94: There is a Limit to What A Person Can Be Asked To Do. And Sometimes You Lose. "Men at Arnhem", by Geoffrey Powell

0:00:00 - Opening 0:05:49 - Sometimes you lose. Default Aggressive. - "Men At Arnhem", by Geoffrey Powell. http://amzn.to/2xF6Kvs 2:07:29 - Real world take-aways and life comparisons. 2:20:07 - Support JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, Origin Brand Apparel http://www.originmaine.com, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. http://amzn.to/2szgaEj 2:40:25 - 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.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 94 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  The black cloud of smoke exploded silently outside the open door of the Dakota obscuring for the moment my view of the geometrical Dutch landscape deserted but for a few forlorn cows. As soon as the sea had appeared below us, I started to think about the flak and I knew that everyone else in the aircraft must be worrying as well. When we crossed the east Anglican coastline, that slight wave of movement had flickered down the aircraft as the men checked their watches calculating the time it would take to fly over the sea and come within range of the now alerted German anti-aircraft guns.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  Below us, the air sea rescue launches of the RAF dotting the water at precise intervals were pleasantly comforting. The narrow band of beach which was the coast of Holland had aroused us once again. As the flooded fields flashed into view, Private Harrison had leaned across to point out the guns on the ground shooting up at the massed ranks of our aircraft.

• 1:19Jocko Willink?

  At the sound of my Batman's voice, which had been silent for the past hour, the men near to the open doorway had craned forward to see what they could, while the rest anxious for the first indications of the enemy had twisted their necks to peer through the small windows at their backs.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  At first, I could see nothing.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  And I was stupidly aggravated that everyone but myself could spot gun flashes. Then came that cloud of smoke producing an odd sense of satisfaction, a reaction which immediately shamed me. This was the behavior of a small boy. For all that, it was satisfying not to feel scared by it. Perhaps it was because the experience was not only novel, but in some way impersonal. Looking down the dark tunnel of the aircraft at the double line of soldiers, it was a relief to see that all traces of nervousness had disappeared.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  We had been waiting a long time for this.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  So that is the opening of a book called Men at Arnhem. And it was actually sent to me by a guy by the name of James Fennell and the book was originally published under the pseudonym Tom Angus and it was about this battle at this place called Arnhem, which is in Holland. And in the book, the units that are doing the fighting, they're not identified. They don't say what units they are, but shortly after the book was published, it became very clear and it was revealed that the author was an individual named Geoffrey Powell,

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  a British Army officer, and that the unit that the book talks about was the 156th Parachute Battalion of the British Army, who fought against all odds. And really with misfortune after misfortune for eight days during Operation Market Garden, which is a famous WWII operation, a bold and super aggressive plan. And also the largest airborne operation up until that point. And

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  the goal was to isolate parts of the German forces and to cut off what's known as the Ruhr District, which is like the heart of German industry, and then open up a route going from through that whole area, take control of the roads and the bridges and be able to punch right into the heart of Germany. Over 40,000 airborne troops took part in the operation, including America's 82nd Airborne and the 101st Airborne Divisions. But the deepest,

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  those that jumped deepest into enemy territory were from the British, British 1st Airborne Division, and that included this battalion, the 156th Parachute Battalion.

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  And if you know anything about Operation Market Garden,

• 4:50Jocko Willink?

  although it did achieve some beneficial things, overall, the mission was considered a failure because it didn't actually achieve the objectives that it wanted to achieve. And as you can imagine, those that were furthest out suffered some absolutely catastrophic casualties and people taken prisoner and people killed in action.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is only an eight day, this is eight days long. So this, this period that we're about to cover is only eight days long and you're going to see that it is, it is vicious. And the names were changed in this book. But again, this is an accountant, an account from one of the company commanders inside this battalion.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  So, obviously, the opening was them flying over to the English Channel and getting ready to jump in to Holland. And here we go, back to the book. "I braced myself at the open door, the first man in the stick to jump, gripping the fuselage in case a sudden jerk flung me out too soon. Leaning forward, the wind whipped my face. Pouring over the details of the placid Dutch landscape below, I could now see one or two cyclists dotting the otherwise deserted countryside. The flicker of the red warning light near my face told me that there was one minute to go. A railway line flashed below. The pattern of the woods was familiar as the view of the stable yard from the office window.

• 6:33Jocko Willink?

  The air photographs and the briefing model of the ground had imprinted the shapes on my mind." The pilots were dead on target. More often than not, in the old days, we had been dropped astray, but these Yanks always learned from their mistakes.

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  I never saw the red light turn to green. Harrison's hand slapped my shoulder, I was out of the door. The slipstream hit me, flicking me sideways, and I fell away, just catching a glimpse of Harrison in the air above me, and the tail of the aircraft flashing out of sight. Then I was floating, suspended gently, in midair, my parachute canopy high.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  I looked up at the sky, choked with hundreds of swaying parachutes, most of them patterned in green and brown camouflage, but other, others in a galaxy of colors, red and orange, purple, blue and yellow, vivid against the scattered white clouds.

• 7:32Jocko Willink?

  Every moment more aircraft arrived, arrived to disgorge their cargoes into the crowded air. Then I noticed the humming. We were being shot at from the ground. There were boche on the drop zone. Something was badly wrong, an opposed landing with the enemy firing, as we hung from our parachutes, parachutes or tried to collect our weapons before we could gather into a cohesive force on the ground, was something new for us in the British airborne forces.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  So as they're coming down, they're getting shot at, he uses this term throughout the book, he calls the German boche, B-O-C-H-E. And where it comes from, from what I gathered, there's a French word that means, it could mean head, like caboches? Or something like that, and it also can mean cabbage. And so, I guess their, their, their slang term, their derogatory slang term was these big-headed German, big cabbage heads. And he reduced that down to this term boche, and it's a common one for them to use, they used it a lot in World War I. And so this is, this is a hangover from that, but you're gonna hear it throughout the book, that's how he's referring to the Germans.

• 8:50Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, a sharp pain burned the knuckles of my left hand. Blood was seeping from my fingers. A bullet must have hit me, grazed me anyways. But now, the heathland was rushing up. Raising my hands to lift the webs, I pulled and then hit the, and then the ground hit me with an uncomfortable jar. A bad landing. I lay in the sunken road, listening to the bullets cracking overhead.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  And they're right, they get right into the mix. I mean, it's immediately into the mix. Obviously, they're getting shot at in the way down. And then as soon as they hit the ground, it's on. Back to the book, a man with blood strain, bloodstained shell dressing wrapped around his throat, walked around the corner of the wood and towards us, just as Pritchard, who's the medic, finished his work. Then came a couple of parties carrying stretchers, the occupant of one unconscious, the other with a cigarette between his gray tight lips. They were the first stream of wounded men from a variety of units, making their painful way towards the dressing station, which had been set up in the wood behind us. So far, C Company had been lucky.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  Only four men were missing and a fifth had turned up late, smiling cheerfully despite a bullet through his bandaged arm. Another four or five were limping and hopping about on strained or twisted ankles, expressions of disgust in their faces, victims of the gusty wind on the dropping zone.

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  All of them would have to be left behind.

• 10:21Jocko Willink?

  But then I thought again, calculating the figures once more, perhaps we had not been so lucky after all. A tenth of the men who had implained that morning were already casualties. It had sounded as if all the fighting had happened on the far side of the dropping zone, in the Arnhemger direction. Now the noise of the battle began to ebb. The enemy posts had probably been overrun. Neither news nor orders had arrived from battalion headquarters. But I knew better than to obstruct the radio net with needless questions. So, first of all, you're rolling into a situation where you, you're on your insert and you lose 10% of your men. That, that's, that's just where you're starting now. If I remember correctly.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  That is the standard kind of figure that when you're conducting a big airborne operation, like when the army conducts big airborne operations, that's what they figure they're gonna take for casualties on the drop zone. Obviously, they usually do better than that, but for worst-case scenarios, that's kind of what they figure, and that's where they're at. The other thing that I thought was cool is here he is, he hasn't heard any word from the battalion HQ yet, but he's not gonna jump on the net and saying, "Hey, boss, what do you want me to do? Hey, what's going on? Hey, where do you want me to be?" Because there's other people that are trying to talk, and he's gotta just kind of figure things out at this point.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  Now, he's talking about his own company, but here's the report on the rest of the battalion as he figures stuff. And as usual, obviously, I'm not reading the whole book, and I'm skipping through big chunks of combat situations, but at this point, he figures out what's going on with the battalion, going back to the book. Casualties in the battalion had not been light. Two officers and a hundred men had failed to arrive. Among them, the plane load which we had seen shot down.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  Another load had probably been dropped in the wrong place. Ian Hampshire was one of the missing officers. Rumor had it that he was dead. The other was the intelligence officer, whose job Jimmy Gray had now combined with his own. Jimmy could not explain the reason for the delay. No one seemed to know. And that's one of the parts that I didn't go over in the beginning of the book. As they're flying in, as they're seeing flak hit and explode around them, you know, they see another one of their aircraft, filled with their brothers, go down. No shoots.

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  Now they start getting some coherent...

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  Input from the battalion and here's what they figured out calling back to the book. We would move as had already been planned in England. The leading company of the battalion with Leslie Doyle's platoon, number nine in the front, some 200 yards ahead, followed by company headquarters. Then Luke Tyler's eight platoon, then Douglas Thompson's seven platoon at the back. As I had expected, the company was ready to move by the time orders had been given out. Two minutes were all that was needed for the men to slide their entrenching tools into place, pick up their weapons and sort themselves out. No one had removed his equipment. It was a lesson which the Colonel had drummed into us. No man must ever remove his equipment when the enemy is anywhere near, no matter whether

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  he was digging, sleeping, or defecating. Whatever time it may be, day or night, a soldier had only to reach for his weapon to be ready to fight or to march. Just once this day, just once each day, one man in three at a time was allowed to strip so that he could wash and shave. And shave they must. The last man of nine platoon was disappearing around the corner of the sandy track which ran parallel with the railway line to Ardnam when I noticed the Colonel standing on the right next to the shell of a still smoking glider, which partly blocked the battalion's path. So there was paratroopers that came in, but other people came in on gliders.

• 14:27Jocko Willink?

  Just big gliders, you know, no engine that would get towed by other planes. They're filled with men and they would just land these gliders in, in big, open fields. Gray was by the Colonel's side and behind them crouched a knot of radio operators and orderlies. It was the same as ever. The Colonel's eyes were still, but he never missed anything. The unfastened pouch from which a grenade or Bren magazine could slip. The slack chin strap which would fail to hold a running man's steel helmet in place. Quietly, the Colonel would indicate the error to whichever passing officer or NCO was responsible for the man. Nothing was ever ignored.

• 15:13Jocko Willink?

  Safely out of range, the offender would mumble about the nitpicking old bastard. But the abuse was usually perfunctory and good natured. All of them knew his ways, and by now, they had learned that his fads mattered. So, the Colonel's running a tight ship. That's what he's doing. He's a highly disciplined guy and he keeps his troops in check. And, as you can see, they're not offended by that. Like, they complain about it a little bit, but they also know it's the right thing to do.

• 15:50Jocko Willink?

  Here we go back to the book. Although we were moving along our planned route, our role in the battle had been changed. Instead of making for the high ground north of Arnhem, the whole of the brigade was now marching for the bridge to relieve the struggling remnants of the first brigade which had been fighting alone there for more than 24 hours. One thing was certain. So, their mission had changed a little bit. There's a bridge, and first brigade was at this bridge, had taken the bridge, but now they're getting attacked at that bridge by the Germans. And now, these guys, this brigade gets the orders to go and help them, go and relieve them. Back to the book. One thing was certain. Parachute infantry were not the fast-moving, hard-hitting troops depicted by the daily press.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  With no more transport in a battalion than four lightly armored carriers and some half-dozen jeeps, nearly everything needed in battle either had to be carried on the backs of soldiers or dragged behind them. There were no trucks just behind the forward companies loaded with spare ammunition. Instead, extra bandoliers were strung around necks and light anti-tank mines swung from waistbelts. Success came with surprise in this sort of fighting. The enemy must be caught unaware and crushed before they could recover. Inevitably, we would run short of ammunition if the Boche were allowed the chance of standing and fighting.

• 17:19Jocko Willink?

  This weary trudge toward the bridge in Arnhem, along the endless tracks, was a crazy way to use airborne troops. Surprise had been lost long ago. Before the operation started, I doubted the wisdom of dropping so far from the bridges. Now it was clear that it had been a mistake. So they're, they're in a radically different situation. Instead of dropping in and holding some ground, now they're moving, they have to carry all their gear with them. It's, it's not a good situation.

• 17:53Jocko Willink?

  He's talking about some of the guys are carrying it as much as a hundred pounds, which is a ton of weight.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  And now they get, they get word from the Colonel back to the book. He was able to confirm that the first parachute brigade was still holding out at the bridge where the casualties had been heavy on both sides. The Germans having already lost 2,000 men, although it was not clear who had counted them.

• 18:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, a- as he gets done with that, he kind of gives them word that they're going to start moving, uh, down this track. So he's giving that order to this, one of his officers Doyle. And Doyle's normally, you know, pretty, pretty fired up about what he's doing. He's a motivated guy. And here we go back to the book. Doyle was not at all his ebullient self. The task of nine platoon was simple. He and his men had to walk straight down the track until they ran into the Boche position. Their first warning of the enemy presence would be the rifle and machine gun fire tearing into them. Still less were the two scouts to be envied, who would be moving out in front of the rest of the platoon.

• 19:08Jocko Willink?

  It was almost inevitable that the first German rounds would hit one or both of them unless the Germans were cunning enough to let them pass so as to kill more of the men behind.

• 19:21Jocko Willink?

  But without armor in front to draw the enemy fire and pinpoint their positions, there was no other way to advance. I had chosen Doyle to lead the advance because I was certain that I could rely on him.

• 19:36Jocko Willink?

  This was the penalty for being good at one's job.

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. They're actually walking down train tracks and they know a hundred percent, they know a hundred percent that Germans are waiting for them. And they're going to push down these tracks and the way they're going to find the Germans is when the Germans start shooting at them.

• 20:02Jocko Willink?

  So they proceed down the tracks and now going back to the book, "The Expected Happen", happened. The calm of the night collapsed in an explosion of light and noise. From a wide arc in front of nine platoon, streams of white, red, and yellow tracer bullets converged on the stretch of track where the men must have flung themselves to the ground. Very lights and parachute flares, larger and brighter than anything carried by us, swung down towards the earth, lighting the dark country side to the shade of a gray November morning. A house burst into flames on the other side of the railway. It was too sudden for an accident. The conflagration must have been planned.

• 20:47Jocko Willink?

  Anything which moved was now visible. Overall, was the noise. The din of shells and mortars bursting both behind and ahead, merging with the harsh roar of the enemy spandau light machine guns and the more sustained drumming of the heavier weapons.

• 21:07Jocko Willink?

  Now I could hear another sound. It was a slow ratatat tat of nine platoon's Bren guns and the crack of British rifles replying to the German fire. There were a lot of enemy in front of us. The Germans had men everywhere.

• 21:25Jocko Willink?

  So this is like a well-planned ambush scenario. And if you think about it, they had, it sounds like they rigged this house to light up and be on fire, and now that's backlighting and silhouetting all the friendly troops because it just makes you stand out because there's a fire behind you. On top of that machine gun fire, on top of that mortars, shells are hitting you.

• 21:52Jocko Willink?

