202: Never Forget The History of Our Freedom. "Faithful Warriors" with Dean Ladd.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:03:41 - Dean Ladd. "Faithful Warriors" 3:50:04 - Final thoughts. 3:55:15 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:14:07 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 202 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  On a bright and violent morning in the Central Pacific, a dying Marine with part of his face shot off saved my life.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  He was perched atop the partially raised ramp of an LCVP. He was a big, solidly built man with a gaping, gory hole where his eye should have been.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  Blood streaming from the wound. Moments earlier, he had been standing in the water beside me at the bottom of the ramp, waiting with the other wounded men for his turn to board. Another casualty in the battle for Basio Island.

• 0:51Jocko Willink?

  I was dying.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  I had been shot through the lower abdomen, hit as my unit waded toward the shore to assault the island. Two men from my platoon hauled me back to the LCVP and struggled to lift me into the boat. The Marine with the ravaged face who had just boarded now saw that they were having trouble with me. He reached down, grabbed me with one hand and pulled me up and over the top of the ramp.

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  Amazing.

• 1:26Jocko Willink?

  And so I didn't die. That too was amazing.

• 1:34Jocko Willink?

  But not really all that significant in the grand scheme of things. That incident is just a small scene in a very big picture.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  an insignificant event like that, can you imagine being gut shot in waist-deep water under heavy machine gun fire, barely making it back to a landing craft which is going to save you, being pulled into that landing craft by another wounded Marine?

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  And surviving? And can you imagine considering that? That series of events to be insignificant?

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  It's almost impossible to think that way. But that excerpt is from a book called Faithful Warriors, written by Lieutenant Colonel Dean Ladd, who served as an enlisted and officer in the Marine Corps in the Pacific Campaign in World War II. He participated in the battles for Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. Battles where tens of thousands of Americans were wounded or killed as they fought against the fanatical Japanese Imperial War Machine.

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  And while it's impossible for us to understand what those men actually went through and what those battles were like, this book does an amazing job of giving us a glimpse into this savage part of war. And it is a complete honor to have the author of this book, Dean Ladd, here to talk with us about his experiences. Colonel Ladd, welcome to the program.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:36Jocko Willink?

  That's incredible, the things that you went through. And this book has been, I could not put this book down. And this book is just, the picture that it paints of what you all went through in that Pacific Campaign is, it's unbelievable what you guys went through. It truly is. So I guess if we're gonna start, I always like to start, I always like to start at the start. So for you going to the book here, it says, "In early 1939, a boy from the next block came over, came home from overseas, and I was never the same because of it." His name was Lee Preston.

• 4:22Jocko Willink?

  And he was a corporal on leave from the Marine Corps. He showed up wearing his dress blues, creating quite a stir in our quiet Spokane neighborhood. Mostly, I think, the stir was in me. He looked so sharp in that uniform and his manner, the way he carried himself. At once modest, but utterly self-assured. Got me thinking about myself and my future. I was only a couple of years younger than Lee, but it didn't seem that way. I was a senior in high school, just a teenager, still a kid. And Lee, well, he was different now. He had changed. He had left home a boy and returned a Marine, a warrior, a man. So the old Marine Corps recruiting process of just sending Marines home on leave in their

• 5:06Jocko Willink?

  dressed uniform worked on you, huh?

• 5:08Speaker 01

  It really did.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  And what did you know about the Marine Corps at that point in time?

• 5:16Speaker 01

  Not very much. I was being approached by one of the old timers in the local Marine Corps Reserve organized. And they were trying to get me to join. And so I, this was an opportunity just to find a little bit from another source, what it was going to be, what it was like. I was, I was surprised later on, thinking about this, that at that time, Marine Corps was only 20,000. And, and a lot of people, they felt fortunate to be able to be selected to get in there, actually. And this is all in 1939, and long before we even thought we were going to get in World War II.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  And it wasn't until, it wasn't much longer after I joined in 1939, that I went to a couple of, we meet just like the National Guard, once a week, and have drill, right down, right, very close to where we're having this broadcast right now, right across the road from us. And we

• 6:21Speaker 01

  And then I went on, went to college, Washington State University, and had one year of college. And went to two encampments with the organizers. One, the first one is San Diego, and the second one is Bremerton. And so then we got called to active duty though in November of 1940. And that's not very long, well, just a year. That's a year before we got into the war. Here we were called and went by troop train. There were about 300 of us at least, and ended up in San Diego.

• 7:03Speaker 01

  And that was for an encampment. Then a year later, in November 1940, we were called and acted duty. And now we thought we were going to be gone one year, but we were only gone, but we were gone for a total of five years.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  So where were you when Pearl Harbor happened?

• 7:25Speaker 01

  When Pearl Harbor happened, we were in San Diego, and I was going through a scout sniper school at a place called Mission Valley.

• 7:34Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if you've been to San Diego lately, but Mission Valley is now a mall.

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Isn't that amazing? That was nothing but, nothing but sagebrush and a lot of rattlesnakes.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  And so you're going through that sniper school. Pearl Harbor happens. And what did they do? Did they immediately recall you? Did they cancel the school?

• 7:52Speaker 01

  We all had to return to the base and get ready to go here, go there. There were just all kinds of commands going out. First of all, hey, we got to go here. No, no, we're going to go there, and this, all of that. And in spite of all of that, within one month, well, by first part of January, we were aboard a ship heading to American Samoa and to defend that island from the Japanese taking over and blocking the supply line from United States to New Zealand and Australia.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  Now, did the Japanese ever show up and attack that section of American Samoa?

• 8:36Speaker 01

  They didn't. They didn't for a long time. They would have if it hadn't been for...

• 8:46Speaker 01

  What's that mean, Alan, where the big battle? Midway.

• 8:49Jocko Willink?

  Midway.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  Midway, yeah. At my age, I'm a little difficult recalling names anymore.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  It's all good, we got time. So, at what point did you get the next orders that you were gonna not just guard this island anymore? You guys were gonna head out?

• 9:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, about a month before we finally left. We'd been training the Japanese young men who joined the Marine Corps Reserve. And they took over guarding each of the little beaches all around the island, some were very remote. And so, we were able to leave and had no idea where we were going. We thought, well, it could be the East Indies, we had no idea. But, on the other hand, we knew it pretty much was gonna go out of canal because we were having difficulties there.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  And somewhere in here, you got your commission, and you became an officer. How did that happen?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Okay, after we'd been on Samoa for about three or four months, I was now a corporal as a squad leader of a machine gun, light machine gun squad. And I got along very well with the NCOs and with our platoon leader. And so, I was recommended to go to a machine gun, it was billed as a machine gun training school. But it turned out, it was just to identify likely candidates to become commissioned. So, I recognized there was probably about, could have been 150 or more of us.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  And it lasted six weeks. And here, as corporal, I was one of those selected to get a field commission.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  And that's it. You, you had one year of college. They, they put you from corporal to second lieutenant.

• 10:51Speaker 01

  To second lieutenant, and at that time, we had no means of even getting, getting second lieutenant bars. Had made one down at the, where they, where their, where their aircraft were.

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  So you guys just fashioned some, some butter bars for yourself?

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Right, we did. And then, and then next, next thing was a matter of, in part first of our November, this was only a month after I was commissioned. Uh, here we were, board ship, heading to Lord knows where, turned out to be Guadalcanal. And here I am, entering combat with the same group that I had been enlisted with before, the same company. And I know our first sergeant, he was a gruff old guy. And he used to read me out like he did everybody else. But he saw that any time that I was giving a command, that he said, "You listen to your second lieutenant, you're gonna have to contend with me."

• 11:49Speaker 01

  So that was just, it was just wonderful. So I was an extra officer assigned to the company headquarters. And that was pretty much the situation. They had to have extra officers. When they got into casualties, they could immediately fill, fill the, fill the ranks with, with a new platoon commander. And that's a long story after I, how I got into the actual action of itself. Not knowing how I was gonna be able to react as a, as a young lieutenant leader.

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're right about that here. Here, we'll go back to the book, and here is you actually heading into Guadalcanal. And here we go. I remember thinking, as my LCVP chugged toward the beach, that my time had come. And that it would be a time of testing, when I would get to show what I was made of, at last. Even so, a part of me wished I were somewhere else. What if I failed the test?

• 12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  I was assigned to the headquarters section of B Company, First Battalion as an extra second lieutenant with no specific duties other than to follow whatever orders I was given and make myself useful in whatever possible way. The regiment was actually above full strength with junior officers to spare. It was an unusual circumstance and I knew it would soon change because junior officers typically suffer the highest casualties relative to the other ranks. Attrition would quickly and inevitably take its toll. Lieutenants in command of line units would get killed, wounded, injured, and sick. Extras like me would replace them. Inevitably, inevitably too, a few junior officers would be relieved for incompetence or cowardice.

• 13:26Jocko Willink?

  I prayed that I wouldn't be one of them, that I wouldn't turn yellow and let my buddies down when the going got tough. A fate worse than death. As for death itself, no worries there. Getting killed was something that happened to the other guy. And then arrival. Our LCVPs came to a gentle halt at the waterline, nosing into the sand of beach red between the Teneru River and Lunga Point. We climbed over the sides. There were no ramps on those early model Higgin boats and we walked onto Guadalcanal. We hardly got our trousers wet. We'd experienced rougher landings during amphibious assault exercises outside San Diego.

• 14:08Speaker 01

  That's right. San Clemente for one.

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're, you're, you're heading into Guadalcanal and there's, it's a pretty calm entry even though there had been a lot of fighting going on.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, previously there had been at that location.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  So, once you get on Guadalcanal, you start to move towards the front lines?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, in, in this case, it was off, opposite direction where we, where the front lines were. The Japanese had landed way, way, way south of us and there was concern that they were going to come and envelop us from that location. So, our, uh, our regiment moved out to head them off and, uh, going through jungle and, and in, in, at night and, uh, we didn't know what.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Really where we were, didn't know where they were. We finally got up to the, to an army outfit, the 164th from the COTUS. And they had just ended up shooting each other, just the day before. And here we saw blood all over the place from that, that situation. We entered up at night and we just had to stop right along, right along a river bank. And I had my feet dangling in the water at the time. So anyway, we never did run into the Japanese. We, they all of a sudden they disappeared from that particular location. But that was a, quite a trying time, just what it's like to moving into combat and not knowing what's going to happen next.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, one thing that I talk about a lot is the possibility of friendly fire occurring.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  That is exactly what happened.

• 15:51Jocko Willink?

  I know I had friendly fire incidents happen with me in, in Iraq. And this happened to you as well. I'm going to the book here, you were, you were, you've been moving for a while and you're holding up at night and you guys are in your position, then all of a sudden, bang, someone yelled, another shot fired.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:10Jocko Willink?

  And then another, and then another, several shots in quick succession, all from our foxholes, more shots all at once. And just the whole company, shooting, firing every which way, shooting and shouting, grenades were thrown, bursting left and right, front and to my rear, explosions and muzzle blasts lit the area like popping flashbulbs. Corporal Lane was hit in the arm, a minor wound, but he didn't think that it was minor. He panicked and shouted out to Sergeant Wimpy Wright. "Top, my, my arm shot off." Since Wright and Lane were best buddies, a show of concern from the first sergeant might have, might in the circumstances have been expected and would certainly have been warranted. But Wright, an old salt, who is crusty as they come, was not practiced in showing concern, even to best buddies who had been wounded in combat.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  Muttering just loud enough to make himself heard above the racket, Wright replied, "Shut up, you fool. You want to let them know where I am?" The shooting continued, more grenades exploded. PFC Harold Park, a bar gunner with first platoon. Realized that several men just to his left were throwing grenades all around the darn place. The guys were just having a little hand grenade war with each other. Maybe the Ja- Japanese were out there too tossing a few grenades of their own, but Park didn't think so. He stayed low and didn't fire his weapon. I didn't, I didn't figure it would do any good even if there were Japanese. You couldn't see nothing. All you could do is sounds.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  Park was a half Korean and half, half Irish.

• 17:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  I, I, I, I had, I had a lot of contact with him after the war as well.

• 17:39Jocko Willink?

  So it was important for him to, uh, cause I know you say in the book that, that he inherited his father's looks, not his mother's. So he looked more Korean.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  He looked more Korean. We told him, you better stay close.

• 17:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's a rough one.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you, you get done with this, this just happening basically all night. I mean, crazy firefights and you don't even know if there's any Japanese out there.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  At the time, Murdock, that was our acting, acting company planner at the time. And a man near him got, got shot through the abdomen area and he's more concerned that he lost it, lost his private parts. But he didn't.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  And now, now was Murdock, did Murdock have, uh, experience from some of the other campaigns?

• 18:30Speaker 01

  No, no, he was new just like the rest of us. We're all new to combat.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  Uh, speaking of, you know, near misses and whatnot, you're waiting to, uh, do a link up and here we go back to the book. I thought I might grab a quick bite to eat and started to open my C ration can. In the process, I somehow managed to cut my thumb to the bone, bloodlust from the wound, and I spent some frantic moments applying a field dressing to staunch the flow. The non-coms and enlisted men watched me, probably trying hard not to laugh.

• 18:59Speaker 01

  I still have a scar right there in that thumb from that.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  And they're watching, they're thinking, second lieutenants are idiots. Hard to argue with that assessment, which the lower ranks held as virtually axiomatic. And I just given them another reason for their certitude. How humiliating and annoying. The cut would not fully heal as long as I remain on Guadalcanal and I still bear a scar from it. Thus far, the chief dangers in Guadalcanal posed to my well-being had come from, one, my buddies via friendly fire, and two, myself. The Japanese in comparison had been a relatively benign presence.

• 19:34Speaker 01

  There are a couple of situations right at that same time that happened. One was a young Marine from another outfit. He was real badly, he thought he was, he's really been there. He says, I'm used to all this stuff. You know, and here he had a Japanese skull hanging from a, from a cord of some sort, and he was just swinging that around. Crazy. Then, a little bit later, within, within an hour or so, we had a big air raid. Hundreds of Japanese planes dropped, dropped bombs on us. And then I was watching one of our aircraft cruisers shooting at them, and many of their planes dropped at that time. That was, that was really, really getting into it in deep way,

• 20:18Speaker 01

  but not really directly in direct fire at the time.

• 20:21Jocko Willink?

  So that, that time, that kid that you talk about, and you mentioned in the book, this is, um, this is sort of the, so he's a guy that had been fighting somewhere else and he comes back. And so this is the first person that you see, that you look at, that's starting to be, you know, he's having some, let's see, how did you put it? He had acclimated to conditions on Guadalcanal, that's what you wrote. And, you know, however long that takes before, you know, it's a, it's a different, it's a different, it's a different environment. It's a completely different mindset. And that's what he was doing.

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Now, these, all these young people, they, they all had beards now, you know, they haven't shaved for a long time. And they, uh, they had, had enough food, really. They were eating Japanese rice and whatnot. Because our transports all had to leave. They loaded off, they loaded off the troops, but most of the, all of the food and stuff, they weren't able to unload, so they had to eat this Japanese food. So anyway, they were pretty gaunt looking people. But even so, they were full, they were full of, full of fight, you could tell. Young people, you know, young guys that are in their teens still, you know?

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  You get into this

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  Montecaval. Am I saying that right?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Montecaval.

• 21:38Jocko Willink?

  Montecaval.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  Montecaval.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  This, this river. This offensive that you guys start on 10 November, which is the 167th anniversary of the founding of the Marine Corps. And here we go to the book separating our forces from their geographical objective, a coastal village with some four miles of exceptionally rugged terrain. Grassy ridges falling away steeply to jungle choked ravines and several thousand Japanese infantrymen, also exceptionally rugged. Our mission objective was to engage, defeat and destroy the enemy formations in our path. Our assault units advanced slowly but steadily against determined resistance. The eighth Marines ordered to move up in column behind the two seven filed across a narrow pontoon bridge over the Montecaval.

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  Montecaval and continued a short distance before halting for noon chow. As before, the sweep to Colley Point, we encountered no Japanese. The attacking units had driven them off. But we suffered casualty just the same.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  Let me tell you a bit about there. Where we had chow. There were many Japanese bodies lying about. Some had been partially buried. Some of their legs are still sticking out. There'd been a major battle between, between them attacking the other Marines that had been there just before, a few weeks before. And here, all these, among all these bodies and flies and maggots and everything else. So we ate among all of that.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're saying some, some guys would, couldn't even carry on barely because it smelled so bad.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it did. Yeah. This right near a place called Point Cruz, by the way. And today it's a city, well, of over 20,000. That's the capital of the, of the Solomon Islands.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  At this point, you actually say in the book, as you were sitting there amongst all these bodies, these dead bodies and as you're sitting there eating your chow. You say, like that kid twirling the skull, I was acclimating to the conditions on Guadalcanal.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  I'd been on the island for seven days.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:44Jocko Willink?

  So that's an indication to you. So then you guys, later that day, an enemy unit penetrated our line and ambushed weapons platoon, killing three Marines with a burst of enemy fire, with a burst of machine gun fire. And then the entire offensive had suddenly been called off. And not only that, we were gonna give up the ground we had taken, relinquishing it to the Japanese. What the hell, we thought. So you get told, hey, you guys, stop attacking.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  The reason was, which you'll get into in just a bit, is that there's a major task force, the Japanese, about 12 transports full of troops, can you imagine? And battleship and cruisers and a lot of destroyers. And they were gonna, they were gonna just knock us off of there. We hadn't, we didn't have a good feel that it was that dire. But boy, it turned out it was because that, and when they did come in at night, we saw them come in in mid-November, and major battle between naval battle, naval battle, Galle Canal. And you would never know, watching it at nighttime, you didn't know which are our ships and which are theirs.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  All of a sudden, you see something blow up, or you see red hot shells being fired, going back and crisscrossing back and forth. And then the next, next morning, he was, had troops, had the, some of our men, their own ships were sunk. And now they, they're all full of oil, and they're coming, now they're landing on our shore. It was, and here we watched it from a grandstand viewpoint on a ridge, watching all this happen. Incredible.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you know that this naval battle was about to take place?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Didn't know it was gonna be anything like that. Imagine, roughly 12 transports full of troops, all but, all but three of them were sunk.

• 25:42Speaker 01

  And the three that did beach, the troops got off, but all their supplies and stuff remained on. And, and we, our planes bombed, bombed that and our artillery did. So we had those, we, we had to reckon with those troops that came, got off of those transports. As the next, over the next week or so.

• 26:04Jocko Willink?

  Your, your description of this battle is, is, is crazy to read. I'm gonna read it.

• 26:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  The battle between the American and Japanese surface fleets began a little before zero two hundred, like a suddenly breaking storm of cataclysmic size and power.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:20Jocko Willink?

  In the language of naval tacticians, the coming together of two fleets in Sea Lark Channel constituted what is known as a meeting engage in, engagement. But collision engagement is a better term for describing what happened. Steaming more or less blindly into the channel, the fleets ran into each other at oblique angles. Their ships quickly became intermingled, resulting in a close quarters melee that saw the combatants charging madly about, their big guns flashing and booming, hurling red hot shells in high flaming arcs above the channel. The thunder of the guns rolled across the black water, a steady pulsating roar, and the molten projectiles streak like meteors, crisscrossing the skies

• 27:02Jocko Willink?

  with fiery tails, rising and falling and crashing into ships and exploding in massive fireballs. Violent secondary explosions caused by ammunition cooking off in the intense heat of the detonating shells rocked some of the ships and sent them furiously ablaze, burning like Roman candles. Fountains of fire sparking and shooting flames and blasting big chunks of steel in every direction. All the while, star shells and flares burst high above the channel and then faded like dying galaxies as they drifted down at the end of their parachutes into the extinguishing water. The canisters that held the flares periodically flew over our positions, chugging like locomotives. Searchlights probed the lower darkness with their long brilliant beams sweeping back and forth above the

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  surface, bisecting, fixing on some hapless ship, bringing the blazing shells down on it. Streams of tracers from automatic cannons and machine guns curved through the middle of the air. Every now and then, an errant torpedo slammed into the beach below us. Twenty-five hundred pounds of explosives blasting a big crater at the waterline.

• 28:06Jocko Willink?

  We watched all this from our foxholes on the ridge. Front row seats to a spectacle that John Murdoch likened to. All the 4th of Julys I ever saw in my life, all put together at once. We were a vocal audience, awestruck and profane. A ship would explode and all up and down the line, you'd hear men exclaiming, "Jesus Christ and holy shit and oh my fucking God, did you see that?" It was thrilling, really. You couldn't help but feel that way. But I also couldn't help but wondering which ships were ours? And how they could distinguish friend from foe? I thought of the many men who were losing their young lives right before our eyes. I felt very fortunate to be in safe in my foxhole and I wondered,

• 28:52Jocko Willink?

  "Who's winning?"

• 28:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had no idea who was winning. We just knew that what a... We had seen a massive combat. It was incredible. And we were at a ringside seat.

• 29:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, as that's going on, obviously you have to realize that if the Americans don't win this thing,

• 29:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it.

• 29:15Jocko Willink?

  You guys are done.

• 29:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Can you imagine a convoy like that, that many transports? They probably matched our numbers at that time. If they had all gotten ashore, but they didn't. Yeah.

• 29:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, early the next morning, B Company crossed the river to spearhead the attack by another Green Army battalion. The one, the first of the 182nd, along the coastal flat toward the base of Point Cruz. So you guys, you guys took lead.

• 29:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were spearheading that particular attack.

• 29:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, you talk about, you mentioned Wimpy, right? A little earlier and that's a heck of a nickname. And it doesn't sound like it suits them very well.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  I've thought about that, true.

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  But, but we talk about, you know, a lot of times we talk about leadership on this podcast. And you do a great description of this kind of transition and the relationship that you had with Wimpy, right? I think it's worth-

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Well, this is, this is my co-author, Steve Weingartner. I tell you, he was, he's a, he's a, he's a great, you know? He got an award for a Polish woman that escaped the Holocaust.

• 30:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  Callalas story.

• 30:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, we can definitely look into that book.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  Um, here's how he describes your relationship with him. Wimpy Wright was the company's first sergeant. He was a tough old salt, short and stocky, late 30s or 40s, old enough to be my father, old enough for that matter to be the father of quite a few of the lieutenants in the regiment. He was going on 20 years in the Marine Corps and had served in China, Nicaragua and Haiti. He was no newcomer to war, no stranger to combat.

• 30:59Speaker 01

  He was an old salt, in our terms.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  He possessed a commanding voice which he used in a full-throated bellow when reading off one of his charges, when reading off one of his charges for doing something stupid. On Samoa, before I was commissioned, I had been one of his charges and had usually, more than once deservedly, been on the receiving end of one of his harangues. But now I outranked him. I was at first uncomfortable with our new relationship. I found it hard to imagine giving orders to a man who not so long ago had been shouting in my face and giving me a dressing down the likes of which I'd never experienced before and never would again. It wasn't that I was afraid of him, rather I respected him too much and knew him, and

• 31:44Jocko Willink?

  knew too well that he was a great Marine to think that I could or should be telling him what to do. And I thought that he might resent my status and, just to be cantankerous, make things difficult for me. I needn't have worried about Wright. A consummate professional, he supported me fully and sincerely. I should have expected that. After all, it was because of his recommendation that I received my commission. He looked on me as his protege and he wanted me to succeed in part because my success would reflect well on him, but mainly because he was genuinely, genuinely proud of me. Also because I was a known quantity whom he had personally mentored, he much preferred me to be giving orders rather than some 90-day wonder fresh out of training in the States.

• 32:28Jocko Willink?

  Since he had taught me everything I knew, he was confident that in combat, together, we would more or less be thinking along the same lines, an important connection for a top sergeant to have with his platoon leader. Nor would he, nor would he brook the slightest insubordination toward me from anyone else in the platoon. "You obey your lieutenant or you'll have to answer to me," he growled at my guys. And you can be damn sure they did. Nobody wanted to have to answer to Wright. Sounds like an outstanding Marine.

• 32:56Speaker 01

  Pretty soon you're gonna be getting into a part that's my, my first encounter of very close calls was losing me alive.

• 33:07Jocko Willink?

