. Well, yeah, that's because you treated them well, you listened to them, you you had those relationships with your with your troops. And that's what makes people, like you said, when you got to have somebody that's gonna gonna go out and fix a track under fire. Well, that's somebody that's they're not gonna do that just because you order them to do it. You better have some some relationships, you better have treated them well, and they must understand what the why on the mission is to like, hey, why this is important. So when you when you look back at World War Two, Korea, Vietnam,

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  I I was from a tactical perspective, actually maneuvering troops. Is there any big lessons that you would think back of that you say this is something that I did consistently? Or this is something that I would never do because I knew it would cause problems?

• 1:30:31Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:30:33Speaker 02

  I can't think of anything.

• 1:30:37Speaker 02

  I'll go back to what I said earlier. I've always believed, and maybe this is from growing up in Iowa, I don't know, just treat people like you'd like to be treated yourself. And it worked out.

• 1:30:54Speaker 02

  I I don't know.

• 1:30:57Speaker 02

  I I told you about my first sergeant calling me Fife,

• 1:31:03Speaker 02

  which pissed me off, quite frankly. But because he was a guy who didn't treat people like people like to be treated.

• 1:31:14Speaker 02

  And I've always was amazed how much I exalted in the fact when he got busted. I mean, we were in England on the way over to the continent. And he he got busted for I don't know what reason. But he got busted back to being a private. That's a big jump from first sergeant down to being a private. And I was happy.

• 1:31:43Speaker 02

  Because I didn't think this guy was... He's also the guy, when I took the test to see whether I could be smart enough to go to the military academy, he said, "What the hell are you taking a test like that for? You're not smart enough to go to the West Point." And I always would like to be able to say to this guy, if I ever saw him again, I'm sure he's dead by now, "I told you so." But, you know, if you don't treat people like they should be treated, you deserve to be treated the opposite way. And I just have always practiced, I tried to practice that anyway.

• 1:32:26Speaker 02

  And so far, it's been relatively successful.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  That's a huge underpinning of leadership from everything I've seen, everything I've ever read, every person I've ever talked to. If you care about your people, you care about and you want to treat them well as human beings, that's the underpinning that really makes leadership work. And it's, a lot of times, and you mentioned this earlier, a lot of times from the civilian side, they think, "Well, in the military, you can just order people to do things and they'll just do it because you're the boss." And that's not true. And it's actually, when I got out of the military and I started working the civilian sector, I thought to myself, "Well, if you didn't want, if you want somebody to do something and they don't do it, you can just fire them." But that's not true either, because guess what?

• 1:33:13Jocko Willink?

  You'll run out of people really quick. And so, what you have to do is you have to lead.

• 1:33:18Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:33:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what you have to do. And one of those, the most core underpinnings of leadership is really caring about the people that work for you. And I think the more you care about them, and I know for me, I cared more about my guys than I did about myself. I wanted to make sure that they were okay and that things were going to go well for them. And that was always my priority, my real priority. And I suppose someone that was very jaded might think, "Well, then, you know, you're going to get passed over, you're not, things aren't going to work out good for you because you're more worried about your troops." And the opposite's actually true.

• 1:33:59Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:34:00Jocko Willink?

  And my career was beautiful. And all I ever tried to do was take care of the people that worked for me.

• 1:34:07Speaker 02

  Because that's the way you get to be successful.

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  You know, hiring people or working with people, you know, in civilian sector, you hire people. In the military, whoever arrived, that was it.

• 1:34:27Jocko Willink?

  You get people.

• 1:34:28Speaker 02

  But I've always said, your job is to make the boss successful and vice versa. The boss's job is to make them successful. And if you work that, it works out for both of you. And to me, leadership, you know, we talk about it, but it's easy if you follow a few basic principles. You don't have to have all the stuff that goes... I mean, people write books on leadership. You've probably written books on leadership yourself.

• 1:35:08Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  But the fact of the matter, there's some basics and you just expand on it. You don't... It isn't that magic if you just follow a few basic principles.

• 1:35:22Jocko Willink?

  One of the things we talk about in the book, actually, is simple, not easy.

• 1:35:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:28Jocko Willink?

  Because it is. There's... And we say that in our book as well, is we're not... We didn't invent any of this. This is stuff that's been around and there's no eureka moments. And we're not claiming to have anything startlingly new. This is fundamental stuff that if you think about, it's... Some of it might be stuff you already do as a leader. Some of it be stuff that you know you should do as a leader. And just making it clear for people to understand is probably the only real benefit of the book itself. It's like, okay, this is good stuff.

• 1:35:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:35:58Jocko Willink?

  But nothing... No rocket science there. I didn't need to be a whiz kid to write that book, I can promise you. So, did you... You mentioned earlier, when we were not recording, that you actually ended up going back to Vietnam.

• 1:36:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:36:15Jocko Willink?

  And were you a civilian at that time?

• 1:36:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, yes.

• 1:36:22Speaker 02

  Well, my wife and I like to travel. So, we've traveled most of the places in the world by now. And she wanted to go back and see where I'd been in Vietnam. And I wasn't too sure about that. But, anyway, we had this opportunity. And so, we went back. And I went to Hanoi, which was an experience. And I go to the Hanoi Hilton and seen how they've turned that into a propaganda place.

• 1:37:05Speaker 02

  And I still remember seeing this picture on the wall of Senator McCain and a couple other guys, I can't remember the names. Another one was one high school classmate of mine. Bud Day by name, who was an Air Force retired Colonel, got the Medal of Honor. But, anyway, and they were showing them in these white pants and white over shirt as if they were on a barbecue, you know? And you know, everything you've heard about this place was just...

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  And they showed you some of the cages that they had people in.

• 1:37:54Jocko Willink?

  We actually have had two guests on the podcast that were in the Hanoi Hilton. And one of them went back and was talking us through that same propaganda. Went back to the Hanoi Hilton as a civilian. And just the...

• 1:38:14Jocko Willink?

  The feeling he had was pretty strong.

• 1:38:17Speaker 02

  I can't imagine. I mean, but, you know, when I was there, I was just seeing it from the propaganda and what they were, because it's a big tourist attraction, apparently, for the Vietnamese. And so, we obviously saw it and knew what it was and for what it was. And I hear all kinds of stories about the people that were there, you know. But, and then, we went from there to Da Nang and then down to Saigon.

• 1:39:01Speaker 02

  And I'd hired a car and a guide to take us up, back up to my old operational area, and drove through the Michelin Rubber Plantation, which was sort of a fun experience to see. Now, it's no longer Michelin, it stayed on, they took it over, obviously, from the French, but it looks exactly the same. I mean, trees are lined up, rubber trees, just rubber trees, rubber trees. And the people are out there working the trees.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  And I don't know if you know this, this is an aside, you cannot burn a living rubber tree. It won't burn. And I've tried hard. I mean, I have two flamethrowers in my unit, and we tried hard to burn those trees down on the sides of the road. Doesn't work, doesn't work. And so, anyway, but we went back up to the old operational area in the same place.