  And here we go, back to the book, as, as,

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  as the major here, as the company commander Geoffrey Powell is, is crouched down, waiting as all this is happening, out ahead of him. He's not with that first platoon, he's behind them a little bit. And here we go, back to the book. "I saw a single crouched figure running up the track behind, towards me. Then I recognized the broad bulk of Bartholomew, Leslie Doyle's platoon sergeant. This was quick. Leslie had wasted no timing sending back news. Only a little out of breath, Sergeant Bartholomew sank down by my side and began to speak, his voice as calm and sensible as usual. His leading section had come under fire at a range of only some twenty or thirty yards. It appeared that the Germans had allowed

• 22:41Jocko Willink?

  the two scouts to pass unmolested, but everyone else in the front section had been killed.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  There were several other casualties in the platoon, as well, including Mr. Doyle, who had been hit badly in the thigh and was only semi-conscious. The survivors were pinned to the ground by fire which was coming from either side of the track."

• 23:03Jocko Willink?

  This was all wrong. With his platoon commander hit, Sergeant Bartholomew, his place was with the platoon. There were plenty of other people to carry messages. Not only that, but Bartholomew could hardly have had time to verify the disastrous information about the leading section. It was far like, far from likely, that every man in it had been killed.

• 23:27Jocko Willink?

  So Bartholomew's nerve had broken in the first test. So that's the situation. This guy ran, and he comes back and reports in and says, you know, "Hey, everyone's dead." And he's, he realizes-

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  He realizes, the company commander realizes that, not true. Going back to the book, perhaps the responsibility had been too much for him. Whatever it was, he was certainly scared despite his success in concealing the fact. The sergeant had run away, leaving the platoon to its own devices. I was flabbergasted. Of all the NCOs, I had judged this cool, reserved man to be the most dependable. A hard taskmaster, too ruthless to be popular, Sergeant Bartholomew had been an effective foil to the easygoing and friendly Doyle. And the two men had formed a fine team. It was incredible that this should have happened.

• 24:29Jocko Willink?

  In the light of a flare, I studied the sergeant's face. There was nothing to be seen. Bartholomew returned my glaze with steady eyes. There could be no point in my further destroying the man's self-respect. It was possible that he might recover after this first shock. His pride taking charge to control his fear.

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  So my rebuke was restrained, no more than a comment that Bartholomew should have sent Private Jones back with the news and not come himself.

• 25:02Jocko Willink?

  Then I stood up once again, told Robert, who had appeared by my side to take charge, and started down the track toward the forward platoon, motioning Bartholomew to accompany me. There was no need to say anything to Harrison, who automatically rose to his feet, his stand cradled in his elbow, ready to shoot.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  So, interesting leadership dynamic there. Instead of saying, "You coward, you quit." He doesn't do that. Instead, he really tones it back and says, "You should have sent Jones instead." He's hoping that this guy will recover, and this is a great line, "His pride taking charge to control his fear." Meaning this guy just has no pride at this point. He's trying to keep it together, but... Hopefully, the cap, the, the company commander is thinking that, okay, this guy will get it back together hopefully and we'll be able to utilize him. As opposed to me just dropping the hammer on him right now, in which case, he might just completely break and be worthless.

• 26:04Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing, and I, I tried to include as much as I could of this guy Harrison that gets mentioned, who's sort of the, the, the company commander's right-hand guy. But he's just always there, always ready, always stepping up and making things happen.

• 26:25Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 26:28Jocko Willink?

  eventually, as all that unfolds, we're going back to the book. Nesbit, which is one of the guys in that, in that platoon. Nesbit had decided that it was time to leave and had used the lull to bring back the survivors of the platoon. Two men were dead, while nothing was known of the fate of the two scouts. With Nesbit were five wounded men, two of whom, including his officer, were being carried. Leslie, in shocking pain from a shattered thigh, which Morphia had done little to help, had fainted after a few yards and was still unconscious. A third of the platoon were casualties. It was bad, but not as, quite as bad as pictured by Bartholomew. I could not blame Nesbit for withdrawing without permission.

• 27:12Jocko Willink?

  Short of ammunition, with her officer wounded and the platoon sergeant unaccountably missing, the men had heard nothing of the troops behind them for the past hour and had concluded that the battalion must have pulled back. Nesbit had seen a lot of war, as his DCM One in Crete testified. He understood its muddle. He knew it was rare for a battle to go as planned. His responsibility was to his men, to rescue them from what seemed to be a mess. This he had done and his judgment had been correct. They were no place to be caught at daylight, overlooked on a forward slope and unencumbered with wounded men.

• 27:57Jocko Willink?

  So, you see decentralized command in action right there. Nesbit doesn't hear, doesn't know what's going on. He makes a decision, I'm getting these guys out of here. And, what's good is the company commander supports it. Hey, he made a good call. That was the right thing to do.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this point, they're moving back, they're moving back after they've confirmed, you know, they pushed forward trying to find out where the Germans were, and now they're moving back because they realize that the Germans are absolutely holding strong. So they've done this push forward, they've got basically ambushed, and now they pulled back after, you know, like I said, confirming where the Germans were. Back to the book, to accomplish this, meaning to accomplish finding out where the Germans were, to accomplish this had cost us Leslie Doyle and the absent Bartholomew, while two men in Doyle's leading section were dead and the two scouts were missing, probably either

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  killed or made prisoner. Seven other men had been wounded, including another sergeant. This is a total of 13 casualties with another nine men lost when we landed. With nothing at all accomplished, over 20 men had already been killed or injured, and now the battalion was moving in the wrong direction back the way we had come. And you're gonna, you're gonna find, I mean, this is, what makes this story so devastating is that, you know, I talk about Murphy's Law and things go wrong. These guys are complete, it's just Murphy's Law over and over again, and in most of the books that we read on here,

• 29:38Jocko Willink?

  there's triumph and there's victory at the end. And you can see right now already where this is heading. We got 20 guys wounded or killed, and instead of moving forward, we're actually moving backward.

• 29:54Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, sooner than expected, we reached the battalion base. It had been sighted in a rectangular patch of wood about 20 acres inside, lying just north of the railway.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  It was 2:30 AM. A horrible hour, especially so if one is tired, cold, and hungry. Thank God it would be starting to get light in a couple of hours.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  What would happen tomorrow? Something had gone very wrong indeed. By now, we should be dug in on the high ground north of Arnhem, waiting for the Germans to counter-attack the bridges. Instead, we were sitting here in the woods, only a few miles from where we had dropped, with strong enemy forces between ourselves and the city, where the men of 1st Brigade must be fighting for their lives. Wherever one turned, there seemed to be German troops, and good ones at that. The men who had stopped us had not behaved like rear-area troops scraped together to put up some sort of resistance, but had fought with skill and tenacity.

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  The slit trenches were dug, and everyone except for the double sentries in each section and the officers and NCOs on duty was sound asleep. The men humped like dogs, some curled up with a companion for warmth, lying in their full equipment, their weapons tied to their wrists by the slings.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  I should be asleep too. Not sitting and worrying, feeling sorry for myself, but trying to get some rest in preparation for the coming day.

• 31:31Jocko Willink?

  Stand to would be at 04:30 hours. Half an hour before first light, when everyone would be awake and ready in this slit, weapon poised for a possible dawn attack.

• 31:47Jocko Willink?

  So they're dug in. And of course, it's not looking good at this point. They're gonna stand to at 04:30, which is pretty common. You're gonna be up before the sunrise, and you wanna be up before the enemy as well.

• 32:05Jocko Willink?

  Now they get together and get some word, "Here we go," back to the book. It did not take long, it did not take the Colonel long to give us our orders. The Brigade was to renew its effort to reach the bridge and bring relief to the men still fighting there. So, pretty simple, straightforward goal.

• 32:24Jocko Willink?

  And in order to achieve this goal, they set up to do an attack on this little section of woods where they think there's a bunch of Germans and here we go, back to the book. The leading sections plunged into the wood and disappeared. There were no enemy there at all. The information from brigade must have been wrong. We had attacked and taken an empty position. Never was there such an anticlimax, but never was an anticlimax more welcome. Now we get a little visit up on the front lines. Here we go, back to the book. As the small spare figure stepped out of the first vehicle, I realized that it was

• 33:06Jocko Willink?

  the first time I had seen the Brigadier Commander since we left England. He was just the same as ever, relaxed and smiling. Battle was nothing new to him. He'd been through the worst of the desert war. Muddle in no way disconcerted him, at least not outwardly. It's interesting, he uses the term muddle. He's talking about the fog of war, this muddle, when you don't really know what's happening. He talks about how the veterans are used to it and accustomed to it and they can deal with it. Muddle in no way disconcerted him, at least not outwardly. He seemed to anticipate it, understanding how judgment and behavior was impaired by danger.

• 33:47Jocko Willink?

  Wherever he went, he inspired confidence with his gentle eyes and friendly manner. For a regular cavalry officer, his background was unusual. He'd come to his regiment not from Sandhurst, but from Oxford, with a double first and fluency in a half a dozen languages. And I love this line right here. He wore his learning lightly, as he did his decorations. Meaning this guy is highly educated and highly decorated, but you don't even know it. It was rare for soldiers to be aware of officers more senior than the colonels who commanded their battalions, but every man in the brigade would recognize, could recognize and name the Brigadier.

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  The two visitors did not stay long, but their appearance was a tonic for all. It was a reminder that, that there were able men in charge, even though the battle was developing in a rather odd manner.

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  Now as they, as he continues in these situation, back to the book, "Suddenly my preoccupation, my preoccupation with the problems of others ceased. There was a familiar whine overhead, and I found myself propelled into the half-dug trench, all but on top of Galbraith and Robert. The action had been a reflex. I knew that I had made no conscious decision to jump. As I lay there with my second-in-commands and trenching tool carving into a ridge in my left buttock, the mortar bomb burst about eight feet to the right. The scream of the shards of jagged metal passing just overhead flailed my ears as earth and stones spattered

• 35:27Jocko Willink?

  down on top of us. The stench of high explosive filled my, filled the trench. My face I found was pressed into the coarse material of Corporal Galbraith's battle trousers. Gingerly raising my head, I peered over the low parapet. At the foot of the, of a tree some fifteen yards away lay a motionless heap, a green and khaki bundle which did not stir. Jumping out of the trench, I ran across and turned over the limp body. The head fell back to show the open staring eyes of Sergeant Hawks, one of the seven platoon section commanders, a bright young NCO, only just promoted, who had been with the battalion since the

• 36:08Jocko Willink?

  day it was raised. He was another old friend. At first I could see no sign of injury, but then I noticed the small hole in the back of Hawks' helmet and the thin stream of blood streaking the back of his neck. Lying by hug and side, I seemed to count seven explosions, all just a little further away than the first, but still close enough to smell the hot gases. There was a short pause, and then, as if it were not afterthought, an eighth bomb struck the branches of the tree just above us, directing its hot metal splinters down to the trenches below. A half-strangled cry of distress brought my

• 36:49Jocko Willink?

  head up, just in time to see Corporal Pritchard clamber out of his slit and race across the, towards the cry, his haversack of medical supplies marked with its red cross dangling from his hand. The pause lasted no more than a half a minute. Again the whine, again I ducked. This was the covering fire for a counterattack. Or, was this the covering fire for a counterattack? Or were the Boche merely harassing us spitefully?

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  But when I raised my head from Huggins Boots to look around, I was relieved to see one of the seven platoon Bren gunners, his helmet and eyes just above the level of the parapet, gazing down the track towards his front. So the sentries were still doing their job. The fire was not forcing their heads down. If this was the covering fire for an attack, we would not be caught unawares.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  So that's the standard procedure right here for the Germans, and really for anyone, it's cover and move, right? We put in big bombs, we put in mortars, we put in artillery, and while you're hiding and while you're ducking down so you don't get killed, they maneuver in. And then right when they get so close that they're in danger of their own artillery, the artillery stops and then they proceed with the assault. Here we go. The lull, now there's a lull. The lull provided a chance to finish digging. There was no longer any need to persuade the men to dig faster. The lesson had really been driven home. We'd been digging for no more than a few minutes when the sound of firing to the north slackened. But the noise from the vehicles in front had increased. The thud of guns only a few hundred yards away

• 38:27Jocko Willink?

  was punctuated by the hammering of Brens. By the way Brens, I don't think I've said this. Brens are sort of the weapon, the British machine gun. Versus the Spandau, which is the German machine guns. And they use, the Brits and the Americans use the term Spandau to talk about basically heavier machine guns. But, that's what they're talking about when they're talking about Spandau. And then a Bren is the Brit machine gun.

• 38:59Jocko Willink?

  Both forward platoons were in action. And I had placed company headquarters too far back to be able to see what was happening. The walkie talkies were silent. Also, I worried about the sitting of the platoon some 300 yards apart. Each isolated in its own corner of the woods and unable to support the others against a determined attack. This is so important for tactical leaders out there. Think about these lessons and these are lessons that I talk about all the time. And these are lessons that I used to have to teach all the time. So you've got your platoons, they're out there doing something. You need to be close enough that you have communications with them so that you actually understands what's happening. And this is the same in the business world.

• 39:44Jocko Willink?

  If you put yourself in a position where you can't, where you don't understand what's happening in the field, then you're not going to be able to help. You're not going to be able to support. You're not going to be able to, to understand what's happening so you can make decisions. So in this point, he's positioned himself too far away. On top of that, he's positioned his platoons too far apart from each other. So if you're too far apart from each other, you can't cover for each other. If you can't cover, you can't move. And if you can't move, you can't win. So those are critical points. Make sure your command position is close enough, not so close that you're getting in the firefight, no, not so close that you're pinned down, but close enough so that you

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  understand what is happening. And then if you have multiple elements in the field, you get them close enough to each other that they can support each other. Always. He sees a guy running back and here we go back to the book. It was Sergeant Pryor, one of Nesbit's section commanders, a rather sulky man, able and well educated, but with a grudge against authority. In his left hand, Pryor grasped his stem in a grip so firm that the knuckles showed blue under the, under the sunburn. His right arm, from which clothing had been cut away at the shoulder, was thrust into the front of his smock, the elbow covered by a bloodstained dressing. His face was white with shock and taut with pain.

• 41:14Jocko Willink?

  A morphia injection was doing little to alleviate the agony of an elbow smashed by a bullet.

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  The news Pryor brought was serious. The vehicles which we could hear were Boche armor. Driving backwards and forward along the road and sweeping the front of nine platoon's position, secure from retaliation. So far, the armor had only claimed Pryor, but Sergeant Avondale had been killed by a mortar fragment as he dashed across between a couple of trees to put some question to Nesbit. This inexorable loss of skilled leaders was serious. In our parachute battalions, unlike usual infantry units, section leaders ranked as sergeants, not corporals. Nine platoon had now lost not only its officer, but three of its four sergeants as well.

• 42:06Jocko Willink?

  Hawks was dead, and one of seven platoon's section commanders had failed to appear at the rendezvous after the drop. Already, nearly half the sergeants had become casualties. This is just a nightmare unfolding. Back to the book, after we'd put the final touches on our slit trenches, time was found to scrape a shallow grave for Sergeant Hawks. It was hard to suppress one's revulsion at touching the body of someone I had known so well, but just as I was steeling myself to do so, Huggins stepped forward, ripped

• 42:50Jocko Willink?

  open the dead man's smock and shirt, and slipped one of the two identity discs over the blood-stained head. The sergeant major then unbuckled his watch and searched the pockets for anything which might be useful. A Morpheus syringe, and a field dressing, a bar of chocolate and a couple of Mills grenades, two packets of cigarettes and a box of matches, a couple of maps, and a pocket knife. There was nothing personal except for a grubby envelope containing a half a dozen faded and dog-eared snapshots of a stout, smiling girl, holding a baby. Before buttoning the envelope into his breast pocket, Huggins slipped the identity disc between the photographs.

• 43:35Jocko Willink?

  I was helping Corporal Pritchard shovel the earth back over Hawk's body, listening with one ear to Huggins sharing the dead man's ammunition and other possessions among the members of the company headquarters, when suddenly I became aware of Jimmy Gray, standing beside me, apparently anxious to speak, but diffident at interrupting.

• 43:55Jocko Willink?

  Telling Pritchard to finish the job, I rose from my knees, glad to be able to put my mind to something else.

• 44:02Jocko Willink?