  On Hill 78, second platoon was dealing with a lone sniper who had fired on us from the open trees on the coastal flapple below. He was high up in one of those trees, high enough to place him a little above the hilltop, allowing him to shoot down at us at a shallow angle. He potted us, potted at us for a better part of four hours. And then by the, by and by, and much to my astonishment, a lieutenant I didn't recognize came strolling along the ridge, fully upright, fully exposed to the sniper, smirking at us. I was lying on the belly, on my belly in the grass, and he approached me saying, "Ah, what are you worried about? That sniper can't hit anyone." In the next instant, a shot rang out, and a bullet winged his arm.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  Can't get complacent.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you continue on. I didn't much care where that lieutenant went, or what happened to him. I wanted to get that sniper. I pulled out my field glasses and scanned the trees below our position. As luck would have it, I spotted the sniper almost at once. That is, I spotted his pewdy wrapped legs and booted feet dangling from the limb of a huge banyan tree about 150 yards from my position. I lifted the field glasses a notch to the clump of leaves where those, above those legs. I couldn't see him, but he had to be there. Japanese legs were always attached to Japanese bodies. Just then, he took a shot at me. He must have seen me looking. Maybe my field glasses glinting in the sun and give me away. His bullet hit the ground just inches from my nose, spraying dirt

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  in my face. I dropped my field glasses and snatched up my Springfield. Firing from the prone position, I unloaded the entire clip at the clump of leaves above his feet. Five shots, one after the other, working the bolt quickly, but smooth me, but smoothly, so as to not spoil my aim. Just as I had been taught to do, and just as I had practiced on the Marine Corps rifle ranges. I didn't think about it. I didn't have to think. All that training just kicked right in, and I killed the man who had been trying to kill me. He didn't drop from the tree, he didn't drop his rifle, but that was to be expected. Japanese snipers customarily tied themselves and their rifles to the trees. Bottom line, he didn't shoot at us after that. He was dead all right. The first man I had killed.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  Yes, that's my first, my first call.

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  The first call of

• 35:21Speaker 01

  My first call of life.

• 35:22Jocko Willink?

  Of having a round hit right in front of your face.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  Right in my nose, yeah, knocking dirt in my face. Boy, he spotted me. I was no longer somebody to harass. I was somebody who was gonna kill him. Now we had a duel, a duel going on.

• 35:42Jocko Willink?

  Alright. The Eighth Marines, First and Second Battalions were to advance by side in columns into a ravine, then attack and capture Hill 83. Ridge line. The First Battalion was to move forward on the right. B Company would lead in the battalion's advance and my platoon would lead the Company's advance. So that you put you, does that put your company right, your, your company right at the front?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, at that time.

• 36:06Jocko Willink?

  And your platoon right at the front of the Company.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were at that time. We, we were right in, right in the crux of it.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  Following in our, an artillery bombardment, Second Platoon with the rest of the battalion behind it, passed through the army lines and advanced into the ravine. Enemy machine guns and riflemen fired down on us from concealed positions on the ridge, some seventy-five yards a, ahead and above us. Machine guns chattered relentlessly, ripping through the jungle, rustling foliage, clipping branches and leaves. Corporal Olson de Moss and his squad led the way, moving up, out of the ravine and onto the ridge. Suddenly a voice shouted, "Baker Company, get off the ridge." "Huh?" I looked around at my men. "Who gave that order?" Most of my men had gone to ground, hiding in the bush as, and were invisible to the Japanese. That's the nature of jungle warfare. Everyone tries to stay hidden. You can hardly see anyone, either enemy or friendly.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  The battlefield seems empty and you feel, and you can feel alone and isolated on it, especially when you're in command, especially when you're in the middle of a firefight, and when somebody else starts giving orders to your men. I looked around and a few of the men I could see stared back at me, their, their blank expressions, a firm denial. It wasn't me. A few minutes later, De Moss and his squad returned to the ravine, having relinquished their brief hold on the ridge top. "Somebody yelled at us to get off," De Moss explained. He thought one of our guys had given the order. Then we both realized what had happened. Those clever Japanese, one of them, someone fluent in American English, had given that order. Very clever. He must be pleased with himself. He must be laughing at us just about now. Him and his men laughing. And how did he know that we were Baker Company?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  You heard us say that, that's it. Now, we're gonna get a little bit later than this now. I took over the platoon, second platoon. The platoon leader was yellow. He wouldn't get up out of his hole. So now I'm in charge. And you're gonna get into what the close calls I had there. Boy, they were mighty close. Unbelievable. I don't know how I survived it.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, going back to this, we resumed our uphill attack, and we were met with more devastating machine gun and rifle fire. So would you say this engagement right here is the first time that you were under real...

• 38:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 38:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, other than getting bombed, other than having aerial attack, other than a sniper shooting at you...

• 38:28Speaker 01

  No, this was it. This is it. It was about as close a call as it can be, I tell you.

• 38:34Jocko Willink?

  We kept going forward, firing on the move, leaning slightly into the incline, shooting from the shoulder and the hip, firing blindly at the top of the ridge. We couldn't see the enemy, but we knew he was up there. DeMoss on my left banged away with his Springfield, just as fast as he could, worked the bolt. And then his rifle seized up. DeMoss looked at me, and I looked at him, and the spell was broken. Just that fast, I came out of my battle trance. I felt very exposed and insecure. Judging by the wide-eyed look he gave me, DeMoss felt the same. DeMoss inspected his rifle and discovered that he had a bullet had pierced his magazine, barely missing his nose in the process. He never cursed, never uttered profanities, and now, true to form, his eyes still as saucers, his eyes still as big as saucers, he exclaimed, "Well, I'll be a dirty name."

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  Then he discarded his rifle and started throwing grenades at the top of the ridge. The reality of our sudden, harrowing plight then struck me. This was my first major combat test as a platoon leader, and I realized that I had to take immediate and firm control of myself. I could not show fear in front of my men. A couple of feet to my right, Private McCoy Reynolds had been hurling grenades, one after the other, each time courageously standing up and exposing himself to enemy fire. He crouched down next to me and scanned the top of the ridge. Then he exclaimed, "I see them," and threw another grenade. In the next instant... He was shot through the neck, killed instantly. He fell at my feet. For a moment, I just looked at him, his eyes wide open, lifeless stared back at me.

• 40:00Jocko Willink?

  Then I realized that now more than ever, I had to get a grip on things and seize control of what was becoming an increasingly chaotic situation. I decided at once we needed support from our mortars and backed a little way down the ridge, out of the field of fire, to further assess the situation.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Now, at the same time, we were running low on ammunition as well. And we sent back a call, we need more ammunition. Next thing we knew, bandolier after bandolier of ammunition started arriving. Just the same, the same, "Go at it, guys."

• 40:36Jocko Willink?

  Now, that's an interesting, I mean, you recognized that, that you needed to get control of your emotions. Is that something you had thought about? What made you realize that? What made you realize, "Oh, wow, I better do something because I'm in charge and I need to make some decisions here?"

• 40:58Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't know. All of a sudden, fear went away, I guess. I didn't have fear right at that time.

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  And it's also interesting.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  But I saw the dire situation. Here we were in a situation that, that we, we had it, we, we were committed. And either to keep going, or are we going to back up? Then back off. Finally, we were called back down. And not only that, that, that same kind of movement went clear to the top. And, and decided to just call off that drive in general. Here, I was at the, I was at the spear's head, right there. It was called off, and they just, the general, from the top on down, was that, "Okay, we stop going after them and losing troops, and just let them dry in the vine."

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, because at this point you had, we controlled.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  We controlled the supply. We controlled the supply.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  And we had taken out their supplies.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  So let's do some siege warfare on them.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:01Jocko Willink?

  And make them wait.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  Make them starve.

• 42:03Speaker 01

  So we, we, we had no more fighting. We had a, we had a, a firm defense line along the ridge for a month. Just, just held the line. Continually setting up reconnaissance patrols, make sure, know what they were doing, what they were doing. And I led a number of reconnaissance patrols myself, taking out four or five men with me and finding out where they were. And that was a scary situation too, all these reconnaissance patrols.

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, right before they, before they stopped that, as you're still pushing forward up that ridge, you've got some great detail in here that's, that's absolutely worth talking about.

• 42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 42:41Jocko Willink?

  Going to the book here, "The ammunition was quickly distributed."

• 42:44Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  So this is, you, you called for ammunition. The ammunition was quickly distributed and once again, we moved uphill, shooting as we went. Another of my man, men, Private Walter Cuss.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:53Jocko Willink?

  Was fatally hit while scouting up the ridge from a different direction.

• 42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:57Jocko Willink?

  At the moment of his death, he exhaled his last breath and let out a long, rising howl of pain and anguish like a dying animal.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. Didn't sound like a human being.

• 43:08Jocko Willink?

  Several attempts were made to reach him and drag him back, all unsuccessful. PFC James Bell said, "I'm going up there. I'll bring him down." He was off and running before anyone could stop him.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, on his own, he did that.

• 43:21Jocko Willink?

  And he was shot through the chest well before reaching Cuss's body. We were able to retrieve Bell and he was still alive as we carried him down and out of the line of fire, but he was just about gone. He had a sucking chest wound that made it increasingly difficult to breathe.

• 43:36Speaker 01

  Opened both sides, so he couldn't breathe, you see.

• 43:40Jocko Willink?

  This was the first time I had seen such a wound and it was a terrible sight. Our corpsman tried to patch him up, but there was little he could do. A sucking chest wound needs to be sealed internally as well as externally, and the corpsman could only treat the outside. Finally Bell said, "It looks like this is goodbye."

• 43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:56Jocko Willink?

  And then he calmly died.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:58Jocko Willink?

  Just like in the movies, I thought.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00Jocko Willink?

  With his last words and everything.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:03Jocko Willink?

  Soon after that, we quit attacking and withdrew. We couldn't dislodge the enemy from the ridge. We had been defeated. Our losses were heavy. My platoon alone suffered seven casualties, four killed. Reynolds, Bell, Cuss, and Private Robert Kessler. Three wounded, PFC James Harris, Private McBurney, and Private named Manderville. Total casualties for First Battalion were nine killed and 23 wounded. Overall, in the period spanning 18 to 23 November, the 8th Marines lost 42 men killed and many more wounded.

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Now, you've gotten a part where a destroyer escort was named after McCoy Reynolds.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I did not know that.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Well, let me tell you about that.

• 44:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 01

  My company commander had been a journalist with a New Orleans paper. So he's good at writing up things. So I recommended, recommended something written up on him. He wrote this up in such a manner that a destroyer escort was named after him, is called the McCoy Reynolds, and it in turn sank two Japanese submarines later on.

• 45:19Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:22Jocko Willink?

  And was that, was that Captain LeBlanc that you're talking about?

• 45:26Speaker 01

  Yes, it is.

• 45:27Jocko Willink?

  So Captain LeBlanc was your company commander?

• 45:30Speaker 01

  He was the company commander at that time.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like, it sounds like from the book, well, let me give you your thoughts on him. We called him Little Napoleon. He was notoriously eager to make a name for himself and just as notorious, just as notoriously averse to taking risks. His men took the risks and he took the credit for their success. He would say, "Come on, we've got a tough, tough job to do," and then he'd assign someone else to do it. Sometimes he'd announce that we were going out on a reconnaissance platoon, and then he'd turn to Murdock or me or one of the other junior officers and say, "Hey, how about you leading it?" And at one point, he tells you

• 46:08Speaker 01

  There you go now.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  To go back to the, uh, go back to the Army.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  This is the stupidest darn thing you can imagine if you're gonna read it now.

• 46:15Jocko Willink?

  He, he's telling you to go back to the Army and tell them what, you know, what the enemy disposition is.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And they ran into the same stuff that we did. Horr- and they really, really ran into it. Really bad.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  So he tells you to go, and this is what you, this is what you write. "I cut low across the ridges, east-facing slope, walking in the grass at the edge of the jungle. I was beneath the crest and felt reasonably safe. The area was deserted, a true no man's land. I found this very disconcerting. It was eerie." So you're alone?

• 46:44Speaker 01

  I was alone. I was stupid, stupid.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  "Then I came upon the body of an American soldier. He lay slightly above me and to my right astride a narrow trail leading to the top ridge. His abdomen had been torn open and his intestines had spilled out and were spread across the ground, a grisly and heartrending sight. I tur- I hurried past him thinking, I wonder what his dreams were."

• 47:08Jocko Willink?

  "Will that happen to me?"

• 47:09Speaker 01

  No, he was looking at a photograph.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Did we talk about that there?

• 47:14Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 47:14Speaker 01

  Okay, he's now, he, the last thing before he died, he's looking at a photograph of his family or his girlfriend. It's laid out there, and that's the last, the last, as dying as he's dying, he was looking at that.

• 47:29Jocko Willink?

  And you're thinking, "I wonder what his dreams were."

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, that could've been me. That could be me.

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  And "will that happen to me?"

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Well, that happened, yeah, because there's, it was still a lot of danger.

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Here, there's still snipers out there shooting at me at this time.

• 47:44Jocko Willink?

  And now you go, "I arrived at the Army CP to find it in turmoil. An anxious captain and his, and his visibly agitated staff stood around a field radio, listening to a report from the front line. Emanating from the speaker were the sounds of battle mixed with the crackling of static. A frightened voice crying out, 'We're taking a lot of fire. Platoon leader hit. Leg blown off. Get us out of here.'" I could hear the actual sounds of the battle outside, not too far away, machine guns, rifle fire, grenades, mortars, the usual mayhem. I reported to the commanding officer and told him what I knew. Then I left the CP, laid out close by were as many as a dozen bodies covered with ponchos. I hurried on, instead of staying low on the slope, I headed over toward the top of the ridge.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  He wasn't interested in hearing me. He's already in it so darn deep. He didn't care about any more details. He, he knew he was in it over his head.

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's old information at this point, for him.

• 48:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  When I reached the top of the ridge, I snuck my head, I stuck my head over the crest. In the next incident, a Japanese machine gun cut loose at me with a long burst, sending a stream of bullets snapping just inches above my head. That brought me to my senses and I ran down the slope into the jungle. I stood there for a minute, gasping for breath, shaking and thinking, holy smokes, almost bought the farm on that one. Holy smokes.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Does that count as one of your close calls?

• 49:12Speaker 01

  Very close.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I'm, you've already covered two of them now.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Two out of eight. There's, there's, there's actually, there's, there's three more on Guadalcanal that you'll get to in a bit.

• 49:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, um, what do they say, a cat has nine lives, so luckily we only have eight to cover? Otherwise, the ninth one, we wouldn't be here, sitting here talking. On November 25th, we were pulled off the line and sent to positions uh, near, in the rear, near Henderson Field. For the next 15 days, we slept in open-sided tents on the grove of coconut palms on ground that was sodden from frequent, heavy rain showers. There was always a possibility that Japanese warships would foray into Sea Lark Channel during the night and throw a few hundred large-caliber shells into our soggy environs. But these dangers were negligible compared to what we had recently been through on the front line and we did not worry about them. Actually, we did not worry about much of anything.

• 50:12Jocko Willink?

  We were emotionally and physically drained and lacked both energy and inclination to worry. We mostly sat around doing nothing, nothing, partly because we had nothing much to do, but also because we were sort of in a daze. You might say we were numb. It was not, it was not an unpleasant state. We were purely glad to be alive and the fact that no one was shooting at us, at least not directly or intentionally, made us feel downright euphoric. We were living for the moment, and for the moment, everything was fine and we were content.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  See, now we're coming down with malaria as well, you see.

• 50:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, the other thing you go into here, which is interesting, is during this period, a number of Marines took steps to upgrade their personal armament. The main object of their desire was the superb M1 Garand semi-automatic rifle that had been issued to the Army.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  Army had that. We still had the old ones.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  The Model 1903 Springfield we carried was a fine weapon, but it was obsolete. The old salts loved the O3 like a Viking loves his broadsword, but the kids were unsentimental about the rifle because they had no history with it. So you say while some Marines acquired their M1s through honest scrounging and battlefield scavenging, others resorted to outright theft.

• 51:29Jocko Willink?

  And you go through some methods that were used to do that.

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Moonlighting.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  You guys had Tommy guns.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:37Jocko Willink?

  Which you said weren't really all that great for most of the purposes. The Rising Gun.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  For a while, for a while, we even had shotgun, you know?

• 51:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:51Jocko Willink?

  On the night of 30 to 31 November, a Japanese.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Beginning, the beginning, using, using the flame swords as well was there too at that time.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  Rough weapon right there.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  On the night of 30 to 31 November, a Japanese task force steamed in the Sea Lark Channel, bringing food to the beleaguered Japanese forces on Guadalcanal. Our warships sailed forth to intercept it, meeting the enemy fleet in that off-disputed gap between Savo Island and Guadalcanal, just off Tassafarongo. How do you say that?

• 52:23Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Tassafarongo Point. Because our bivouac was situated inland on low ground, I heard the battle but did not see it. Our fleet took an awful beating. One of our heavy cruisers, North Hampton, was struck by two torpedoes within a matter of seconds. Consumed by fire, she sank a few hours later.

• 52:41Speaker 01

  Just offshore.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  The heavy cruisers Minneapolis, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Pensacola were severely damaged.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  And the sailors were coming off, off of it, all covered with oil.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  And so would they swim into shore?

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Some did, probably did. It was right near the shore.

• 52:58Jocko Willink?

  The battle had been a clear tactical victory for the Japanese, but a strategic defeat. The task force had failed with its primary mission to deliver food to the Japanese army on Guadalcanal. This was a calamitous development for the Japanese. Even before the battle, their food stocks were desperately low. Now they began falling below substance levels. The entire enemy army was growing physically weaker because the soldiers simply didn't have enough to eat.

• 53:29Jocko Willink?

  We were in better shape than the Japanese overall, but only in a relative sense. The 1st Marine Division in particular was greatly reduced by illness and sheer exhaustion, as well as by battle casualties it had suffered in four months of fighting. A large number of its men were unfit for duty, and many more were only marginally capable of rendering effective frontline service. The High Command, recognizing that the entire division had just about reached the end of its operational utility, pulled it off the front lines and began sending it units to Australia, starting on 9 December.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  It's the day after my birthday, December 8.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  So you waved goodbye to those guys as they're leaving. And meanwhile, on 11 December, the 8th Marines resumed, returned to the ridges.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, right, but we didn't really take off until first part of January, I guess, in the final drive.

• 54:20Jocko Willink?

  And then, so it's you on one set of ridges and the Japanese were on the other set of ridges.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  They were usually, some were right on the reverse slope in front of us. They were dug in like gophers, like gopher holes.

• 54:33Speaker 01

  But most of them were further back on the next, over the next ridge.

• 54:37Jocko Willink?

  So there'd be you on one ridge?

• 54:39Speaker 01

  They would come up close enough to throw hand grenades at us, or throwing hand grenades at each other.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  All right, these dispositions, meaning these two ridges that you guys had occupied. Both ours and those of the enemy remained substantially unchanged for the next 34 days.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  The brass anxious to avoid a repeat performance of the November battles had ordered a temporary halt to large-scale offensive operations.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 55:04Jocko Willink?

  Instead, we were told to hold the line and harass the enemy with aggressive patrols and raids. In the meantime, our air and naval forces would strive to interdict the Tokyo Express, which is their supply chain.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Now, while we were at that location, there was a sergeant from the adjacent company, and he had a Tommy gun, and he didn't have enough action going on where he was. Instead, he was coming down the line, whether there's ever action, he wanted to get into it. Well, he came right by where I was, and it wasn't too much, it wasn't great. Shortly after that, one of our rounds dropped in short. He lost two legs and an arm. And there was an article in the Saturday Evening Post about it, and saying that, "At least I have the right arm to wrap the bar with for a drink." I'll tell about it in there somewhere, too.

• 56:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's... You guys, during this, you also talk about the fact that you would be yelling stuff back and forth to the Japanese.

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Certainly, a little bit, a little bit.

• 56:12Jocko Willink?

  They'd be yelling at you guys, and you'd yell back at them.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:14Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like during the daytime, well, you say during the daytime was a policy became one of "Live and Let Live" during the day. A much different policy ruled at night, after night.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Probably the case, yeah. And they would sneak in on us every now and then, make a little... Try to sneak in and maybe get one of our guys in a foxhole.

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you go into one of those. One night during a heavy downpour, the Japanese crept up from the ravines. The sound of their movement masked by the falling rain and jumped the crew. A ferocious hand-to-hand struggle ensued. I heard our men yelling, "Help! Oh, God, they're in our hole! Help, help!" Their blood-curling cries and thrashing sounds were plainly audible to everyone in the vicinity.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  They were on a point, a little bit ahead of our regular line.

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  And this has got to be just, this is unimaginable. We listened horrified but stayed in our holes. That's how bad it was to get out of your holes.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  You don't dare, because anybody outside the hole is enemy.

• 57:14Jocko Willink?

  Suddenly the yelling sounds of the fighting ceased. We anxiously waited and listened, peering through the rain and into the darkness. Then the Japanese began probing our position, all up and down the line, running up to the crest and chucking a few grenades over the top at our holes and running back downhill. After the grenades exploded, usually harmlessly, our guys would leap from their holes, dash to the crest and throw grenades at the fleeting enemy. Then they'd scamper back to their holes and the Japanese would return to hurl their grenades. Back and forth it went through the night, intervals of silence and then flashbang of grenades exploding and men hollering and cursing in English and Japanese. The next morning we discovered that one of the men in the machine gun post had been killed,

• 57:50Speaker 01

  There you go, that's that one.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  bayoneted to death. The others had been wounded, but somehow they'd beaten back their attackers.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  And you were saying this earlier, you, you, we also conducted aggressive patrols and probed their lines at night, giving as good as we got, or maybe even better. If more frontline Japanese soldiers had survived the war, maybe you'd be reading memoirs by those veterans of Guadalcanal Campaign recounting how the US Marines terrorized them at night. And terrorized them, we most certainly did. Some guys really enjoyed this part of the job. Teenagers who found their true nature in the jungle, who discovered that they were born for the warrior life. There were very, there were a few in every unit, more than a few actually, more than you might expect, more than I expected. They went after the Japanese with a competence and enthusiasm that made them almost as frightening to their officers as they must have been to their enemies.

• 58:42Jocko Willink?

  "It was just amazing," observed Murdoch. "How you could take kids like these and put them out into the jungle and in just a few weeks, they'd be great at jungle warfare." For them, it was like playing cowboys and Indians. They'd come back from a patrol and you'd hear them talk, "How many teeth did you get?" Or "How many did you kill?" And they'd brag, "Well, I killed three or four."

• 59:03Speaker 01

  Now, on one of these patrols, much earlier than what we're talking about right now, I was leading this patrol, had four or five others with me, and we, we ended up, we were in a location where the army had now passed through our lines and they were in control. So we came right by the regimental, regimental CP and the army colonel says, "What are you guys doing here?" I said, "Well, we got a reconnaissance patrol." He says, "Well, we're in charge here now. We don't need you in here anymore." And so he says, so the...

• 59:40Speaker 01

  We moved on a little bit further back toward our own line, where we were in reserve. And it turned out we were a little bit higher than where he was. So he'd look up at us, and we were on the skyline. From his perspective, we're on the skyline. And then we would have... He said, "Well, you're gonna attract fire, being up there." Well, he was partially correct, but not entirely. Well, anyway, as we left, my man says, "See, there are two or three snipers in a tree right over their CP." "What should we do?" I said, "Shoot 'em." So we shot 'em, killed 'em, and told the Colonel we just shot three snipers right over your CP.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  And later on, when we returned in 1982, there's a big Catholic church right there now. And I talked to the... Not a priest, but the next one up was there. And I was telling him about it. And then, later on that same day, well, he said, "He's the one, as a young priest, he's the one that rescued Joel Foss when he got shot down." I was out in the water, and he was all tangled up in his parachute and everything else. Telling about it. Well, later on that day, we saw Joel Foss. And then, here, he met this priest, you know, and they were talking about it.

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  And so, anyway, what's interesting is that when they told this Army Colonel what we had just done, the Colonel was still unhappy with us. And at the same reunion, when we saw Joel Foss and all, there was a veteran Army, who had previously been a Marine in China. And he joined the National Guard, and that's where he was out there this time. And he came to me, and he says, "You know, I just heard you talking. I was there." And he had a beard like Santa Claus. And I says, "You were there?"