• 1:40:18Speaker 02

  I was pretty close to where I got wounded. When I was in Vietnam, I was in my helicopter flying over this river. And I was pretty close to where that happened. I could do that because I had the map coordinates of where I'd been wounded before. Otherwise, I guarantee I'd never be able to recognize the place. But my old base camp, which was, because I had helicopters and so forth, I had an airfield, is now being turned into a strip mall. So we watched all that happening.

• 1:41:01Speaker 02

  But seeing Saigon again was an amazing experience to see what they've done. You see all these tall buildings now. But the one officers' club that was on the roof of one of the hotels is still there, exactly the same. And my wife and I went up and had lunch there.

• 1:41:33Speaker 02

  In my time before I went out to the unit, I used to go up there. And we'd go up there and you'd watch out here and see the sabers, not sabers.

• 1:41:51Speaker 02

  What do you call the rounds that are... Tracers. Tracers, thank you. See all the tracers from being fired up and back down. And it was a unique experience because you really weren't fighting a war. I mean, in Saigon, you know, it was...

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  So different from there when you went out into the field. So, but it was, it was fun to go back and see what they've done. And I was impressed with how much the South Vietnamese have really been serious about getting real business and going and a lot of things happening business-wise. Up north, it's still agrarian. It was still agrarian at the time, very agrarian. I mean, very few tall buildings, very few businesses and stuff that you could identify. And maybe it's still the same, because that was, that was 11 years ago now, but I don't

• 1:42:58Speaker 02

  know what's changed over there. So, the North Vietnamese won the war, so to speak. I say that with tongue in cheek, actually, but they won the war, but I'm not sure that the South Vietnamese aren't coming back and taking over and running the country. They certainly have the financial strength there. And I hope that's a way it eventually will work out.

• 1:43:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, the way the rest of the world's gone, it's been freedom and democracy and capitalism that eventually wins the long war. And we've seen that worldwide, so hopefully it'll happen for them as well. How did you get wounded, your third, your third time getting wounded in Vietnam?

• 1:43:40Speaker 02

  Well, I was, I was, one of the missions we had, every evening we'd go into a perimeter and most of the time we'd be in a perimeter around an artillery unit. So they could fire at night without worrying about getting overrun. And so I put all of our unit into this perimeter from my helicopter flying around. And I noticed a bunch of sandpans evacuating the area that we had.

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  So I thought, in my John Wayne feeling, I'm gonna go down and shoot some of these guys. So I got the pilot to, I was flying, in this case, in a two-passenger, I mean, a one-pass-

• 1:44:42Speaker 02

  Bubble helicopter. And anyway, so I had this M40. You know what an M40 is? It fires, it looks like a shotgun shell. So I'm up there and I'm shooting at these guys in the sandpan. And I'm doing pretty good. Missing a lot, but getting some. One of them shot back. And my god, it hit me in the leg. And so I told the jobber pilot, take me back down to the headquarters, which was where the squadron surgeon was.

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  And he, I will never forget, he cut my pants away and there was blood spitting right out, all the way out, at least 18 inches from my leg. I hit something they call a spurger. And he said, this is a captain speaking to me. Colonel, you goddamn dumb son of a bitch, you could be dead. So anyway, he bandaged me up and the metal's still there, still in my leg. But

• 1:45:58Jocko Willink?

  Were you, you returned to duty though, right?

• 1:46:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I mean, I would, I hadn't been in command more than 30 days. I was scared to death. I couldn't be evacuated. Hell, I had to finish up my tour. I mean, so

• 1:46:16Jocko Willink?

  One of my friends named Tim Kennedy is a Green Beret and he has a TV show coming out called Hard to Kill. I think maybe we need to get you on that show.

• 1:46:25Speaker 02

  No, no, somebody might take me up on it. I mean, I, I've been fortunate. I mean, a lot of people got hurt a lot more seriously than I've been.

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  And I've seen some, in fact, I've had too many. I hurt pretty seriously. I had one of my, my XO was in a helicopter and got shot up through the seat of the helicopter and all the shrapnel, everything went right into his leg and he was forever in bad shape. I mean, I've seen a lot of people get hurt pretty badly. I've been fortunate, I mean, but I've also had the attitude, I'm not gonna get shot and

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  killed. I mean, now, it's worked out, but going back to, you know, when I got out of that tank to go back in Korea, I had no more idea that I was gonna get killed. That wasn't gonna enter into my mind. I just had something to do. And that may be foolish, but it's just the way it was.

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think if you're, if you were thinking about what could happen, you wouldn't do anything.

• 1:48:03Speaker 02

  You couldn't do anything. You're right, yeah.

• 1:48:06Jocko Willink?

  So you, you're, you wrap up your squadron commander in Vietnam again, I mean, you were taking, how often would you guys, you're getting in firefights a lot. What was your, what was your rate of casualties like? How many guys did you lose? How many people were killed while you were there as a squadron commander?

• 1:48:26Speaker 02

  How many were killed? Probably 10. Not too many, I mean.

• 1:48:39Speaker 02

  When you have ACAVs, do you know what an ACAV is? That's a personnel carrier. I mean, ACAV stands for Armored Cavalry Assault Vehicle. But it's, uh, it's, it was the M113s back in those days. I don't know, I don't know what they're called today.

• 1:48:55Jocko Willink?

  We still used M113s. We used M113s in Ramadi, the same exact vehicle. So we, we are very familiar with it. We both rid in the back of them.

• 1:49:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, they're pretty well protected and the tanks are, we had Patton tanks and they're protected. So, uh, yeah, we had casualties, uh, because in, in a cavalry troop, we have infantry riding in the ACAVs. So when they get out, they get hurt. But I don't know the statistics. Uh, I, I wrote enough letters, but not very, I mean, one's more than enough. But, uh, I, I don't remember how many I wrote.

• 1:49:49Speaker 02

  Uh, but, uh, cause I did that for everybody who was, who was killed. Uh, but, uh, I don't, I don't know the statistics. Uh, not too men, not overburdened, burdened, I mean, in the sense that, uh, I got several people's names on the wall. Uh, I go there every year just to stand there. Uh, but I don't know, Jaco, I don't know the answer.

• 1:50:28Jocko Willink?

  Understood, sir. When you got home from Vietnam, you know, you talked about coming home from Korea. Everyone's in uniform and, you know, we hear stories of guys coming home from Vietnam and they literally get told, don't wear your uniform around. How different was the reception from World War II, Korea to Vietnam?