  When I turned to speak to Gray, I was disturbed by what I saw. The dirt of battle had exaggerated his usual scruffiness. His smock and trousers were coated with mud and dust, and his right sleeve was stained from top to bottom with blood. Not his own, as he explained when he saw my eyes fixed on it. The front of his smock and the battle dress underneath had been torn by a large fragment of a mortar bomb, which in some miraculous fashion had failed to even scratch him. Three inches to one side, and it would have severed his head.

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  But it was the eyes, above the pallid, unshaven cheeks, which were frightening.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  They were empty of life. When he spoke, the words were lucid and well-chosen as ever, but the voice lacked expression.

• 44:58Jocko Willink?

  The phrases were cold. It was not as if he were describing events which he had himself witnessed, but something unreal, something half-imagined.

• 45:09Jocko Willink?

  B Company had attacked at zero eight hundred hours. At the start, their advance through the woods had gone like the first attack of the morning, a calm and steady progress against a seemingly nonexistent enemy. Then, some hundred yards short of the objective, a swath of fire had cut down the men of the two leading platoons. The half-grown trees and the sparse undergrowth had neither hidden them, nor shielded them from the interlocking arcs of the enemy weapons, which covered every inch of ground.

• 45:42Jocko Willink?

  It was just possible that they might have been able to deal with the machine guns alone, but the armor was too much for them, pumping shells into the men at near-point-blank range.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  Gray had seen it all happen.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel had tried to stop the attack as soon as the full strength of the enemy position had become clear, but by then, more than half the men of the two leading platoons had been killed or wounded.

• 46:11Jocko Willink?

  Both subalterns were dead. The other officers and the CSM had all been wounded.

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel had tried to turn the German flank by sending A Company around to the left, but there was no flank. The second attack had been a replica of the first. It too had collapsed, but not before some forty more men were dead or maimed, including two of the four surviving officers.

• 46:41Jocko Willink?

  Harry Bates had been terribly wounded in the stomach and by now was probably dead.

• 46:48Jocko Willink?

  As Gray had pulled him behind some cover, his blood had soaked his sleeve.

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  This was not the complete story. There was further bad news. Not only had our own attack been shattered, but the other battalion to our north had hit similar enemy positions and was making little progress in its efforts to get into Arnhem along the main road.

• 47:15Jocko Willink?

  From somewhere or other, the Boche had found enough troops of quality good enough to smash the Brigade's attempt to reach the city.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  So, we just have a horrible situation unfolding.

• 47:39Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, from far away in the distance came the drum of powerful airplane engines. Nesbit was the first to spot the minute shapes, first circling and then diving out of the sun towards us, the noise changing to a shriek as the machine swept down towards the wood, towards the woods. From a half a dozen different directions, a happy shout of Spitfires rose from the trenches. At last, some help had arrived from the outside world. The RAF had arrived to give us close air support. And that's, you know, we've had close air support save the day many times in, in, in books that we've talked about on this podcast.

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  As I gaved up at the dozen spits screaming down to strafe the Boche positions on the sloping ridgehead, Nesbit's voice suddenly roared in my ear, shouting to everyone to get their heads down and hide their faces. As I ducked with the rest, I spotted the black crosses on the wings. The aircraft were not ours, but German Messerschmitts. Our air superiority was so overwhelming that it never occurred to anyone that the machines might be hostile. They were not diving onto the enemy positions, but onto our own.

• 49:00Jocko Willink?

  I gazed skywards, the Messerschmitt was so close that I could see the pilot's face. Two rockets detached themselves from the wings and swooped down to explode seconds later in the woods where the survivors of A and B companies were settling into their new positions. As I ducked once more, there was another scream of engines from behind, followed by the sound of a storm of bullets striking branches on the trees on the other side. Two aircraft which had discharged their rockets were now carrying out a second run, strafing with their machine guns. As I squeezed even closer to the earth at the bottom of the shallow trench, the reverberations of an explosion some fifty yards away pounded my eardrums. It was another rocket.

• 49:45Jocko Willink?

  Suddenly, it ended. The aircraft had vanished as quickly as they had arrived.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  Wow. Yeah, cuz at this point, the, the, the British and the Americans had almost total air domination, and so everyone just completely assumed that, oh, thank God, here comes some Spitfires to come and save us, and, and they were wrong.

• 50:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, the, the air, we did have air domination for the most part. And, one of the things that they needed, as you, as you heard, these airborne troops, they can only carry so much. And so they're, they're gonna need resupplies. They need more ammunition, they need medical gear, they need food, they need water, they need stuff to be dropped to them. And so, there was a plan in place for them to have gear and food and equipment and ammunition dropped to them at these locations where they were supposed to be. Because remember, they were supposed to be making progress this whole time. They're not making progress, but they're supposed to be making progress.

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  And since communication is so bad, they can't call back and say, "Hey, we're not where we're supposed to be, we're over here, drop the gear on us." But the gear gets dropped in the pre-planned positions, which, of course, are enemy positions. But here's what it sounds like for them, or here's what they're thinking on the ground. "Then to the south of us, I saw the familiar shape of a line of Dakotas approaching at about a thousand feet. In a minute, the sky was crammed with them." It was the first supply drop about which we had been told at the briefings. But the drop zone was a couple miles away, over the other side of the hill, right in the middle of enemy positions.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  By now, of course, the division should have captured the area, but the Boche still held it. News of the progress of the battle could not have reached the RAF, or the pilots would have diverted to drop their supplies elsewhere. Now, they can see this happening. And, the people that are in the planes, they're called the RASC, the Royal Army Service Corps. They run basically the supply and the logistics and, and help resupply and drop this equipment. So this is, he's, as he's watching, all these Dakotas, the Dakotas are these little transport planes, it's actually what they had parachuted out of.

• 52:19Jocko Willink?

  And now they're watching them drop this resupply.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, among the mass, a single Dakota just overhead caught my attention. It had already been hit, and flames were creeping down from the starboard engine toward the cockpit.

• 52:37Jocko Willink?

  As it lost height, the khaki-clad RASC dispatchers were standing at the open doorway, pushing out the paniers of supplies, those are the bags of supplies. I could see their faces. The fire was on their side of the plane, the wing was burning before their eyes.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  The Dakota was now little more than 300 feet above the ground. If the men at the door jumped now, they might just save themselves. In a second or two more, the aircraft would be so low that their parachutes would not have time to open.

• 53:17Jocko Willink?

  This the men must have known. But they went on with their routine drill, pushing out the paniers regardless of what would happen to them.

• 53:28Jocko Willink?

  Then the starboard wing crumpled. The flaming plane disappeared beyond the trees, the paniers still falling from the open door.

• 53:39Jocko Willink?

  The sky was empty.

• 53:42Jocko Willink?

  The last plane had gone.

• 53:45Jocko Willink?

  But we still stood watching the place where the Dakota had vanished, mourning the futility of the self-sacrifice we had just witnessed.

• 54:00Jocko Willink?

  Can't even imagine that.

• 54:07Jocko Willink?

  Guys just continuing to do their job. Knowing their fate.

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  At their, their senior officers at this point and their NCOs are, are starting to get hit pretty regularly by snipers. Hmm. And so he decides, he tells his, his guys, "Hey, take your, take your rank off your uniform, because I don't want the enemy to know." And he tells this to one of his, one of his leaders named, named Robert. And he says, "As I watched Robert slip his captain's stars off his shoulders and tuck them away in his pocket, I knew for certain that my second in command disapproved. Officers should show themselves as such." So one of his guys is thinking, "No, we're officers.

• 54:59Jocko Willink?

  We need to, we need to stand out. We need to stand up." Now, I mentioned the American forces, the 82nd and the 101st and the British forces. There was also a Polish parachute brigade that was coming in on this attack as well. And they were scheduled to come in a little bit later as reinforcements. And here we go, back to the book. "Only then did I remember that the glider-born part of the Polish parachute brigade was due to land that afternoon upon the stretch of enemy, upon the stretch of open country below us, at the same time as the parachute battalions were dropped in the polderland south of Arnhem Bridges.

• 55:44Jocko Willink?

  The landing zone was already a battlefield, and the wretched Poles were about to land in the middle of it. First, the gliders hit the ground, its massive weight tearing up chunks of stubble as it skidded to a halt, lurching onto one wing as it did so. Men jumped out and rushed to the rear and to release the tail unit, so that the vehicles inside could be driven out. Two more gliders were now plowing across the ground. Another exploded in the air in a vast ball of yellow flame just as it was upon the point of touching down. More bombs were bursting among the men struggling to release their loads, while streams of chase tracer bisected the scene into oddly formal patterns. Another glider was on fire on the ground, as still more swooped in to land, adding

• 56:28Jocko Willink?

  to the chaos. The Poles were now joining in the battle themselves, some firing toward the Germans, some towards the KOSB, which is a, the King's Own Scottish Borders. It's a, it's another British unit."

• 56:43Jocko Willink?

  And some in the direction of our other battalion. It must be impossible for the Poles to distinguish enemy from friend. They probably thought they had landed in a circle of Boche units, all intent upon their destruction. In a few minutes, it was all over. From the wrecked and flaming gliders, which now littered the ground, small parties of Poles were making their escape, firing at anything they saw move. Two or three vehicles had been driven away, but otherwise they had failed to drag their jeeps and guns from the gliders. The Polish anti-tank battery no longer existed as a fighting unit. It had landed in the middle of a battle and been destroyed before it could fire a single shot. Waste. It was waste once again, waste like the supply drop.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  Nothing seemed to go right.

• 57:32Jocko Willink?

  A knot of some eight Poles charged towards us, intent on seeking shelter either in the woods or behind the safety of a railway embankment. Some thirty yards away, one man slightly ahead of the others must have noticed our camouflage steel helmets in the slit trenches ahead and shouted a warning. In a bunch, they flung themselves into the undergrowth. Anticipating what would happen, I yelled to everyone to get their heads down, just as a hail of bullets from the Poles whistled over our heads, a few hitting the trench parapets, but most striking the trees well above our heads, as the excited men emptied their weapons in our direction. So long as we kept our heads down, we were safe from the Polish fire, but the worry was that some of them might creep closer and start tiffling grenades around.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  However, in a couple of minutes, the firing slackened and then ceased. Possibly the Poles sensed that something might be wrong when no one retaliated. The comparative silence provided the opportunity to shout a warning across the narrow stretch of ground which separated us. There was no reply, and I shouted once again in faltering English, a voice inquired who we were. Firmly, the company's Sergeant Major Huggins told them. The Poles seemed to understand. After a few seconds of audible consultation, they rose to their feet and walked across.

• 58:53Jocko Willink?

  So you've got a, just a chaotic situation. The Poles land, they're getting attacked from all directions and sure enough, they're shooting at the friendly forces, blue on blue, happening. Once he gets them settled down, he's got some people, some of these Polish folks that now have no leadership, back to the book, calling Douglas over, I told him that he now had a fourth section in seven platoon. And within a few minutes, the Poles were digging hard under the tutelage of their corporal, the only comprehensible part of whose name sounded like Peter. The digging had hardly started when a jeep roared down the track in the direction, from the direction of the battalion headquarters. As it braked to stop in the cover of the trees,

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  Jimmy Gray jumped out and ran towards us. Gray's news was startling. We were all to withdraw to Wolfhazen in 15 minutes' time.

• 59:46Jocko Willink?

  One could not just stand up and walk away from an enemy right on one's heels. In daylight, the only way to withdraw was to move by bounds with platoons and companies covering one another back. Any other plan was madness. Things over in the north must be bad indeed for the Colonel to be rushed in this way, but Gray's instructions were unshakable. So, they're digging in, they're getting ordered, "Get out of here, we're gonna leave." And he's saying, "Okay, that's fine, but guess what? Even when you leave, you still use the fundamental principle of cover and move." And that's what he's wanting to do. So now, they're on the retreat, and, here we go, back to the book, the pace was far too quick. Some men were all but running to keep up. As I had

• 1:00:28Jocko Willink?

  expected, little by little, cohesion was starting to break down. Some of the men of the mortar platoon had overtaken us despite the weight of the loads and were mixed in among us. There were two small groups from another unit in the middle of seven platoon. From somewhere in the front, a long way off, a spandau spent, sent its bullets flying harmlessly overhead, but men were looking apprehensive and flinching. We were now under fire from two different directions. At any minute, the Boche would find the range and then the slaughter would begin. It was no longer an orderly retreat, the withdrawal was taking on the nature of a horde of men seeking safety. Soon, discipline would crack and everyone would start to run.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  What a target we must be, some 500 men from four or five different units rapidly coalescing into a solid, moving mass.

• 1:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is just a nightmare. And, and you can imagine it's an individual thing and you're gonna see some great leadership examples, but it's an individual thing because if you can keep the teams working together, covering and moving for each other, that's good. You're gonna keep the enemy's heads down. But if, if people in the group start saying, you know what, I'm not gonna cover, I'm gonna run. Yeah. And now no one's covering. And now you've got a bunch of people that are moving and no cover, and that's when you're gonna get slaughtered. Not only you're gonna get slaughtered by, by people that are shooting at you, but if you're not putting down cover fire, the enemy maneuvers. They, they don't just sit there. I mean, some of them will be shooting, but they'll be shooting, but other elements of them are gonna move, and they're gonna be able to cut you off.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  They finally do make it back, and they get, they get a little bit of luck here. Here we go back to the book. We caught our breath in the wood. So they, they get to a woods. David's men had disappeared and there was no sign of the Colonel or of the battalion headquarters. No one had followed us. We were the last across, but a quick check told me that only Robert Watson, the CSM, and three or four other men were missing in addition to seven platoon. Of the latter, there was nothing to be seen. In all, there were still about fifty men with me, not counting Peter and his seven Poles still clinging tenaciously to us. Perhaps I should try to get back across the bullet-spattered embankment to find out what had happened to the others. But the noise of the battle was getting louder. The Boche must be closing in.

• 1:02:49Jocko Willink?

  The vital thing must be to rejoin the rest of the battalion with the fifty men I still had, and not to leave them in Luke Tyler's charge while I returned on what could be a foolhardy errand.

• 1:03:02Jocko Willink?

  But it was difficult to avoid the thought that perhaps I was reluctant, reluctant to climb back over the top of that embankment.

• 1:03:11Jocko Willink?

  So he does make it to this woods, but he doesn't have everybody with him. And he's questioning himself. Should I go back over there? And risk it or not? And part of his rationalizing, you know, the best thing to do is get back with the rest of battalion. But part of him is saying, you're rationalizing this and you're just, you're just not, you're being a coward.

• 1:03:32Jocko Willink?

  But he does, he proceeds on with the battalion. He knows he's gonna get killed if he goes over that. He can hear the enemy coming. So back to the book, 10 minutes later, we found the remnants of the battalion. Half of A Company, the mortars and what was left of the machine guns were still, were missing as well as our own 7 platoon. More than one third of the men who had withdrawn from the woods had failed to cross the railway. We were now down to no more than a couple of hundred men.

• 1:04:03Jocko Willink?

  So we're going, we're down to a couple of hundred men from five or 600 men in the battalion. Maybe even a little bit more. Maybe there might've been 700 men in the battalion. They get word, once again, here's what's gonna happen. Tomorrow at first light, the brigade would move on to Oosterbeek to join the rest of the division. But unless ammunition, together with air and artillery support was forthcoming, the prospects were far from good. We were, it seemed, not opposed by a few third line troops. Elements of three SS Panzer divisions had been identified in the battle.

• 1:04:44Jocko Willink?

  The Germans seemed to have moved quickly or else something had gone wrong with the intelligence. It was not surprising that the day's fighting had been so very bitter. So they're pointing out that they weren't going against, you know, third rate troops. They were going out against SS Panzer divisions, the best of the German soldiers. In talking with

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Major Bauer and Sergeant Nesbit. Before I reached Tyler's platoon, I had done my best to be as cheerful as possible, but it was plain that the two NCOs realized that I was making the best of things. With Luke Tyler, it was different. I could not insult him by trying to disguise our straits. I just told him the facts as I had received them from the Colonel. Possibly it was a mistake. Quite suddenly, the failure of it all oppressed me. In less than thirty-six hours, two-thirds of the battalion had gone. Fifteen rifle company officers had landed, only two were left.