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  "Yeah." And I says, "After you left, I told the Colonel..." He says, "No, after all, we're on the same side."

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  A small world. Oh, that's. Yeah. That's crazy after all those years. Uh, you know, we talked a little bit about, um, about Murdoch. Mm hmm. And, and he's quite the character. And, uh, you, you talk about him a little bit here. Cause Captain, what happened to Captain LeBlanc? You get somehow, somehow, uh, Murdoch ends up taking over. Eventually LeBlanc was relieved and replaced by Murdoch, who's ideal. A Boston Irishman. Murdoch was very funny and very tough, a superb combat, a superb combat commander and a bit wild, too. All traits that his younger charges greatly appreciated.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  One manifestation of his toughness, apart from his courage and coolness under fire, was his disdain for medals and commendations. Very few men who had him as their CEO, including me, received decorations. Murdoch explained, I didn't recommend many people. I didn't care if a machine gunner killed 50 men. That's what he was supposed to do. That's what he's getting paid for. That was my attitude. Once in Hawaii, we had a big formation with the division and they decorated all these guys. One company would give 40 medals out. I'd give one. My attitude was, hey, killing Japs is our job. We're not gun, doing it for medals. Yeah.

• 1:03:24Jocko Willink?

  And here, here you start to talk about just the whole, just the, the brutality of what's going on over there. One of the themes running through the preceding anecdotes is the merciless nature of the Pacific War. The Marine Corps had tried to prepare us for this in our training. Bayonet drills were especially important. In reality, in combat. To be, to be aggressive, you see? Right, right. Yeah. Uh, in reality, in combat, there were few instances when men used bayonets in the traditional manner, fixed to their rifles. Bayonet drills were performed for their psychological effect. So that men would learn the psychology of the bayonet, namely to kill brutally, quickly and unthinkingly without compunction or moral qualms.

• 1:04:09Jocko Willink?

  But unrealistic as far as the application. Right. But our training merely paved the way for our transformation into hardened killers. Exposure to actual combat accomplished and completed the process. You got hard or you died. It was that simple.

• 1:04:27Speaker 01

  Kill or be killed, kill or be killed, you know?

• 1:04:30Jocko Willink?

  And the Japanese made it simple. They were notoriously unsparing. Their reputation for ruthlessness and savagery was widespread and well-founded. We knew all the stories, the rape of Nanking, the Badon Death March, atrocities committed far and wide and often against prisoners. We believed correctly that we could expect no pity if we fell into their hands. They neither asked for quarter nor gave any, and we responded in kind. If they had set rules as we believed, we were damn sure going to play by them. What other choice do we have? They simply would not surrender. They would not stop coming at us until we killed them. Very quickly, we learned that trying to take prisoners was a waste of time and dangerous.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Even the wounded, if we went to treat them, would try and kill us, usually by blowing up everyone themselves and the corpsmen who had stopped to help them with a grenade. The dead had a nasty habit of rising up from the ground and attacking us. So we made sure the dead were truly dead. No sense in taking chances. This kill or be killed approach to war was as brutalizing as it was brutal and affected everyone to some degree. Murdock recalled a corpsman who came up to me and said, "Hey Lieutenant, I've got a live one. Can I shoot him?" I said, "Sure, go ahead." Corpsmen weren't supposed to have weapons, and we shouldn't have shot that wounded guy, but I let him do it. We all did it all the time.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  Because if we took a prisoner, it would take two men at least to send him back to the rear. And we were so thin, our lines were really thin because we had a lot of guys sick. Our units were very much depleted. Thus, we became inured to the horrors of war. And not surprisingly, we did horrible things. Not without reason. When your enemy behaves in a bestial fashion, it is only natural to look on them as beasts. Natural and to some extent justified.

• 1:06:24Speaker 01

  Considered as animals, really.

• 1:06:27Jocko Willink?

  But we were not without sin in this regard, far from it. Murdoch, for example, never took any prisoners. And here's Murdoch. I wasn't nice. I did bad things. Looking back over the years, I can say we probably committed as many atrocities against the dead bodies of the Japanese as they did to ours.

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Pulling teeth.

• 1:06:46Jocko Willink?

  For example.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Gold.

• 1:06:48Jocko Willink?

  For example, we'd heard Japs wanted to die looking at the sun. So we'd roll them over and stick their faces in the dirt so we couldn't, so they couldn't see the sun. Our guys would cut off fingers and make fobs, which believe it or not, with the finger of the Japs' finger hanging down. And they'd go out there with the knives and pliers, trying to pull out gold teeth.

• 1:07:10Jocko Willink?

  But if some of us truly relished, but if some of the men truly relished battle, embraced and enjoyed it, enjoyed the killing, the brutality, the horror, all of it, it is important to establish that on the continuum of brutal human behavior, the rest of us were not all that far removed from them. And we tended to move closer as the war went on. Some men are more capable than others when it comes to killing, but all men are capable. One way we improved on this capability, such improvement being vital to our effectiveness as Marines, not to mention our very survival, was to look on our enemy as hateful creatures, less than human. From a psychological standpoint, it became easy to kill them.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  We were killing animals, not men. And after killing them, we would look upon their dead bodies and feel nothing. No remorse, no guilt, no horror, pity, or whatever. From there, it was just a small step to place in the geography of the mind where pulling gold teeth out of corpses was not all that outrageous.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  But not many were doing that. There were just a few crazy guys doing it. I had one of my sergeants that did that. And he had a whole, he had a whole pocket full. And for some reason, rather, something happened, he changed his pants or something. And they were all, oh, I'll get some more.

• 1:08:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I like the fact that you said basically that, I mean, somebody asked me about dehumanizing the enemy and when we were fighting in Iraq and I said that the enemy dehumanizes themselves with their, with their actions that they would take and, and that's the same situation here, you know, the, in, in Iraq, the insurgents would behead people and skin people alive and just do absolutely horrible things.

• 1:08:58Speaker 01

  I don't know what, the Turks seem to be doing that right now, it seems like, I don't know. Yes, cleansing.

• 1:09:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's definitely some, uh, it's, it's hard to figure out what's going on over there right now. Um, I've, I've saw some fresh reports of what going on and absolutely, yeah, it does not look good.

• 1:09:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  You also had some people that couldn't, that didn't adopt that mentality and here's Murdoch talking about it, talking about people that couldn't adopt that kill or be killed mentality. He said they'd have to go back because they were no good to us. They'd just disappear. They'd be sent back to the States. It was a self-weeding process. The guys who remained were the guys you could depend on. When I became company commander in New Zealand, that was an awful thing I had to do. We could send 3% of our personnel home every so often so they could start new outfits back in the States, but you never wanted to send the good guys home. You send the shitheads and the screw-ups. I wanted the best men with me. I didn't want any of my good men to go. In New Zealand, just before we sailed for Tarawa,

• 1:10:03Jocko Willink?

  Murdoch told our company, now listen, I'm going to send some of you guys home. If you fuck up, you're going to go. But he told me later, these kids were so good, they just wouldn't do that. They wouldn't fuck up on purpose. They would do their job and do it well. They didn't want to become known as a fuck-up and a lot of those kids were killed on Tarawa that I could have sent home. But that's what happened because I wanted to keep the good guys with me. Man, that's a powerful statement. All these guys have to do is be slackers and they'll get sent home to the States, but they wouldn't do it.

• 1:10:38Jocko Willink?

  That's the Marine Corps.

• 1:10:39Speaker 01

  See, the thing is, this isn't a general average opinion, I don't think. He was a little bit overboard in all of this discussion, you know. He's not typical, in other words, but he was, he was, he was well liked because of, because of the way he looked at life.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he talks about one guy here. He says, I had one guy, a platoon, a lieutenant platoon leader, we'll call him Mac.

• 1:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:06Jocko Willink?

  Not his real name.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  That's the one I took over from and then we almost got killed.

• 1:11:10Jocko Willink?

  He says he was a Yale graduate, came from Connecticut, very well brought up, had money, nice guy too, and handsome, a rugged look, good looking Marine, but on Guadalcanal, he'd go on patrol, he just could not handle it.

• 1:11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Jocko Willink?

  Wally Godinius was his platoon sergeant, and he'd have to take over Mac's patrols all the time. Mac tried, but he couldn't do it. I respected him for that. He was trying. The kids were calling him Yellow, and they'd say to me, we don't want that guy, he's Yellow. And I'd say, wait just a minute. That guy is not Yellow. He tried to do the job, but he's just not, he just couldn't do it.

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Just couldn't do it.

• 1:11:43Jocko Willink?

  A Yellow man doesn't go out and try, he quits. Mac won't quit.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Now, this Godinius, he became an officer. He, he married a New Zealand gal. I knew him pretty well.

• 1:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 1:11:57Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so continuing on here. By December, our long sojourn in the front line had taken a big toll. We were wasted by illness, multiple illnesses. We were malnourished and looked it. We went about shirtless, showing scrawny bodies with protruding ribs and vertebrae and sallow skin stretched over, stretched tautly over them. Our faces were drawn and angular beneath scraggly beards, and our eyes were recessed in their orbits. We didn't have a change of clothes during that period, and we became unimaginably filthy. We looked scary and menacing and pitiful all at once.

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  See, a lot of us came down with yellow jaundice. See, that, that would deliberate, that would do you in too, you know?

• 1:12:34Jocko Willink?

  The constant threat of enemy attack punctuated by intermittent bounce of actual fighting was tremendously stressful. It seemed that much of the time we were either waiting to be attacked, or being attacked, or attacking the enemy ourselves. Or, we were just sitting around trying to get some rest, but feeling cruddy because we were sick and we always were tensed up, thinking and worrying about our next combat action. Depending on how your day was going, such concerns might be in the forefront of your thoughts, incessant and acute, making you all edgy and fretful. Or they might be buried deep, usually they were somewhere in between. But they were always present, in your head and on your mind, you could never fully let go or get rid of them. The unrelenting mental strain, not to do, not to mention the physical dangers that caused it, made us twitchier each passing day.

• 1:13:19Speaker 01

  You know, during the times that we were, we were back, behind the front lines, and nobody's shooting at you, oh my, this is wonderful, nobody's shooting at me!

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  And all that stress, you know?

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:35Speaker 01

  Now you, now you don't have to worry about it.

• 1:13:37Jocko Willink?

  Now, what about the fact that, even though no one's shooting at you right now, you have time to sit there and think about the fact that you're gonna go again, and the enemy's gonna attack you?

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  You know, somebody pulled a, pulled a, it was a stupid thing, threw a hand grenade dummy into a tent. Everybody just took off, "Why would a guy do that? I don't understand." He thought it was funny.

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I'll tell you why I'm laughing when you tell that story, because one of my friends, one of my good friends, a guy by the name of Leif Babin, who I work with and wrote a book with, wrote two books with him actually. He did that to a couple of his guys, took a grenade, we were in Ramadi, and he took a grenade, the pin was in it, it was still taped up, but it was a real grenade, and there was a couple guys sitting in a room talking, and he, and he just opened the door and rolled the grenade in there.

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  Oh!

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  We were just talking about it the other day.

• 1:14:30Speaker 01

  Stupid!

• 1:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh yeah, we were just talking about, the reason I remember, we were just talking about it yesterday, and he goes, "Yeah, that wasn't smart." It wasn't smart, because who knows what's gonna happen? I mean, those guys, if they had guns, they might have shot, I mean, there's all kinds of crazy things that could have happened.

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  You may get, may later on get in here, but also in our last drive on Guadalcanal, I had a, had an enemy grenade, fell right down by my legs, and I tried to kick it away and it hit something, came right on back, it was a dud!

• 1:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Here's Murdoch talking about Guadalcanal and why, what made it, what made it Guadalcanal? He said each campaign was different, each with different problems. Taro was the worst in terms of fighting, but the battle lasted only three days. Right after it, we, right after it ended, we were taken off Beishio and sent back to Hawaii. But on Guadalcanal, we were on Guadalcanal for three months. For the amount of time we were there, we didn't do all that much fighting, but there were other things. The sickness and the heat especially, the living conditions were the worst on Guadalcanal.

• 1:15:41Jocko Willink?

  And then you say as bad as it was, it was worse for the Japanese, much worse. Their condition was no mystery for us. As December gave way to January, there was a noticeable drop off in enemy activity that we correctly ascribed to their deteriorating health. Their nocturnal probes dwindled and in time virtually ceased altogether. They simply lacked the energy to come at us in the night.

• 1:16:01Speaker 01

  They eventually got, took 10,000 troops off. We, we didn't know that they had done that.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  After a while, they didn't even bother to yell at us. They rarely achieved success when they did attack. In battle, we found, we had, as we've been told on Samoa, the Japanese made the same mistakes over and over. For instance, they would commit their units to battle as they became available, instead of holding them back and massing them for a single powerful blow. And they would keep coming in small, coming at us until they were killed, primarily by artillery. The carnage was sickening even to us. We, and we couldn't understand why they never seemed to learn from their experiences and make the necessary adjustments.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  One, one thing that was wrong with their strategy that they, they would attack and there was, there was no command to change, uh, he gonna go to flank or something like that. They just keep coming, keep coming till they're all killed.

• 1:16:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's a lack of leadership and maneuver warfare, right?

• 1:16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, no maneuver, no maneuver at all.

• 1:16:59Jocko Willink?

  No maneuver, just hey, we're going forward, we're gonna do a frontal assault. And they would just get killed, get mowed down. And that happened time and time again.

• 1:17:06Speaker 01

  And here we are though, coming into, into Tarawa, the same situation. We, we had no, no way to maneuver or anything. They'd just keep going into, facing heavy machine gun fire, just like the Japanese did.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  The Japanese thought their indomitable will would provide them with the margin for victory. It did not occur to them, or they could not acknowledge that the Marines and soldiers they were battling were equally indomitable and in the end victorious.

• 1:17:35Speaker 01

  They had so easy on moving all down through the, through the, the East Indies and all that. And it's just, everything just, just faded away and they just kept going, no problem at all.

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  And then they met American forces.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  So then, so this is, this is, this is the turning point, Guadalcanal, where they, that's where they, we turned the tables, now we're, now we're in the offensive.

• 1:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so, January 10th, you begin going on offense.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  There you go, there you go.

• 1:18:04Jocko Willink?

  Eighth Marines, including the 1/8, the 2/8, and the 3/8, I worked with the 3/8, a bunch of Ramadi, they were outstanding.

• 1:18:10Speaker 01

  You did, huh?

• 1:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Our mission orders issued by General Patch were to attack and destroy the Japanese forces remaining on Guadalcanal.

• 1:18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:23Jocko Willink?

  We, we moved up and I'm just reading, and I always have to mention this, I'm obviously not reading this whole book. I could read this whole book. I, I want to read this whole book because the book is outstanding, but I'm jumping around, so if it seems a little bit scattered, it's because I'm jumping from, I'm skipping over big chunks that you're telling with great detail. And, and this is, this is one of the most outstanding accounts that exists of these campaigns. So, just know that. You have to buy the book. The book is called Faithful Warriors. So here we go. We moved, we pushed on. We moved up and over Hill 82. The hill and jungle draws below were infested with Japanese. My men saw a single Japanese soldier and opened fire, killing him instantly.

• 1:19:07Jocko Willink?

  I collected some personal effects from his body, a diary, a lock of hair, a first aid kit, a photograph of a group of soldiers, and a thousand stitch belt, which was a piece of cloth embroidered with a thousand stitches by well-wishers that he carried for good luck.

• 1:19:21Speaker 01

  Now, I sent a lot of this stuff that we took off of the dead, home to Japan, to their, to their families.

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Eventually.

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Eventually, and we'll probably get into a little bit, but the, I received a letter from the brother of one of these soldiers, just beautifully done calligraphy, you know?

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, so you you held on to this stuff and eventually figured out who this guy was.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  And I did that because we we were asked to talk to a Japanese in Los Angeles. There's a Japanese Japanese area there. And the the priest there suggested I do that. He couldn't speak any English, but through the translation, I knew that that's what he had to do. And so we sent it to the to the relatives of Phil that I worked with at North American Aviation. And his wife's family were Honda, which is a Honda car. And so we sent it to one of one of her cousins. And when they they came to play baseball in this country after the war, and they lost.

• 1:20:26Speaker 01

  So they had lost face, so to speak. So they wanted to go back with something. So they took this, all of these items that I had taken off of these soldiers that we're talking about here. And they put it in a white box, strung around their neck. As they got, as they landed in Hawaii, a lot of Buddhist priests were there, meet the plane. When they got to Tokyo, oh, a big thing, always picked up. And my name got all over, all over Japan, about over that. It's incredible.

• 1:21:01Jocko Willink?

  What were you thinking about at the time? I mean, at the time, you couldn't have been thinking about that, all that was gonna happen.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  You know, and also, you know, where we we were asked to attend this Buddhist ceremony. And my family had made three daughters with me. And here, we're the first ones in line. And you were supposed to, you're supposed to, you had to carry these incense. And there's a gong and goes on and a whole bunch of stuff. We led that procession as it went by. Then after that, we we had a get together, sukiyaki and and beer and the parsnage.

• 1:21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'd be real careful what I said, you know, I had my friend as a translator be real careful, they didn't call them Japs and all that. Yeah, and I said, how come, how come they're so interested in what happened here? He said, well, these, these people from northern part of Japan, and they had no clue of what had happened to their soldiers way down south.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 1:22:01Speaker 01

  See?

• 1:22:02Jocko Willink?

  Wow. Um, yeah, because they didn't have enough witnesses living after the war to explain.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  No, and then on, on Saipan, and I was talking to Donnie Edwards, we were there at, you've been there, you know where this, what is called Suicide Cliff.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Well, there, there's one monument there, that were, that were paid for by children raising the money, and one of them faces south kneeling, a mother mourning over her lost, her sons lost in the South Pacific. The other was facing the Suicide Cliff mourning the children that were carried over the cliff to be killed. And what is happening was, they're just putting in the new monument, they hadn't, don't have the new captions yet, and I was explaining to Donnie what that, what that was all about. And it's on, it's, it's on, um, uh, Instagram.

• 1:22:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Go to Instagram, and you go to Best Defense Foundation, and it'll tell about it.

• 1:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:04Jocko Willink?

  So even though you're gathering souvenirs, this is not over yet. And here you go, the fighting was constant but not everywhere at the same time. One squad might be resting while nearby another was engaged with a sharp fight.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:23:18Jocko Willink?

  With a sniper or machine gun nest, and all up and down the line, automatic weapons rattled, rifles cracked, grenades popped, the air carried the stringent smell of cordite. In places where there had been a lot of firing, the atmosphere was hazy with gun smoke and the smoke of burning foliage. There was a lot of shouting, someone screaming, and the frequent cry, corpsman, corpsman.

• 1:23:38Speaker 01

  Now, this is not a general atmosphere, this, this is certain locations that this is happening.

• 1:23:44Jocko Willink?

  Because?

• 1:23:45Speaker 01

  Not everywhere, you see?

• 1:23:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because, and this is because the Japanese were really depleted at this point.

• 1:23:48Speaker 01

  Pretty much so, yeah, they were, yeah.

• 1:23:51Jocko Willink?

  stretcher bearers, many of them musicians in the division's band.

• 1:23:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Ran around the battlefield, picking up the wounded and carrying them back to battalion aid station.

• 1:24:00Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 1:24:01Jocko Willink?

  So every Marine's a rifleman is what they say.

• 1:24:04Speaker 01

  True, true.

• 1:24:04Jocko Willink?

  And so there's the, there's the band out there.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  They got the band and there's stretcher, stretcher bearers. Yeah.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  14 January, we continued to advance.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  The action much the same as the day before, intermittent clashes with Japanese diehards. Some of the Japanese we came upon blew themselves up in their holes or just sat there and let us kill them with the grenades.

• 1:24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:25Jocko Willink?

  My platoon made good progress. You had a guy named.

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  They're blowing themselves up, a whole hand grenade right here. He had it and kick it off and then stay there and blow himself up right over your heart.

• 1:24:37Jocko Willink?

  So would they try and take Marines with them?

• 1:24:40Speaker 01

  No, well, yeah, they could, but when you get into Saipan, I'll explain there how we, we saw a hundred, over a hundred doing that as we advanced. And they could have shot back at us. They didn't. Instead, they just, we got so close and they blow themselves up. Bang, bang, bang, as we, as we, as we advanced. Incredible.

• 1:25:03Jocko Willink?

  One guy, you lost a guy named Gunner Lund. And you were, and Gunner Lund had kind of a, had a kid that looked up to him.

• 1:25:12Speaker 01

  Yes, you bet.

• 1:25:13Jocko Willink?

  Herschel Willski and you were the one.

• 1:25:15Speaker 01

  And he wrote, he's the one that did some of these illustrations.

• 1:25:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  In, in this one here.

• 1:25:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So Willski, you're the one that has to tell Willski that, you know, his, his.

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  He is no more.

• 1:25:27Jocko Willink?

  He's no more. And here we go. Shortly thereafter, it fell upon me to break the news of Lund's death to Corporal Herschel Willski. Ski, as he was known, was a barman and a squad leader in Lund's platoon.

• 1:25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  He took Lund's death very hard. Gunner Lund was a popular figure and B Company and Old Salt, who was trusted and respected for his courage, competence and common sense, battle wisdom, and loved for his tough, his rough humor and for the obvious and genuine affection and concern he felt for his young charges. Before the war, he had been sea-going Marine, serving on the beloved aircraft, the Lexington. He'd always been smoking a cigar. How he was able to keep himself stocked with stogies on Guadalcanal is anyone's guess. Such are the talents of an old salt. He used to say that after the war, he was gonna buy himself a big shiny Cadillac convertible and ride it around smoking his cigars.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Instead of that, I visited his family after the war. He had a sister that had been to a dance and they couldn't find her anywhere. She was dead in the trunk. They found her body in the trunk of the car, been murdered, and they got this, this same time as hit as when he, the family found out about Lund.

• 1:26:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you said that that was a simple dream for a simple, very good man, a dream never realized. All the kids looked up to Lund, Will Ski in particular. Ski idolized Lund, the gunner was everything to him, a hero, mentor, father figure, older brother and best friend. At first, he refused to believe that Lund had been killed.

• 1:26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:57Jocko Willink?

  "I was just talking to him a few minutes ago," he said. But then the truth sank in, and he became distraught and threw his weapon on the ground. "This damn war," he exclaimed.

• 1:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Ski then announced he was quitting the Marine Corps and quitting the war. Ski meant what he said. He was about to head back to the rear when Murdock arrived on the scene. Murdock calmed Ski down and told him that he just couldn't up and quit, that it would be desertion in the face of the enemy and that he would get in a lot of trouble for it. Murdock spoke softly with him for several minutes in this vein until Ski came to his senses. Ski picked up his weapon and rejoined Third Platoon, and Murdock assumed command of that unit. But Ski was a changed man.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:35Jocko Willink?

  Exchanging one madness for another, he went from being a Marine who did his job and did it well, to being a Marine who did his job with a singular passion. From that day forward, he hated the Japanese with a savage intensity and took it on himself to personally avenge Lund's death, often going off by himself to hunt the enemy. If you were a compassionate man, you might say a prayer for any Japanese soldiers who crossed his path. He always returned eventually, but with little to say about his exploits. He was the quiet type guys like him usually are.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:12Speaker 01

  He was an epitome, epitome of a combat Marine.

• 1:28:17Jocko Willink?

  And so this continues on and then you say this, "And so to the end. My memory of the final days of January offensive is blurry and I find it difficult to remember the details. At reunions, we reminisce about our very limited personnel, personal perspective of the offense and the countless little battles that were fought as we went forward. At that perilous time, we focused primarily on our own concerns about adequate cover for incoming artillery and other life-threatening events in our immediate area. We advanced on a broad front but never in an even line. Some units always moved faster than others depending on the terrain and the resistance they encountered. We went up and down more hills and ridges, up and down, up and down, sometimes fighting and killing the Japanese, sometimes just killing them.

• 1:29:01Jocko Willink?