• 1:50:54Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:51:00Speaker 02

  Coming back from Vietnam was a sad experience. We thought we'd been doing a good job. We thought we were doing the right job. And I came back to the Pentagon and I sort of witnessed the experience of the country being up in arms about Vietnam.

• 1:51:39Speaker 02

  So, didn't feel too appreciated, I guess is the right word. And yet, it didn't feel like, I felt like I'd been doing a good job. So I don't, I didn't have, I didn't have any bad feelings. Most of those feelings about what was going on came after I got out of, I mean, I retired in 69 and things began to go to hell in the country about what we were doing over there.

• 1:52:24Speaker 02

  Well, right after I got out, I guess. My job when I got out, I mean, when I came home was in the, it's at the Secretary of Defenses level. I told you earlier, the Army was sending me to school to learn to counteract the Whiz Kids. Well, guess what? When I came back, Army sent me to be a Whiz Kid. I was, I was sent up to the Secretary of the General Staff.

• 1:53:02Speaker 02

  Alan N. Tobin's organization, which was called Systems Analysis, and that's where all the whiz kids were. And they had representatives of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps, all four of us. And we were sort of the other end of the teeter-totter. We were supposed to balance some of these smart young men that were the, quote, "whiz kids." And as I tell people, I'm never a whiz or a kid, but I was in that organization. And it was an experience. They wouldn't let me work on anything Army. And I had, because they knew I had to go back to the Army. See, that was...

• 1:53:47Speaker 02

  And you had to be sitting there making decisions that could be against the Army, what the Army wanted, as opposed... One of the things I was involved with, because I was involved with the Navy and the Air Force. The Navy wanted to build another nuclear submarine. Well, there's only so many capital ships. That was by law. So, Navy, I asked why there was... I can't remember now. I think 13 capital ships, or whatever the number was.

• 1:54:30Speaker 02

  I asked, "Why is that number 13?" It took quite a while for them to figure out the answer. And it really was very simple. Going back to the League of Nations, parley in 1920-something, when they parleyed out to the various World War I winners the number of capital ships, i.e. called battleships, numbers of ships that each country would have. And that's where this number came from. Well, I... That was just...

• 1:55:11Speaker 02

  Now, I learned to ask that question because when I was going to Michigan, one of the professors said... This was in statistics class.

• 1:55:27Speaker 02

  I want to know what you want to, what, not what the results are. I want to know what the assumptions are. And so I was asking this assumption. Why is there X number of capital ships? It was a simple question. I, I didn't know I was creating a challenge. I mean, it, it turned out to be exactly what I was saying. It was a strange phenomenon for them to try to figure out why there was that number. I don't know what the world is now, but I can tell you at that point, this was in 1968, I guess.

• 1:56:09Speaker 02

  That was a, a question that it took a while to answer. By the way, I don't know how many capital ships we have. I don't know what they're called today, but we have a lot more than I think we had back in those days.

• 1:56:24Jocko Willink?

  So what made you decide to retire?

• 1:56:28Speaker 02

  Well, I had 25 years in the military. And I decided I wanted to think about doing something else. Part of it was I used to listen to people tell me, you just order people to do things and they do it. And I said, that's just a lot of baloney. So I wanted to go and see, cut my, if you would, teeth on, trying something in civilian world.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  So I sent a bunch of resumes out and I eventually was hired to go down to Texas. And a fellow that hired me was a retired Navy aviator, who, by the way, as an aside, was assigned to the first squadron, I think it's called, that flew jets off of aircraft carriers.

• 1:57:42Speaker 02

  A guy by the name of Felix Jablonski, who was a wonderful man.

• 1:57:48Speaker 02

  But if you wanted to know what time it was, he'd tell you how to build a watch.

• 1:57:56Speaker 02

  But he hired me, and our job there

• 1:58:06Speaker 02

  was to figure out how to use, from LTV's computer resources, how to use these in civilian application.

• 1:58:20Speaker 02

  And

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  one of the things we did was we developed for Dallas

• 1:58:34Speaker 02

  X's and O's that they used to do on the chalkboard on the computer screen.

• 1:58:43Speaker 02

  And this became a way that, apparently, the Dallas Cowboys would teach the guys how to react to whatever plays it was. So that was using some of this fancy technology that LTV had to build something that was applicable in civilian life. Well, Ling of LTV, Ling Timkovat,

• 1:59:14Speaker 02

  suddenly got challenged because he was creating a huge empire, and the antitrust people got after him. And all of a sudden, our organization, the part that I was in, was went from 30 people to four. And I was one of the four. And I don't know, to this day, I still don't know why they kept me because I'd just been there less than a year. But the guy who tried to hire me into computer sciences...

• 1:59:47Speaker 02

  Previously, offered me a job with Computer Sciences. I mean, even though I had a job, I knew that this place was not a place I long-term going to be. So I went to work for Computer Sciences and I spent fifteen years there. And ended up retiring from there. As one of the presidents of one of their divisions. And one of the things that my bosses used to say, I was one of the few leaders they had.

• 2:00:25Speaker 02

  They had a lot of managers, but I was leading a group and we became very successful, much more so than I ever imagined we could be. It was primarily in sales and marketing. And I had a boss that said, who was from IBM, strict IBM suit kind of guy, you know, you've heard all the stories about. And he said, he said, "If I were to go back to my comrades at IBM and tell them that I just hired a former army colonel to be head of sales, they'd all think I was goddamn crazy." And so, anyway, I had a great career at Computer Sciences.

• 2:01:10Speaker 02

  And as I said, I retired from there. And I'm not a typist. When I was going to high school, if you took typing, you weren't going to college. It was back. So this thing called voicemail appeared to me. And I thought, so another fellow and I started a company in the voicemail business in 1984. And

• 2:01:45Speaker 02

  It was pretty successful. And we sold it in 1998. And I've stopped working since then.

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, that is awesome. And I know we've kept you here for a couple hours now. And probably a good place to at least stop for this, for this particular session. Is there anything else you want to say? Anything else you want to close out with?

• 2:02:14Speaker 02

  Well, I can, I can say this. That I met my wife on my first assignment from the Pentagon. And I, my job in the Pentagon, among other things, was to control the number of troops on the ground in Vietnam. Congress mandated that be 550,000 people on the ground. My job was to be sure that that number was met. So when the Secretary of Defense went to for Congress, he could always say that we have never. So on a quarterly basis, I would go to Hawaii.