• 1:05:49Jocko Willink?

  Ten for certain had either been killed or wounded. The chances of surviving another day were small. Fatigue and hunger had drained me. There was a need to unburden myself. Luke was junior in my rank, but equal in years, and in any case, it was easier to confide in someone who was in many ways a stranger. Even as I spoke, I was ashamed of this weakness. But there was no stopping. Quietly, Luke gave me the reassurance I needed. The iron needed to sustain oneself through such a day was easily expended, and I felt that I had purloined some of Luke's share.

• 1:06:33Jocko Willink?

  So he, he basically unloads to one of his guys, or to one, to another, another officer below him in rank, but what I think is interesting about this is, he needed someone to talk to. He, he was holding it all inside and wasn't saying anything and trying to look positive. And even he's looking at his guys as he's telling them, "Don't worry, gents, we're gonna be okay." And his guys are looking at him like, "Hey, no, we don't believe you." And so he has to, he feels the need to unload on someone. And that's why, you know, I, I just think from my perspective, you, you know, we always talk about relationships that you have in your team. And for sure, in your platoon or in your team, it's really good to have someone that you can just kind of unload on, that you know is professional enough to bolster you up

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  without getting dragged down into your negativity. And, and a lot of times, I've found, if, if you have someone like that, or maybe a couple people like that in your team that you can talk to, well, guess what? Sometimes, they're gonna be bolstering your attitude. And sometimes you're gonna be bolstering their attitude.

• 1:07:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and so you gotta, you gotta find someone like that, that's in your team that you can say, "Man, this is, this is horrible. This is going wrong." And some, that someone's gonna go, "Hey, you know what? It's not that bad. We're gonna get through it." And then two or three days later, he might be coming to you and saying, "Hey, this is a horrible situation. I can't believe this." And you're gonna be saying, "No, man, we're gonna be alright." So I, I think it's important, and that's, again, we're building relationships, but that's one of the reasons we build relationships.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  "They get into a holdup position. Back to the book. On stand two rounds, I found the Polish trenches empty except for Peter, their corporal, crouched grimly behind his Bren. The rest of the party had vanished in the early hours, sensing perhaps that they had attached themselves to an unlucky unit. Peter explained nothing, but his embarrassment was clear. It was both unfair and pointless to press him for details when either pride or sense of duty had kept him there to fight among strangers.

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  The thought of what would have happened if the enemy had attacked from this direction against a position held by one solitary man was chilling.

• 1:08:42Jocko Willink?

  It was a mistake to trust strangers. I had learned yet another lesson. Rely on only those you knew."

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Again, it's interesting how he sometimes backs off. Instead of pressing, "Where, where are your guys?" He, he knows, it's like, "What, what, what point is that?" Or when Bartholomew was, was running away, he didn't press him super hard. And you're gonna get to a point, there's a point in here where he does press people. But here, he's deciding he's not gonna do it. And the other interesting thing is, here it says, "I learned another lesson, rely, you know, not to trust strangers, rely on only those you know." What you have to do in those situations is you have to put someone that you do trust, embed them with these units that you don't know. So if he would have taken, and he gave these, he gave that section to one of his platoon commanders and said, "Hey, you got another section now? But maybe embed one more guy or two more guys in there, or split these guys up even more.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  So instead of seven in one big bulk, you put two or three there, two or three there, two or three there. And now you've split them up a little bit, and you can have better control over them." It's weird, there's, you know, there's opportunity to desert, though, and these guys took the opportunity.

• 1:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, the fighting rages on. And obviously, I have to fast forward through some of it. And they eventually get into a little village, a little small village, and they've taken down, they've taken some buildings. And here we go. They're in these buildings. Back to the book, we were in a mess. The Boche were on the other side of the valley outnumbered and outgunned us. There was not the slightest hope of reaching the back of the breed line this way. And to stay here on this forward slope was impossible. At this rate, we would all be dead or wounded soon.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  Somehow, I had to get the survivors back up the hill, but it was near, but it was a near insuperable problem with the men scattered down among the houses, lawns, and shrubberies shot at every time they moved. Someone called from the side of the house. As I turned and looked, Private Gregory darted across to throw himself down beside me. Under the dirt and two days scrub of beard, his face was grayish white. He seemed about to vomit. As Gregory stammered out his platoon commander's name, I knew what had happened. Lieutenant Tyler was dead. It must have happened just after we parted.

• 1:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Luke had been killed on the steep garden path which led from the house down the road. He'd been hit by a sniper, killed outright by a bullet through the heart within a couple yards of the place where Gregory was lying. Possibly Luke had been careless because he was still dazed, but he had to get back to his platoon and the path was his only route. So they had been together and they'd been hit by some kind of artillery in the house and it rattled them. And then Luke had gone out to get back to his platoon and when he left, he got shot by a sniper. Back to the book, this was how officers and NCOs were killed, just doing their routine job. This was why casualties among the leaders were so high, all the time that they were

• 1:12:06Jocko Willink?

  moving about, checking here, encouraging there, backwards and forwards. Now, besides myself and only the Quartermaster Sergeant Bauer and Sergeant Weiner were left.

• 1:12:21Jocko Willink?

  All the rest of the officers and sergeants in the company had gone.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  One problem however had been solved. The remnants of Tyler's two forward sections had managed to extricate themselves without waiting for orders. Since last night, Private Gregory had been in charge of one of the other sections, both the NCOs having been hit the day before. During that last mortar stonk, a bomb had fallen right on top of the corporal who was commanding the other section, blowing him and his Bren gunner half to pieces. Common sense had told the survivors to quit, and there had been no one to stop them except Gregory, who for the moment was shaken by the sight of what had happened to his friends, and who in any case lacked the authority to hold them there.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  No one else had been hit in the scramble back, and the survivors were now sheltering in the house.

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  So they're in these houses, and for the first time, you're gonna hear the company commander start to realize he's got people at their breaking point. Back to the book, "The others were as uneasy as I was. For the first time, I was unhappy about them. Until now, they'd endured the successive disasters, but the events of the morning had tried them too far.

• 1:13:46Jocko Willink?

  It had been yesterday once again, yet another failure against an enemy who was far too strong for us. Men were looking jittery, some could be well near their breaking point.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  As I gazed down the slope, trying to spot some activity among the boche, a movement to the right caught my eye. About twenty yards away, two of Kelly's men were moving diagonally behind me, sheltered on the far side of the ridge."

• 1:14:14Jocko Willink?

  These are, these are deserters. My shout made them hesitate, and then stop after two or three more steps. Forgetting the enemy, I stood up and strode down towards them. No explanation was necessary, the surly guilt on their faces was enough.

• 1:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Deliberately choosing words for effect, I cursed them in language rarely used by officers towards their soldiers.

• 1:14:40Jocko Willink?

  It was enough. The two men turned back towards their platoon.

• 1:14:48Jocko Willink?

  So like I said, sometimes he, there, there he's dropping the hammer. These two guys are trying to desert and he goes on and, and drops the hammer on them and gets them back with their platoon. Back to the book, in this mood, the men would never stand up to an enemy attack. Even a mortar stonk could break them. I could see it happening. First one or two men would slip away like the two I had just stopped and then a rush would follow. Something drastic had to be done. No more than the occasional rifle bullet was now coming over. In fact, no one had been hit since we took our positions along this ridge. It seemed safe enough. Standing up, I began to walk along the path towards the left of our position.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  For the first few steps, I felt wretchedly vulnerable. But then an odd exhilaration seized me. For the first few steps, I felt wretchedly vulnerable. But then an odd exhilaration seized me. Not too slowly and not too quickly, I strode deliberately toward the first group of men. Grinning down at Lance Corporal Williams, I made some inept remark about it being the wrong place for a company clerk. If I were to be hit, it would happen anyway. Now seemed to be as good a time as ever. Stopping at each group of men, I checked their firing positions and made necessary changes.

• 1:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Then I was at the end of Kelly's line and I started back, conscious that everyone was watching. There was a burst of machine gun fire well wide of us, but I managed to avoid flinching at it. Suddenly Sergeant Weiner's voice, harsh with concern, was yelling at me to get down, demanding angrily what I was playing at. The spell broke. I was grateful for the excuse to lower myself down beside him, very relieved that it was over. The rage in Weiner's face dissolved into an unaccustomed grin. The corny dramatics were over, but they had served their purpose. The men had got a grip on themselves. So he basically stood up and walked around and...

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Talked to everyone and made himself visible and made himself appear to not be scared to get the guys heads back in the game until his Sergeant Weiner yells at him and says, hey, dude, get down.

• 1:17:14Speaker 01

  When these guys desert, like the deserters, where do they go?

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  So they can head back towards, towards the areas that have been secured. So as this beachhead, you know, we landed D-Day, June 6th, this is now in September. So, you know, coalition forces or, or sorry, allied forces had pushed into France. So if you could walk back, you could eventually get to friendly lines.

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's what their plan was.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  And then what, that when you get there, don't they know, hey, you deserted?

• 1:17:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, you'd say, you know, you'd say, oh, I was, I got separated from my troops when I parachuted in, I couldn't find my people or whatever. You make up your lie and you.

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  Deal with it later.

• 1:17:54Jocko Willink?

  Deal with it later. Cause right now you're thinking, I'm not going to make it.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just want that beef.

• 1:18:01Jocko Willink?

  It was clear why nothing, we had heard nothing from battalion headquarters for the past two hours, like everyone else, the signal, the signalers, orderlies and clerks had been fighting for their own survival. The Germans were all around them and had been pressing them hard throughout the morning. So they're not getting any information about what's happening.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is interesting. He goes back to get, they, they, they end up with a little extra ammunition and he goes back to get some ammunition from the battalion. They have got it like staged in the battalion headquarters and as he's doing this, he, he, the, the ammunition was in a Jeep. And so he goes to the Jeep, he finds the Jeep and he's with one of his other guys and the regimental sergeant major is sitting basically on top of the Jeep on top of the ammunition. And he kind of is looking at the guy, you know, saying, hey, I'm here, I'm an officer. I got platoons out there and a company out there. I gotta get them ammunition and, and he doesn't really move. He just kind of sits there. And so finally.

• 1:19:06Jocko Willink?

  Here he was, but here the regimental sergeant major was in the middle of battle, sitting on his arse and taking his ease while the company commander hunted for ammunition. Majors are not in the habit of rebuking regimental sergeant majors, but this was too much. The tensions of the morning had snapped my self-restraint and in a couple of succinct sentences, I told the RS, the regimental sergeant major what I thought of him. Then the regimental sergeant major apologized, but he did not move. Without any trace of irony or annoyance in his voice, he quietly explained that he could not stand up because he had been shot through both legs. I had not noticed the airborne smock with which

• 1:19:48Jocko Willink?

  someone had covered his outstretched and bandaged legs.

• 1:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Think before you act.

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  Now they're on their way, they're heading finally to this area of Oosterbeek. They're on their patrol, and here we go. Back to the book of Spandau, opening up ahead, sent us all to the ground, men diving for cover just a little too quickly. A moment later, a second gun fired on us from the right, but it was the ominous rattle of the tracked vehicles which chilled. The first one, then another, then two more, quite close and in front, their engine clatter rising above the din of the machine gun and rifles. Then, some seventy yards away, I saw the first of the SP guns. Its stubby weeping traversing

• 1:20:42Jocko Willink?

  slowly towards us. SP guns are, they're kind of like tanks, it's self-propelled guns, they're like artillery pieces with tracks on them.

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  The flash from its stout, from its snout was one of, with the explosion of the bursting shell. Just to the right, a half-grown tree shattered into jagged splinters. A second shot falling hard on the first one covered Harrison and me with earth. We were swamped by the noise. Every sort of weapon seemed to be firing. Grenades were exploding, but the distinct above the rest was the clank and the throaty cough of the armored guns. Caught like this in the open, we were helpless. Tanks plowing among, about among us, could have been no worse. There was no way of fighting back. No one seemed to have even a piat, which is like their bazooka anti-armour weapon. And we could not get close enough to use the gammon bombs, the bags of plastic explosive,

• 1:21:38Jocko Willink?

  carried for use against armour. So that's another little, it's like a big

• 1:21:43Jocko Willink?

  bag of explosives that you can put on a armour vehicle to destroy it. They call them gammon bombs.

• 1:21:50Jocko Willink?

  The men in front were moving again. I stood up and signaled those behind to follow. We were doubling now, but there was still some sort of control. We were not running away, but making for somewhere. Where? I did not know.

• 1:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Then, about a hundred yards away, I caught a glimpse through the trees of a German half-track. It stopped, and helmeted shapes jumped from its sides. How many more of them were there? This could be the start of another attack, which could only end at all. Our will to fight back was all but broken. Then, I heard the brigadier telling me to clear the enemy out of the hollow, after which the survivors of the brigade would join us there. "See" company, it seemed, was the last organised body of troops. So they're looking at this area, this open area where there's some enemy, but it looks like it's a good position.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Of course, their will to fight is just about broken, and you hear the brigadier is saying, "Hey, take your company and clear out that hollow. Go." Back to the book. For a moment I was so dumbfounded that I hardly heard the brigadier going on to say that the brigade major was dead as well, killed about five minutes ago. Another friend was gone, but I hardly listened. What was the brigadier ordering us to do in his quiet and determined fashion? It was absurd. The men were finished. Only a few minutes ago I had realised that they were past defending themselves. Now we were being told to assault that boche position. The brigadier's look was both quizzical and encouraging.

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  The confounded man could see what was passing through my mind. Then I was away, dodging back and through the bushes towards the men in the ditch, even more aware than ever before of the bullets singing overhead. With my back to a broad tree which hid me from the enemy front, I looked down at the upturned faces. There was no point in wasting, at all, in wasting time on details. The orders I had to give them were quite simple, devoid of any complications such as who would provide covering fire. It was time for play-acting again. My naturally loud voice carrying down the line of men among the, above the sound of battles,

• 1:24:12Jocko Willink?

  I balled at them to follow me, adding the comment that it is better to be killed going for the bastards than lying in that bloody ditch. No one hesitated. The men rose to their feet at the moment I stepped out into the open from behind the shelter of the tree. Glancing to my right, I was exhilarated by the sight of David Unwin's solid bulk running parallel to me and half a dozen of his men following. David shouted something to the effect that they were coming as well, and I waved my Sten gun in acknowledgement. Behind me, Sergeant Weiner broke into a scream of rage, harsh and furious. The yell spread down the line.

• 1:24:54Jocko Willink?

  Too heavily laden and too tired to sprint, we lumbered forward towards the enemy in a sort of jog trot.

• 1:25:02Jocko Willink?

  Now I was careless of everything. We did not stand a chance, but this was the right way to go. This was the proper way to finish it all. Nearly hysterical now, with rage and excitement, I heard my own voice join in the screaming.

• 1:25:20Jocko Willink?

  The Germans were shooting at us. I could see flashes of their weapons springing out of the gloom of the trees. There was no need to look back to confirm that the line of men was still following. The noise told me they were there. Now the Boche were no more than fifty yards away. As I brought my Sten down to hip level to press the trigger, it flashed through my mind that it was the first time I had fired my weapon since the battle started. My forefinger squeezed the metal. Nothing happened. It had jammed. Here I was, running toward the enemy with a useless piece of metal in my hands.

• 1:25:54Jocko Willink?

  There were figures moving among the trees, first a couple, then a half dozen dark shapes were outlined against the green background, men sprinting away, men disappearing through the trees, the Boche were running away. We had done it. We had driven the enemy out at the point of bayonet. This was the ultimate in war. The sight of the savage screaming parachutists streaming towards them had been too much for the Germans, even though they had to do nothing more than keep their heads and shoot straight.