  End of January, our last week on Guadalcanal, B Company was bivouacked by Henderson Field, awaiting transport off the island. While there, I came down with jaundice and I lost a lot of weight. I would be getting off the island just in time. In the meantime, there were no duties to perform, some of them very un, there's, in the meantime, there were still duties to perform and some of them very unpleasant. One of Murdock's responsibilities was to record the location of the battle site graves on the overlay. It troubled him that the locations couldn't always be specifically pinpointed. So there was no, so there could be no assurance that the bodies would later be found for relocation to permanent cemeteries."

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  Now, regarding those bodies, a year or so ago, the organization that, that locates bodies and gets them buried and all, they're in, they're in Hoi and Honolulu, and they ran out of money. But they were gonna pay for me to go down and help them locate these bodies we're talking about. But the, the guy that, he was, he was a doctorate and he, he says, "I just, I just ran out of legal room, money-wise, couldn't do it."

• 1:30:10Jocko Willink?

  So finally.

• 1:30:11Speaker 01

  This was last year.

• 1:30:12Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, maybe we can raise some money for him.

• 1:30:19Speaker 01

  This was called J-PAC and then announced new name. The problem was they were mis-missed, they were mis-missed. They were mishandling money, they're spending money where they shouldn't have been.

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  So not a lot of it was going on. You probably heard about when the new, when the new Secretary of Defense came in, he, he, he just changed the whole thing around.

• 1:30:45Jocko Willink?

  So we wrap this up, this section on January, on 31 January, the 1-8 and the entire 2nd Regiment boarded the troop transport Crescent City. And then during the first week of February, the Japanese managed to evacuate more than 11,000 troops. A minor triumph that did little to offset the magnitude of their defeat. They lost upward of 25,000 men in Guadalcanal Campaign.

• 1:31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:09Jocko Willink?

  Of these, maybe 1,000 were taken prisoner. Our losses were comparatively small.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  According to Army historians, about 1,600 were killed and 4,245 were wounded. On 9 February, the rest of the 8th Marines left Guadalcanal onboard the troop ship Hunter Liggett at American Legion. That same day, Guadalcanal was declared secure. One way or another, for the living and the dead, the fighting on Guadalcanal was over forever.

• 1:31:42Jocko Willink?

  So. Your, uh, your next chapter here is called Heaven.

• 1:31:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  Because from the hell of Guadalcanal, you went to a place called New Zealand. And this was quite the change for you all, going from Guadalcanal to New Zealand.

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Wow. No longer sweating jungles.

• 1:32:06Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you, you highlight some of the good things about New Zealand and then I, then you get to what apparently is the biggest highlight in New Zealand. It says this, there were girls.

• 1:32:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  Holy smokes.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  And not only that, their men are all gone. Boy, they were, they, they were welcoming us open arms.

• 1:32:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause the, cause their men were over fighting.

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  Cause they were in half, North Africa.

• 1:32:27Jocko Willink?

  Young girls, pretty girls, smiling girls. They were everywhere, lots of them.

• 1:32:31Speaker 01

  My girl, my girlfriend was nineteen and out here I was, I was approaching twenty-three, twenty-two. She's still alive. She's ninety-five now.

• 1:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 1:32:39Speaker 01

  Can you imagine?

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  They stared at us and we stared at them and they smiled at us and we smiled at them. And in many instances, we greet each other and exchange pleasantries and actually converse with them. Even the Casanova's among us had a hard go of it at first. It had been a long time since we had spoken with girls. We were out of practice. We were also gazy is the term you use, staring inward a thousand yards back into our heads, flashing on our thoughts and visions of Guadalcanal had put in there. Our faces, what are you laughing at? Oh, just being New Zealand.

• 1:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, just remembering, yeah.

• 1:33:17Jocko Willink?

  The contrast was immediately apparent and profoundly jarring. We had learned how to handle hell, but heaven would take some getting used to. A board ship, we, we hadn't been aware of our gazy condition. We all seemed normal to each other, but here in this beautiful city, among these wonderful civilized people, among all those pretty girls, it was possible to see how far from normal we were. What would they think of us? They loved us and we loved them right back.

• 1:33:46Jocko Willink?

  So you guys, I mean, you, you, you talk about some of the, uh, things that happened there and some of those adjustments getting into it and, and then the kinda, I guess the kinda mayhem and chaos that you create.

• 1:33:58Speaker 01

  Murdoch himself, he, he, here's one story about where, where he come barging, barging into the owner, the woman owner of the hotel where, where our, where our officers mess, where the

• 1:34:12Speaker 01

  get together was. And it tells about it in there.

• 1:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  But anyway, he comes, he crawled out, crawled, he was drunk, no clothes on, I guess, and crawled along an edge and then wrapped on the window and she opened it up, let him in. He ended up well, the next morning woke up, here's with this older woman and.

• 1:34:34Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, she said something like, you know, good morning. He says, did I have a good time or something like that? And she said, yes, you did. It sounded like he was avoiding her for the rest of the time.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:34:51Jocko Willink?

  All right. To get back to the military side of this, after a few weeks, New Zealand, we started training in earnest. We needed a lot of training, both to get ourselves back into shape and incorporate replacements who were streaming in from the States. Our experience on Guadalcanal provided the template for our training. We built positions on the Japanese model and practiced attacking them. We advanced through wooded areas against simulated sniper attacks. We worked on the use of supporting fires and we worked with tanks. One of the most important changes overall was to give the squad leaders more freedom of action to make decisions in combat. Let them decide on their own how to maneuver their men and move around to envelop an enemy's position.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  On terror, I was like, they had to come. There was no room for maneuver. No, no, no chance to use tanks, speaker.

• 1:35:40Jocko Willink?

  But it's interesting, you know, we, we talk a lot about kind of the principles of combat leadership and one of the most important principles of combat leadership is decentralized command. And that is allowing your subordinate leaders to lead. And that right there.

• 1:35:52Speaker 01

  Even the private, even a private say, come on, guys, let's go. And he pull them together. Let's go.

• 1:35:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that's obviously you're taking that lesson. That's then you say that's a change overall. So you guys, even you all realized, hey, we need our frontline troops to be able to lead.

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mentioned that when I spoke in the Marine Corps League, you know, the Marine Corps Birthday Balls and all that. And I mentioned that leadership aspect. Now you've written books about it too, I know.

• 1:36:20Jocko Willink?

  I have. It's one of the things I talk about all the time. And when I taught leadership inside the SEAL teams, that's one of the main things I needed the, the young troopers to do.

• 1:36:29Speaker 01

  We would have failed. It would have been a disaster if that hadn't happened. Yeah.

• 1:36:35Jocko Willink?

  So, fast forward a bit through the, you talk some more about that training and what it's like in New Zealand and the continues on and then finally, we get to this, "I'm not going to say that we knew we were leaving for good, but many sensed this might be the case. So did everyone in Wellington, the girls especially. Just before our ships cast off again for Hawke's Bay, a number of girls, some hugely pregnant came down to the docks to find out what was going on. Nobody could or would tell them anything. But many had dire premonitions."

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Nobody knew.

• 1:37:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so you guys didn't even know?

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  We didn't have a clue. We thought we were going to another landing exercise.

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  Our ships steamed north past Hawke's Bay and continued on a northerly heading.

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  Kept going, yeah.

• 1:37:15Jocko Willink?

  After a few days at sea, it was announced that we were going to invade the Tarawa Toll in the Gilbert Islands. Maps and sand tables were brought out.

• 1:37:23Speaker 01

  One square mile, one square mile.

• 1:37:27Jocko Willink?

  Our sudden and permanent disappearance from New Zealand was very hard on our Kiwi girlfriends and wives. One day they woke up to find us gone and knew we were headed into battle. Then towards the end of November, they started hearing rumors that a lot of us had been killed. The rumors proved to be true.

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we lost over 1,100 killed and 2,500 wounded in three days, most of in two days.

• 1:37:57Jocko Willink?

  So, you get to Tarawa. And here we are, the Navy promised us a preliminary bombardment that would blow the Japanese and their defenses to kingdom come, leaving the Marines to carry out what would amount to little more than a mopping up operation. During a pre-invasion staff briefing, an admiral announced that it was not the Navy's intention merely to neutralize Basio Island. "Gentlemen," he told the assemblage, "we will obliterate it." This statement was passed on to rank and file and we believed it. At the same briefing, a battleship captain declared, "We are going to bombard at 6,000 yards. We've got so much armor, we're not afraid of anything the Japs can throw back at us."

• 1:38:39Jocko Willink?

  The commander of the 2nd Marine Division, Major General Julian C. Smith, was incensed by the captain's brave words. "Gentlemen," he retorted, "remember one thing, when the Marines land and meet the enemy at Bayonet Point, the only armor a Marine will have is his khaki shirt."

• 1:38:57Jocko Willink?

  It is unbelievable though when you see the bombardment, because you can see film of the bombardment of Taro. I mean, they just-

• 1:39:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looked like it was just obliterated, is right.

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  And I had, I had a situation where my guys in the Battle of Ramadi got caught in a friendly fire situation and-

• 1:39:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. You were there, huh, at Ramadi?

• 1:39:17Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And an army unit that we had called for QRF came in and put about 150 rounds of 50 caliber machine gun fire into the building that my guys were in at a range of about 25 meters. 150 rounds. And you, you would think, anybody that's seen a 50 caliber machine gun, you'd think everyone in that building would be dead. But I had one guy get wounded and it wasn't actually all that bad. And so when you see the, that's why you can never trust that, you know, big bombs are going to actually solve the problem. It doesn't always happen. And this is a classic example of that.

• 1:39:57Speaker 01

  And the main reason that naval gunfire wasn't, wasn't all that effective is that we're just only, you know, land was only about six foot above sea level. So things, most of it was just going over. If it hit there, it's just such a narrow target.

• 1:40:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  And what he should have done is landed on a adjacent island and pounded it with, with mortars or, you know, short range artillery, see?

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  In direct fire.

• 1:40:23Speaker 01

  And that's what they did. And that's what they did in the marshals. It made all the difference in the world.

• 1:40:27Jocko Willink?

  Lesson learned.

• 1:40:28Speaker 01

  And months later.

• 1:40:29Jocko Willink?

  So you say this, "It's tough going right from the start. The Japanese are heavily armed, firmly and deeply entrenched. And as always, they resist fiercely infecting heavy, inflicting heavy casualties on our assault teams. The radio reports start coming in. They're spotty and intermittent, but we get the picture. Encountering heavy resistance, heavy machine gun fire, boats destroyed, units scattered, many casualties. The voices on the loudspeakers enumerate these calamities in measured tones. They sound calm, almost detached. If you, if you didn't know better, you'd think the situation wasn't too terrible. But we knew better. We were all looking at each other thinking some version of, oh, boy, this is bad. This is really bad."

• 1:41:08Jocko Willink?

  The tides, the tides which were supposed to cover the reef to an adequate depth proved uncooperative. The water is too shallow, just inches in, just inches deep in some spots, and always less than needed for the three-foot draft of the landing craft.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  See, the problem was that there was just barely three feet what we require for an LCVP to clear the reef. But, we got hung up with their big guns, their, their big naval guns shooting at our transports. So our transports had to move further out. That means now all the landing craft took a lot longer to get in. In the meantime, the tide was going out. Now, we didn't have three feet.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  Not only that, it was a kind of a tide that was extremely low.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  So you, you were actually part of the reserve element? Is that, is that the right thing to call it, what you were doing?

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  The one, the battalion I'm in was gonna, was supposed to land on the next island up. Instead, hey, oh, we need to right down here. We landed right in the middle where the worst of it was. And here, here we had our guys on the beach. And here, here the enemy was shooting over their head, right at us out there. We couldn't, we couldn't do anything about it.

• 1:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, terrible.

• 1:42:23Jocko Willink?

  So, if, just for folks that don't understand what you just said, you've got Marines on the beach?

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  On the beach, looking at us, watching us being mowed down.

• 1:42:32Jocko Willink?

  And, and you're at sea.

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  And we can't shoot back.

• 1:42:34Jocko Willink?

  You can't shoot because there's friendly forces in between you two. Just, and like you said, the sea level's only, or the altitude's only six feet.

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  And not only that, there was one beached, uh, British, uh, transport, and it was beached, it, it had been run before we landed there, sometime before, about time of Pearl Harbor. It had run up on, on the reef, and, uh, was still there. While the Japanese swam up to it with, with the machine guns, they fired flanking fire right at us.

• 1:43:05Jocko Willink?

  So, all this is happening, and you're in the reserves, and finally you guys are told, "All right, load your boats," which means you guys now know you're going in, and you say here, "We don't know where the brass is sending us yet, but we don't, but we expect to go where the fighting is hottest, and we expect to go soon." We circle and circle in the lagoon. We're standing in the boat, either leaning against the sides or holding on to them for balance. In general, we have a soft ride because the water is mostly still, except for the turbulence caused by all the boats. The turbulence buffets the LCVPs and this movement, combined with the stench of the engine and the nervous tension we all feel, makes many of us sick. Some of the sick men, some of the sick men stick their heads over the sides to retch while others puke into the wooden deck. The men standing next to

• 1:43:50Jocko Willink?

  them just step aside like it's no big deal to get sick, because it really isn't a big deal. When the men, when the sick men finish retching, they straighten up as if nothing had happened. No one thinks the worst of them for it. After a while, depending on how long we're out there in the boat, the deck might be slippery with puke, but that's no big deal either. You can't smell the vomit or anything else for that matter, because the exhaust fumes overpower every other smell.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  Diesel engine, yeah.

• 1:44:15Jocko Willink?

  The minutes go by, lengthening into hours. The hours go by, but we're going nowhere. We're just going around and around. The sounds of battle are muted this far out. We can hear artillery explosions, but not small arms fire. We're all peering over the sides, looking at Bejio, looking at the fires and the smoke and the explosions. It's an awesome sight, a massive smoke and flames. "Holy Moses, look at that," we say. Not for the last time, we ask ourselves how many of the defenders, how the defenders could survive in a place so torn up. It's an irrelevant question, really. Many Japanese have survived, and they're killing a lot of Marines.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  About half of them survived.

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  We know that a lot of our men were killed going in, and we know that the men who did make it ashore are fighting for their lives. We expect we'll have a tough go of it, too. We're apprehensive, who wouldn't be? And we're wondering how we'll behave in combat. I know the new guys are especially concerned with how they'll behave. The great fear, the greatest of fear, is you won't be able to handle it, that you'll turn yellow, that you'll let your buddies down. We fear this much more than we fear getting killed or wounded. One reason for that is no one really thinks he'll be killed or wounded. You never think it's going to happen to you, never. You acknowledge that it could happen to you, that it might happen to you. But the rational part of your brain makes you understand this.

• 1:45:34Jocko Willink?

  But in such circumstances as we now find ourselves, emotion trumps rationality every time. We know we're too young to die. And somehow, in a kind of strange and protective twist of logic and feeling, we figure that because we're too young to die, we certainly won't die. You've got to do a lot of hard thinking to reach this conclusion. However, and because we're all thinking so hard, we're not talking that much. Just as well, the engine is so loud, you can't talk or hear anyone except the guy standing next to you. We wait for the word to begin the assault, but it doesn't come. We continue circling beneath the hot sun, beneath breathing exhaust fumes, staring at the island. We want, we want to know what, for Pete's sake, is happening.

• 1:46:16Jocko Willink?

  We wonder what they're, when they're going to send us in and where they're going to send us. We wonder, gosh, how much longer can it go on like this? A lot longer, it turns out. Nightfall. One moment in the sun, one moment the sun is above the horizon and the sky is bright. Then the sun drops below the horizon in the dark. That's how night comes in the tropics, no twilight.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  This is on the, on the equator, you see.

• 1:46:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, boom, it's gone.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  It's bright one moment, dark the next. Bejio isn't dark, however, Bejio is on fire and the sky above it glowing red. Suddenly, it's morning.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  See, the problem is that the top command thought we'd already landed. And really, there was just a lack, there was, all communications were disrupted.

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  So you guys are out there for?

• 1:47:01Speaker 01

  So they didn't know we're out there still circling, didn't know it.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  How much fuel did those things have? Because you were out there for 20 hours.

• 1:47:07Speaker 01

  Well, 20 hours, yeah. Amazing. That horrible?

• 1:47:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what you say. Suddenly it's morning, the sun pops over the horizon and then there was light. We're still circling, waiting for orders. Spatio is still burning. I was wondering how our boat can carry enough fuel to circle. How long is it? 12, 14, 16 hours? Answer, we float, we were afloat for about 20 hours. Our mouths dry, our muscles stiff, we feel haggard and cruddy. Some guys are sipping from their canteens or nibbling on their rations, although there's not much eating because we just aren't hungry. About 5:0530, the LCVP, LCVP, carrying our battalion commander, Major Lawrence Hayes chugs along up next to our boat, cupping his hands around his mouth and shouting to make himself heard above the noise of the boat engines. He says, "We're going in at Red Beach Two."

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  Oh, no.

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  And what, why was that? Why was that a bad thing?

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  Because we, we knew that that probably, well, some way we knew that that was where they had the hardest time was on that beach.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Still shouting, Major Hayes assures us that Red Two won't be a problem. The Japanese positions on the beach have been eliminated, he tells us, and our landing will be unopposed. You'll probably go in standing up. He actually said that. That's what you said in the book. He actually said that.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  I guess we were completely surprised. Thinking back, we were.

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  None of us really believed we'd go in standing up. Now, not that we think Major Hayes is feeding us a line. He's a good man. He wouldn't do that. But it could be that he has been misinformed. Uninformed is more likely. More like it, totally uninformed. Communications with the units ashore are in disarray and several instances functionally nonexistent. The same goes for communications with General Smith and his staff on the battleship Maryland, the invasion's fleet flagship. This is due in large measure to failure of our radios, which are too fragile to withstand the rigors of amphibious assault. I've got a walkie talkie strapped over my shoulder and it's a hunk of joke, hunk of junk. I can't even communicate with the other boats, which is why Major Hayes

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  had to come by in boat and shout orders to us. Those walkie talkies weren't doing any good.

• 1:49:17Speaker 01

  Now, the officer in charge of Red Two at that time was Colonel Shoup, Lieutenant Colonel Shoup. He became the comrade later on, years later.

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  In any event, we're relieved, the waiting is almost over. The business of riding around in boats is for the birds. We want to get ashore and throw some punches. I'm standing in the bow of our LCVP. Behind me are thirty-two Marines of my platoon, most of them teenagers, most of them new to combat. I look at them and they look at me. I see fresh, boyish faces and wide worried eyes staring out from beneath their brain, their helmet brims. Their helmets all seem a size too big, accentuating their boyish, making them look young as well. Most of them really are. Their helmets jammed down on their heads, the straps pulled tight under their chin. You can wear helmets this way so they don't fall off while you're clamoring down the cargo nets of the troop transport into your boat.

• 1:50:12Jocko Willink?

  The helmet is nothing more than a steel pot, heavy and getting heavier the longer you wear it. If it falls off while you're on that net, it could hit somebody beneath you. Somebody could get hurt. And that's when, and that's not when Marines are supposed to get hurt. Not during the boating phase, as it's called. The phase of the operation when the emphasis is on safety. The getting hurt part, the part where safety is, one might say beside the point, comes later. For us, for me and the men in my boat, that part comes now. Did I say men? Well, I suppose they are. We call them men. We treat them as men. We expect them to act like men. They are, after all, United States Marines. But really, they're kids just out of high school, or not even that. Kids with rifles, true. Kids trained to kill, also true.

• 1:50:57Jocko Willink?

  But kids nevertheless. Just turned seventeen, many of them.

• 1:51:02Jocko Willink?

  To use a term like that has long since fallen into general disuse. They're youths. A state of being between childhood and adulthood. Today's American male exercising a lifestyle choice can often, can and often does loiter for many years in that state. But in the mid nineteen forties, in a world at war, the state of youth tends to pass swiftly and, do I need to say it, violently. The youths, the kids on my boat, have got a lot of growing up to do. Unfortunately, they'll be doing a hefty portion of that growing up in the coming minutes and hours. In that period, far too many will undergrow all the growing up they will ever experience.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  These are the men that went in and I have a Debbie or a Kay written on all the casualties in this picture and roughly half, half are casualties going in.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  In that period, the youths, the kids on my boat have got a lot of growing up to do. Unfortunately, they'll be doing a hefty portion of that growing up in the coming minutes and hours. In that period, many, far too many, will undergo all the growing up they will ever experience. They will transition with almost obscene dispatch from youth to adulthood to the grave. At Bejio, youth won't be served. It'll be served up and consumed, literally, in fire. These youths will be men only briefly and then they will be just a memory forever.

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  All of this sounds as if I'm a grizzled veteran. I am a combat veteran. I fought on Guadalcanal earlier this year, but the fact is I'm just 23 years old, still young, and not all that grizzled in appearance or temperament. Practically speaking, though, I'm the gray beard of this bunch. Same goes for the platoon sergeant who's about my age. We're the tribal elders, the warrior chiefs. I'll lead my boys off the boat and the platoon sergeant standing in the back will make sure they follow, urging them and cajoling them, yelling at them, maybe throwing a few choice cuss words, whatever it takes to get them moving.

• 1:53:24Jocko Willink?

  I'm watching my boys as they watch me. Things begin to happen fast. With the majors LZVP leading the way, our boats break formation, one after the other, and file off to our departure line.

• 1:53:38Jocko Willink?

  is an invisible line about 6,000 yards offshore that runs parallel to the landing beaches. When we get there, our boats are form up all in line abreast, arrayed like a cavalry squadron, waiting for the bugle to sound charge. The coxswain's rev and gun the engines in neutral gear and the boats are rearing and lurching, chomping, chirping at the bit. It's as if the coxswain's are struggling to rein in war horses that can't contain their eagerness for battle. Our boat's engine is blasting, the noise almost painful to the ears. We're pumped up. My men, I and I, I, we're really pumped up. The adrenaline is flowing, surging through us, clutching our weapons, looking over the side of the boat at the island, breathing hard, thinking fast, focused on the task at hand, steeling ourselves, getting ready, ready, ready. Here we go.

• 1:54:23Jocko Willink?

  The signal is given. Our coxswain shifts out of neutral, pushes the throttle wide open.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  That's a chartered light brigade, the thinking right there.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  And repeating, repeating verbs as well, you see?

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I see.

• 1:54:39Speaker 01

  Ready, ready?

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Ready, ready, ready.

• 1:54:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:43Jocko Willink?

  Little literary.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:45Jocko Willink?

  A little, little, literary.

• 1:54:46Speaker 01

  So that's, that's, that's, that's the thinking behind it.

• 1:54:48Jocko Willink?

  Tip of the hat.

• 1:54:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:50Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. The signal is given. Our coxswain shifts out of neutral, pushes the throttle wide open, the engine bellows, belches, belches smoke, the stern dips, the men in the boat rock back slightly as the boat leaps forward. Now we're barreling toward the island. Our boat, all the boats, 600 men, more or less of the first battalion, eighth Marines, water churning, boiling behind the boat. We're bucketing and bouncing, bulging ahead with our squared off bow, muscling the water aside. The boat is throwing spray, soaking us, and we're getting closer, closer to the island. We're about 800 yards from the shore, when zip, zip, zip, we hear tiny objects flying past, and those aren't hornets, boys, they're bullets.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  We're in the range of the Japanese machine guns, and good gosh, they're shooting at us. We find this interesting, bullets zipping by, splatting on the water surface, splash, splat here, splat there, splats to the left and right, splats in front of us. Look, by golly, there's some enemy fire hitting right over there. Look over there. That's me talking, that's all of us talking, talking and pointing at the impact circles in the water, little splats, little dots where bullets hit, people shooting at us, fascinating.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Realizing that we could get our heads shot off, we ducked down into the boat. More bullets splatting into the water, but none hit our LCVP. We tell ourselves that those are, that most are 7.7mm slugs, which is what your basic light Japanese machine gun fires and are nothing really much to worry about because they're too small to pierce even the thin-skinned Higgins boat. That's what we tell ourselves, all right, but we really don't believe it. We know good and well that the Japanese are also shooting at us with heavier automatic weapons. Big 13mm machine guns and the even bigger dual-purpose anti-boat, anti-aircraft guns,

• 1:56:39Jocko Willink?

  which range in size from 37mm to 77mm, and their lobbing shells from 70mm mountain howitzers. These weapons can and do inflict considerable damage on our assault teams, killing and wounding hundreds of them, disabling or destroying many Amtraks and LCVPs. They're not my chief concern, however, and never mind that they might at any second blow us to eternity. What really bugs me is being hunkered down in this boat where I can't see anything. I can't see where we are, where we're going, where we should be. I can't observe the enemy fire, engage resistance we're likely to encounter. I feel as if I'm going into battle blindfolded. This really stinks. How can I do my job if I can't see anything?