• 2:02:56Speaker 02

  And then people from Hawaii, Thailand, Korea, Philippines, and Hawaii would all meet at the headquarters there up on the hill. And we'd go over. Because when, when Westmoreland would want to replace an ACAC battalion with an infantry battalion, it's different numbers and everything's different. So we had to do all this monitoring and keeping track of how many troops we had. My wife was a schoolteacher in California. And she was over there on a vacation. And one of my former colleagues from Vietnam, she knew him. And somehow or another, we met.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  For the next two years, we dated cross-country. She in California, me in the Pentagon. And I would go every quarter to the Hawaiian Islands for this meeting I'm telling you about. So I planned the meeting to be started on Tuesday. So I could fly from here to California, spend some time with her. Then I'd fly off to Hawaiian Islands. And then, on the way back, I'd stop and do the same thing. Then I'd be back here. So anyway, we got married in 196... After I got out, retired in 69, and we got married in October of 69.

• 2:04:27Speaker 02

  And the reason I'm still living today is because of her. She keeps me alive, takes care of me. I mean, so she's the principal reason that I can sit here and talk to you.

• 2:04:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, then we'll say thank you to you for coming on. And we'll say thank you to your wife for getting you here. Because, sir, once again, this has just been an absolute honor to be able to talk to you, to be able to hear the stories and the lessons that you learned. And thank you from all of us for your service, your sacrifice, and it's been an honor.

• 2:05:14Speaker 02

  Well, you all deserve the honor. I mean, you guys, I don't know what it would be like to be in the service today, frankly. I mean, I see these guys. My nephew deployed six times, twice to Iraq, once for the Somali extraction, plus three other times just deploying, you know? And...

• 2:05:49Speaker 02

  Now, how he did this, I'll never know, but he never left Camp Pendleton. I mean, he did, he was a drill sergeant down at MCRD, but he'd commute back to Pendleton. I mean, his wife lived there the whole time, his 20 some odd years in the Marine Corps. All in the same, I never figured that out. I moved around like, but my wife would tell you, she and I got married after I got out of the, we're in our 17th house. We've only been married 40, almost 49 years.

• 2:06:33Speaker 02

  I mean, so everybody said, well, you were in the military. We didn't do this one. She was never in the military. We moved all the time since then. I mean, you stay in San Diego.

• 2:06:46Jocko Willink?

  I'll do my best, sir. I'll do my best. And again, yeah, absolutely, the troops that are out there today, and there's a lot of troops that listen to this, guys out there holding the line and doing those deployments over and over again. But, you know, the work that we do today is based on the lessons that we learned from your generations, from the three wars that you fought, and what you passed on to us. And it was an honor for us to continue to carry the flag. So, thank you, sir.

• 2:07:16Speaker 02

  Keep carrying it, yes, sir.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir. And Colonel Tom Fife has departed, and obviously it is an honor to get to talk to him, and thanks for setting that up, Dave.

• 2:07:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, that was awesome.

• 2:07:33Jocko Willink?

  Much appreciated, three-war veteran. I mean, come on.

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  Come on, that's just unbelievably awesome to sit and listen to and, and you know what? Thanks Dave for setting that up and also thanks to everyone that, that supports this podcast so that we have the opportunity to bring people on like Colonel Tom Fife and be able to share those lessons learned, which there was a ton in there. So, thank you all for supporting and echo. If people do want to support.

• 2:08:06Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  Can you maybe fill us in on how to do that?

• 2:08:10Speaker 03

  Sure. Let me start with our company.

• 2:08:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:08:14Speaker 03

  Origin. That's the company. Originmain.com is the website.

• 2:08:24Speaker 03

  There you can get Jocko has supplements. You can get Jocko supplements, Jocko super krill oil for your joints.

• 2:08:33Speaker 03

  Joint warfare for your joints. Don't run out, by the way, Dave Berke. You're, I don't know if you've ever been on the, in the situation of running out of super krill when you depend on super krill. It's a bad situation. And if you ever want to reduce the risk of running out, do the subscription thing. That's what I do. Kind of.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Subscript.

• 2:08:54Speaker 03

  Subscript. Yeah. You just get your allotted amount per month or however often you need it. Also, pre-mission supplement. It's called discipline.

• 2:09:04Jocko Willink?

  Hold on, Dave. You're firing up on discipline. You, you said, you said to me, and I quote, "I live on discipline."

• 2:09:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. It has become a daily part of my life, for sure.

• 2:09:16Jocko Willink?

  You, you've got it in the brain.

• 2:09:18Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:09:18Jocko Willink?

  You use it before you work.

• 2:09:20Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:09:20Jocko Willink?

  You're studying, you're working, you're prepping. That's your go-to.

• 2:09:24Speaker 03

  The stuff is awesome. I use it probably more than I should. Yeah, it's legit.

• 2:09:28Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if there's a, some kind of a, you know, limitation health-wise, like if you're drinking nine gallons a day.

• 2:09:37Speaker 03

  I'm gonna explore that. I'll let you know. Yeah.

• 2:09:41Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:09:42Speaker 03

  All right, well, there it is. It's a pre everything, pre mission, pre workout, pre test taking, pre meeting, pre jujitsu.

• 2:09:50Jocko Willink?

  Now, you're gonna get mad or whatever, or you're gonna make, you give me your attitude, cuz you know you make fun of me cuz I wanted it to taste good.

• 2:09:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:59Jocko Willink?

  You make fun of me, and there's not even that much I can say about that because it's a legitimate thing. For me, big jocko to be like, oh, I want it to taste good. It's kind of a weakness, right? It's kind of soft. Right. Well, that being said, we have another flavor coming. I'm gonna tell you what.

• 2:10:18Speaker 03

  What?

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, first of all, I'm gonna tell you two things. Well, first of all, it tastes good.

• 2:10:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, bro.

• 2:10:23Jocko Willink?

  Second of all, it's, it's, it's basically pina colada. But I can't call it that. That's like, it's, I can't do that. I can't do that. So it's gonna be called like coconut pineapple.

• 2:10:36Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:10:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, we're not going just straight pina colada, cuz I just can't.

• 2:10:40Speaker 03

  No, no.

• 2:10:41Jocko Willink?

  This is not, that's not how.

• 2:10:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, no, that's not how. Yeah, you did mention that, and I'm impressed that you're sticking with the delicious, luxurious tasting. You know, but that's one of those things, like, you like pina colada? You like that flavor? Like, I've heard of people not really liking it, but that could have to do with the fact that, you know, like, when you drink alcohol too much, and it has like, like, tequila will have it. Pina colada is like that. If you just drink too many of them, you get drunk, you have that experience. Now you can never drink it again. Now, if you smell it, you feel off. Are you thinking of tequila right now? Tequila is like that, for sure.

• 2:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Jaeger, Jaeger.

• 2:11:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't, during my younger years, I had like a fourteen month hiatus from Jaeger after I had a.

• 2:11:26Speaker 03

  Bad sitch.

• 2:11:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, bad sitch.

• 2:11:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, so pina colada.