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Surrounded, broken, and I think, key point here.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  When you're, think you're broken, do something and do something aggressive. That's, that's the, this is, this is 100% default aggressive. That's what this is. You know what? We're here, we're being defensive, we're hiding in our slit trenches, okay, you know what we're gonna do? We're going to attack. We're going to attack full force.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "The sight of David on the right added to my delight. Shouting to him to hold the right of the hollow, I directed Sergeant Weiner round to the left. There was no need to tell anyone to hurry. They all knew that the Germans would not delay in mounting a counterattack. A moan of terror distracted me. I turned to the wounded German. The man's features were contorted into a rictus of despair. Above him stood Sergeant Major Kelly, red-eyed and panting, his bayonet raised above the soldier's stomach.

• 1:27:34Jocko Willink?

  But Kelly did not strike. He was relishing the moment, snatching maximum pleasure from the wounded man's anguish before he sliced into the soft belly. As my newly-found Mauser knocked the bayonet to one side, the Sergeant Major snarled at me in an unspoken protest at such silly scruples. Then he seemed to shake himself. The bloodlust had passed. And he came to his senses, gathering his men to the defenses." So, again, this guy goes from the pure fury and rage of this incredible bayonet assault, and then he immediately just puts his, one of his sergeant majors in check who's about

• 1:28:18Jocko Willink?

  to, you know, ruthlessly kill this wounded guy.

• 1:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Very interesting dichotomy there. Mm-hmm.

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, something had been snatched back from the disasters of the day. The remnants of the brigade headquarters, together with a few stragglers from other units, had now all arrived. In all, there seemed to be about a hundred and fifty men with a half a dozen officers, as well as the brigadier, David and myself, there was Jimmy Gray. The latter brought news that the Colonel was probably dead, although he could not be sure, as they'd become separated during a scrimmage with an SP gun. Of the rest of the officers who had jumped with the battalion, Captain John Simmons, the gunner, forward observer, was the only left, one left.

• 1:29:12Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, "After about fifteen minutes, a lull in shooting suggested that I might now be able to get round to visit the battalion positions. The battalion! For the first time, it struck me that I was now in command of what was left of it. Pitiful remnants, but they are still fighting. The brigadier had allotted the south and west sides of the perimeter to us. The first pit held Sergeant Weiner with seven or eight men. At the bottom, his eyes shut, lay a gray-faced and motionless Private Gregory, shot through his stomach. Corporal Pritchard had bandaged him up and given him a shot of Morphia, but because his airborne smock had been pulled down over his bloodstained dressing to keep as warm

• 1:29:56Jocko Willink?

  as possible, he lay there with no outward sign of injury, looking as a man might do who had collapsed with exhaustion. Gregory's eyes opened. When he saw who was standing over him, he asked for the favor. His voice was quiet, his words measured and coherent, his proposal quite logical. Out here, without the help of a doctor, he was going to die in any case, and he could stand the pain no longer. Would someone please put a bullet through his head?"

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  For the moment my grip tightened on the Mauser. In Gregory's state, I probably would have been asking for the same release.

• 1:30:41Jocko Willink?

  If it did happen, I hope that someone would have the guts to give it to me.

• 1:30:46Jocko Willink?

  Then I caught Weiner's eye. And he knew that I could not do it.

• 1:30:52Jocko Willink?

  The only way to help Gregory was to give him a further shot of Morphia, dangerous though it would be to do so. As I reached for my own ampule, in the breast pocket of my smock, I was ashamed by my reluctance. The reason was purely selfish. Sooner or later I might want to use it on myself, wounded and alone, behind a bush with no one about to help me. But Sergeant Weiner came to the rescue. He had scrounged a couple, a supply of ampules, from somewhere or another.

• 1:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Opening the small, black tin, he bared Gregory's arm and pressed the needle home.

• 1:31:31Jocko Willink?

  The words of sympathy and encouragement sounded pitifully trite, as I pressed Gregory's shoulder. Nervous of any reproach which I might see, I turned and walked away, without looking at the wounded man's face.

• 1:32:00Jocko Willink?

  My name was being called.

• 1:32:03Jocko Willink?

  It was Private Jones. Slithering towards me, down the opposite slope of the hollow, Jones told me quickly. It was Major Unwin, killed by a sniper. Shot through the forehead as he was peering over the rim of the hollow, trying to locate the whereabouts of a Spando machine gun.

• 1:32:21Jocko Willink?

  He had died instantly. Jones was adamant, there was no doubt that he was dead. His brains had been blown out. Jones was urging me to come see his body, but I could not bring myself to do so.

• 1:32:36Jocko Willink?

  David could not be dead. They could not have killed David. Everyone else, yes. One after another, friends had died, but I never believed that this could happen to David, so vast, so indestructible, the humorous, gentle David.

• 1:32:55Jocko Willink?

  The Brigadier was beside me. He had also heard the news. For nearly two years, he had known us both, and it was plain that he understood the anguish.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  But there were other things to think about.

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  As we knew only too well, the Brigadier told us, our ammunition was nearly finished. And as our own fire slackened, the enemy snipers were becoming bolder, and more men were being hit. Soon we would be forced to surrender, so he decided to take the initiative. We would break out towards Oesterbeek, charging through the enemy in solid mass, trusting our numbers and impetus to get through. It was an extraordinary plan. For the second time that day, the Brigadier was ordering us to do what seemed impossible.

• 1:33:50Jocko Willink?

  But our trust in the Brigadier's judgment was now implicit. It was a gamble, but one which offered at least a chance of success. To stay here would only end one way.

• 1:34:03Jocko Willink?

  Fifteen minutes later, we were ready. It could have been the start of a race. The Brigadier asked whether we were ready, then, at his shout, the hundred of us rose to our feet and exploded in a solid mass over the lip of the hollow. In front was the Brigadier himself, leading the way. Behind came the yelling, screaming men, filthy and bloodstained, weapons in their hands, bayonets dull and menacing, a fearful sight to anyone in our path. The German fire now seemed to be coming from every direction, but I saw no one hit. We were rushing downhill, along a lane, a solid, human battering ram.

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  The first wild pace slackened. The firing stopped. We had done it. We were through the enemy and out of the forest. For the second time that day, boldness had saved us.

• 1:35:04Jocko Willink?

  Once again, some default aggressive activity. And, and, I mean, obviously, I want to make it clear that in both, in the, both these situations, it wasn't, it wasn't a, it wasn't a call of, "Hey, there's a, there's a, there's an objective we want to reach, charge it."

• 1:35:27Jocko Willink?

  It was, "We can either sit here and do nothing and die, or we can attack." That's, that's the big, I don't want anyone out there thinking, "Oh, okay, I'm just gonna, every time, default aggressive, I'm gonna run and we're gonna attack." No. These are situations where the alternative to attacking is, is being defensive, laying down and dying and continuing to get picked off and snipers until you get overrun.

• 1:35:52Jocko Willink?

  Now, they meet up with, finally, they, they meet up with these other British troop.

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  "Back to the book, someone was leading us into a garden of a large house. The men dropped to the ground as they halted, conscious that they were now safe, with houses and other British troops around them. Others, after a swig from a water bottle, lay supine, unconscious, in instant sleep. I counted them. Jimmy Gray, John Simmons, and Sergeant Weiner were there. Sergeant Major Kelly was missing. Someone had seen him fall in the rush. There were just forty-nine other men, about half from C Company.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Last night, there had been two hundred. The night before, five hundred."

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  Now, they're in these positions.

• 1:36:45Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 1:36:47Jocko Willink?

  They're about to get attacked. "Just below in the garden, but out of sight, another Bren opened up. It was Jimmy Gray's sentry at the garden gate. There was a glimpse of a camouflage figure, running through the trees, opposite, no more than a hundred yards away, diagonally across our front, towards the air landing troops. Then a couple more. Jimmy's Bren fired again, and one of the figures pitched forward, rolling over, carried on by its own momentum."

• 1:37:14Jocko Willink?

  We would not, we would have to fight, and this is they're, they're talking, he's talking about the fact that they're in the houses now, in these, in this village. We would have to fight from the house itself, not from the trenches in the garden. It was a sturdy building with thick, solid walls, and in any case, the garden was too small for the purpose. From these upper windows, we would have an extra range and observation to fire diagonally down the road in front of the houses held by units to the left and right. Fifteen minutes later, the trim Dutch house had been wrecked. Every pane of glass had been smashed, and every picture and mirror knocked from the walls, there was no time to be careful. In the center of each room barricades had been built, well back from the windows, out of sight of the bosch,

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  but sighted so that every scrap of ground outside was covered. Sideboards and chests of drawers stuffed with books or bedding made the barricades. Contents of the furniture flung in heaps into the corners of the rooms. Mattresses were rolled down into the basement, ready for use if needed by wounded men. More books crammed into drawers were blocking those windows, not required for shooting through. Fortunately, the owner of the house possessed a fine library, from its contents seemed it was a doctor. With gray, I walked around the house for a final check before leaving to return to my own headquarters at the rear. Manic vandals might have swept through it, some woman's life work, ruined in the time it took to drink a cup of coffee.

• 1:38:49Jocko Willink?

  An explosion from above, followed by the clatter of tiles falling from the roof drowned out the noise from the gun. Another bomb burst in the garden just outside the window, sending a couple fragments whistling into the room. Now the bosch were hitting us with mortars as well.

• 1:39:05Jocko Willink?

  A bullet splintered of the empty frame behind me and buried itself in the ceiling, a warning that I was far too close to the back bedroom window. There was a sniper behind us as well as the spandau. A quick movement in the garden of the house caught my eye. Then two figures in the wrong sort of camouflage darted from behind a bush into the shelter of a wall. They were Boche, not British. So now the enemy was indeed all around us. There was no doubt about it now. John Simmons and his men were in the houses where they had been left that morning. John had made strong points out of a couple of houses, smaller but just as robust as the ones held by Gray.

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  The two groups had been working closely together, largely I felt certain because of John's charm of manner and determination. This young gunner had done very well. It hardly seemed possible that most of his men hardly knew him by sight yesterday. Today he has welded the survivors of four different companies of a unit into, of another arm into a tight knit entity, well capable of carrying on the fight. All day they had held firm, killing and wounding quite a lot of enemy, but losing only one man themselves, a corporal of a company whose hand had been blown in half by a flying mortar splinter. Lined and filthy though his face was, eyes red rimmed and chin stained with three days

• 1:40:31Jocko Willink?

  worth of fair fuzzy down, John still moved briskly, a reminder to all of us that we could still keep going. So he's got guys that are stepping up big time. Inside the houses, we felt reasonably safe from the shells and bullets, but there was always some cause for the officers and senior NCOs to move about in the open from one building to another. It was the same as it had been in the woods. The officers and sergeants stood a greater, greater chance of being killed or wounded as their men. All the same, it was easier for an officer. With so much to do, he had little time to worry about his own safety. Also, he always had to try and act the part to set an example to the others.

• 1:41:14Jocko Willink?

  An officer had to exude confidence however hard it might be. But because he always had to try to keep a grip on himself, it helped him forget the danger.

• 1:41:28Jocko Willink?

  Very true. Very true. Got a lot of things on your mind.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  They get a massive bombardment in these positions that they're in. Back to the book, the Germans must be softening us up in preparation for something more serious. Their ammunition seemed unlimited. The bombardment ended quite suddenly, rather as it had started. This would be it. Nudging Williams to get his head up from behind the barricade, I shouted a warning to the others, Elkins and Bauer in the next room, and the two signalers who had moved up to the bedroom at the back. The stutter of the Bren gun cut across the words. Bauer's rifle thudded next door, and then Williams was firing a succession of bursts from his Bren gun. In the orchard opposite, Germans were running through the trees towards us. Several dropped.

• 1:42:21Jocko Willink?

  This could only be the start of an attack. Now from either flank, the sound of rifles and machine guns reached us, accompanied by the thud of exploding grenades. The attack was coming in all along our front.

• 1:42:35Jocko Willink?

  Some of the Germans among the fruit trees were firing back. A couple of rifle bullets splintered the front of the wardrobe. Then more gray figures were lumbering towards us through the trees. Some fell, others ducked behind the puny trees. They didn't stand a chance. It was like shooting targets on the practice range. The Germans and the mortars had been forced to stop because their troops were so close. It was... So it was possible to fire slow, carefully aimed shots. With little or no distraction. The only way out of the orchard was through the single gap in the high fence, but the enemy soldiers never got within 20 yards of it.

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  A tall German officer was standing in the middle of the drive, out in the open, clear of the trees, waving his arms to the men behind him.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  No more than fifty yards away, every detail of his face and uniform was clearly visible. He was a handsome young man, fair-haired, and smartly turned out.

• 1:43:41Jocko Willink?

  Already, he'd been standing there for about five seconds, encouraging his men to advance. As I leveled my sights on the German officer, I knew that I was looking at someone who was just about to die. It seemed a pity. He was such a courageous boy, just the sort... Just the sort one would like to have had as a platoon commander. My fingers started to squeeze the trigger, but it was too late. Someone else had fired. The German fell, spread eagled, and lay still. At least, he died quickly. The death of the young officer marked the end of the attack.

• 1:44:24Jocko Willink?

  Now, no one moved in the orchard except for a single wounded man, squirming his way back through the trees.

• 1:44:35Jocko Willink?

  So, it's interesting when you... You take the leader, and the leader goes down, and the attack's over. Now, also, it's important to note that although the leader stood up and encouraged the attack by taking that risk of being out there in front of everyone, in this case, it didn't work out well, because he got shot, killed, and the attack faltered.

• 1:45:00Jocko Willink?

  Perhaps if he could have found a little bit better of a position to do that from, then maybe, then maybe he would have been able to encourage his troops and stay alive.

• 1:45:12Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, but we had won no more than a temporary respite. Fifteen minutes later, we could hear the unnerving noise once again. Tracks were clattering towards us. So I haven't, I, I don't know why I haven't talked about this yet, but here you have these airborne troops on the ground. And their biggest fear is tanks. And, and you've heard me talk many times about my love for tanks. And how effective and awesome they are as tools and as weapons. And the way that the tankers utilize them, they're just, they're just awesome machines.

• 1:45:53Jocko Willink?

  But here you have the tables turned and, and the good guys don't have real, any effective way of stopping these tanks. You can shoot a machine gun all day long at a, at a Panzer tank and it's not gonna do a damn thing. And so it can just, and by the way, you hide in a building, cool. A tank will go right through a building. They go right through buildings. They will go right through a building. Like it looks like a construction piece of heavy equipment. That's what it looks like. It'll go right through a building like it's nothing. So these guys are absolutely horrified of the tank showing up. That's their fear.

• 1:46:34Jocko Willink?

  Trac- Tracks were clattering toward us. A gun fudded and the dark red house opposite began to fall apart ra- as round after round crashed into it. Muzzle flashes from the far side of the orchard revealed the position of the attacker, but there was nothing we could do. At least the men were not waiting in the house, but slipping one after another out the door, back across the road to the headquarters house. On either side, the guns were firing. Now it was our turn.