• 1:57:22Jocko Willink?

  How can I be sure the Coxon is taking us to the right place? My men, what are they thinking? They're watching me, watching to see how I'm bearing up. Well, I'm watching them too, and for the same reason. They look okay. Check that, they look grim and resigned, but that's good. Grim and resigned look means they've more or less accepted the situation, which is also good because the situation isn't going to change unless it changes for the worse. This whole thing is on the rails. It's a runaway train and there's nothing going to stop it now. If you know this, if you accept it, you can keep your fear under control. And if you can keep your fear under control, you'll do your job. You won't let your buddies down.

• 1:58:05Jocko Willink?

  So we're doing fine, relatively speaking. The boat is racing toward the shore when "crang", scraping bottom, metal grinding on coral, it abruptly stops. We're thrown forward cursing, "We've run aground." All along the reef it's the same, boats grinding to a halt on Batio's fringing reef. I think, "What the heck? The tide is supposed to be up, the water deep enough to allow the LCVPs to clear the reef. We're 600 yards from the shore, 600 long yards. This just cannot be." Wrong. It can be. It is. Though we're not aware of it, we're victims of the same disagreeable tidal conditions that fouled up yesterday's landings. "This is as far as we go," are Cox and Yells.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  "We're going to unload." His passengers are not happy. There are exclamations of astonishment and protest. "Oh shit, you gotta be kidding." But he's not kidding. "Yeah, this is as far as we go," he repeats. "We're hung up, we've hit the reef, you gotta get out here." Then he works the controls that release the cables that hold the ramp up. The cables which are still strung along the sides of the hull unwind with a metallic rasp. The ramp screeches as it opens, drops, splashes into the water. And there before us is Batio in all its hideous glory. Not to exaggerate or overdramatize, but it is a scene from hell. I mean, one second we're looking at this slab of a metal ramp,

• 1:59:33Jocko Willink?

  then the ramp drops and we're looking at an inferno. Fire and smoke fill our frame of vision. Framed by the sides and the bottom of the boat. Orange fire, red fire, and black, black smoke. The fire is shooting up, the smoke is roiling, curling, climbing is fast and high. The sky isn't high enough to contain it. You'd think we were looking at a volcano being born. You wonder what could produce so much smoke. Surely by now, everything on Bejio that can burned, has burned. So where is all that smoke coming from? From the bowels of the earth, it would seem. From somewhere deep underground, under the ocean, from the ever blazing furnaces of the world. And let's not forget the explosions.

• 2:00:16Jocko Willink?

  There are a lot of them, explosions here, there, everywhere. Fire and fireballs, tongues of flame, crimson and yellow flashes in the smoke. The time is 0615 and some 600 Marines are about to be launched, or rather, launched themselves at Bejio, code-named Helen. I'm at the front of the boat, the lieutenant, the platoon leader. Time for me to lead. A few seconds go by, I was, a few seconds ago, I was deploying the limited protection offered by the thin metal ramp. Now I'm deploying the lack of that limited protection. It was, after all, better than nothing, which is what I've got now. I kind of feel sick, and I'm thinking, God, why am I in this mess? What am I doing here?

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  But I'm resigned to the situation, I've got to ride it out, no matter what happens. No turning back now.

• 2:01:10Jocko Willink?

  So the ramp hits the water and I run down the ramp, clutching my M1 carbine, waving my guys forward, shouting, "Let's go!" I sense that my men are hesitating, but I pay no attention to them. I jump into the water, not knowing how deep it'll be, thinking that I might jump into a shell hole and go all the way under. But I land on coral and sand, solid footing, that's only thigh-deep. What a relief! And the water feels good, that incredibly is my first thought, the water feels good. It's calm and warm like bathwater, almost soothing, a pleasant contrast to the still-cool morning air. It's murky, though, sand and coral all stirred up beneath the surface. None of that crystalline purity that comes to mind when you picture a tropical lagoon. War comes to paradise and literally fouls it up.

• 2:01:56Jocko Willink?

  I look shoreward, only 600 yards to go.

• 2:02:04Speaker 01

  Now, the fellow that reached down and pulled me up over the ramp here a few months ago, we ran across a photograph of him, and what he looked like, and a little bit of reference to his family, but we never made any contact. Now, this is as of, within six months or so ago.

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  Wow. So, this is...

• 2:02:36Speaker 01

  And nobody else I talked to really knew who this guy was. He was new to the outfit. He was a sergeant, he was new. But nobody knew him at reunions, didn't know him.

• 2:02:49Jocko Willink?

  So, you look out, there's 600 yards to go.

• 2:02:52Speaker 01

  And then, as he and I were being lifted up by the transport, side by side in a basket, and just as we were, okay, just brought up from the landing boat, in this basket, taken, risen up to the transport. And I made a comment, says, "Looks like we made it." His comment was, "You've made it. You've made it." And then he died.

• 2:03:25Jocko Willink?

  So, you look down, going back to this point when the ramp actually opens, and you see you've got 600 yards to go, and just nothing but machine gun fire. And as you said earlier, the Japanese, you'd watch them storm forward without any ability to maneuver, just only thing to do is assault. And now, here you are

• 2:03:45Speaker 01

  We had no maneuver either.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  In the exact same situation.

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Yep. We're in the receiving end, completely at their mercy.

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  You say here, 600 yards, six football fields, just under a third of a mile. If you run that distance on dry land, unencumbered and unimposed, you'll be gasping at the finish line. I don't care what kind of shape you're in. We're in water, and we're wearing and carrying 60 pounds or more of gear, and the Japanese are ripping us apart. They've got an absolutely clear field of fire, and we have to walk straight into it.

• 2:04:17Speaker 01

  When I returned, and I looked, I went clear out there where I was hit, and walked in, and I saw remains of old carbines and so on, down in the sand.

• 2:04:30Jocko Willink?

  We've got to walk, not run, because we're in the water, remember? Walk slowly because we can't run. We can't even walk fast. The Marines are the world's experts in amphibious warfare. The Corps has been training for the past two decades to assault and establish a beachhead on a hostile shore. It has developed complex doctrines to guide us in such endeavors. At Bejio on 21 November 1943, all that training and doctrine doctrine has come to this. We step out of our LCVPs into shallow water and walk slowly across 600 yards with absolutely no cover whatsoever to make a frontal assault on heavily fortified and defended enemy positions.

• 2:05:10Speaker 01

  On my website, you just go to it by my name, just Dean Lad. There is a poem in there called Curtains of Fire. And it goes in a great detail, similar kind of words, but done done a little differently. And it's, it's so that's where that's where it's all spilled out.

• 2:05:34Jocko Willink?

  You say some training and some doctrine that they've been working on, that's your quote. We cannot believe the volume of fire that's coming from the island. The air is just filled with bullets. We can't see them. But we can see where they hit, splat, splat, splat, like raindrops dotting the water. Dot pattern sweeping back and forth across our line. Curtains, a curtain of fire, it's called, curtain of fire passing over us, through us.

• 2:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:59Jocko Willink?

  I realize, oh, my God, the Japanese have got this reef zeroed in. Which means they don't even have to aim their machine guns. They just lock the guns to a predetermined setting and traverse the barrel left and right, left and right.

• 2:06:11Speaker 01

  Just along the reef.

• 2:06:13Jocko Willink?

  Like shooting a fish in a barrel.

• 2:06:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:06:16Jocko Willink?

  Major Hayes was right. He said we'd be going in standing up, and that's what we're doing. Not that we want to. There's no other way, no place to run, no place to hide. Some men crouch in the water. They watch the bullet patterns, the curtains, trying to figure out when the curtain will sweep over them. It's all a matter of timing. They'll duck underwater at the right moment to avoid getting shot. It would be a good plan if only there were two, if only there were one or two machine guns firing at them. But there are many, many machine guns firing, creating multiple curtains that meet and intermingle and overlap and crisscross.

• 2:06:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:48Jocko Willink?

  Bullets are flying every which way. Worse, the guns are aimed to fire just inches above the surface. So if you crouch with your head just above the water, you're likely to get your head drilled. Might as well stand up. That way you'll get shot in the chest or stomach, which is usually fatal, instead of to the head, which is almost always fatal. Also, if you're crouching in the water, you're not moving. And if you're not moving, you're a stationary target, and you're easier to shoot. You have to keep moving. You have to get to shore. Get ashore or die.

• 2:07:19Speaker 01

  And the whole thing, orders were, don't stop to help anybody. Everybody's going to get killed. Just you get yourself in. My men that stopped to help me violated those orders. And I told them, "Don't wait for me. Go on." No, they stuck around.

• 2:07:39Jocko Willink?

  Walking straight into curtains of machine gun fire is not something that comes naturally. Your instincts oppose it. Every fiber of your being being seems screams in protest, resisting, telling you, "No way in hell am I going to do that."

• 2:07:55Jocko Willink?

  That's why, when I glance over my shoulder to see how my men are doing, I see that I haven't, that many haven't left the boat. A few, most likely those that are just next to me in the boat, are in the water, but the others are bunched up at the top of the ramp, all tensed up to take the plunge, but hesitating, unable to make themselves move. I can't blame themselves for hanging back, but I can't allow it. For one thing, they make a big fat target standing. They're crowded together at the front of the boat. They've got to get into the water and disperse before the Japanese machine guns find them and wipe them out with a couple well-placed bursts. But more important, they've got a job to do. They've got to get off the boat, get ashore, and fight and kill Japanese. I gesture at them and shout, "Come on, guys. Let's go. Get moving. Move out."

• 2:08:38Jocko Willink?

  They obey me. They get moving. They're good men, the best. They charge down the ramp, jump feet-first in the water, start wading toward the shore. And that's when the slaughter really begins. Right away, the men around me, my men, are taking hits and falling. I'm very aware of this. I'm hearing cries for help, cries for corpsmen. The wounded are calling out, "Corpsmen, corpsmen, I'm hit. I'm hit. Over here." They're calling out as loud as they can. I see men going under, often for the last time. What do I do? I keep moving forward, that's what. Cries for help everywhere, and I ignore them. I have to. You get hurt, you get hit, you just have to keep going. You have to cope with it yourself. Do the best you can. Hope for the best. The sounds of battle are everywhere.

• 2:09:24Jocko Willink?

  There are those sweeping, slashing curtains of fire, dozens of machine guns rattling, a cacophony of staccato hammering. Artillery shells exploding in the water, splashing, throwing up whooshing geysers of water and human body parts. And most especially, most memorably, the shouts and screams of the wounded and the dying, "Oh God, I'm hit, corpsman, over here, corpsman, help me, help me, please." Men are dropping everywhere to the left and right of me, falling and sinking into the water, going under. Some men don't cry out, hardly make a sound when they're hit. The bullet or bullets thump into them, they grunt and they're gone. We're not permitted to help them. The corpsman can come to their aid, but not the rest of us.

• 2:10:09Jocko Willink?

  Our orders are to move on, to get to shore as fast as we can. If we stop to help the wounded, we'll get shot too, and we won't make it to the beach where we're needed. So we keep waiting forward. My men, the men from other boats, the entire battalion, what's left of it, struggling through the water, holding their rifles over their heads, pushing through toward the beach and into the teeth of all that inflating gunfire. Their courage is incredible. That word only begins to describe it.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  Inflating from that beach to British transport or ship.

• 2:10:44Jocko Willink?

  Crossfire, you guys are in.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:48Jocko Willink?

  Shells exploding, whooshing geysers, machine guns rattling, splat, splat, splat, those little dots in the water, thousands of them, moving this way and that. A bullet hits four feet to my right, splat, splat, then bullets hit three feet, two foot, one foot to my right. Sure do hope they skip over me, and they do, this time. Splat, they begin hitting to my left, one foot, two foot, three foot, and so on. I got lucky, I literally dodged a bullet, several bullets. How long will my luck hold? I can't see any muzzle flashes from the enemy guns. The Japanese are invisible, just like their bullets. We're being slaughtered by an invisible force, nothing to see, nothing to shoot at. Not that we would be shooting if we could see them. You don't stand in open water, shooting at the enemy. You get yourself to the beach, you take cover, and then you start shooting.

• 2:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Anyway, my weapon isn't good for shooting at long and medium ranges. For that matter, it's not much good at close range either. It's an M1 carbine, a pathetic excuse for a firearm, a weakling with a weakling's punch. I'm holding it at port arms across my chest as I wade through the water. Maybe there'll be a stop, maybe there'll be a, maybe it will stop a bullet that would otherwise kill me.

• 2:11:55Jocko Willink?

  That's about all the good it can do me. I walk on pushing forward, straining to move faster, the water dragging at my thighs. No one ever set a speed rucker, record, running in thigh-deep water. I've gone about 100 yards, only 500 yards to go. We're taking fire from the front, from both flanks, from the rear.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  The rear, what the hell? And that's what you talk about, that's the, that's the, uh, sunken ship that's out there and there's Japanese on there.

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  Our planes are, now our planes are coming in and strafing. And we wonder, what is going on to this, when they were, they were strafing that ship?

• 2:12:37Jocko Willink?

  I return to the task at hand, keep moving to the shore. How long has this been going on? How long I've been out here in the water? I can't say, I have no sense of time. Everything is moving in slow motion, seconds seem to last minutes, minutes seem to last hours. It just keeps going on and on, every moment is intense, filled with intense thoughts, emotions, actions. I'm thinking, how can I protect myself? How can I protect my men? Someone screams, another one of my men is hit, and another, and another. Help, corpsmen! Some are killed outright, some are wounded, some are, well, it's hard to say. Some go quietly, some noisily, they fall back in the water, they slip under the water. Some flail in the water in their pain and panic, howling and shouting. I keep moving.

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  My adrenaline is flowing like an electric current through me, allowing me to do things I wouldn't normally and shouldn't normally do. If I stopped to think about what I'm doing, I'd freeze up. I try to track the bullets, the movement and patterns of the enemy's traversing fire. The bullets impact start to my left, to my right, the bullet sweeping back and forth. I see no pattern, or rather, I see too many patterns. Splat, splat, splat, everywhere. It's like the enemy throwing thousands and thousands of stones at us. A pattern of splats in the water comes towards me from the right, sweeps. Past me, continues to the left. I don't hear the crack of the bullets as they zip by at supersonic speed. That's the problem. They're not zipping past us, they're hitting us. They've got our range. I'm in the impact zone. I have to get through it or die. I turn to look back

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  at my men. Let's go, I call out for the umpteenth time. I turn, facing the shore. Then, finally, it happens. A sickening splat, like an inner tube being snapped across my abdomen, slapping my bare stomach. A sharp, stinging sensation. I'm hit, I hear myself say. A bullet has struck me, nearly dead center below the navel, piercing me above the waterline. I'm gutshot, one of the worst wounds of all. Oh, God.

• 2:14:32Jocko Willink?

  I've probably been hit by a small caliber machine gun bullet fired from straight ahead on the beach. It didn't make much of an impact, not long enough to knock me off my feet or even stagger me. Later, I would learn it tore right through my body, piercing my intestines, bladder-

• 2:14:45Speaker 01

  Thank goodness it didn't hit a bone. Zena didn't.

• 2:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so it pierced your intestines, bladder, and sacrum just before-

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  And it missed, and it exited, missing my spinal nerve by a quarter of an inch.

• 2:15:03Jocko Willink?

  As it is, I'll probably die in a few minutes. I'm scared. I think, my gosh, this is it. If it happens that you get shot and you don't know how bad the wound, it often happens that you get shot and you don't know how bad the wound is. But when you're hit where I was hit, you know it's bad. It's a gut wound, and you know it's a pretty sure thing you're not gonna make it. Very few people survive gut wounds, even in the best of circumstances. I'm in what are arguably the worst of circumstances. If I had been shot on dry land, I might be able to crawl to an aid station, or my buddies might have patched me up. But I'm in a lagoon, so there can be no crawling, and my buddies are forbidden to help me. It goes without saying that there are no aid stations close by. I can try to reach our LCVPs on the reef

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  a hundred yards behind me, but I probably won't make it. I'm dying, is why.

• 2:15:54Jocko Willink?

  I dumped my gear into the water. Off goes my pack, my helmet, my webbing, the walkie talkie slung over my shoulder. Goodbye M1 carbine, into the drink you go, never a shot fired in anger. It takes just seconds for me to shuck my equipment. In those seconds, I lose most of my strength. After a few more seconds, I'm almost too weak to stand. It happens that fast. The energy is draining out of me. I'm going into shock. The weakness doesn't paralyze me and it doesn't come from any place in particular. It's an overall sort of feeling that makes me go heavy and limp. I'm in pain, but it's not too bad. Not yet, and I'm not bleeding very much either, but I'm slipping away, no doubt about it. My biggest worry now is that I'll collapse, sink beneath the surface and drown.

• 2:16:36Jocko Willink?

  All I want to do is keep my head above water so I won't drown before I die from the bullet that reamed through me. I know this isn't rational. What difference does it make how I die? Drowning or dying from getting my innards scrambled by a bullet? Either way, I'm a goner and soon. But I'm not thinking rationally. I'm thinking I've got to keep my head above water, period. Maybe 10 seconds have passed since I got shot. That is all. In that time, the man closest to me, PFC Thomas F. Sullivan, has hastened to my side. Lieutenant, where are you hit? He asks. I tell him. He pulls up my dungaree jacket, checks my wound. Sullivan is the platoon's eight ball, a nice guy, just a teenager, but he's got a wild streak. He's always getting into trouble.

• 2:17:19Jocko Willink?

  You can bet dollars to donuts when he goes on liberty, he'll raise the dickens, get arrested and afterwards spend a few days in the brig as punishment. This happened in New Zealand before we left for Tarawa. This happens everywhere we go. It's standard operating procedure for Sullivan. You can put, you can count on him to kick up a row to break the rules.

• 2:17:38Speaker 01

  I never did locate him afterwards. I tried to, I never could. I know he survived the war.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he definitely survived?

• 2:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:46Jocko Willink?

  And you're happy that right now, he's the kind of guy that's rebellious because he's disobeying the orders, which the orders are, you keep going. And he looks at you and says, no.

• 2:17:55Speaker 01

  You know, I thought it was a goner, so why, why have somebody else die trying to help me?

• 2:18:03Jocko Willink?

  Another guy joins him, PFC Duffy. Also a member of my platoon and also a team, a kid who doesn't know how to follow orders.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  When I returned this last time, I, I found out where he was buried.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Duffy?

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:18:21Jocko Willink?

  You even say you'd think you'd be happy that these guys were staying with you, but you're actually thinking, which is what you just said.

• 2:18:27Speaker 01

  They were disobeying orders and they were gonna lose their lives too.

• 2:18:32Jocko Willink?

  And finally, they say, "We're staying with you." "Where do you want us to take you, to the beach or to the boat?" And you opt for the boat.

• 2:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Takes about 10 minutes to reach the nearest LCVP. The boat's crowded with other wounded Marines. Other wounded men are being dragged to the boat by their buddies. Evidently Sullivan and Duffy weren't the only ones who ignored the order to ignore the wounded. The wounded men and the rescuers are clustered in front of the ramp, which is about three quarters raised. One by one, the wounded men are half pushed, half flung over the top of the ramp, after which they roll down onto the deck. My turn comes. The man next to me is that big fellow with the ravaged face. His wound is terrible, worse than mine. I motion for him to go before me. He is boosted up to the top of the ramp. Sullivan lifts me up. I'm groaning like mad. The pain is getting worse. I'm really hurting really bad now. My helpers can't quite get me over the top.

• 2:19:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm limp and heavy, a bulky sack of flesh and bone with a hole in it, and they just can't manage to raise me high enough. That's when the Marine with the ravaged face performs his life-saving deed, one-arming me into the boat. How did he do that? He must be in torment from his wound, but that didn't stop him from helping me.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  I tumble, groaning down onto the dock alongside the man with the ravaged face. The deck is covered with the maimed and wounded men, their bodies bandaged and bloody, many writhing in pain, many just groaning, just like me. Another wounded man is taken aboard. The ramp is then closed and the boat begins to move. The coxswain, aware that our lives are hanging in the balance, opens the throttle wide, and soon we're going full tilt, racing through the channel in the barrier reef toward the Sheridan.

• 2:20:19Jocko Willink?

  This description, I think, is the best description I've ever heard of that kind of combat.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, you take, uh, Steven Weinberger, he is, he's incredible. He does a lot of writing. Uh, see, he worked with, uh, the guy headed up the Chicago Tribune. He worked with them regarding the, uh, Army unit that was, uh, in, in World War II. And then he wrote, and then he wrote this about the, uh, about the Polish woman that was in the, uh, Jewish woman. That was, that was, uh, survived the, uh,

• 2:20:57Speaker 01

  the time that they were almost killed. It's incredible.

• 2:21:02Jocko Willink?

  So that's your, that, that's your, that's the end of Tarawa battle for you. Lasted what, 20 minutes? Well, I guess two, I guess 20 hours and 20 minutes, because you did the first 20 hours circling around.

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  And you give a great account from all the people that, you know, that were there, that got interviewed.

• 2:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Dick Stein, he's, he's pushing in the, in the fighting at, at Tarawa. It's, it's really all taking place at this seawall.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  He later on, later on, he was in the motorcycle officer in LA. And, uh, he'd, he'd been in, been in accidents and shot at, hospitalized 20 times.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh.

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:59Jocko Willink?

  These guys getting ashore, a few, a few seconds later, Dick steps ashore. This is what, this now, you're being, you're being, you know, you're being loaded down the Sheraton. Momentarily loaded, elated, he said to himself, well, they ain't gonna get me now. Then he looked around and his elation evaporated. Nearby, lay a dead Marine with a Japanese bayonet protruding from his chest and three dead Japanese soldiers sprawled around him. Dead bodies were everywhere, floating in the water, piling up at the waterline, strewn about the beach. Guys from the 2nd Marines who had landed the day before, guys from the 8th Marines too, and many Japanese. The beach was strewn with rifles as well as bodies and he took one off of a dead Marine and took the man's ammo clips as well. Now he could fight back.

• 2:22:43Jocko Willink?

  And then another guy named Hester. Hester collected his men and led them back to the seawall. They found Murdoch.

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  He's a perfect example of taking leadership, this Hester.

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  Hester?

• 2:22:51Speaker 01

  Called Big Hester. Yeah.

• 2:22:53Jocko Willink?

  What happened with him?

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  Well, he's able to gather people together and hey, let's go, you know?

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Speaker 01

  So that's, that's the guy is, now, how much more do I say about him?

• 2:23:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I mean, you.

• 2:23:06Speaker 01

  There were two brothers. One brother was killed. His younger brother was killed on, on the Guadalcanal about the time when I almost got killed.

• 2:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, you start talking here about him and him, Hester, and then Murdoch.

• 2:23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:20Jocko Willink?

  And you say, he said, Hester, they found Murdoch near a wrecked dam track in the mad rush to reach the seawall and jump over it. Duffy somehow got separated from the group and they never saw him again.

• 2:23:29Speaker 01

  Never saw him again. He was killed.

• 2:23:31Jocko Willink?

  The guy that saved your life. Sitting with his back to the wall, taking a breather, Dick looked over the, toward the shore, immediately behind Murdoch. The incoming waves washed the dead Marines onto the shore and pushed them into small piles. It looked like a little mound. And at the top of that mound facing the sky was Anthony Boyle. His helmet was off and the top of his head was shot away.