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  I was young and stupid. You know what? Young, stupid, and motivated. Like, you know when you're actually motivated, like, oh, I'm gonna do this. That's bad.

• 2:11:38Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Dumb.

• 2:11:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, but if you haven't had that experience with pina colada, I would assume that that's a, that's a pretty high rate of acceptance as far as deliciousness goes, in my opinion. Or in my, by my estimation, I think, my hypothesis, or whatever. Nonetheless, it's called discipline. It's premission, this, whether you love pina colada or love lemon lime-ish flavor with other delicious factors in it.

• 2:12:05Speaker 03

  That's a good thing, but it's good because it makes your brain more healthy and your body. Pre-mission, pre-workout, pre-test taking, pre-meeting, pre-jiu-jitsu, pre-workout, cognitive and physical force multiplier. That's what that is. So get on now and of course, also, G's and rash guards, Dave Berke.

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  You didn't talk about Molk.

• 2:12:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:12:26Jocko Willink?

  You missed the Molk.

• 2:12:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, I didn't really miss it. I was gonna save it for last, but no, no, no.

• 2:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'll get back in my lane over here.

• 2:12:33Speaker 03

  No, because I just had a whole thing I was gonna do with it.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards, tell me about it.

• 2:12:37Speaker 03

  I feel like we should do the Molk now because you kind of, kind of brought it up, which is, you know, if, for lack of a better term, it's actually, it is a better term. It's not protein powder. It's protein powder, but it's a better term for this particular protein powder. Molk.

• 2:12:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:12:53Speaker 03

  Mint chocolate, just in case you didn't know, Dave Berke, Dave Berke, you on the Molk yet?

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  He's not on the Molk yet. He just told me. He's gonna get it this week.

• 2:13:00Speaker 03

  Well, I will say this. I never was into protein powder. Aside from, you know, when you're in high school.

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  You're still not. You're still not. You're into Molk.

• 2:13:09Speaker 03

  Right, correct, correct. But this one is one of those good ones where, kind of like you in the discipline, where you're like pounding it all the time. So I give my daughter dessert.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, this is a dessert. Straight up.

• 2:13:21Speaker 03

  Straight up dessert.

• 2:13:21Jocko Willink?

  Straight up. It tastes that good.

• 2:13:23Speaker 03

  And don't put a couple of drops of vanilla in there. Try to do that. But two drops of vanilla, put an egg and put it in the blender.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 2:13:32Speaker 03

  In fact, you know what? Don't do it. Don't do it. You'll be in the same boat as me. Nonetheless, it's like a dessert and there's protein. No, it's good, man. Because I used to make these milkshakes when I was young.

• 2:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you think it's making you more swo-?

• 2:13:44Speaker 03

  Probably. Probably is, Victor. Nonetheless, I used to make these milkshakes when I was young. They were, they had vanilla, egg, like a teeny tiny piece of banana, milk.

• 2:14:00Speaker 03

  And some other stuff, some sugar in there and it was good. It was like a solid milkshake, like a good, like almost like you bought it from a gourmet spot.

• 2:14:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, the milk is no joke when it comes to milkshake simulator.

• 2:14:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, mint, mint, chocolate.

• 2:14:13Jocko Willink?

  Peanut butter's coming, peanut butter, chocolate peanut butter's coming.

• 2:14:17Speaker 03

  Chocolate peanut butter milk is on its way, straight up. Dave Berke, when you get on it, you're gonna stay on that. So you're just gonna be pounding discipline and milk like all day, the way, the way Dave Berke, only Dave Berke can.

• 2:14:28Jocko Willink?

  He's gonna look like Echo Charles.

• 2:14:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, swollen.

• 2:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Six months, dude.

• 2:14:32Speaker 03

  Lifting jujitsu, milk, all that stuff. Also, giz and rash guards. We can talk about that if you want, unless you have another suggestion on what else I should talk about at this point. I'm, I'm saying I want to do the right thing over here. You know what I'm saying, Dave Berke? Can I give you a Dave Berke? You do gi, right?

• 2:14:48Speaker 01

  I do, I have two. So here's the one good thing about starting jujitsu with 45. I discovered the one good thing about it instead of starting at 15 is I never have any of those stories where I tell about how uncomfortable the gear is or how the rash guards gave me, you know, or the, the giz are hard to wash. I got Origin Maine giz, time to.

• 2:15:07Jocko Willink?

  From the get go.

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  From the get go.

• 2:15:10Jocko Willink?

  This is like someone that never had a flip phone in 1994.

• 2:15:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Just woke up and they had an iPhone six.

• 2:15:16Speaker 01

  Started with the iPhone 10.

• 2:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're just out of the gate.

• 2:15:18Speaker 01

  Origin Maine rash guards. So I don't know what it's like to have grown up with all the terrible gear you guys use.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  You didn't know what it was like, man.

• 2:15:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that's, that's actually good news in my, in my opinion, you know, cause working, not working, but you know, like working out and, and doing jujitsu in a junk gi, probably the first gi I had, man, you know, you like any, like you ever, when you buy your first suit, same deal. Like you didn't know, I don't know, in my, like, I don't know.

• 2:15:47Jocko Willink?

  You thought that was just.

• 2:15:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, oh, I see you guys, so let me go buy one. I don't know, whatever. So same thing. So I went and bought a gi and it was like, I bought a cheap one, you know?

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, 40 bucks. I, well, no, straight. See, I bought my first gi was in a key, I bought from the Akito store.

• 2:16:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:01Jocko Willink?

  Cause the jujitsu place, they were like, it's a hundred bucks. I'm like, oh, cool, not happening. I'll go find a different one.

• 2:16:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:07Jocko Willink?

  And I found un, unbleached, have you ever heard of this? Unbleached cotton. That was even cheaper than the bleached cotton. It's an off white. It feels like it's filled with steel wool scratching it in your skin.

• 2:16:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, but that's hard.

• 2:16:19Jocko Willink?

  And it lasted like four weeks.

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, get a quality That was It was an Aikido gi. It looked, it felt similar from the external viewpoint to a jujitsu gi. But it wasn't, and it damn sure wasn't made in America.

• 2:16:41Jocko Willink?

  Made in Maine. You know what's awesome is to know, to literally know the people. Cause I, I, we've been to the factory. I know the people that, that made those. I know them.

• 2:16:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:52Jocko Willink?

  I like, I say, oh, hey, how you doing? Oh, I'm over here making a gi.

• 2:16:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's real. That's what's happening.

• 2:16:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. And on top of that, not to mention, the cotton that was loomed right there in the building, by the way,

• 2:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:04Speaker 03

  is from America too. That's something.

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  And you, so I was talking about Pete about this. The cotton, it's not all cotton. It's, it's, um, what is it?

• 2:17:14Speaker 03

  Polyester.

• 2:17:14Jocko Willink?