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  The, the tank wrecks some of the houses and then it, the tank leaves. So here we go, it was time to strike back. The tanks had gone and as yet the Boche did not appear to have occupied the houses. Lying out there in the rear gardens overlooked from the windows, we were vulnerable indeed. Soon the mortaring would start again. Then we would be safer back in the ruined buildings. As John Simmons listened to the instructions, the young captain's manner was as relaxed as ever. Calm and outwardly self-confident, he somehow managed to give the impression that he was almost enjoying the morning's work. Possibly he was making that a point,

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  subconsciously perhaps, that a gunner could always take charge of thirty infantrymen. But there were undoubtedly immense reserves of strength hidden behind that cool exterior. As he lay behind the bed of half-dead pea plants, scanning the houses for any sign of German occupants, there was no trace of disquiet in his voice as he discussed his orders to counter-attack and clear the street of the enemy. Fifteen minutes after John had gone, I was still in the same place in the vegetable patch, watching the second hand of my watch creep towards the top of the dial. Then Gray's weapon opened up on the right, firing back into the rooms of the houses,

• 1:48:36Jocko Willink?

  more in the hope of distracting the enemy than providing covering fire. The danger to John's men lay on the other side, the front of the houses. Now John's three Bren guns were firing as well on the left. The assault party would soon be moving into the street. It came. The sustained rattle of a Spandau gun. First one, then a second. After that, there was silence, except for one or two rifle shots. I waited, lying in the vegetable patch, almost distraught with worry. Something was badly

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  wrong. Nothing could be seen from here, but I had to resist the temptation of going to find out for myself what had happened. I must avoid getting involved in the skirmish. Then Corporal Day, now John's second-in-command, was running through the flowerbeds toward me.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Day's face said everything, even before he started to speak. The attack had failed. It had failed the moment John had been killed. Out there in the middle of the street, and ten yards in front of Day and the rest of the assault party, John had died in just the same way as that young German officer this morning.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  That had finished it.

• 1:50:02Jocko Willink?

  The rest of them, including Day, had turned and run, but in some extraordinary way, no one else had been hit.

• 1:50:12Jocko Willink?

  Day made no excuse, no attempt to excuse himself, telling the story factually and not trying to put a gloss on the incident.

• 1:50:21Jocko Willink?

  The implication was clear: they had been asked to do too much.

• 1:50:29Jocko Willink?

  So now, I had been responsible for killing John as well.

• 1:50:34Jocko Willink?

  It had been so simple. I had issued the orders, and then John had walked out into the middle of that road to be shot down by the machine gun.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  I should not have done it.

• 1:50:48Jocko Willink?

  The counterattack should never have been attempted. The men were no longer capable of making such an effort.

• 1:50:56Jocko Willink?

  They could still hang on to their positions, fighting from behind cover, but after six days of continuous battle, they lacked the will to get to their feet and go for the enemy.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  In the woods, it had just been possible to urge them forward in one last surge of willpower, but since then, they'd endured a further forty-eight hours of death, starvation, thirst, and fatigue.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  And in the woods, it was men from my own company. Today, it had been different.

• 1:51:27Jocko Willink?

  Today, a mixture of men, survivors of four different companies, had been left to follow a gunner officer whom they hardly knew.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  There was a limit to what soldiers could be asked to do, and I had gone beyond those limits.

• 1:51:44Jocko Willink?

  And so, John Simmons had died.

• 1:52:03Jocko Willink?

  That's the burden of command.

• 1:52:10Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. It was impossible to understand why the Germans were not using their armor to support this infiltration by their infantry. If they had done so, all resistance would have collapsed long ago and the tanks would have been on the lawns.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  The crushing news that the brigadier had been badly wounded came through on the telephone just before the line went dead once again. The Boche were now among the houses and gardens which the glider pilots had been holding and Gray had reported that he was being shot at from two sides at the same time.

• 1:52:46Jocko Willink?

  The quartermaster had also sent word that the enemy were behind him. And that he had long ago lost all contact with the Reiki on his left.

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  They are just in a wretched state and he goes to meet with the Colonel in one of the buildings. The Colonel seemed to be trying to break something to us gently. And then it came out. It was hard to believe, harder still to understand. The division was to be withdrawn over the Rhine that night. It was all over.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  It had been, it had only been possible to ferry about 250 men of the Dorsets over the river before dawn, a profitless addition to the perimeter garrison. The second army had overreached itself in trying to get to us and although the troops were pouring northward, they lacked the strength to cross the river and continued the advance into Germany. Already the Boche were hammering from the flanks at their narrow lines of communication.

• 1:53:58Jocko Willink?

  So the operation had failed.

• 1:54:03Jocko Willink?

  Everything had been in vain.

• 1:54:06Jocko Willink?

  It was all a waste.

• 1:54:10Jocko Willink?

  Listening to the outline of what had to be done that night, it was hard to concentrate on the details.

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  The first emotion was grief.

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  And then utter disappointment.

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  The battalion had been destroyed to no purpose.

• 1:54:34Jocko Willink?

  And that's it. They get the order that night to leave.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  And they come up with a plan. They actually follow rope. They put rope at night down towards the river where they're going to get extracted. And at night, they attempt to follow that rope down there. And of course, along the way, they lose more men. Men get separated. Men don't hang on. They get lost. And they lose even more men as they're trying to make it to their extraction point. But he does end up with a small group of people at this extraction point. There's Canadian boats there to bring them across the Rhine River. Back to the book. The Canadians were already pulling the last men into the boat. And I was standing with Harrison alone in the river. When I heard Weiner's voice harshly insisting that no one would be left behind.

• 1:55:27Jocko Willink?

  The young coxswain needed no further urging but implored us to be careful as the boat was grossly overloaded. Then Harrison pushed me up over the side and the two of us flopped down behind the coxswain. As the engine went into gear and the boat moved towards the midstream.

• 1:55:45Jocko Willink?

  So now they get across the river. They get dropped off and, and to answer your question earlier. Once they get dropped off and they're on the other side of the, they're on the western side of the Rhine River. It's basically a secure area. Even though it was only, you know, several hundred yards away, it was relatively secure. And now what they have to do is they have to march back about five miles to get to a even more secure base. Here we go back to the book. As we reached the track, which after a few hundred yards led us to the road. When I stopped, the men flopped to the ground, empty and lifeless, lacking any wish to go on. More parties of men appeared through the darkness, shambling in the exhaustion of relief.

• 1:56:30Jocko Willink?

  All terror ended, devoid of the willpower needed to summon up further effort. There was only one way to make the two-mile march bearable, an old-fashioned remedy. I called the Sergeant Weiner to fall the men in threes. The disciplined bark bounced back to me as Weiner pulled himself to his feet, shouting to the men to fall in. There was no trace of query or surprise in Weiner's voice, and the men shuffled to their feet.

• 1:57:01Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's your root training right there, that you're exhausted after eight days of continuous combat. You're just done, and the sergeant says, "All right, on your feet, form a column of threes," and you do it.

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  They get close to the end, now they can see the camp, and I halted them. There was only one way to end such a march. It was pointless perhaps, but I decided to make the final gesture. Bringing them to attention, I ordered them to slope arms and to march by the left to attention. I sensed their appreciation as their shoulders went back. This was the way they always returned to camp. This was the way they always finished. As they stepped off for the last fifty yards, they were even swinging their arms.

• 1:57:55Jocko Willink?

  So they marched back into this camp. Once they get into this camp, they get loaded up into a vehicle, a big military transport vehicle that's going to take them further to the rear where they can get some treatment. And they're loaded into that vehicle.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  And here we go, back to the book. The canopy of the truck now sheltered us, but my shivering became uncontrollable. I knew I was becoming lightheaded and could hear myself grieving aloud for those that we had left behind, particularly for those who had been lost during the withdrawal down the riverbank.

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  There was silence in the truck.

• 1:58:34Jocko Willink?

  Then I heard, as if from a long way off, the voice of Sergeant Weiner, calm and flat, saying that none of them would have got back if it had not been for me.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  It was true to say that I would never have got back if it hadn't been for them, but I shall always be grateful to Weiner for having said it.

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  The next thing I remember was Weiner and Harrison, half carrying me into what seemed to be a hospital.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  Someone was stripping off my clothes and dressing me in pajamas.

• 1:59:11Jocko Willink?

  Then I felt the prick of a needle in my arm.

• 1:59:17Jocko Willink?

  I was awake.

• 1:59:20Jocko Willink?

  The sun shining into the windows of the ward. An orderly brought tea and food on a tray. I lay between the clean sheets, looking at the torn and filthy garments on the chair by the side of the bed. There was nothing wrong with me now.

• 1:59:38Jocko Willink?

  I saw that my hand was wrapped in a clean bandage.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  When the nursing orderly came to remove the tray, he brought me the message that a soldier was waiting in the corridor to see me.

• 1:59:50Jocko Willink?

  As soon as the orderly left, the room I slipped out of bed and put on my clothes and went out into the corridor.

• 1:59:57Jocko Willink?

  Waiting there was Harrison, a broad smile on his face, telling me that Captain Gray and Mr. Elkins had turned up with eight of the missing men. Another twenty stragglers had also arrived from somewhere or another.

• 2:00:12Jocko Willink?

  But that was the lot. That was the battalion. Three officers and forty-three soldiers.

• 2:00:25Jocko Willink?

  We walked out the door of the hospital side.

• 2:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Side by side.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  The weak September sun shone down on the battered buildings. Away in the distance, the dull rumble of the battle still rolled down from the north.

• 2:00:55Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  once

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  all the men were recovered and that's, that's the end of the book. And when all the men were recovered and when you look at the actual battalion of the 156th parachute battalion, it looked like this, 313 men were captured, many of those were wounded. There was 98 killed in action and there was a total of 68 from the battalion that made it across the Rhine safely.

• 2:01:27Jocko Willink?

  And those 68 men, if they could heal up, were then sent to the other battalions inside the first parab brigade. And the 156th parachute battalion was actually disbanded. It ceased to exist.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  Geoffrey Powell went on to retire from the army, the British Army in 1964. He retired as a major general. He was awarded the Military Cross, which is Britain's third highest award for valor.

• 2:02:10Jocko Willink?

  And this is what his citation reads, "At Arnhem, after his commanding officer had become a casualty, Major Powell took command of the remnants of the battalion. Up to this time, he had conducted himself with the greatest gallantry. For the remaining six days, he retained control of his unit and also of the men of other units in the area under the most difficult conditions.

• 2:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Heavy fire from mortars, artillery and self-propelled guns never stopped his activity in getting round his section of the perimeter and encouraging his men to greater efforts. Throughout the whole period of the Arnhem Battle, in spite of being wounded, this officer showed himself to be a gallant leader of men and a most capable fighter and one whose bravery was a source of inspiration to the men under his command and to all those around him."

• 2:03:13Jocko Willink?

  And I think it's pretty clear that if you read a book like this,

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  General Powell is still a source of inspiration, as are the rest of these incredibly brave men.

• 2:03:31Jocko Willink?

  And also a source of leadership lessons.

• 2:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Of what to do and what not to do. And it's also an incredible reminder

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  of that heavy burden of command.

• 2:03:53Jocko Willink?

  And the fact of the matter is, when you lead, you own every decision and every action, not only of yourself, but of your men.

• 2:04:08Jocko Willink?

  And with that burden, you owe it to them.

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  To be as well-prepared, to be as tactically sound, and to be as physically and mentally strong as you can possibly be.

• 2:04:28Jocko Willink?

  And that goes for any leadership position. When you are a leader, be as prepared as you possibly can.

• 2:04:40Jocko Willink?

  And then you go out and you lead, and you lead with courage, and you lead with resolution, and you lead with boldness.

• 2:04:54Jocko Willink?

  Boldness like Geoffrey Powell.

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  And the officers and the men of the 156th Parachute Battalion.

• 2:05:10Jocko Willink?

  Pretty amazing book that.

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, like I said, I got this book. Six days ago or something. Somebody just sent it to me and I gave it the um. The little tests when I kind of open books up because people send me a lot of books.

• 2:05:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:05:28Jocko Willink?

  And I gave it the uh, I gave it the test, you know, I opened up, I read a couple of sections and immediately. You know, I'll give, I'll, I'll open to a book in four or five different places to see what it reads like. And this, you know, within the first page, the first page that I read, I said, oh, we, it looks like we have a winner here. This one's going to be on the podcast. Because it's just impactful and. The account now, the, in the back of the book. He talks about. The, the individuals and just read some of them off here. The Brigadier was.

• 2:06:09Jocko Willink?

  General. John Hackett. The Colonel was. Dicky DeVoe of the Grenadier Guards.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  His fellow Grenadier was. Sergeant Major, Sergeant Major Dennis Gay. His Batman, the guy that he talks about Harrison throughout the book, the guy that's there from the beginning to the end, always by his side, that was actually a guy named Fred Tracy.

• 2:06:35Jocko Willink?

  A guy named David N. Unwin in the book is the character in the book, the real guy was named Michael Page. Who had been. Powell's best man and whose son Jeffrey, born posthumously, had another. Son named Michael.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  And Luke Tyler and Sergeant Weiner and Jones and John Simmons, these were all real people. So.

• 2:07:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, this is another guy that, uh, very similar to Major John Glover, who said he had a hard time writing about himself in the first person. You know, I did this and I did that. And that's the same thing that Powell said. You know, he had a hard time writing until he just made it about some other, he put, made some other character in his head and wrote from that perspective. But, uh, man, you definitely, this book, I, like I said, I read, I don't know, 5% of it. It's not a huge book, though, actually. It's only a couple hundred pages long and it's a very fast read.

• 2:07:37Speaker 01

  Did you find it to give you this weird stressful feeling reading though?

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  Like, listening to it was like just more stressful.

• 2:07:44Jocko Willink?

  No, it is, it is. And I was, I was debating when to tell you and when to tell everyone that, that, that this is not a good, that this isn't a good story, right? That this isn't a positive thing.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:07:57Jocko Willink?

  And I, I kinda just, I don't know when I actually said that, hey, they're not gonna win. I mean, I said that the, the Operation Market Garden was, was a failure.

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:08:06Jocko Willink?

  But, you know, what does that really look like? You know what I mean? Like, you don't know what that looks like until you get, reading this book.

• 2:08:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  And then you start to feel what it feels like. And absolutely. And, and when you read the whole book, man, it is just coming apart. It's just like little misfortune, little misfortune. And they're just coming and, and they don't stop. They just don't stop.

• 2:08:25Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:08:26Jocko Willink?

  It's a, it's a nightmare scenario. And, yeah, and there's tons of great lessons learned. It's so, it's so amazing, cause I never read this book before. I just got it.

• 2:08:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  But it's amazing. Cover and move.

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Decentralize command.

• 2:08:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Prioritize and execute.

• 2:08:41Speaker 01

  Even that part when you're, um...

• 2:08:43Jocko Willink?

  Keeping it simple, right? Everything that, that we learned, that, you know, I should've learned this years ago.

• 2:08:50Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:08:52Jocko Willink?

  And when I think about, you know, I was, you, you, you look back at your life, right? And you say to yourself, what could I have done better? What could I do different? And, you know, everyone in the SEAL Teams, like, basically you get one shot at each job. Other than just being a, a shooter in a platoon, that you can do three or four times, if you're lucky. But then once you get into a leadership position, you're like, you're an assistant platoon commander. You do that one time. Then you're a platoon commander. You do that one time. Then you're a task unit commander. You do that one time. Generally, sometimes guys, rarely, guys do more than one of those. Same thing on the enlisted side. Guy gets to do, a leading petty officer does that one time. Chief petty officer of a platoon, platoon chief, does that one time.

• 2:09:37Jocko Willink?

  Senior chief in charge of a task unit, does that one time. You don't get to repeat the jobs. And so, basically, when you're finally getting good at your job, you're done. And now you gotta go get the next job up the chain of command. So, for me, it was always, and now looking back, and even talking to my SEAL buddies now, like, how can we prepare them better so that they know what we had to learn during the job? It's a hard thing to do, because a lot of stuff you actually have to learn from experience. And actually, we talked about that at the last muster, which is, that was a big part that we talked about. If you're gonna get good at something, you have two choices.

• 2:10:17Jocko Willink?

  Experience, or training. And training is a way to condense experience down, and distill it. And that's what was great about when I was running training on the west coast. We got to really condense that experience. I mean, guys went through, guys went through hellacious training, and where we'd provide total chaos for them, that most guys wouldn't experience that kind of chaos in their whole career. Or in 10 careers. But they would get it, and they would get pushed super hard. So that way, when they got out on the battlefield, they were ready for the chaos that was out there. Because we trained them, and we pushed them further and harder during training. Then we hoped they would get pushed on the battlefield.