• 2:23:48Speaker 01

  Now, on Anthony Boyle, a number of years ago, Murdoch, I and another one or two, went to a big memorial for him in, uh, in New York, in New York, overlooking the Hudson. And we had one lieutenant general, Boomer, was with us. And he was one of the spokesmen for the, for the, uh, the fighting that you were involved in. He was the guy, the main guy. So he was there with us. But, uh, we, uh, we had a big ceremony in a big Catholic church. We had a parade downtown, through downtown. It was a big event. Big event.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  And this is what happened to him?

• 2:24:31Speaker 01

  That's what happened to him.

• 2:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Is?

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Only seconds before, O'Boyle had been standing next to Murdoch peering over the wall, then a Japanese bullet took off the top of his head and he fell back into John's arm. John cradled O'Boyle in his arms for a long moment before laying him gently aside. Someone else must have hauled him up to the pile of bodies at the water's edge to get him away from the wall. During this time, someone from the company passed Dick's position and informed that Duffy had been killed. Duffy was a very quiet person, never talked to him much, but a really nice guy.

• 2:25:02Speaker 01

  No, he didn't.

• 2:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Dick remembered. He was a little older than the most of us, in his earlier mid twenties, which made him an old man in our outfit. He was O'Boyle's best buddy. Now they were both dead, killed within minutes of each other. For everyone involved, Americans and Japanese, it was a peculiar, peculiar nasty way to fight a war. The situation favored the defenders, but only to a point. Battles are won not by staying in fortifications, they are won by attacking. And on Bejio, the Marines were the attackers.

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  And you never saw, hardly ever saw the enemy, because they were there shooting at you from a, from a hole, out of a hole somewhere, see?

• 2:25:45Jocko Willink?

  They had to assault each and every Japanese position, making short rushes across open ground through murderous fire. Heavy casualties were the result, but ultimately, Japanese casualties were heavier, in fact, almost total. The Japanese would not yield because their military ethos forbade it. To beat them, you had to kill them. But the Marines would not quit, and they could not be stopped. Against a foe such as the Marines, with their absolute determination and capability to win. The initial advantages enjoyed by defenders fighting from a concealment could have but one outcome: annihilation.

• 2:26:19Speaker 01

  Now, I have a, I have a book here, written by one of the Japanese defenders. And I wanted to, wanted to meet him, and I went there and met two other Japanese officers. But we never, we never, we never actually able to get together, we were on the phone. But the name, the name of the book's called, call, uh, let's see, what they called, called Heavenly, something or other. See, they believed, they believed they went to a heaven too, it was a different kind of heaven, when they died.

• 2:26:56Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on here.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, Yasukuni Shrine for one place.

• 2:26:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:27:00Speaker 01

  You know, the officers especially. We will, we will meet again in Yasukuni Shrine. And this one officer that I met on Guadalcanal and who I got to know real well. We, we corresponded for about fifteen years. And, uh, uh,

• 2:27:18Speaker 01

  talked a lot about the, uh, I learned a lot about their, their whole background of their Bushido code and all that stuff.

• 2:27:26Jocko Willink?

  I've read on this podcast, I've read some of the letters that the kamikaze pilots would write. Cause they would write a letter before they would go and die.

• 2:27:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:35Jocko Willink?

  And, and there's also, there's also talk of how like they would write these letters, but some of them were not writing from the heart.

• 2:27:46Speaker 01

  No, and as they, when they, when they died, sometimes they would cut off their fingernails and that would be sent back. Now this one, this one, one fellow who had just been killed, he was in a gopher-like hole, we're just starting our final drive. And, uh, that's where I went, I got the diary from him and the thousand hole, uh, stitch belt and all that kind of stuff. And, uh, anyway, I had the, uh, I had, I had a, uh, little, little, little piece of, part of a hair that had belonged to, uh, I'm thinking belonged to his, his girlfriend or something. Anyway, I was gonna send all that back and, uh, that when, when the, uh, when a soldier

• 2:28:31Speaker 01

  was killed, the wife, and that would have been his wife, the wife is supposed to take care of his family. Instead, she had remarried and she felt bad about it. Well, when she saw this, saw what he had written, but wanted her to remarry, what a, what a difference that made.

• 2:28:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Again, jumping ahead a little bit because people need to get the book so they can read it for themselves, but the casualty toll was nothing less than catastrophic. In New Zealand, the company had been beefed up with a little more than 200 men to give it an extra punch in the assault. Ninety were lost, killed, or wounded in the Bejio Lagoon. In other words, nearly half the company was out of action before anyone stepped ashore. The men Murdoch found on the beach were all exhausted and with a terrible look on their face. That's according to Murdoch, but their shock and exhaustion did not, could not concern him. What I was more interested in was who was alive and who have I got? What have I got? To make that assessment, he continued rounding up the guys on the beach and taking them back to his area.

• 2:29:41Jocko Willink?

  All the while, the enemy fire was flailing on the beach. John ignored it. And when Anthony O'Boyle was shot and fell into his arms, he wasn't phased. And once he laid O'Boyle, O'Boyle's twitching body aside, he didn't think about him anymore that day. He didn't have time, much less the inclination to grieve for O'Boyle or to feel horror for the slow, hideous way O'Boyle died.

• 2:30:00Speaker 01

  See, at that point in time, our battalion, especially our company, led by Murdoch, were wiping out the last resistance. It was a hard, it was really a real determined group fighting there. And that's where we lost them. One of the people that's in this picture here, he got shot by a fellow down in a hole, like a little spider hole, what do you call it? And up in his gut, killed him instantly. He died thinking that, he died thinking that I'd just been killed. I went, I visited his family in Tennessee afterwards, and they

• 2:30:41Speaker 01

  were still so sad that they didn't even want to hear more about it. Didn't even want to talk to me about it, you know?

• 2:30:52Jocko Willink?

  Progress is eventually made. Toward the middle of the day, Bill noticed that things seemed to be going a little bit better for the Marines. They seemed to be making some progress. Bulldozers had landed by then, and they pushed up against the pillbox entrances, sealing them and entomying the Japanese inside. But the flamethrowers really did the trick. A flamethrower operator-

• 2:31:10Speaker 01

  So one of those that was inside, I ran into the first time I returned, first time I returned to Terawa, and he had been in the Navy for many, many years, probably well over 20 years. And he was in charge of the mess area. And then he had been transferred from there to New Guinea just before we landed. That's how he survived.

• 2:31:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so just before he landed, he had been transferred?

• 2:31:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, he'd been, well, you know, maybe a month before, some period of time.

• 2:31:42Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. And that's the only reason he survived.

• 2:31:44Speaker 01

  So he wrote that. So now, here he is. He returned, same time I did, and I met him, you know, and I showed him the picture of the one Japanese soldier that, what they do, they put their toe in and pull the trigger of the rifle and point it right up their mouth. And he was doing that, and he saw that, and the reaction from him was really something. It was really something. When he saw that picture, he says, "Yeah, that was done a lot."

• 2:32:20Jocko Willink?

  Man. Here's what Murdoch says as the fighting kind of comes to an end. As they get to the end, all of a sudden, things began to move. "We were moving, but very, very slowly, like a snail. My guys would go out ahead of me, then they'd be moving, and I'd run up with my gang and get behind them. We were all very close to the enemy, a matter of feet, not yards. It was small, very slow progress, but it was progress nonetheless. For the first time since they had landed the day before, the men of B Company were advancing and not falling back after each forward push. The Japanese meant to fight to the last man, and they were coming ever closer to realizing that goal." Marine Assault Team is mostly ad hoc. Lock assemblages destroyed the enemy bunkers one after another, killing the Japanese while

• 2:33:04Jocko Willink?

  they were inside or when when they ran out. The Japanese were literally slain in heaps. As their numbers were reduced, so was the volume and intensity of their fire. Finally, when John and his men had advanced as far as they could, the battle just sort of petered out. The shooting stopped, bringing silence to their sector of the battlefield and leaving everyone stunned by the abrupt end to the fighting. They didn't know quite what to do. We just kind of sat there and did nothing. The next day, First Battalion marched over to the pier where the LCVB waited to take them back to the Sheridan. On their way, they witnessed a dual-flag raising ceremony for the Stars and Stripes and the British Union Jack with a representative from His

• 2:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Majesty's Government presiding. The Stars and Stripes went up first, but the Union Jack was given the place of pride and honor on a higher pole and acknowledgement of the British sovereignty over the Tarawa atoll. There were some muttered complaints from the men of the 1-8, but not much. Most just smiled grimly and shook their heads. Great Britain may have held the title to Bejio, but the Marine Corps truly owned it.

• 2:34:13Speaker 01

  When I returned the first time, when I returned the first time in in eighty-two, and I stayed with with missionaries there for a couple, for three or four days or more. And then during that time, we all decided to, okay, there was a breakaway, a split in that church group. So part of them are going to another church, just that type of a place, walking, had to walk through some kind of a jungle area to get there. And so...

• 2:34:50Speaker 01

  They had a, we had, we sat down and I was, I spoke and asked them to sing and they just loved to sing, you know, and then it's now, now you gotta sing the Marine hymn. So, and then, so then, what happened was, I didn't really, really sing it. I said, no, we'll sing it, the words, I mean, we'll sing the, the, the, the tune of it. And it was a love song based on a hymn. So it was kind of two iterations apparently. And then I had, then I told them a little bit about, well, you know, that's interesting. And I said, no,

• 2:35:31Speaker 01

  these words, and I went through the words to a certain extent. And, well, that, that was so interesting that to hear they sang that song, that was a love song, like same as our Marine hymn. Hmm. Oh, then after that, I invited them over to the other church that they'd spread off from. And I had, I got a hold of the film that was, that was done by a guy by Norm Hatch, who recently died away. He's the one took all these pictures. Okay. Combat photos. Lives in Florida, by the way. And anyway, I played that for them. And it showed that flag, that flag rising. And these kids, they all clapped on the American

• 2:36:13Speaker 01

  flag and they were real quiet. The British flag, just like it's described in here. Yeah.

• 2:36:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, here's, here's the results. The battle for Bejio lasted 76 hours. Some 4,690 Japanese troops, about 97% of the garrison died. A mere 17 Japanese were taken prisoner, as were 129 laborers. The second Marine-

• 2:36:39Speaker 01

  These, most of these were Korean laborers.

• 2:36:40Jocko Willink?

  Korean laborers, yeah.

• 2:36:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:42Jocko Willink?

  The second Marine Division suffered 3,407 casualties. Of these, 1,115 Marines and sailors were killed and another 2,292 were wounded. The assault units lost 41% of their men dead and wounded. The first Battalion Eighth Marines lost more than 30% of its men just getting to the beach.

• 2:37:01Speaker 01

  There's probably, there could be as many as 400 still there, 300 or 400 still there. Could be, because they're under homes, under parking lots, and so on.

• 2:37:12Jocko Willink?

  Overall, the battalion suffered three hundred and forty-three casualties, a hundred and eight killed.

• 2:37:16Speaker 01

  When I was there to the third, about the third time, and here the, here the, uh, the archaeologist was brushing, brushing off the bones. And they, on the, on this, on this one person, uh, no, that, and two of the, two of them, they found wedding rings on their. Something, huh? And I saw that as, as they were doing it. Yeah.

• 2:37:40Jocko Willink?

  Casualties in my platoon were twelve killed and fifteen wounded, including myself, seventy-five percent of its original strength. Most were hit while waiting to shore.

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:37:53Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 2:37:55Speaker 01

  And you can look at the faces of all these that were killed. And this art, this one, uh, photograph.

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  And you talk about the news clippings or the news stories that were reported about Tarawa.

• 2:38:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:38:07Jocko Willink?

  And, and part of it, I always was told that they released some of these, it was the first time that they really released a lot of images.

• 2:38:17Speaker 01

  FDR, one of, one of, one of the general public realized, you know, this is not going to be easy.

• 2:38:23Speaker 01

  This is what it's really like.

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  Just terrific combat photos, oh, incredible.

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and those were the first ones showing.

• 2:38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:32Jocko Willink?

  Mass casualties of Americans.

• 2:38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, you, you've probably seen that one.

• 2:38:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, I've seen.

• 2:38:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 2:38:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Norm Hatch, that's the one that did that.

• 2:38:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so that is him, okay.

• 2:38:40Speaker 01

  That's Norm Hatch, yeah, oh, yeah. I got to know him real well. Yeah.

• 2:38:46Jocko Willink?

  All right, um.

• 2:38:47Speaker 01

  And the other reason, reason this book got published was, there's, there's a Colonel Alexander, Joseph Alexander, that died in the last, in the last year, four years. And anyway, he was the, he was the, uh, the prime historian for the Marine Corps. And, uh. And then he was very well thought of by the enable us to press. So when it came to making a proposal to enable us to press, it had to go through their, through their border review. And then after that, no, I see now, it had to go through, it had to go through your, what's the word for it, somebody has the same, same amount as you do, I forget what's anyway.

• 2:39:31Speaker 01

  This Joseph Alexander was one of the prime ones that did, did my peer review.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:39:38Speaker 01

  And then when that, so that went, when that got to the, to the review board, oh, he says, fine. So I just sailing on through, you know? And then now, and then my book was one of the first ones to go on as an ebook, the first ones for the press. And I, and I have the ads there in some of the, the, they, the proceedings magazine.

• 2:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:03Speaker 01

  That shows, shows that they've displayed. One of them is with, with Pappy Goington, is on that same page with him.

• 2:40:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, this is available on ebook for those of you that want to get it and can't wait to get it. You can get it immediately, just go straight to ebook.

• 2:40:17Speaker 01

  Not only that, yeah, that too. And not only that, when they go through, and it ends up going through email, I mean to, what is it, amazon.com, it'll be delivery in a matter of about three days or less. And, and, and no, no shipping cost.

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the way Amazon works.

• 2:40:37Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:40:37Jocko Willink?

  It's an amazing thing.

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  How they do it, I do not understand.

• 2:40:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I don't know if this one, there's, there's, but that's where I got my copies. So, yeah, you can get, I have the hardcover and the softcover.

• 2:40:50Speaker 01

  You have both?

• 2:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Yes. I don't play around when it comes to getting your books, sir.

• 2:40:54Speaker 01

  When you get ebooks, it costs three firsts, three quarters as much as, as a, one of those.

• 2:41:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's, the, the publishing world is very strange. Taking it now to where you. Get onto the Sheridan. So now, this is, this is, uh, no sooner had my stretcher touched down on the Sheridan's deck than I was whisked away into the operating room. I was one of the first wounded Marines to be treated and the medical team was fresh and rested and ready to go to work on me. I guess that qualifies as a stroke of good luck.

• 2:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Even better fortune awaited me in the operating room in the form of Lieutenant Commander Lloyd Sussex, formerly an abdominal, an abdominal specialist at the Mayo Clinic. Now the key member of a three man team, doctor, two doctors and a corpsman that would say, you're like, how lucky is that?

• 2:41:43Speaker 01

  You're unbelievable. And on board a ship and that's all there was. And if I'd gone on shore, I would have died. And in most other places, you, you wouldn't have an abdominal specialist.

• 2:41:55Jocko Willink?

  And then it says, the operation lasted about an hour. I was conscious the whole time and didn't feel any pain.

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  Well, they didn't dare put me out because I'd die. I was in, I was in shock and.

• 2:42:04Jocko Willink?

  The doctor spent most of that hour bent over my lower body. And although I could not see what they were doing, I could hear a little clicking and snipping sounds made by their instruments as they worked. They repaired my bladder and removed a portion of my large intestine and gave me a blood transfusion. Then they closed my wound and that was that.

• 2:42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then he had to wear a bag afterwards.

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  I had made it through surgery, but it had been a close call. Doctor Sussex told me that I could not have survived another two hours because of the toxins that were building up inside me.

• 2:42:31Speaker 01

  And that, right after, right after the operation, I was kept in a hot cupboard tent. And it was miserable. I kept trying to shove it off. They had, they had a corpsman sitting there with me all night long to keep me from throwing it off. And then, and then another couple of days, I was able to walk in to, to watch a movie with everybody else that people couldn't be here. I was walking in there to see the movie. They couldn't believe it.

• 2:42:56Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you was good as dead, gut shot.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Not even to the beach yet.

• 2:43:00Speaker 01

  And usually very few people survive, period. A gut shot. Very few. Your cousin, he told me, he said, I talked to the, talked to him later and says, yeah, you know, the poison's in your system. You wouldn't, you wouldn't have lasted another couple more. Another hour or two, that was it.

• 2:43:18Speaker 01

  And here's operating an hour, about an hour or a little over after I was hit.

• 2:43:24Speaker 01

  Just unbelievable.

• 2:43:26Jocko Willink?

  This is unbelievable. Uh, you say a few days later, I was checked over by a younger doctor, a gloomy fellow with with a bedside manner to match. He told me dolefully that my wound was very serious and that I wouldn't live much past my 50s.

• 2:43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:39Jocko Willink?

  What sort of doctor says such a thing to his patients? I reported his words to Dr. Sussex, who who was appalled. He shouldn't have told you that, Sussex said, and there's no truth to it anyways. And I guess we're proving that right now since we're talking about it.

• 2:43:52Speaker 01

  Well, now, what happened to him? A year later, he was operating on a guy at Fairgate Naval Training Station.

• 2:43:58Jocko Willink?

  This is Sussex?

• 2:43:59Speaker 01

  Yes. And here he's about 55 years old. He died of a heart attack as he was operating on that guy. And I've talked, I've talked to the Mayo Clinic about that. And then there's people that have written up a lot of history about that. They've written a little bit about Sussex. And I gave a lot of information too, but so anyway, that's, that's the end of the story with him.

• 2:44:20Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, like you said, you come walking up, they're playing a movie on the mess decks. You come walking about up, my buddies could hardly believe their eyes. Oh, my God, look, here's lad, they exclaimed. First they thought I was dead, then they were told I was grievously wounded, all tore up a basket case, and now here I was walking into the movie theater. How many days it had been?

• 2:44:39Speaker 01

  It couldn't have been more than three days.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man.

• 2:44:46Jocko Willink?

  While I was recovering.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  You know, they always in a hospital, they want you up and around as fast as possible anyway.

• 2:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:44:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:52Jocko Willink?

  While I was recovering from my surgery, John Murdoch dropped by to give me a Samurai sword he had survived, he had souvenired on Bejio.

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:59Jocko Willink?

  Hold it for me until I return, he said. He assumed that I had gotten a million dollar wound and would be sent home. I thought the same. Left unspoken but implicit in what he said was that he didn't think he would be coming home, the sword was probably mine to keep.

• 2:45:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:15Jocko Willink?

  He was, it was, his was a common sentiment. I would venture to say that after Tarawa, most second division Marines didn't believe they would make it through the war.

• 2:45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're looking at the entire rest of the island campaigns and then you gotta go into mainland Japan. And it's gonna be a bloody fight the whole way.

• 2:45:33Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Boy, if that bomb hadn't have dropped.

• 2:45:37Speaker 01

  It's a horrible thing, but geez.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  Murdoch took a head count of B Company using a pre-battle roster for reference, checking off one name after the other from the list. He had known that the toll would be large, but even he was shocked by the final count. My God, he thought.

• 2:45:53Speaker 01

  Now, the casualties are listed, are they listed in there? If not, they're listed, they're listed in here, all the casualties. Uh, what's his name, the guy that, uh?

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're not fully listed in here.

• 2:46:02Speaker 01

  What's his name, um, uh, wrote the book, the story of the, the story of the battle?

• 2:46:10Speaker 01

  What's it, what is it? Anyway, I got that whole thing. They're all listed in here. One's wounded, one's that, uh, killed outright.

• 2:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, now, this-

• 2:46:22Speaker 01

  This is his book, by the way, right here. See? This one right here. You heard of that one?

• 2:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Who wrote that book?

• 2:46:27Speaker 01

  Sherwood.

• 2:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:46:28Speaker 01

  Sherrod.

• 2:46:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:46:30Speaker 01

  No, you know, and all the names are all back here. See, here they are. If you, they're, they're the all, they're all back in here. See this?

• 2:46:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:46:37Speaker 01

  See that? So that's where they all are.

• 2:46:41Speaker 01

  And I talked to him in person and, um, it's getting okay, you know, to quote him. And I said, well, I have a little difficulty with, um, with the publisher. He says, don't pay any attention to them. Says, I gave you the okay. All right.

• 2:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Uh, now, you guys sail to Hawaii. So you go from, you, you go from this hell, how long does it take to get to Hawaii? Like, a week, 10 days?

• 2:47:11Speaker 01

  About a week, about a week.

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  So then you guys get to Hawaii, you guys are pier-side, you're all sitting up there looking pier-side, and a car pulls up, and here we go, back to the book, out, out-stepped Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet and Pacific Ocean areas, who began to ascend the gangway accompanied by an aide.

• 2:47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:32Jocko Willink?

  His friends called him Chet. So did the Marines. They figured their experiences had given them the right. "Hey, Chet," they shouted, "when we going back to the States? Chet, we can't wait for the Golden Gate. Does our skipper know the way to Dago? How about some Liberty, Chet? We gotta get off this tub and do some Christmas shopping." And perhaps most tellingly, "Hey Admiral, get us someone who knows the reefs for our next landing."

• 2:47:59Jocko Willink?

  So that's

• 2:47:59Speaker 01

  And then his driver. Then they

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you say his driver?

• 2:48:04Speaker 01

  At his driver, see. He's

• 2:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, you say, I guess he looked like some Hollywood guy.

• 2:48:11Speaker 01

  Hollywood guy, yeah. So that's choice remarks about him.

• 2:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you guys must have been

• 2:48:16Speaker 01

  But anyway, but anyway.

• 2:48:18Jocko Willink?

  Pretty hard to control coming off of Tarawa.

• 2:48:20Speaker 01

  So anyway, he was, he was so glad, said, these guys are, said, they're just full of it. Great, that's good.

• 2:48:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Then he, so here we go. Shortly after Nimitz's departure.

• 2:48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:48:31Jocko Willink?

  The P A, the, the P A announced that the Sheridan would be proceeding directly to the Big Island. In other words, no liberty on Oahu. This didn't set well with the Marines and they went wild, hooting and yelling and whistling, throwing all manner of junk down on the dock, pelting the band and the shore patrol. The bandsmen lowered their instruments and accompanied by the shore patrols fled to a nearby shed. The Eighth Marines achieved nothing with their show of angry emotions, except perhaps to blow off a lot of steam and confirmed to all concerned parties that they should not have been given liberty. The brass was not about to turn these barbarians loose on the civilian populace of Oahu. The civilized world wasn't ready for us and to be honest, we weren't ready for the civilized world.

• 2:49:13Speaker 01

  Hawaii was concerned of what, after fighting the Japanese, what are we gonna do when there's a lot of Japanese there?

• 2:49:18Jocko Willink?

  It was just as well. The brass had plans for us, the second division as a whole, and these did not involve a return to the United States. First, we would go to the Big Island to rest, rebuild, and then train for the next operation.

• 2:49:31Speaker 01

  We had to put up the tents. There were no, no, there was no place to sleep.

• 2:49:36Jocko Willink?

  So they sent you guys out to the middle of Oahu.

• 2:49:41Speaker 01

  No, no, no, this is, this is

• 2:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, they sent you to the Big Island, but they sent you out to the middle of it where you guys had to establish your own base camp.

• 2:49:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, we had to set up the tents.

• 2:49:49Jocko Willink?

  And start training.

• 2:49:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:49:54Jocko Willink?

  You get here, our train, so you get the stuff.

• 2:49:58Speaker 01

  And then after that, the camp was used by the others that eventually took Iwo Jima.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay. They, you say here, you get, you get the camp set up, you get a little bit of downtime and then they get you guys right into training. Our training stressed the combined arms approach to warfare. For, for veterans of Bejio and Guadalcanal, many aspects of this training were old hat, but the replacements in the division were receiving, was receiving almost daily, they needed all of it.

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  Now we were, knew we were gonna go be in the sugar cane area and we knew we were gonna use the tanks. And we, we knew that we were gonna have to have communication by a phone on the back of the tank.

• 2:50:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Yeah, this was a new modification.

• 2:50:37Speaker 01

  All new, yeah, all new and how to maneuver around, around the strong points and all.

• 2:50:44Jocko Willink?

  You say that most of the replacements, most were fresh, fresh teenagers.