  It's poly. So it's a poly cotton blend. And I thought that the two strands were different and it's woven together. No, the, they make that, that actual thread is ca- cotton, poly cotton.

• 2:17:28Speaker 03

  The thread.

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  The thread itself that you weave is, that's why, that's why you can put it in the dryer to dry like a normal piece of clothing. Not four hours. You pull it out and yourself to hang it up because it's all cotton and it just holds on to the water.

• 2:17:40Speaker 03

  Thick ass cotton.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Gets out of there.

• 2:17:42Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  Made in America.

• 2:17:44Speaker 03

  All good. So yeah, you, um, good, good Dave Berke, boom, Origin Gi. No history of discomfort in other gees.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  No, no, uh, stinky area of the house where wet gees are hanging up for four days.

• 2:17:58Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 2:17:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, and I'll say this for all the stuff at Origin, everything they make is awesome. On their website, they talk about the, uh, the hoodie and they call it the most comfortable hoodie ever.

• 2:18:06Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  I grew up

• 2:18:07Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 2:18:08Speaker 01

  wearing hoodies. If you grew up in Southern California, when it gets really cold out, you put on a hoodie. The Origin hoodie is the most comfortable hoodie I've ever owned.

• 2:18:16Speaker 03

  So that stuff is legit, no joke.

• 2:18:18Jocko Willink?

  No, no personal offense to you, Dave, because I respect you. I do. I really respect you as a person, but your level of measuring comfort is not even close to Echo. Echo is sort of the quality comfort control guy, and he has already made this statement. So you saying it is like, everyone is listening on whatever. We don't, you're in the Marine Corps, you know, you've done some, you know, you've done some tough stuff in your life. They're looking at Echo, they're like, wait, if Echo thinks it's comfortable, we're in. And that actual statement has meaning.

• 2:18:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I will, but I will say, you know, sure, like, of course, Dave Berke, of course, we all knew that, you know, I'm, yeah. I am the gold standard of comfort evaluation for sure, I think. And I will second that. It is the hoodie and the pants, by the way. So, yeah. Get those as well, all made in America, the compression gear and rash guards, all that. I'm just saying, there's all this stuff on the website, originmaine.com, you can get all this stuff. The hoodie, the gees, the rash guards, sweatpants, other stuff, a lot of cool stuff on there. Check it out. If you want something, get something. Also, the immersion camp, jujitsu camp.

• 2:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 2:19:27Speaker 03

  Just got a message from someone from Florida, young lady from Florida, saying, saying, I want to go to the immersion camp, but I won't know anyone there. And I think I'm the only one from Florida. What do you think? Hey, you know me, kind of, I guess, if you've sent me the message, sure, you know me, probably know Jaco too.

• 2:19:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you know Echo, you know me, and that means you know Dave Berke, you know three of us.

• 2:19:50Speaker 03

  Three people already. And here's the good thing, where when you go there, we technically, sure, knew each other, and you knew Pete. That was the first time I met Pete. I met probably, what, like, the first 15 minutes, we met about 20 people.

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:10Speaker 03

  And we hung out with those 20 people plus the other people you meet over the days, the whole time. It wasn't the kind of like, oh, I don't really know them and I'm hanging over here and there over there. It wasn't, it's not like that.

• 2:20:21Jocko Willink?

  You ever heard of those like dating sites where you, no, seriously, you put in,

• 2:20:25Speaker 03

  like match.com?

• 2:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, you look at, yeah, okay. So I grew up before dating sites or I got married before dating sites. So I was just like, do the game back in the day. Like you gotta go to a place where you can hopefully meet a girl, right? The odds of meeting a girl are not the girl that you like and that has some sort of remotely similar interest. You go into a bar of the hundred girls in there and like you're lucky if there's one of them there that's remotely interested in what you're interested in and you can connect, then you gotta meet them. Then you gotta go up and talk to them and all this stuff. It's real hard. Then they made the match dating things online where you put in your stuff.

• 2:20:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  And then you meet that one person and you connect with them and you have all these things in common. This situation, you think about it, you're actually just going into a place where everyone's into the same thing that you're into. It's like walking to a bar and everyone likes the same stuff. Everyone there likes jujitsu and wants to train and wants to hang out and that's, that's what makes it cool.

• 2:21:17Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. No, no dating typically, but hey, yeah, the, it's a good point. Everyone kind of, you kind of converge on the, the topic of jujitsu and then kind of everything else spawns from there. That's what it really seemed like to me.

• 2:21:32Jocko Willink?

  And then everything spins back to jujitsu.

• 2:21:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. It's good fun. So my input is to go. That's what I think. I think go. When in doubt, go.

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  Dave's going.

• 2:21:43Speaker 03

  I'm going.

• 2:21:45Jocko Willink?

  Leif is going.

• 2:21:46Speaker 03

  Good.

• 2:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed. JP's considering.

• 2:21:48Speaker 03

  He'll go.

• 2:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he'll probably end up going. Yeah. So we'll be, it'll be a little EF reunion tour of the Jujitsu Bar.

• 2:21:58Speaker 03

  Yep. Agree. And when you go there knowing zero people, you'll leave there not only knowing more people, but they'll be kind of your friends. I will guarantee you'll have more actual friends after you leave. Guaranteed. This is to, to the lady that emailed me. That's what I think.

• 2:22:13Jocko Willink?

  I know, man.

• 2:22:14Speaker 03

  That's cool. And even if you will know some people there, I say go to because you can immerse yourself in jujitsu. Best way to learn. And you know, let's face it, you're in Maine. It's a bunch of lobster.

• 2:22:26Speaker 03

  They serve lobster.

• 2:22:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:28Speaker 03

  That was one of the highlights in my opinion. Anyway, yeah, so it is on August 26 through September 2. Two sessions, go to both if you want, but yeah, two sessions. There you go, all levels. Also, for fitness gear, go to onit.com/jaco. They got kettlebells, battle ropes, jump ropes, all kinds of stuff. Good stuff, vary up your workout, get some new gear. It'll actually get you more in the mood to do a workout when you, when that gear comes in. I guarantee that. Well, I don't know if I can guarantee that, but that's how it was for me when I got the jump rope. Then all of a sudden I'm a jump roper. See what I'm saying? It's good. Anyway, a lot of cool stuff on there, a lot of good information on there too. By the way, if you're beginning like kettlebells, or you're beginning other workout movements

• 2:23:13Speaker 03

  and you want to know some tips and you know, even some nutrition stuff, really good. Anyway, go there, onit.com/jaco, good way to support. Also, when you get the books that Jaco reviews on this podcast, I organize them on jacopodcast.com. On the top, you click on books from episodes and it takes you to the page. And it has, that's right, you guessed it, the books by episodes for, for, on episodes, by episodes. You see what I'm saying? Anyway, click on there, takes you to Amazon, you can shop, get your books, get whatever else you want from Amazon, your batteries or duct tape, whatever. Keep shopping, do you. Also, good way to support is to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play.