• 2:10:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy. Even that covering move, even when they're retreating. It's like it showed like how you gotta keep that, that discipline with that. It's kinda like, you know, like in an MMA fight or something. And the guy starts getting hit on the inside, and rather than still covering up a little bit while he goes back, he like runs away or turns his back or something like that, you know?

• 2:11:19Jocko Willink?

  Turn your back and you're done. Turn your back and you're done. But, great book. I definitely recommend it for your reading list.

• 2:11:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a, there was that part in there that the guy came up to, I think reload ammo or something and the guy's sitting there.

• 2:11:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  And he's just, so he gets like scolded or whatever and you know, it turns out he's wounded, right?

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:43Speaker 01

  Like, that's kinda, that was an interesting little lesson there. Like, you just don't know.

• 2:11:47Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  You can't just start going off on someone.

• 2:11:49Jocko Willink?

  Totally true and, and I don't know if you remember, somebody asked us a question one time about, you know, how do I, these people that have had everything given to them.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:59Jocko Willink?

  And I, and I, you know, I've had a, I grew up in a tough neighborhood and it's like, oh, you, you actually don't know what that person's been through. And we had that whole discussion.

• 2:12:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:06Jocko Willink?

  And that's the same thing true on a day-to-day basis with every other human being that you're dealing with. You don't know what they're going through, you don't know what triumphs and tragedies they've had in their life. You don't know what just happened to them this morning. So, the, the, the recommended course of action is you, you give someone a little bit of slack when you don't know them, you know?

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. You ever seen that, that Seinfeld one? He goes, he goes to talk to the girl. Come on, bro. It was actually, it was, it was pretty much this, but just on Seinfeld. So he goes to talk to this girl, he's like, I gotta talk to that girl, she's hot, or whatever. He goes up to her and he's like, he's like, hey, hey, hello, excuse me. And her back is kinda turned, you know? He's like, excuse me, hello, hello? Like getting, and he starts to get real mad that she's not listening to him. Finally, he walks like more close to her and she kinda starts to turn around and he's like, oh, so now you pay attention? What, are you deaf? And she's like, bingo, like signs to him.

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:12:58Speaker 01

  And she, she is deaf.

• 2:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:00Speaker 01

  You know? But you gotta chill out, you know? Find out about people first, before you start.

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  Make sure, make sure the regimental sergeant major isn't wounded in both legs before you start dressing him down.

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  I know, bruh. Yeah, man.

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a, that's a good thing. He put that in this book, you know, that's pretty humble.

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:17Jocko Willink?

  For him to put this in this book. You know what I mean?

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  Yep. And that other part where they were all, what, like tired and stuff, right? Or they're defeated, essentially.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  They were act, you mean when they were basically broken men?

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then they, and they got up and they just started charging, getting at.

• 2:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, default aggressive.

• 2:13:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, the default aggressive, default aggressive part. That's like, um, like. You know why there's big centipedes? You know, then they're like, they're kinda like.

• 2:13:48Jocko Willink?

  How big are they? Are they like eight feet long?

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  No, no, they're bigger than like the centipedes that I've seen here.

• 2:13:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay, give me a figure.

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  Like.

• 2:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Six inches, twelve inches?

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Uh, like, six is like a normal big centipede, six inches.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  And these things?

• 2:14:02Speaker 01

  They'll get bigger. Anyway, they're, I mean, compared to you, you know, they're, they're, they're little bugs, they're little, whatever. And you just step on it. But, like, when you start messing with it and it starts to get nuts, it's super intimidating. I'm just saying, it's just like that. I don't know, but they can chase you out of your room.

• 2:14:20Jocko Willink?

  You got chased out of your room by a centipede?

• 2:14:22Speaker 01

  Well, anything, like, even like a, like a wasp, or, you know, like with these little things that are way smaller than you, and they just get nuts and then, and like, you don't wanna mess with it, you know?

• 2:14:30Jocko Willink?

  So Leif, Leif was over at my house, this was a while ago, a couple of years ago, and, uh, there was a lizard in my house, like about a,

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:38Jocko Willink?

  About a nine-inch lizard. And so, my son and Leif are going to try and catch this lizard. And, and they're being weak, man. They're like, they're like, they're like, oh, you know, they're like, oh, wait, wait, no, grab it, get a box on it and all this stuff. So I come in, Mr. Tough Guy.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:14:56Jocko Willink?

  I come in, reached, I go, just grab that thing, you wussies. Reached down, I reached down to grab this thing, this thing turns its head,

• 2:15:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:04Jocko Willink?

  and bites my thumb. And I screamed, like, uh, like the Jim Carrey, like, ah!

• 2:15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  And I flicked my hand, it was, it was absolutely hilarious, cause I went from being a big tough guy to screaming, um, ah! And having a lizard bit onto my finger, drew blood, by the way.

• 2:15:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:24Jocko Willink?

  This thing drew blood, yeah, on my thumb. So, yeah, I was default aggressive, but it didn't work out. The, the, the lizard was more default aggressive than I was.

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, and, and that is funny, that's a funny story, for a couple of reasons, in my opinion, but, that is the exact same concept, though, you know, where if you would've, like how you said in the book, just kept your head, you smashed that lizard.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, if I wanted to catch it alive, I wasn't trying to kill it.

• 2:15:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:49Jocko Willink?

  But still, I should have been more aggressive. Like, the bite, the bite didn't even hurt, right? It just shocked me.

• 2:15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:15:55Jocko Willink?

  It just shocked me that this lady. Yeah, I wasn't ready for the, the, the gnashing of the teeth.

• 2:15:59Speaker 01

  Getting nuts, man. Yeah, those lizards, we have a lot of those, especially when it gets hot. Those, I mean, I'm assuming it's the same kind. There are these, but here's the thing, growing up on Kauai, there's these things, they call them, we call them cavillians, but they're like anole, anole, A N O L E, that's how you sp- spell it. They, they turn green or brown or whatever, and they get, they get pretty big and they're super aggressive. Like, when you grab them, oh, that's, the fir- the red thing comes out of their neck and they start biting you. And you get them to, when you hold them after a while, they start to calm down. And I think they just start to get sick and stuff, I don't know, I don't know, but they calm down. So you can do this thing where basically, okay, if you, if you have a lizard's head, you go like this. And he'll go like that, he'll try to bite you.

• 2:16:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:16:42Speaker 01

  So what you do is when he calms down, like, right when you grab him, he's trying to kill you. But when he calms down after, I don't know, three, four minutes, you do that and he'll, he'll keep kinda like.

• 2:16:51Jocko Willink?

  He'll do it less and less and less.

• 2:16:53Speaker 01

  Less and less, he'll always do that though, but he'll ju- just be a lot less aggressive. And then if you put your finger in his mouth, he'll bite you and he won't let go. So you gotta kinda drag your finger out and yeah, it'll, it can cause blood or whatever. But what we do is, and you can see, look, picture this. We do that and we put it on, put the lizard on our ears, so the lizard would be.

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  An earring.

• 2:17:14Speaker 01

  An earring, yeah, biting ears, you'd have two lizards hanging down. But anyway, the point there being.

• 2:17:21Jocko Willink?

  Fun, fun in Kauai.

• 2:17:22Speaker 01

  Keep your, yeah, in, uh, yeah, when you grow up with that stuff, like, those lizards are not scary. Even if they're aggressive and some of them, they get pretty like big and bulky and they're like, dang, this thing has some power to it, this little lizard, you know? And, but even here, when, when I grab them, they're like, oh no, I wouldn't have screamed like you.

• 2:17:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:40Speaker 01

  Plenty experience.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  That lizard got me, dude. It was awful. It was awful. Well, um. Being prepared, I guess is what we're talking about.

• 2:17:50Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Being aggressive. Why don't you get default aggressive with letting anybody know if they want to support this podcast, maybe how they could do it.

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  Also support Jocko's traumatizing experience with lizards.

• 2:18:01Jocko Willink?

  With lizards.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, biting his fingers and him screaming.

• 2:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Ah!

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  Who was it? Leif and who?

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  It was Leif and my son.

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, did they lose respect for you that time?

• 2:18:10Jocko Willink?

  A little bit. Well, it's actually funny because Leif always talks about, you know, me being calm. And that's why he laughs so hard. We, we were driving one time and we almost got in a car wreck. He was driving actually. And I'll have him tell the story, but we hit mud and we hit, we were out in the desert. We were going sixty-five miles an hour on a back road, backed by all these farms. And it was two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, something like that. And normally these roads are completely dry. They're in the desert. And we're hauling and Leif's driving, I think he's driving his truck. Yeah, he was driving his truck. We're hauling and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, we see, we see a, a big eighteen wheeler on the side of the road, on the opposite side of the road, but it's a narrow road.

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:55Jocko Willink?

  And as we're hauling, all of a sudden, we hit a, a water. Like, like water, probably a couple inches deep of water with mud. Because it's, what happened, somewhere irrigation from all this farmland had broken and there was this flood. And so we hit this thing and we're immediately hydroplaning. And, and Leif is from Texas. Leif is from Texas. So he's not used to driving in the snow. I grew up driving in the snow in New England. You know, you just, you just deal with it. Everyone's like a rally driver up there.

• 2:19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:27Jocko Willink?

  And so, and so Leif, he, he's not really used to this. And he starts to oversteer the car, which is really, really bad.

• 2:19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:35Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I'm sitting there and we're going sixty-five miles an hour. He, he, he, he's funny when he tells the story too, because he's like, we, we thought we were gonna die. He thought, he's like, we were definitely gonna die.

• 2:19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:44Jocko Willink?

  And I'm sitting there in the passenger seat and I, and I say, uh, don't oversteer. Don't oversteer. No brakes. No brakes. Alright, you're good. Because that's the other thing, mistake you can make. If you jam on the brakes.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna lock it up and you're gonna slide, you're gonna lose control. So just, no, don't oversteer, don't oversteer. No brakes. No brakes. Alright, you're good.

• 2:20:04Jocko Willink?

  So that was not my reaction when I got bit on the thumb by the lizard.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Ahhh.

• 2:20:11Jocko Willink?

  It was hilarious.

• 2:20:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. Dang, bro. It's all good. But, hey, man, you know, if you want to support this podcast, how about let's talk about that? Possible.

• 2:20:23Jocko Willink?

  Do it.

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  So, one good way, and support, this is, uh, well, okay, this is what it is, Origin, right? Origin, the brand. OriginMaine.com, that's a website, they got a lot of cool stuff. One of the cool items, actually, there's a bunch, are gis for jujitsu. I remember back when, um, kind of when we first started this thing. That's, that would be the main question about jujitsu, is what kind of gi? And I'd be like, oh, yeah, there's these, and I give them the, the, the three, the top, actually, there was, there's four of them. And it was shortly after where you recommended this, these Origin ones. And then when I went there, I was like, oh, shoot, this is kind of expensive, I don't know, you know? But then, I just looked at the one that was like, it was like the first one I saw.

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  But, there are many varying prices of gis. And they're all good, by the way. I know this because I have some. Nonetheless, if you're still wondering what kind of gi to get, Origin gi, hundred percent. You have, um, options, you know, as far as pricing and stuff like that, if you want the deluxe one versus the more basic one. But they're all dope, and here's the thing about them, they're all made in America. And not in the sense where they're just kind of assembled in America, but so, you know, the materials are sourced somewhere else. The materials are sourced, would you call them sourced? I guess the raw materials.

• 2:21:49Jocko Willink?

  The raw material comes from Tennessee, I would say.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, South Carolina.

• 2:21:53Jocko Willink?

  South Carolina.

• 2:21:54Speaker 01

  Somewhere, here, America, I know that.

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  America.

• 2:21:57Speaker 01

  Boom. Brought over to Maine, assembled, slum, uh, what did, not loom, loom, yeah, that's not a verb, right? Yeah, woven, on a loom, boom, into this outstanding material, moisture, what do you call it, wicking? Wicking, right? That's when it, it kind of like helps.

• 2:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:16Speaker 01

  With moisture.

• 2:22:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:18Speaker 01

  I didn't know all this, by the way, I'm like, being educated on it, and there's lots to know, by the way. Um, and I, antimicrobial, that's a big deal.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Anyway, originmaine.com, that's where you get school stuff. There's other stuff too, like rash guards and even like clothes, regular clothes, athletic wear. It's dope. Anyway, all made in America. Boom. Also, for some legitimate fitness gear. On it.com slash Jocko. I just got the, I know I'm into kettlebells. I know I said that before, I'm gonna say it again. What is yours? What is your heaviest kettlebell? The one you have?

• 2:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Forty kilograms.

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  Right, so eighty pounds?

• 2:22:59Speaker 01

  Mine's ninety, by the way.

• 2:23:01Jocko Willink?

  I have two of them.

• 2:23:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you only have one?

• 2:23:05Speaker 01

  I only have one currently. Alright, alright, well shoot, I guess, you know, it's clear what I gotta do. Maybe I'll get another one.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  Step it up.

• 2:23:11Speaker 01

  But, um, shoot, who is I talking to about it? Oh yeah, Morgan. You know Morgan.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:17Speaker 01

  Right, we're talking about kettlebells.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Morgan's feeling strong. I told him that yesterday.

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:22Jocko Willink?

  Not, not just, cuz that's, it's kind of a insult in jujitsu.

• 2:23:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Right? To say like, hey, you feel really strong.

• 2:23:29Speaker 01

  It's an insult.

• 2:23:30Jocko Willink?

  It's an insult.

• 2:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:31Jocko Willink?

  But I made it perfectly clear yesterday. I was like, hey, you feel jujitsu strong. I said, it's not, I'm not trying to say you feel strong, like, hey, you're a meathead.

• 2:23:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:23:42Jocko Willink?

  But you feel strong in a positive way because, and I said, here's the deal. If it was just you being strong, then five years ago, when I started training with you, I'd be like, oh, you feel strong. I didn't say it then cuz you didn't feel strong.

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:54Jocko Willink?

  You feel strong now that your jujitsu's getting

• 2:23:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Better and, and you're getting more skills.

• 2:23:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like we gotta come up with a different expression, or maybe just a modified expression. Because some people, yeah, like, people tell me I'm strong or whatever, and after a while, I was like, wait. I felt the same thing that you, one time I told you, like, you're strong. I thought it was kinda, maybe subconsciously, I thought it was kinda established that, okay, look, you're really good at jujitsu, you know? I thought that was kind of a given, so if I were to tell you you're strong, it'd be kinda like

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Did I like rebut you?

• 2:24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:29Jocko Willink?

  Was I like, oh yeah?

• 2:24:30Speaker 01

  I was like You're like, no, my technique. Yours is like, no, my technique. I was like, yeah, no, no, I know that. I know your technique is outstanding.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  God, I got defensive.

• 2:24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little bit. Not in an angry way, nothing like that, but yeah.

• 2:24:39Jocko Willink?

  Funny, actually. I'm surprised I wasn't a little bit more sarcastic about it.

• 2:24:45Speaker 01

  See, okay, which brings me to my point.

• 2:24:47Jocko Willink?

  I got surprised I didn't say, "Yeah, I'm glad I'm so strong."

• 2:24:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:50Jocko Willink?

  That I can just destroy you like that.

• 2:24:52Speaker 01

  When people say it, and I know people don't mean it, I know they don't mean that. You know, what, how we take it, kinda like, you're strong, it's your, your physical strength, not your jujitsu technique. That's what, what we take it as, you know? And they're just throwing it in like how, essentially how I did with you is kinda like, "Look, you're better than jujitsu than me. You, you beat me up all the time."

• 2:25:10Jocko Willink?

  But in addition to that.

• 2:25:12Speaker 01

  You're pretty strong too. Yeah, I, that's probably what people are saying most of the time. But, so, when people be like, "Dang, you're strong, you're great," and you, when they say you're strong, I say, "Yeah, I lift a lot of weights."