• 2:50:47Speaker 01

  Now we're starting to get, now we're starting to get draftees.

• 2:50:51Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:50:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what, um, you say here, um,

• 2:50:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:57Jocko Willink?

  eager kids with no combat experience and no idea what they'd gotten themselves into. The rest of us just looked at them and shook our heads. We did know what they had gotten themselves into. And we wondered how they would survive in the battles to come, never forgetting that our own survival thus far was due in large measure to the vagaries of chance and circumstance. And maybe just a little bit to the grace of God as well. Luck and God's grace were desperately slim reeds on which to hang our hopes. Slimmer still for the replacements because they're inexperienced. We expected that many would die. The odds were against them because they had seen no action, but we also expected to die. The odds were against us because we had seen too much action. Either way, you did the math, it came out bad.

• 2:51:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:38Jocko Willink?

  And if the war went on for another two or three years.

• 2:51:40Speaker 01

  You'd reach a hundred percent figure, you know?

• 2:51:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:43Speaker 01

  Your chances.

• 2:51:44Jocko Willink?

  Your chances are one hundred percent.

• 2:51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:48Jocko Willink?

  We were, oh, here you talk about the draftees. We were especially skeptical.

• 2:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go.

• 2:51:51Jocko Willink?

  Skept- skeptical about the draftees of which there were a significant number. These were selective service Marines were something new. Uh, to which was previously an all volunteer force, new and unwanted and a matter of grave concern for the rest of us. Would the draftees measure up to Marine Corps standards? Would we be able to depend on them in battle? We had our doubts. We were wrong to doubt them in battle. When the chips were down, they proved that. Like volunteers, they were worthy to be called Marines. So you eventually take over a, uh, uh, as a 60 millimeter mortar section.

• 2:52:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I was still weak.

• 2:52:30Jocko Willink?

  Because you were still hurt.

• 2:52:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so I didn't have to get out and do a lot of moving around, you see.

• 2:52:36Jocko Willink?

  And then, and again, you cover some of this stuff in good detail in the book, but then soon enough, it's, you're, you're hitting Saipan.

• 2:52:44Speaker 01

  I learned, I learned how to, you know, load the ship and, and, uh, be a court recorder and all that kind of stuff, you know, light duty, light duty stuff.

• 2:52:53Jocko Willink?

  How long were you guys in Hawaii for?

• 2:52:54Speaker 01

  Uh, let me think. Uh, about, about six months, five months. Yeah.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  So you get five, did you get any liberty in that time? Did they?

• 2:53:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

• 2:53:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so they let you go.

• 2:53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went down to Hilo a lot.

• 2:53:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  All right. So now you get done with that and then boom, morning, 15 June 1944, shells rained down on our assault waves. This is Saipan kicking up tall columns.

• 2:53:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but now before we left Hawaii, we had our LSTs all lined up side by side and one of them blew up, a mortar shell or something. They were, they were doing some welding or something. Anyway, a mercy I blew up and then fire just spread from ship to ship and we lost, I don't know, maybe could four, over 400 men lost their lives.

• 2:53:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:43Speaker 01

  In that whole line up there. And then that, and then that we lost a lot of equipment because of that.

• 2:53:48Jocko Willink?

  Did that set back the operation at all?

• 2:53:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it did. It did put us, yeah. Yeah, it did. And so that, that was a place called Westlock.

• 2:53:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:56Speaker 01

  You've probably heard about that one, haven't you?

• 2:53:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. And you've got it written, you've, I did, I've, I've heard about it because they made changes to the way that they did business.

• 2:54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:04Jocko Willink?

  With regards to handling.

• 2:54:06Speaker 01

  Now, this happened, this happened when we were at landing exercises on Maui and, uh, and I think we, we had some, we had some complications in landing due to the weather or something it was. And, and so that was part of it. I, uh,

• 2:54:23Speaker 01

  That was part of it, but the main thing, they don't know exactly what caused the explosion, but they think it probably was, was what I just mentioned.

• 2:54:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:32Speaker 01

  The guys got blew up, blew up and just kept flying out and, and one of my friends, it happened to him and here he's able to swim, swim, no, he was picked up by a boat came by and had a, they pulled the line, said, "Grab on!" And then just dragged him over to the beach, you know? It's incredible.

• 2:54:52Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy, these vets from Guadalcanal and Tarawa and then De Parrish and that is unbelievable.

• 2:54:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:01Jocko Willink?

  But you push it back, I guess, and then you guys head to Saipan and here we go, June 15th, 1944, shells rained down on our salt waves kicking up tall cones of water.

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  Now, can you imagine landing on Saipan?

• 2:55:13Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:55:14Speaker 01

  They had all their artillery set on the west side of the mountain, fire over at us, all zeroed in on the reef and along the beach. All they had to do was just rake back and forth.

• 2:55:29Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. And you couldn't even shoot them?

• 2:55:31Speaker 01

  And we lost so many, all are wounded, our wounded were all going back and then here they got hit by all this artillery fire. And our battalion, a lot of our battalion commanders were wounded and killed. Cause they were, they were, our main, our CPs were wrecked along the beach.

• 2:55:48Speaker 01

  And, and then our ships couldn't fire back at them from that angle. They had to go clear around the outside of the island and hit them from their rear.

• 2:55:55Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:55:57Speaker 01

  That's what happened.

• 2:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Hmm. Yeah, you, you say here are...

• 2:56:01Speaker 01

  Not only that, they had a spotter on a smokestack at a sugar refinery.

• 2:56:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:56:07Speaker 01

  And all that was called in.

• 2:56:09Jocko Willink?

  Just perfect.

• 2:56:09Speaker 01

  Perfect, yeah.

• 2:56:12Speaker 01

  Two of my, two of my friends were killed right there on the beach, one led to death, the other, the other, the other one, the same way, basically, yeah.

• 2:56:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is what Murdoch said about it. Our Amtraks were in line abreast when we were taking our total refire, the heaviest we ever encountered. You could see the shells hitting the water, exploding and making the water splash way up. Just off to my right, Shell scored a direct hit on one of my boats and pow, it just went to pieces. There was a flash and a big explosion and I could see pieces of men flying out of it. I thought, oh shit. But I also thought, thank God it wasn't my boat. But I was mostly thinking, who was it that got hit and how many guys am I gonna be without? Man, Murdoch was a serious, like, marine combat leader.

• 2:57:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he got there too. He hit there too.

• 2:57:06Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is your, uh, this is you saying, this is your, your experience. When my Amtrak reached the reef, we were all crouched low below the sides. There was too much metal flying around the air to risk popping up for a look around. The guys had their heads pulled down between their shoulders and they stared at each other with eyes, we big guys, and said nothing. The veterans of Tarawa had been through this before and were probably having a harder time of it precisely because of their prior experience, because they knew how bad things could get. The new kids were mostly better off because they didn't have a clue. Certainly, they were scared, but they were also fascinated and awestruck by all the noise and commotion. And these emotions blunted their fear. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for this. The live fire exercises in Hawaii were puny by comparison.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  And so they did not realize that our situation was terrible and likely to get worse. You can be sure that I was scared, but fortunately, I had the concerns of an officer to distract me. What wave were you in? What, what group were you in?

• 2:58:06Speaker 01

  There was somebody with ahead of us on the beach I landed on. We were way on the northern side, northern end of the landing beach. And what happened is the tide or whatever it was, forces further way to the left. And we had to realign a couple hundred yards further back to right again. Now, uh, thing is, there's

• 2:58:28Speaker 01

  We didn't, we didn't have a lot of, a lot of problem getting in to the beach. But once, once we got to the beach, there was nobody on the beach. So they, so they, they didn't, they didn't, they didn't defend themselves at the beach. Instead, it was a heavy artillery fire. So they let us, basically let us through. But where I was, we had to cross a fighter strip that they had. So we had to cross, and that was kind of scary. Going across that exposed from people shooting at us from the other side. But then as we, as we maneuvered, kept moving to the right further to get back where we're supposed to be. Then the heavy artillery fired just all over the place. It was just pandemonium, horrible.

• 2:59:13Jocko Willink?

  You said so many good men were killed that day. One of them was First Lieutenant Noel T. Berg of Beacom.

• 2:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, Noel Berg, he was, he was a-

• 2:59:20Jocko Willink?

  Former school teacher.

• 2:59:21Speaker 01

  Former school teacher. He and I went on, went on Liberty together a lot in, in New Zealand, yeah.

• 2:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Shell fragments sliced off one of his legs. No corner could be found to help him.

• 2:59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he just died.

• 2:59:33Jocko Willink?

  Nor were there any aid stations.

• 2:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Around the same time, oh yeah, that's, his femoral artery pumped the last of his blood onto the sand. He looked up at those gathered around him and whispered, "Get the men off the beach."

• 2:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because war, the fire was coming in.

• 2:59:52Jocko Willink?

  Around the same time, John Murdoch-

• 2:59:53Speaker 01

  We saw these guns, by the way, when we returned up there. And those guns are still up there, two of them are. And now it's, now it's, it's a Japanese memorial. And these are part of the memorial up there.

• 3:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I, I mentioned to you that I went to Saipem.

• 3:00:07Speaker 01

  You've probably seen them too. This is right above a place called Sandman City, Ben Sany.

• 3:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:11Speaker 01

  It's right up there.

• 3:00:12Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if we, I don't know specifically because-

• 3:00:14Speaker 01

  No, there's a nightclub on top of that hill. As you get in, there's a big nightclub on the top. Now, it'd be just in the north, towards Shapati Chal.

• 3:00:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:23Speaker 01

  It's just, that's where the, that's where these, these, this artillery is. However, and then, then down to the left, there's a monstrous, monstrous-

• 3:00:35Speaker 01

  Dig out of where they they got the coral, the coral gravel or sand to make the airport with. Now, that all got filled in with Japanese tanks and and and amphibian tractors. They're all buried right in there. You probably didn't see it because they've all been buried. But I got a picture, picture of them in my, in one book here, of what it looked like before they were covered up.

• 3:01:01Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, I, I was here when, um, when your friend Newell, was it Newell?

• 3:01:07Speaker 01

  Newell, yeah, Newell, Newell Berg.

• 3:01:09Jocko Willink?

  You said around the same time, John Murdock, John Murdock, who was running up the beach after disembarking from his Amtrak, came across Gus Krieger.

• 3:01:18Speaker 01

  Krieger, yeah.

• 3:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Krieger, one of B Company's veteran first lieutenants and a close friend. Krieger was lying on the ground with no one around him.

• 3:01:25Speaker 01

  I've got his picture here, yeah.

• 3:01:26Jocko Willink?

  His body perforated by shrapnel. He was alive, but just barely. John knelt beside his friend. "I looked at him to see what I could do for him," John recalled. "But he was bleeding in so many places, I knew I couldn't do anything. He wanted a cigarette, so I gave him one. I lit that for him. And I said, Gus, you'll be okay. I gotta go. I had to go. There was too much to do. I had to get the company organized, and I left him there." So he died there.

• 3:01:51Speaker 01

  I, I visited his wife afterwards, years later. Yeah.

• 3:01:57Jocko Willink?

  Thus, within the span of a few minutes, John had lost two of his seasoned platoon leaders. Also wounded and put out of action were the second and third battalion commanders. Lieutenant Colonel Henry P. Jim Crow.

• 3:02:08Speaker 01

  You heard him, man. Jim Crow. Oh, yeah.

• 3:02:11Jocko Willink?

  Legendary.

• 3:02:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:02:12Jocko Willink?

  And former, he was the former commander of the Scout Sniper School that you attended.

• 3:02:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:02:16Jocko Willink?

  And also Lieutenant John Miller, Lieutenant Colonel John Miller. So both the battalion commanders out of action.

• 3:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, from that artillery. Yeah.

• 3:02:26Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 3:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02:28Jocko Willink?

  You're, again, you know...

• 3:02:32Speaker 01

  It looks sort of hopeless at that stage. It just seemed hopeless. Here we're catching heavy artillery fire and we couldn't do anything about it.

• 3:02:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's, it's, I like, I like bringing up these points in the book where you talk about things like this. While that's all that's happening, you say, meanwhile, I lay in the brush with my men and tried to free myself from the despair that suddenly gripped me. The situation seemed hopeless. It was Tarawa all over again. How, I wondered, are we going to get out of this mess?

• 3:02:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly my feelings at that time.

• 3:02:58Jocko Willink?

  And then you say the feelings soon passed. I just didn't have time for it. At, at my command, we moved out. Everyone rose from their shell holes and craters and went forward, no hesitation. Emerging from the bushy strip, we lumbered about 10 feet to the airstrip. Keep going, keep going. I heard myself shouting, don't stop. It's good. I like to bring those points up because there's several times where you talk about you as a leader have to kind of get yourself together. And, and I think what that's helpful for is young leaders in the military that are going to feel that same thing. If they get into a tough situation, okay, you got to recognize it and then you got to take action.

• 3:03:34Speaker 01

  Young 23 year old with all that responsibility. Oh my God. So then, uh, next day, uh, I got, got strapping off of my own motors. Hit, hit the leaves up above us and went off. I didn't report it. It just, I got entered, entered, entered up and there's still air as far as that goes.

• 3:04:00Jocko Willink?

  Still there.

• 3:04:00Speaker 01

  I didn't report it.

• 3:04:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you guys are pushing forward and then you guys get a, you guys get kind of a, a skirmish line and then

• 3:04:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:12Jocko Willink?

  The Japanese counter attacked several points along our line. Don Mainz, um, he recalled this. They bonsai'd across the gosh dang swamp and we just shot them up. The swamp was marshy.

• 3:04:22Speaker 01

  Now, you remember, you remember this place called Susupi, Lake Susupi?

• 3:04:26Jocko Willink?

  I don't remember it.

• 3:04:27Speaker 01

  It's a swampy area. And what happened is one of the other officers in our battalion, uh, he was a, like a soldier of fortune type of a guy. And he'd been with the British Eighth Army as an ambulance driver in North Africa. And, and we just figured, well, he's either going to be a hero or he's going to get killed, one or the other. And then he got killed. What happened was that, that we were, we were at the swamp and there are a lot of Japanese on the other side not exposed himself yet. But he's trying to get it, he walked out ahead, tried to get him to expose himself. He thought that he'd get him to surrender. And instead, this one guy bent over, he had a machine gun strapped to his back, killed him.

• 3:05:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Lot of guys, lot of casualties. And, and actually,

• 3:05:19Jocko Willink?

  at this point, there's another casualty, and it's a guy by the name of John Murdock. And this story is about as good of a story as I've ever heard about the military as a whole. So, here we go. This is around this time, John Murdock also became a casualty. Hit while landing B Company, hit while leading B Company on a sweep west of the landing strip, down toward Sharon Canoa.

• 3:05:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, Sharon Canoa.

• 3:05:48Jocko Willink?

  Sharon Canoa.

• 3:05:48Speaker 01

  Sharon Canoa.

• 3:05:50Jocko Willink?

  And this is, so this is John Murdock.

• 3:05:51Speaker 01

  Now, it's called, it really is a Shalan, Shalan Canoa.

• 3:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:05:57Speaker 01

  See, they couldn't, they couldn't, you know, they couldn't pronounce,

• 3:06:01Jocko Willink?

  The Rs.

• 3:06:01Speaker 01

  They couldn't pronounce their Rs. So we called Sharon Canoa.

• 3:06:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:08Jocko Willink?

  So here's John Murdock talking.

• 3:06:09Speaker 01

  In fact, all of our, all of our past signs had a lot of Rs in them.

• 3:06:14Jocko Willink?

  And that's where Roger comes from, right?

• 3:06:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Like when we say Roger that.

• 3:06:18Speaker 01

  It could be.

• 3:06:18Jocko Willink?

  I was told.

• 3:06:19Speaker 01

  That's possible. I hadn't thought of it. That is possible.

• 3:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the original usage was that we knew if someone says Roger, you knew it was American.

• 3:06:28Speaker 01

  On Guadalcanal, Murdock was in there, was, was taking, taking a piss. And here Japanese come, come in, and oh my God, turned out he was an interpreter, one of our interpreters.

• 3:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:06:42Speaker 01

  He really had a second take. I don't know if he mentioned that in there.

• 3:06:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, you read about it in here, but, yeah.

• 3:06:48Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 3:06:49Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so here's Murdock talking about when he gets wounded.

• 3:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Opposition was very light on the other side of the strip, and when we got down to the end of it, we stopped and a Sherman tank came up to help us. The tank had a phone in the back, and I was on the phone, and I'm trying to tell the guy inside what, where I wanted him to shoot. At the big smoke stack in the sugarcane factory. I figured a Jap was up there spotting for artillery, which was very accurate. Then all of a sudden, boom, shells started falling all around the tank, and I knew the spotter in the smoke stop was telling his guns to fire at us. So I ordered the tank commander, get that smoke stack. Then I put the phone back on, and I'm running back to the safety in a hole, and that's when I got hit by shrapnel in the left leg and the right elbow. So I'm sitting there and the corpsman comes over and starts bandaging my arm and I look

• 3:07:35Jocko Willink?

  down at him down and my pants are all wet and I said, holy shit, I pissed my pants and the corpsman said, that's not piss, that's blood. That's when I found out I'd been hitting the leg. So I dropped my pants in my drawers and now the corpsman's bandaging up my lead, leg and the jabs start to shell us again. So I jumped and ran to a nearby hole, which wasn't easy, you know, because my pants and my drawers were down around my ankles. And so, see, because I haven't read the entire book, you know, you talk about Murdoch and I've mentioned that he was a character and, you know, obviously you mentioned that he liked to drink and one of the people-

• 3:08:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was an alcoholic at one time. He finally got over-

• 3:08:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, one of the people that I would say, what's that word, aided him in being an alcoholic and somebody he'd apparently become good friends with because he was a Catholic was the Catholic priest-

• 3:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Father Joe Keahan. So they were really good friends and they spent a lot of time together. And so, as, as he's starting to move towards being, leaving the area, there's a guy, John's executive, John's exo Jim Westerman appeared on the scene and told, and John told Westerman to take over.

• 3:08:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Here, Westy, congratulations. You just made company commander. I'm getting out of here.

• 3:08:45Speaker 01

  Now, Westerman got hit by the same artillery that I almost got hit, almost got clobbered with. And he, he, he was out of the service after that. He got badly wounded.

• 3:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 3:08:55Speaker 01

  And we had 50 casualties and Westerman was one of them. And I was too.

• 3:09:01Jocko Willink?

  So, so this is Murdoch continuing-

• 3:09:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:09:06Jocko Willink?

  How it goes for him. So I head down for the beach, looking for, looking for the evacuation team. I wasn't bleeding all that badly, but I was a mess. I could walk, sure, and I walked. I was looking for one particular doctor, Sol Cassal, a dentist. Earlier I had seen him on the beach there, now I found him and I said, Solomon-

• 3:09:23Speaker 01

  This is funny.

• 3:09:24Jocko Willink?

  Solomon, my friend, a ticket, please. Because you couldn't get evacuated without a ticket. They had to put a ticket on you. He looked me over. My right hand wasn't any good. I couldn't use it. So Solomon ticketed me. A little while later, I was evacuated in a small boat and I said to the Navy kid who was driving it, hey, find me APA 51, will you? And he said, sure. We found the ship. And by then I was lying down and the guys on the deck called down to me. We'll pu- we'll pick you up in a boom on a stretcher. And I came up in the basket and I'm all dirty and bloody. And I see our chaplain, Father Joe Keahan, who I'd become very friendly with.

• 3:10:00Speaker 01

  Oh, dear man.

• 3:10:01Jocko Willink?

  So when they took me out of the basket and put me on the stretcher on the deck, I closed my eyes and pretended I was dead.

• 3:10:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Father Joe came over and started giving me my last rites in the church.

• 3:10:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10:12Jocko Willink?

  Last rite of the church in Latin. But I can't keep a straight face, so I opened my eyes and smiled at him. And he goes, "You son of a bitch." He goes right from speaking La- Latin to calling me a son of a bitch. Then he took me down to the infirmary and they patched me up a bit. Then he took me to his stateroom and put me in his bed. I must have slept all day and all night. I didn't hear a thing. I wasn't feeling any pain. My night, my right hand and arm were numb. When I came to, I didn't know where I was at first. Then I took a shower, changed the bandages and got cleaned up. That was the end of my war there. My second day on Saipan. My right arm was no good, really. My hand, even today, is no good.

• 3:10:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, here, here's the thing, even afterwards, when he quit his salute, there's this thumb would be done.

• 3:10:55Jocko Willink?

  It was a million dollar wound. I don't have any feeling in the right side of my hand. The nerve was cut, it was a million dollar wound, really, because my thumb and two fingers are good, still good. And the next to the last finger, the little finger, were dead.

• 3:11:09Jocko Willink?

  So I thought that was about as good of a story as I've ever heard.

• 3:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Character.

• 3:11:18Speaker 01

  You know, you know, when he, when he, uh, what, what happened to him there when he walked, barged into this hotel window? And, uh, he was drunk, drunk as all get out, of course. Well, anyway, the battalion commander, uh, talked to him the, the next day about it. And he said, "You know, you should, you should be more like an officer. You shouldn't be doing that." Then he went on to say, then the battalion commander says, "Well, how, why, who am I to say that?" So I'm kind of like that myself.

• 3:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got a whole story about him in Hawaii.

• 3:11:49Speaker 01

  And then this, this same battalion commander, he was killed on Woganville. As he, as he landed. He, they called him, they called him, uh, he, well, he, he took over the, one of the, uh,

• 3:12:02Speaker 01

  What do you call it, one of the battalions, what do you call them, can't name it now, they had a name for them, like the equivalent of the, of the, in, in, in England, they had the equivalent of it.

• 3:12:14Jocko Willink?

  Huh? I don't know, I don't know.

• 3:12:17Speaker 01

  What was the name for it, you know, that, kinda like, like the, uh?

• 3:12:20Jocko Willink?

  A reconnaissance battalion?

• 3:12:22Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no, no, no, they'd be a unit that would be the ones that, just like you, a SEAL, see?

• 3:12:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, a Raider.

• 3:12:28Speaker 01

  A Raider, Raider, he was, he took over the Raider Battalion that landed on Woganville.

• 3:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:12:33Speaker 01

  And he was killed there. And then his, his comments were, as he died, said, "Well, it's been a short war for me."

• 3:12:41Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 3:12:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, you, um, there's actually another, another one of these big situations that happens where there's a battle at sea.

• 3:12:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, Philippine Sea, yeah.

• 3:12:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:57Speaker 01

  Mariana's Turkey Shoot, yeah.

• 3:13:00Jocko Willink?

  You know that it's coming, you'd seen this before, and you said, "We were right." A few days later, we learned that a great battle had indeed been fought in the waters off west of Saipan, resulting in the decisive victory for the US Navy.

• 3:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, yeah.

• 3:13:11Jocko Willink?

  With their defeat in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, the Japanese lost all hope of re, relieving their forces on Saipan. Now it was up to us, the Marines and the Army, to win the land battle.

• 3:13:21Speaker 01

  We called, I called it the, the, Mariana's Turkey Shoot?

• 3:13:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:25Speaker 01

  I did, right there, okay.

• 3:13:27Jocko Willink?

  I don't think you've used those words.

• 3:13:28Speaker 01

  Well, okay, alright.

• 3:13:29Jocko Willink?

  That's traditionally what it's called.

• 3:13:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is, that's the same one. Now, that's the reason that, uh, this guy, uh, he held on, because he thought the Navy could come back and take it back. Now, he, because he surrendered, even after the war, he was not promoted to major. And it's terrible. And, uh, and the other thing was, even the other, other officer I, that I visited at the same time, that, that had fired at us from, with his artillery in Gualdo Canal, named by name, Akio Tani, even, he badmouthed this guy, says, "Well, he should've, he should've even committed here and there, even now." He says, "Haha, I just couldn't believe it, you know, they still, yeah, oh, yeah."

• 3:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Now you guys are kind of pressing through the rest of the island. You say here, "My mortar section was always about 200 yards behind our lead elements." An outbreak of small arms fire in front of us was a signal to stop and set up our weapons.

• 3:14:33Speaker 01

  Now, you see now, in that movie about Pacific.