• 2:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Spotify, do you subscribe on Spotify?

• 2:24:02Speaker 03

  I don't know, I've been to Spotify.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot more apps for podcasts now. Yeah, I think I'm going to explore some of them too.

• 2:24:09Speaker 03

  Daily.

• 2:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:10Speaker 03

  Like new ones comes up daily. Yeah, well, either way, the point there is.

• 2:24:14Jocko Willink?

  Apple changed their thing.

• 2:24:16Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 2:24:16Jocko Willink?

  Their, their, their, their layout or something. So now it pops up different, everything's different now. Frustrating.

• 2:24:24Speaker 03

  I know, but it's like. You ever realize when when the layout of some so this was a big thing on Facebook. When do you get on Facebook, Dave Berke? Do you remember? Two thousand fourteen. Fourteen dang, that's that's that's pretty early. Requirement for school. Okay, there you go. So were you in on Facebook when they kind of changed the layout of Facebook from something to something to like news feed? Negative. Jocko, Jocko doesn't know anything about this. You know what I'm talking about at all, huh?

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  No, I didn't. I didn't get on Facebook till probably like two thousand. I was might have been on, but I didn't actively do anything on it till like maybe a year ago.

• 2:25:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Maybe a year and a half.

• 2:25:03Speaker 03

  So the layout of Facebook was like, you know, you had your profile picture and I even I'm just trying to remember what it was. It was like, I don't even remember what it was, but it was like, I think like your wall or something like that where it's like you're just your your own stuff. And then they all of a sudden switched it to this news feed situation. You know how like now it's like everyone's stuff that you're basically how it is now. They just switched it. And people were mad. It was like it like changed their life. You know, they were pissed. That's what you sounded like when you just talked about the apples. That's, you know, you had that same effect on your brain. Anyway, subscribe to the podcast is what I'm saying, regardless of the layout of any iTunes or any other applications that the layout has

• 2:25:44Speaker 03

  or has not changed. Good way to support. Also, we have a YouTube channel, so subscribe to that if you want. And if you're interested in the video video version of this podcast, if you want to see what Jocko looks like, or Dave Berke, in this case, what he looks like, pretty handsome, I think, as far as handsome goes.

• 2:26:01Jocko Willink?

  Or Colonel Tom Fife.

• 2:26:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:26:03Jocko Willink?

  See what he looks like.

• 2:26:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, typically, those are the the ones that people want to see. You know, they want to see the guests. They want to see what what they look like.

• 2:26:09Jocko Willink?

  They know what we look like.

• 2:26:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, they kind of already know, except me. I guess they don't really know what I look like because I still do get, hey, you don't look like how you sound.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:26:17Speaker 03

  Which is an actual thing. You can look like how you sound. Like you look like how you sound.

• 2:26:23Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:26:23Speaker 03

  They're saying Dave Berke looks how he sounds. But it's not a one to one. It's not a face to like your voice sounds like this. So your face is going to look like it's not like that. It's like your your voice sounds like this. So your face can look like this kind of real, like this group, this little variety of face, possible faces. See what I'm saying? That's how it works.

• 2:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but for you, your voice does not match.

• 2:26:45Speaker 03

  I'm outside of that group. My face is outside of that group, apparently. So if you're interested in that sort of thing, YouTube, boom. Also, we have excerpts on there if you want, you know, some of the lessons that Jaco talks about, you know, you want to share them, they're condensed, or actually, they're not condensed, they're just taken out and, you know, made little videos on there. Also, enhance excerpts, put some music on there, make them more.

• 2:27:07Jocko Willink?

  Somebody asked for tracks, enhanced excerpt tracks into Psychological Warfare available on iTunes. So, does that make sense?

• 2:27:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:27:16Jocko Willink?

  So, I think it's time for Psychological Warfare 2, by the way.

• 2:27:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I agree.

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  I've been getting a lot of requests for things like that.

• 2:27:24Speaker 03

  I agree, but not from a personal interest standpoint, because the Psychological Warfare 1 is still very effective, 100% effective for me right now.

• 2:27:35Jocko Willink?

  Album with tracks.

• 2:27:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, which I will talk about after I talk about the fact that Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store, JacoStore.com. This is where you can get the t-shirts, let's say, Discipline Equals Freedom, like the one I'm wearing right now, or the Jocko Podcast shirt, basic, but very nice, the one that Dave Berke is wearing right now. Also-

• 2:27:54Jocko Willink?

  Were you telling me you got called out with a Jocko Podcast t-shirt? Where was that?

• 2:27:57Speaker 03

  I'm wearing this exact shirt. I'm at Disney World with the family after Orlando two weeks ago from across the way. I get a good evening echo.

• 2:28:05Jocko Willink?

  That's the standard bona fides.

• 2:28:06Speaker 03

  Legit, man.

• 2:28:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep, the standard bona fides is good evening echo.

• 2:28:10Speaker 03

  Yeah. Very good. Yeah, looks good on you, of course. And even if you want the one that Jaco has on now, the one that Jaco always has on right now, the one he has on right now and always has on, you see what I'm saying? Anyway, if you want that shirt, go on JacoStore.com, or if you want a hoodie, or if you want a hat, or if you want a rash guard. Anyway, just go on there, you can see, you know, if you want to support that way, there's a lot of cool stuff on there. If you want something, get something. It's called JacoStore.com. Also, just like Jaco mentioned, Psychological Warfare is an album with tracks. Basically, these tracks are, each track, you can get these on iTunes, by the way, so each track is Jaco telling you how to get past certain weaknesses that you might have, might-

• 2:28:54Speaker 03

  Have on your campaign against weakness. So you know, you're on the path, right? We're working out, we're waking up early, some of us. And you know, we're reading more, whatever we're doing. Sometimes you don't want to do that. You don't do that every day. You just don't feel like it on some days, but you still should do it. We all know that. But sometimes you don't feel like it. So you're about to skip the workout. Boom. You listen to a certain track. Doc will tell you why you shouldn't skip the workout and it's effective. You won't skip the workout. Take it from me. I know 100% from experience. That's what it is. Get it on iTunes.

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  Check. You know, also, speaking of subscribing, I have another podcast now. Yeah, it's called the Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 2:29:34Speaker 03

  Good one.