• 2:25:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:24Speaker 01

  So it kinda gives them the impression, kinda like, "Yeah, my weightlifting basically beats your jujitsu," kinda thing. And that's a more of an insult, you know, kinda thing.

• 2:25:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right.

• 2:25:32Speaker 01

  But it's, it's a joke, really, you know? Uh, nonetheless, so, yes, Morgan, he's strong.

• 2:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu's strong.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  Jujitsu's strong, so his technique is strong.

• 2:25:42Jocko Willink?

  So that means his technique is getting better and it, and it reveals his strength.

• 2:25:46Speaker 01

  It can deliver the strength in the proper way.

• 2:25:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:48Speaker 01

  Yes, good job, Morgan. But we were talking about kettlebells.

• 2:25:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:52Speaker 01

  And he was like, "Bro, kettlebells are hard." So I started to feel kinda good, cuz I got this ninety-pound one and I was like, "Shh." I lifted it up and you know, okay, you know this, the one hand, boom, clean, what do you, clean press. Is there a name for that?

• 2:26:04Jocko Willink?

  If you use your legs, if you use your legs to snap it up there a little bit, that's the clean and jerk.

• 2:26:09Speaker 01

  Okay, even one hand?

• 2:26:10Jocko Willink?

  If you just do, if you don't use any legs and you just power it up smoothly, that's a press.

• 2:26:15Speaker 01

  Okay, so mine was clean and jerk, I tried to use the whole kinda body, whatever. So, my metcons, I do, when I got the werewolf ones, those are like sixty-two pounds. I do two at a time, boom, boom, okay, easy. And you do reps, you know, it's a whole thing. So I got the, the gorilla one, seventy-two pounds, and I could do that one, just as you get strong, you know? So I get the ninety-pound one, I'm like, "I only got one, too, so I don't know, do you think two at one time is easier? Cuz of the balance, right?"

• 2:26:44Jocko Willink?

  No, it's not easier.

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  Just, I mean, you're using more energy for sure, but as far as like doing the balance, I feel like...

• 2:26:49Jocko Willink?

  Not easier.

• 2:26:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Well, so one is easier.

• 2:26:53Jocko Willink?

  One is for sure.

• 2:26:54Speaker 01

  Okay, good. Well, okay, gotcha. So I got one big foot that's ninety pounds. And I lifted that up. I was like, man, I'm not.

• 2:27:03Speaker 01

  Not ready for that. And so it was like maybe two, three days later, I was like, well, I gotta try. That's the, you know. I got the seventy-two pound one. I can do that, you know, a bunch of times, actually, but. So I just warmed up a bunch and just, first time I did it, like I straight up failed. I couldn't do it. And I was like, all right, all right, I know how it feels now and all this stuff. And then, then I could do it. Boom, both. Yeah.

• 2:27:26Jocko Willink?

  That's good.

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  Solid.

• 2:27:28Jocko Willink?

  Glad we all know that now.

• 2:27:31Speaker 01

  Hey, that's relevant. Just saying, actually, which is actually what makes kettlebells kind of fun to do. Is because it does require legitimate technique.

• 2:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:40Speaker 01

  Like you can't do, like, it's hard. It, it's like a dumbbell or a barbell or a machine.

• 2:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, if you're doing barbell snatches, it takes a hell of a lot of.

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  And that's really the spectrum, you know, so if you go like kettlebell and dumb, because dumbbells are straight up balanced. I mean, they're not, they're not like, but they have a handle, both sides of the handle, equal amount of weight. You know, boom, you just have to balance your body and then after you get that balance down, it's pretty easy. Barbell even less. Because you don't have two sides gotta be balanced. It's just one long thing. And then two sides of that is balanced. Then you go machine, you don't even need balance. You just need the strength to push. So it's that spectrum. So the kettlebell. It's way on this side of the spectrum where it kinda, there's the game within the game, you know? That's what makes it more fun, I think. See progress in both areas, technique and strength.

• 2:28:30Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 2:28:30Jocko Willink?

  We'll leave it at that.

• 2:28:31Speaker 01

  If you want the cool kettlebells on it, dot com slash choco or jump ropes. Battle maces. The way, do you call them battle maces or just maces? Yeah.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  Or clubs.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, though you can get some cool workouts with that and they do, like your forearms get.

• 2:28:50Speaker 01

  I didn't look into like what exactly, you know, they're gonna improve, but I know core strength and all this stuff, but there's all these little things they improve too. Outstanding stuff. Also, good way to support. If you're gonna get this book, Men at, how do you, how do you pronounce the place?

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Arnim.

• 2:29:11Speaker 01

  Arnim or Arnim?

• 2:29:12Jocko Willink?

  Yep, Arnim.

• 2:29:13Speaker 01

  Okay, Men at Arnim. Jeffrey Powell.

• 2:29:15Jocko Willink?

  That's how I pronounce it anyways. I apologize to anyone that's from Holland.

• 2:29:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:19Jocko Willink?

  And pronounces it a different way. I looked at it on YouTube and how they said it and it was like, they say, "Oh, how to pronounce Arnhem?" And there's 14 different ways to say it.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:28Jocko Willink?

  So I just rolled the dice and picked one that sounded easiest for me to say. So, sorry if I'm saying it wrong.

• 2:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. No, all good. But if you want to get that book,

• 2:29:42Speaker 01

  or any other book that Jocko reviews on the website, just go to jockopodcast.com. On the top menu there, click on Books from Episodes. All the books are listed there by episode. Along with a few other things, but mainly just the books by episode, you click through there, boom, takes you to Amazon. Get those books there. That's a good way to support. That's the Amazon click through. Or if you do any other shopping, if you're getting a tripod, or a video camera,

• 2:30:12Speaker 01

  or duct tape, or whatever, click through there, boom, that's a good way to support. Great way to support. Also, a little addition there, you know how we had the website jockopodcast2.com? That's, there's a long story. I think I went into it. It was like when I was like testing, like what website provider, whatever. I was like, "Let me get this one, because what if I'm attached it?" It's a long story.

• 2:30:35Speaker 01

  And then, so we ended up getting jockopodcast.com and they're both kinda there. But Jock Podcast 2 is kinda the, the primary one. It's not the primary one anymore.

• 2:30:46Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Podcast.

• 2:30:47Speaker 01

  It's Jocko Podcast dot com.

• 2:30:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:30:50Speaker 01

  So that's the website.

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  And that was actually a trooper that straight up got us Jocko Podcast.

• 2:30:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, looking out for us, and then that's a big deal.

• 2:30:57Jocko Willink?

  We saw him in New York, good dude.

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a huge deal because, um, like, do you have your own name?

• 2:31:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:05Speaker 01

  Okay, so people will be like, oh, this guy's blowing up. They'll go and they'll buy the domain name, either hold on to it or immediately go to you and be like, hey, you want to buy this from me? Yeah, they'd hold it hostage. In fact, I think there might be like a legal, like, defense against it, like if someone gets your name or your kid's name and you're kind of a public figure or something, I think, I'm not sure. But yeah, that's what people do, man. Or they'll buy a bunch of domain names that sound cool and they'll be like, yeah, you can buy this from me, kind of thing. It's super whack when they do it with like Euro, you know, when they know like that's your company.

• 2:31:40Jocko Willink?

  UFC had for a long time, they, I don't know what they paid for, eventually paid for UFC dot com, but for a long time, they were like UFC dot TV and all these other UFC. But finally, they had to step up, I bet you, I bet somebody made a lot of money off that one.

• 2:31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, UFC, especially the three letters, I guess, like if you get.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  The less letters, the more money.

• 2:32:00Speaker 01

  Crazy town. Nonetheless, but yeah, Jocko Podcast dot com, that's the main website now. If you were going to Jocko Podcast two dot com, it's, it's not that anymore.

• 2:32:09Jocko Willink?

  Does it send you though over?

• 2:32:10Speaker 01

  Uh, it, it does, did, but while I'm switching, I'm doing this thing.

• 2:32:14Jocko Willink?

  It will eventually.

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  It will eventually, yes, but if you run into that, that's why. People have been hitting me up and rightly so, thanks for that. Um, so yeah, nonetheless, back to the point, if you want to support by getting these books, go through the website and click through there. It's a good way to support, small action, huge reaction, small, huge, that's how it works. Also, subscribe to the podcast.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  iTunes if you haven't already, Stitcher if you don't use iOS, iPhone, Google Play, any, anywhere they, where they provide podcasts. Boom, we're on there. So subscribe, that's a good way. Also YouTube. Yes, I put some excerpts on there. More excerpts. I'm gonna continue to do so, shareable excerpts. Try to keep them under four minutes. That's cool, right? Four?

• 2:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it might be a little long, but...

• 2:33:05Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, you get it like a good, like, ten minute one though, that's the thing.

• 2:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  But they're more shit, better than two hours.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  That's a long time, though. Think about the videos that you, you wanna get compression. Three minutes, four minutes tops.

• 2:33:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it depends on the...

• 2:33:18Jocko Willink?

  You should edit them, maybe. Like, make them shorter.

• 2:33:21Speaker 01

  Hmm, yeah. Yeah, I mean, if it's appropriate, because sometimes you don't wanna... Sometimes it's just you saying like a whole thing. And it's like, okay, that's solid. And sometimes it's you and then my rebuttal to kinda, kinda bolster the point, your point, cuz you'll clarify it because I, you know, and it's all, it's, it makes sense. So sometimes if you edit certain things out, maybe the message isn't there as much as maybe it should be. Not all the time, not all the time, but most of the time. Nonetheless, I'll look into it, how about that? Ideally, if a video, and this goes along with like people's typical like attention span, should be, what, like about a minute and a half?

• 2:34:06Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, but my attention span's getting tested right now. By supports.

• 2:34:11Speaker 01

  Just saying. We, this is important stuff, we need to go over this. So we can come to the best conclusion on how to conduct ourselves in regards to YouTube excerpts and other things. Nonetheless, subscribe to YouTube channel, it's good. We're gonna, uh, provide value, how about that?

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:34:31Speaker 01

  Also, if you're into the video version, cuz some people are, some people are into more the video version of the podcast.

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  You know, boom, subscribe if you haven't already, YouTube. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store, jockostore.com if you didn't already know. Um, on there, we got some cool stuff, shirts mainly, some rash guards. I just made an order for hoodies, thicker, heavier.

• 2:34:58Speaker 01

  Fall is coming. Are we in fall right now?

• 2:35:00Jocko Willink?

  The

• 2:35:01Speaker 01

  Fall was, the first day of fall was like the other day.

• 2:35:03Jocko Willink?

  We are in fall.

• 2:35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we got some, not that we're doing a whole seasonal thing, I'm just saying it's fall now, getting cool, getting cooler.

• 2:35:12Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:35:12Speaker 01

  Got some hoodies on there, got some shirts on there, got some rash guards on there. I think I'm gonna do a warrior kid rash guard. I have one.

• 2:35:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, I saw that.

• 2:35:22Speaker 01

  But it's not.

• 2:35:24Jocko Willink?

  In production yet.

• 2:35:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not, I'm gonna change it a little bit, some coloring stuff and whatever, but it is pretty cool. Good, good little pre-response. Also hats on there and some other cool stuff. I'm not saying get something, I'm saying go on there.

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  Check it out. If you wanna support and you wanna get something, you think something is cool for yourself or for your, you know, friend, wife, girlfriend, neighbor, whoever, then get something. Good way to support, actually great way to support. Also, psychological warfare. Okay, what psychological warfare is, if you don't know, it's an album with Jocko tracks. So basically if you're on your campaign against weakness and you have a moment of weakness, this is like a little spot. So basically you put on these audio tracks to let you know, hey, pragmatically, don't skip this workout today.

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  Hey, don't slip on this diet today. Hey, your procrastination isn't working and here's why, but it's Jocko telling you, so it's kinda like more effective, way more effective. Hundred percent success rate in my experience, hundred percent.

• 2:36:39Jocko Willink?

  That's legit. Hey, also Jocko White Tea, if you want it, you can get that on Amazon. It tastes good and it makes you feel good. Also, on originmaine.com, you can get

• 2:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Super Krill, Krill Oil, that will make you feel good. And on top of that, you can get Jocko Joint Warfare, which is awesome.

• 2:37:03Speaker 01

  What's in that, by the way?

• 2:37:04Jocko Willink?

  It's glucosamine, chondroitin, those are the main, the main, but then we put some additional things in there. Yeah, and it's, it's been rocking. It's, it's, it's awesome. You've got books, or I've got some books, if you wanna read them. One is called Way of the Warrior Kid. One is called Extreme Ownership. The Warrior Kid book is for kids. Extreme Ownership is for people in leadership positions or people that want to be in leadership positions. There's also a new book coming out called Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. It actually comes out October 17th. And at one point, many months ago, October 17th seemed like it was a long ways away, but it's not anymore.

• 2:37:44Jocko Willink?

  It's here. So you can order that one. It is unlike any book that you have ever seen or read. Also, what's interesting about this book is people keep asking me if it's going to be on Audible. It's not going to be on Audible. Instead of being on Audible, it is going to be on iTunes, it's going to be on Amazon MP3. It's going to be on Google Play. It's going to be where you can find MP3 tracks. There's a reason for this. If you do it through Audible, you get this one big, long book and it's in what the book is, the way the book is written, it's written to be chunked up and you're going to want to take parts of it and play it at certain times.

• 2:38:24Jocko Willink?

  More like you would do with the Psychological Warfare album. So, people are asking for more Psychological Warfare. That's what we're doing. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual is going to be available as an album that you can buy and then you can do what you want with the tracks. You can make them your alarm ringtone. You can listen to them out of order, in any order. You can put them in a mix. You can do a lot more stuff with them. That's why we're doing it as an album with tracks instead of as an audible book. So, you know what? We might, you know, people might have a little challenge finding it or realizing, you know, when they go onto Amazon or they go onto Barnes and Noble, they won't see that it's available. They'll be looking for the audible and you won't be able to find it. I'm sorry.

• 2:39:05Speaker 01

  Well, just in Audible, I think that's where they won't.

• 2:39:08Jocko Willink?

  You'll be able to find it in the Audible platform.

• 2:39:10Speaker 01

  Right, right. But it'll be on Amazon.

• 2:39:12Jocko Willink?

  It'll be on Amazon, but you, I don't think it'll be linked in to the same thing where you go, oh, here it is. I think it's going to be hidden. It's going to be hard to find. Kind of like it's hard to find on iTunes. It's hard to find Psychological Warfare. But the question is, do you want to do, did I want to do something right or just do something easy?

• 2:39:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true because the field manual, like any field manual, like when you want to go refer to it, you don't want to be searching around, especially in audiobooks.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in audiobooks.

• 2:39:38Speaker 01

  You're gonna be like, okay, what is that one part, you know, that deals with this? And boom, you can just go to the...

• 2:39:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you just look for the track name and you're there. So, like I said, we could have done the easy thing and whatever. You know, had everyone just been able to click on it real easy. I apologize, but if you want the right way, then that's what I had to do. So, that's that book. And then, Echelon Front, that's the leadership consulting company that I have with Leif Babin, with JP Denell, Dave Burke. If you want to have us come and work with your business, contact [email protected].

• 2:40:15Jocko Willink?

  And if you have any questions, or if you have any answers, or if you just want to continue this conversation, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on the Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And finally, thanks to everyone out there for making this podcast possible. To those of you in the military, especially those right now on the forward line of our own troops facing evil every day, thank you for providing this freedom that we enjoy. And to the first responders in law enforcements, in fire, and EMS,

• 2:40:59Jocko Willink?

  thank you for taking care of us while we are here at home. And the rest of you that are out there, that are working and building and producing and creating and leading. Keep leading.

• 2:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Keep stepping up. Keep taking on challenges and keep striving to do more and to be more. Keep picking up the pace and keep pushing harder. And no matter what the odds, or what the probabilities,

• 2:41:41Jocko Willink?

  keep getting after it.

• 2:41:46Jocko Willink?

  So, until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.