• 2:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uncle Jake has lessons. The name of the podcast is Warrior Kid. Ask Uncle Jake. Uncle Jake answers questions from little warrior kids around the world. And you can get that, play it for your kids. There's no foul language. There's no talk about the Me Li massacre. It's totally separate. So your kids won't get stumbled upon something that they shouldn't be listening to, that they're not ready for yet. So you can check that out. Also, Jaco White Tea is available on Amazon. And if you're going to order it, well, then go ahead and just go ahead and order some more weights for your barbell too, because you're going to need them. You need about 8,000 pounds worth. And that's the minimum guaranteed deadlift. Also, there's cans of white tea coming soon.

• 2:30:20Jocko Willink?

  They're going to be here in June. They're going to be available on Amazon in June. Victory in a can. Yes. Certified organic. Never thought you'd hear me say that now, did you? Yeah. Certified organic. There you go. We're going to get rid of all the horrible energy drinks that are out there making people sick. And we're going to place it with Jaco White Tea, which is 8,000 pounds of pure power.

• 2:30:46Speaker 03

  Let me ask you this.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:30:47Speaker 03

  About Jaco White Tea. Would you consider making the microdose or a version that doesn't have just the microdose of caffeine?

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  But uh. If you drink the, no, probably not.

• 2:30:59Speaker 03

  No more caffeine?

• 2:31:00Jocko Willink?

  No. The Jaco White Tea can, I think is two servings and I think it's 30 grams. I'll confirm that.

• 2:31:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31:08Jocko Willink?

  I shouldn't have said it.

• 2:31:08Speaker 03

  I'm saying, would you ever consider making like another, another version in the future or anything like that? Something with more caffeine?

• 2:31:15Jocko Willink?

  White tea hype or something.

• 2:31:18Jocko Willink?

  No, uh, more, I, I don't know. I don't think so.

• 2:31:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 2:31:22Jocko Willink?

  I don't think so. Cause um, if you want more, you can drink more.

• 2:31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, man.

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Or go get some, you know, something that's gonna make you all jittery.

• 2:31:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  That's fine. Uh, books, Way of the Warrior Kid, series. It's a series of books, by the way. There's two of them right now. There'll be more. I got a, I got a, a note on

• 2:31:43Jocko Willink?

  social media.

• 2:31:46Jocko Willink?

  And it was from an eight-year-old warrior kid named Addison. And she wrote this, Dear Mr. Willink, I absolutely love your book, Way of the Warrior Kid. I think it's the best book ever.

• 2:31:59Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying? Uh, it taught me about discipline and commitment. Now, every day I train before school. And trust me, it helps a lot. Your friend Addison. So, there you go. Listen to Addison. Pick up The Way of the Warrior Kid and pick up Mark's Mission, the second book, so your kids can get stronger, smarter, faster, and overall.

• 2:32:22Jocko Willink?

  If you want to support a particular warrior kid that's on the move, making things happen, go to IrishOaksRanch.com. Get some soap made by Aiden Warrior Kid. Warrior Kid with his own business.

• 2:32:35Jocko Willink?

  He makes Jaco's soap on his farm. So you can stay clean.

• 2:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. I met a trooper up in Yosemite. I was up in Yosemite. This was, I guess it was last summer. And, you know, we just started talking. And I'm like, what you doing up here? And he was like, I'm up here to get my mind right. I was like, yeah. I don't know. I got kind of fired up, you know? Get my mind right. And that's a thing. That's a thing that you, that you kind of got to do sometimes. Get your mind right. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. It'll help get your mind right.

• 2:33:16Jocko Willink?

  It'll help get your mind right.

• 2:33:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 2:33:18Jocko Willink?

  It'll help get your body right, too, by the way, if you get some of those Defcore workouts going, for sure. If you want to listen to it, instead of read it, or in addition to reading it, you gotta get the audio version, not audible books. It's not on there. It's available on Amazon Music, iTunes, Google Play, other MP3 platforms. Discipline Equals Freedom field manual. Meditate on that. Also, for leadership, Extreme Ownership, Combat Leadership for the Battlefield for Business and Life. And now you can order the follow-on book to Extreme Ownership. It's called The Dichotomy of Leadership. It's available for preorder on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, local bookstore. Hit them up. It'll be out September 25th.

• 2:34:01Jocko Willink?

  If you want to get one of those first editions, if you're a, if you're a book person, that's into the books, you like to have that first edition, order it.

• 2:34:11Jocko Willink?

  If you need backup with your team from a leadership perspective, whatever business you're in, or whatever leadership situation you're in, you need some support, you can contact my leadership and management consulting company. It's called Echelon Front. It's me, Leif Babin, JP Denell. Dave Berke is in the game. The website is echelonfront.com. We solve problems through leadership.

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  That's it. That's how problems get solved in any organization. Not some whiz kid looking at a spreadsheet. Sure, we'll assess those. That's not where the problem's going to get solved, though. We might identify a problem there. The problem is leadership. The problem in your organization is leadership.

• 2:35:01Jocko Willink?

  We'll fix it. That's what we do. Of course, we got the muster. We're in DC right now for the muster.

• 2:35:09Jocko Willink?

  It sold out, and they all sell out.

• 2:35:12Jocko Willink?

  There's one more muster in 2018 muster 006 in San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. You registered extremeownership.com. Like I said, it is going to sell out. If you want to come, register now. Also for current military law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, other first responders, we got the roll call 001, September 21st in Dallas, Texas. It's a one day, one day leadership training seminar that's specific to dynamic and hostile environments, things like fires, things like combat, things like high-speed

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  pursuit chases. That's what it's about. You can register for that as well at extremeownership.com. And until we see you at the muster or at the roll call or at the immersion camp in Maine, if you want to communicate with us and hang out virtually, you can find us on the interwebs.

• 2:36:13Jocko Willink?

  What's yours, Dave? David R. Burke.

• 2:36:15Speaker 01

  At Dave R. Burke.

• 2:36:17Jocko Willink?

  Dave R. Burke.

• 2:36:19Speaker 01

  I put the R on there.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  Is your Twitter handle.

• 2:36:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:36:22Jocko Willink?

  Your Twitter call sign.

• 2:36:23Speaker 01

  That's it. I might have snagged a good deal, Dave. Just to make sure nobody else has it. I might have grabbed that.

• 2:36:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, nicely done. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And to all the military personnel out there, standing the global watch for evil. Thank you. And to the families of those men and women that are also serving and also sacrificing, thank you for what you do. To the first responders out there, police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, thanks for standing by to get some at all times. And also thanks to your families as well. And to everyone else that's out there.

• 2:37:15Jocko Willink?

  With us, facing whatever you're facing, life, challenges, struggles, pain, suffering, uncertainty, look at the past.

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Look at a guy like Tom Fife, look what he's been through, see what men and women have gone through, what they've been subjected to, and how over and over and over again, we see human beings that rise against and they overcome.

• 2:37:46Jocko Willink?

  To keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep fighting to move forward and keep getting after it.

• 2:37:57Jocko Willink?

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