• 3:14:40Jocko Willink?

  You mean the series, The Pacific?

• 3:14:43Speaker 01

  The series, yeah. Here they had the 6mm guns right up in the front. I don't know why the advisor does, "Hey, you don't do that."

• 3:14:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

• 3:14:53Speaker 01

  And also, the whole script is all screwed up. It was all about a guy that was going through some kind of a psychological thing. And here he's talking, he's talking to the Colonel in charge of the hospital that he's at. You don't do that. You're talking to the corpsman, you know? Stuff like that.

• 3:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, Hollywood, they don't...

• 3:15:17Speaker 01

  Oh, it's terrible because, you know, they have to... In the real world, everything all spread out. So you know that, they take a picture. So they take a picture of something real concentrated, you see? And it's not like that at all.

• 3:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Still one of my favorite war movies, The Pacific.

• 3:15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15:37Jocko Willink?

  What did you think of it?

• 3:15:38Speaker 01

  Well, the sets were incredible.

• 3:15:41Jocko Willink?

  They were.

• 3:15:41Speaker 01

  Incredible. Like, for instance, I've been to Peleliu. And, good, wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful set. And, let's see, what was it there? What was the other place they were in?

• 3:15:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, they did Guadalcanal.

• 3:16:00Speaker 01

  So on Guadalcanal, yeah, all the landings were, they were great. They were great. But that one, now, what other one did they cover, besides those two?

• 3:16:14Speaker 01

  Okay, I'm thinking primarily the one in Pelotlo, I guess. Yeah.

• 3:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I just, the first time I ever watched it, I was riding on an airplane. I had it on my computer. I had headphones in. I was watching it really close. And I, I thought that the

• 3:16:30Speaker 01

  Oh, the script was horrible.

• 3:16:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the script might be horrible. The combat scenes for me

• 3:16:35Speaker 01

  They were unbelievable.

• 3:16:36Jocko Willink?

  Were unbelievable.

• 3:16:36Speaker 01

  Unbelievable.

• 3:16:37Jocko Willink?

  The, and actually reading your book, I was, I was saying, wow, they did a great job because one thing that I always said to myself, ah, you know, it's, you know, when, when some of the firefights, the night firefights, it just flashes and they're like, oh yeah, that's what it's like. There you go. And you captured it in your book. You can't really tell what's going on, but it's bad.

• 3:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:16:56Jocko Willink?

  And they did a great job of capturing that.

• 3:16:58Speaker 01

  Now hopefully this Neil Die, we'll pick up on this.

• 3:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:02Speaker 01

  You'll see the potential there.

• 3:17:04Jocko Willink?

  Well, absolutely.

• 3:17:05Speaker 01

  Hopefully, we'll see.

• 3:17:13Jocko Willink?

  So now you guys are, as you guys are pushing through, you say casualties overall were relatively light.

• 3:17:18Speaker 01

  Yes, they were at that time.

• 3:17:21Speaker 01

  Well, the thing is, you know, this ran for, well, almost a month. So yeah, I dragged out, but casualties were, kept coming in, of course.

• 3:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you say meanwhile, off to a right on the other side of the mountain, the 27th Division had run into a meat grinder. The army was attacking on a plateau, a plateau bordered on its left by a sheer cliff that formed the east face of the mountain.

• 3:17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Called Purple Heart Ridge.

• 3:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And they were held up and so, uh, Hollen Matt Smith, he just, he got rid of their, their general. And, uh,

• 3:17:55Speaker 01

  the army and National Guard troops, they, they, they never really got over it. That was unfair. They shouldn't have done that. Well, they, they did run into some terrible things down there and they were catching from the flank, you know, real bad.

• 3:18:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:07Speaker 01

  And here, I was up, I was up way inland further and I could look down and I see what they're up against.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Here, speaking of friendly forces or friendly fire incidents, here you were. I was resting on one knee next to a tree, holding my carbine upright with a butt plate to the ground, when suddenly, wham, wham, wham, three big shells exploded over our position.

• 3:18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, 155 millimeter, long term, long toms, long range.

• 3:18:32Jocko Willink?

  The shells came not from Japanese artillery, but from a battery of Army 155s.

• 3:18:37Speaker 01

  Our battalion exec didn't believe that we were that far forward. So he did it. I found out, like, the Western one told me about it. He's the one that called it in short.

• 3:18:47Jocko Willink?

  And it was horrible.

• 3:18:50Speaker 01

  Oh, it was awful.

• 3:18:51Jocko Willink?

  It was devastating.

• 3:18:52Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh, so many guys were just pulverized.

• 3:18:54Jocko Willink?

  We didn't know what had hit us. Most of us did not hear the shells coming. No one shouted warnings, no one ducked for cover. One of the shells burst in the tree above me, deflecting the force of the blast, and most of the shrapnel outward and set us straight down. That's what saved my life. A single piece of metal pierced my elbow. The wound was larger than a bullet hole, about an inch in diameter. It hurt like hell, but it didn't look serious. It hardly bled, and the bone didn't seem damaged.

• 3:19:17Speaker 01

  Didn't hit the bone, that's the main thing.

• 3:19:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Still, the wound needed treatment. A few minutes later, several hospital jeeps converged on the scene, and I talked over one of them. On the way, just 50 yards from me, I passed a large crater containing the remains of several men from Weapons Platoon, who'd been playing blackjack when the shell hit their position. They'd literally been blown to bits. Several of those men had been my friends since Samoa. I had served in their unit before being commissioned. I could identify only one of them and only by the glasses.

• 3:19:45Speaker 01

  Because of his glasses, yeah. Yeah. His name was Costenson. In fact, I have a picture of him, too, somewhere here.

• 3:19:54Jocko Willink?

  A few yards further on, a dead Marine lay in a hole beneath a coral outcropping, where I had spent the previous night. He too had been killed by the Army's misdirected salvo. The same shell that killed the blackjack.

• 3:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, yeah.

• 3:20:09Jocko Willink?

  The same shell that killed the blackjack players wounded Dick Stein, then a member of Weapons Platoon. He doesn't remember the explosion or anything else about the day. One moment, I'm standing on the ground with the guys in the Weapons Platoon, and the next thing I know, I'm waking up in a tent there in the field hospital, and it's around midnight.

• 3:20:23Speaker 01

  It's just a concussion in his case. He just, "Why am I here?" So he just takes off.

• 3:20:30Speaker 01

  He could still be alive. I think he's in a rest home now, I think.

• 3:20:36Jocko Willink?

  All in all, the shells from the 155s killed or wounded more than 50 Marines.

• 3:20:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, the fellow wrote a book, "We Came to Win or Be Killed," or "To Die." And he got hit. He retired as a Colonel, by the way. And anyway, he got hit by the same rounds. And it put him out. He got medical disability, uh, retirement.

• 3:21:06Jocko Willink?

  Devastating.

• 3:21:07Speaker 01

  Not only that, uh, one of his very closest friends, turns out he was my company commander at this particular time. And Seltzer, his name was Seltzer, he'd been a professional dancer.

• 3:21:22Speaker 01

  And he got hit by a large round on the tinian. And then I took over. Took over. I was the exec. Took over. And he went to the hospital in Guadalcanal. He killed himself because he didn't want to live without one leg. Because he's a professional dancer.

• 3:21:45Speaker 01

  And I don't think that this fellow wrote the book. Realized. He writes in the book, he was a spontan. He didn't ever mention he killed himself. I talked to the guy that wrote the book. He didn't really know any of the others. Well, he did. I know. What a coincidence. I dated a gal one time. She was a receptionist for William Morris Agency. And they represented a lot of the big people. Lana Turner and all of those. Well, anyway.

• 3:22:16Speaker 01

  She, I was invited to their Christmas party. And this was in 44, William Morris Agency. And as they came in, she told me who was, so on, Monty Willie and so on. As they all came in. And then I ended up, I dated her a couple of times. And one time, we were in this, uh... This big place, well-known place, can't think of name now, but anyway, others had just returned, it's about a month after I had from the Marianas. I said, "How did he, how did so-and-so make out?" And they said, "Oh, you didn't know? He killed himself." My girlfriend says, "I knew that. We were close fans, we were his fan, we used to play bridge together."

• 3:23:01Speaker 01

  What a small world.

• 3:23:02Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy.

• 3:23:02Speaker 01

  Isn't that incredible?

• 3:23:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's crazy.

• 3:23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:08Jocko Willink?

  So, at this point, you're wounded.

• 3:23:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:23:13Jocko Willink?

  And you go back to the aid station.

• 3:23:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:15Jocko Willink?

  And then late on the 7th of July, my third day in the field hospital, doctors and corpsmen went through the wards,

• 3:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:22Jocko Willink?

  wards, telling all the walking wounded to return to the units.

• 3:23:26Speaker 01

  Because we had the mop up and there were thousands, thousands more. There were still thousands of them there, hiding, ready, ready to either kill themselves or make one last bonsai charge. And I had walked right through where forty were killed that, that, the last night of the mop up. Can you imagine? And then this guy, he was, these were his men, and I, when I, I found out that his track, his track and my track crossed.

• 3:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:24:03Speaker 01

  I found out on that, and so when I went to, I wanted to talk to him, sure enough, she says, "Yeah, I was there." I said, "Were you the one that was saying bonsai and all that?" "No, that was another guy."

• 3:24:14Speaker 01

  So here, and then, then he, and then the guy wrote a book about him, I have the copy of the book. It's called, it's called The Last Samurai by, by Jones. And I helped, I helped the reviewer of the book before he published it. Well, so, uh, ended up...

• 3:24:35Speaker 01

  He was invited by the author to attend our reunion in Florida. And when he came, he and his wife came, and some of our guys treated him terribly. They could not believe this guy could have done what he did, as far as giving him such a bad time, being up there right up until after the war. And I tried to calm things down. I had a heck of a time. There's an article, there's an article, look at this article right here, tells about it. Look at this, look at this article. I think I have it in here, let me think. No, I guess I don't have it here, let me think. Yeah, here's the article.

• 3:25:14Speaker 01

  No, I guess I don't have, no, wait a minute. No, that's not it either, darn it. By the way, here's a picture of this guy, I showed you that. There's a picture of this guy that I'm interviewing. This is the other guy that fired, was known as Pistol Pete. He's the one that did most of the shooting at us. He had a 105 long-range rifle. He had four of them. And one was on Guadalcanal, and we went to it, that's, I have a picture in my book with him standing at it. And he became a major.

• 3:25:52Speaker 01

  His father had been a general, at a, kinda like our, like West Point, but for senior officers to come to. And one of these officers was the prince. He was lieutenant general, became a lieutenant general, and he was one of the ones standing on the Missouri at this surrender. That was the, one of his students, his father's students. Amazing, huh?

• 3:26:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And by the way, this is what the Bonsai looked like here. You see that? Here, we buried those bodies, we dragged them into the ditch. And we buried probably 4,000 bodies like that.

• 3:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 3:26:35Speaker 01

  And, and now there are homes all through here.

• 3:26:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:26:39Speaker 01

  So they're still there. They're still there, only about four feet down. And then, then there's, then there's a beautiful new hotels right along the beach, just across the road from that. And you were probably told about that when you were there. I don't know. It's a place called, place called Tannapag.

• 3:26:56Jocko Willink?

  I don't, I don't recall if I was.

• 3:26:58Speaker 01

  Place called San Roke.

• 3:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So for people that are just listening, these are just images of this, this massive attack that took place.

• 3:27:08Speaker 01

  We, uh, we fired in, uh, our 11th Marines artillery fired in at them as they were charging. And so their bodies are all chewed up, all chewed up.

• 3:27:21Jocko Willink?

  You, you go into some pretty good detail about the, about that Banzai attack, about this, about the H battery and all that stuff. Yeah. You do a great job.

• 3:27:29Speaker 01

  That is the best you'll find anywhere. And in fact, that's the reason I had to reveal it in detail because I had some doubt about it. And I said, well, it looks like in general, he's okay. He's, he's said it right. And nobody else can talk about it, to that detail. Nobody can.

• 3:27:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's a great account.

• 3:27:46Speaker 01

  No, firsthand.

• 3:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:49Speaker 01

  Now I did go to a reunion of those people in that battalion back in Iowa. And, uh, so this guy was there and he was one of the ones that we interviewed, of course, for this.

• 3:28:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then, yeah, so if you want some account of just incredible fortitude, you've got to read this book. And then it picks up where you, what you were just talking about. This is when you go now to do sort of the, um, sort of the cleanup. And, and you say this, many of the bodies were unrecognizable.

• 3:28:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:28:26Jocko Willink?

  And, um,

• 3:28:29Jocko Willink?

  One of the guys Sandy and the others had to reach the bloody remains for dog tags that would identify their friends discovering which one of their friends.

• 3:28:37Speaker 01

  There were seven hundred of our own people were killed Muslim soldiers. It went right through them.

• 3:28:44Jocko Willink?

  You say that this banzai, this banzai resulted in, um, as near as I can determine from what I saw and what I've read, the Japanese lost upward of four thousand men, some 500 Americans were killed, most of them from the army. The two battalions that were overrun and nearly wiped out. H battery suffered 152 casualties in the attack. Seventy-five killed and seventy-six wounded.

• 3:29:06Speaker 01

  They got completely overrun.

• 3:29:08Jocko Willink?

  It's estimated that some 600 Japanese were killed on the open ground directly in front of the batteries guns.

• 3:29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:29:16Jocko Willink?

  You're,

• 3:29:19Jocko Willink?

  you were pushing up, um, again, this is another, another thing that you passed through. We passed through their positions and deployed to skirmish lines extending to the water's edge and the railroad tracks and six Marines advancing along the, on, along the shore and the eighth along the right.

• 3:29:34Speaker 01

  Along the road, yeah.

• 3:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Thus a raid, we picked our way slowly through the battle zone, our weapons at the ready. All around the dead were thick on the ground in numbers that defied comprehension. Bodies and pieces of bodies everywhere. Artillery had pounded the area and chopped up the bodies, turning the battlefield into an immense open air abattoir strewn with torsos and limbs and heads and chunks of unidentifiable flesh burned black by fire. I could recreate the flow. I could recreate the flow and ferocity of the battle, the patterns of the fight and flight by the numbers and positioning of the dead. There would be places, pockets of resistance where bodies were piled on top of bodies. Dead Japanese entangled with dead Americans frozen in attitudes of hand-to-hand combat,

• 3:30:16Jocko Willink?

  clutching each other, plunging bayonets into each other, locked in their death struggles. Our machine gun positions were tableaus of butchery with bodies of the Japanese heaped in front of positions and bodies of American soldiers slumped over their guns. For men who didn't want to be there, the US Army soldiers.

• 3:30:33Speaker 01

  There were a lot of our draftees, a lot of draftees there too.

• 3:30:36Jocko Willink?

  Not all the Japanese were dead, of course, as usual, some were sham shamming.

• 3:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:30:41Jocko Willink?

  We knew this would be the case and we very quickly and we're very quick on our triggers if we saw any movement. If one of those bodies so much as twitched, we pour fire, we'd pour fire into it. Even if we didn't see movement, if a body or a group of bodies looked suspicious, we shot it through and through. Bushes big enough to provide concealment were preemptively blasted into wood, chips and leaf bits. Now and then, as we advanced across the battlefield, a dead body rose suddenly to throw a grenade or shoot at us. Some Japanese jumped to their feet and tried to run away. We shot them all, just shot them all right down. No prisoners were taken. We moved forward at a steady pace, hardly breaking a stride, rarely halting. We just kept walking through the killing ground, looking around, scrutinizing the bodies, firing at the Japanese.

• 3:31:24Speaker 01

  Our company killed probably a hundred, probably at least a hundred. And we, we, we, we had only a couple of wounders all we had in that process.

• 3:31:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:39Speaker 01

  That was the largest of the war.

• 3:31:41Jocko Willink?

  That was what?

• 3:31:42Speaker 01

  That was the largest bonsai counterattack of the war.

• 3:31:47Speaker 01

  See, they were given no objective, just keep going, keep going, kill as many of us as possible until they're, until they themselves lost their life. And, and the two, uh, the two commanders, they, they committed Harry Carey before it started. And one was the one, Nagumo, was the one that led the attack on Pearl Harbor. Nagumo.

• 3:32:10Jocko Willink?

  And then we finally get to the last campaign. A little, a little over three miles south of Saipan, Santinian. Twelve miles long, six miles across at its widest point. And this was your?

• 3:32:24Speaker 01

  Oh, this is really something too, that first night.

• 3:32:34Jocko Willink?

  One eight landed late that afternoon.

• 3:32:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:32:38Jocko Willink?

  The second division unit involved, the only, the only second division unit involved in the J-Day operation is the regiment quickly established a reserve position behind the beachhead perimeter, digging in and stringing barbed wire in anticipation of enemy counterattack, all moving around the perimeter.

• 3:32:51Speaker 01

  Oh man, two hundred mile, two hundred, two hundred foot, no, two hundred yard wide beach. They had no idea they were going to be up there. They thought we were going to land down, down near the main town, which was called, well now it's called San Jose.

• 3:33:05Jocko Willink?

  You guys fainted, you get, there's a fake.

• 3:33:07Speaker 01

  We did a fake, but we had a battleship hit, hit, there was a lot of damage and we lost lives from counter, counter fire, counter battery fire.

• 3:33:15Jocko Willink?

  This was for me and many other second division Marines, the fourth combat operation in just eighteen months. The three previous, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Saipan had all been difficult, each in its own way, taking enormous physical and emotional toll on all the survivors. Most of us had been wounded at least once, all of us had been sick.

• 3:33:36Speaker 01

  Now, somewhere you're going to get to the point where, where we had to, at night, go over and hit, and head off the Japanese that were attacking our artillery in the rear.

• 3:33:50Speaker 01

  You don't see, I'll tell you about it if you don't see.

• 3:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The, the thing that's interesting about this is, I mean, just you guys, having been through everything that you'd been through at this point, I mean, the mentality going into this, you know, you say here, the air force could have dropped Bushels of Purple Hearts on our frontline units and every Marine who grabbed one would have deserved it.

• 3:34:11Speaker 01

  Okay, now the, the napalm was dropped, the first time the war on, on, on tin before we, before we landed.

• 3:34:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you said, you said the, the aircraft used napalm bombs, something new to us. We watched in amazement as the bombs fell, earth were tumbling end over end, and exploded on a ridge that instantly erupted in flames and oily smoke along its entire length. About ten seconds later, a gust of hot air from the ledge blew us over. Next day, first battalion elements moved up on the ridge and poked around the scorched landscape. Most of the undergrowth had been burned away. The ground was black and reeked of gasoline, and the foxholes were filled with the corpses of Japanese soldiers, blackened and shriveled by the incinerating fires.

• 3:34:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, first use of napalm.

• 3:34:57Jocko Willink?

  What was the other section that you were talking about?

• 3:35:00Speaker 01

  Okay, right at tail end, the day the island was secured. August 2nd. Here, I'm company commander. We reached, we reached the, the next, the last, the beach, you know, looking down over the cliff. And when I, when we returned there, when they're in, in March of this year. We looked from the south side of that beach where the civilians all jumped and killed themselves. And looked, looked up across and my company was spread from about halfway up clear to that point. And we had, we had, we had boats go out with a bullhorn to firm the surrender.

• 3:35:43Speaker 01

  And gave them, all the made them, they didn't. So then we fired a machine guns and mortars at them. And they all, they all, they all jumped off, off the point, this side of it. And hundreds of them jumped off their desks. And then that night, we were spread out so long, so, so thinly. We decided, I talked to my, my, my company exec of that time. And what should we do? Well, I guess we're gonna have to have strong points, figure whether likely to come through. That's what we did. We lucked out. They tried to come through right at a strong point, so. But anyway, these, the. Then we had to send people down and try to get them out of the caves down below us. There were a lot of civilians in there.

• 3:36:29Jocko Willink?

  So were the civilians that were there, were they staying with the, were they the?

• 3:36:32Speaker 01

  No, they're by themselves.

• 3:36:33Jocko Willink?

  Families of the soldiers though?

• 3:36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there were families, whatnot. They were in there, they were in the same cave, some soldiers with them.

• 3:36:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:36:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and eventually you say here, the Japanese, I mean, and again, this, we're, we're jumping through all kinds of, you know, just crazy combat. And then you get to a point where the Japanese had no, no more fight left in them. They were ready to die.

• 3:36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:36:57Jocko Willink?

  If not yet, call it quits. For the most part, they went over.

• 3:36:59Speaker 01

  Okay, then what happened? You see when I, when I told you, right after we landed, the first night. And here we got, here we got, we got a, we got, got a message that our artillery was being, being overrun by their Japanese. And so we had it years after dark and probably around midnight and here we uh here as a battalion, I was a company exec and I I took up two hundred maybe two platoons and we went single file to form a line of skirmishes in front of the artillery. Well, that's very dangerous because anybody walking around is going to get going to get the enemy, you know?

• 3:37:38Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:37:38Speaker 01

  Well, then when morning came, here there were all kinds of shell holes out there and there was Japanese in them. And here we had our line of skirmish had to go forward. I went, oh, this is going to be horrible. They're in foxholes, they're in holes and we're not. Not a one of them shot at us as we came up very close within less than a hundred feet or so. They just put a hand grenade, shoot, kill themselves. Bang, bang, a hundred and kill themselves as we walked forward and we only had a couple of men wounded, that's all we had. And why they didn't shoot back, I don't understand. All they were giving orders, now it's the time, come here, here. Wow.

• 3:38:23Speaker 01

  What a relief, what a relief.

• 3:38:26Jocko Willink?

  So going back to the book here and again, I'm jumping through some incredible stories, but Tinian was declared secure on one August. First Battalion pulled back about a mile from the coast and set up camp. The end of the fighting was very abrupt. Suddenly, we didn't have anything to do. There was no enemy activity in the immediate area, no danger, no shooting. I just sat back and tried to enjoy the situation. Now, this wasn't as easy as you might think. I was exhausted and filled with a lingering dread, a sense that I'd used up all my lives. I had I had been become conditioned to wondering whether I was going to survive another day and then all of a sudden, all the causes for concern had vanished as though I had been given a reprieve from a death sentence. I could hardly believe it, a strange feeling. I didn't have long to dwell on it.

• 3:39:11Jocko Willink?

  A few days later, I received orders to return to the States. Thirty-two months after leaving San Diego, I was going home.

• 3:39:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 3:39:22Jocko Willink?

  Three weeks later at Pearl Harbor, where I'd been marking time in the transit center, I boarded a giant Martin Mars flying boat for the final leg of the journey.

• 3:39:30Speaker 01

  Incredible flight that was, oh my gosh. Wow, landed in, what do you call that place? I can't think right now, in Berkeley.

• 3:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Was it like Alameda or something?

• 3:39:41Speaker 01

  Alameda.

• 3:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Alameda?

• 3:39:42Speaker 01

  Alameda Naval Air Station.

• 3:39:44Jocko Willink?

  Everyone on board, servicemen from every branch, returning home, watching utter silence as the Golden Gate Bridge passed beneath us. I reported to a marine facility who was granted thirty-two day furlough, one for every month of overseas duty. Later that day, I visited a barber shop. While I was sitting in the chair, one of the patrons began bitching about the terrible state of things in the country. I listened to him for a while and then I exploded. "You don't know what terrible is," I told him. He shut up after that.

• 3:40:10Speaker 01

  You're gonna talk about the woman ran into?

• 3:40:13Jocko Willink?

  The what?

• 3:40:14Speaker 01

  The woman that ran into?

• 3:40:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Got picked up, that was your first time seeing a female Marine?

• 3:40:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and you know, because they brought the women in, now they can form a sixth division.

• 3:40:24Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:40:25Speaker 01

  But, taking all the men that had clerical type works, take them out.

• 3:40:30Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:40:30Speaker 01

  Put them in combat.

• 3:40:31Jocko Willink?

  Right. This is the, the thing that's crazy for me to think about here, is you know, you just have one line that says, "The war wasn't over," right? And this is nineteen forty-four, the war wasn't over, and as you talked about earlier, the thought was that, you know, America was gonna have to invade every island until you got right into Tokyo.

• 3:40:52Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:40:53Jocko Willink?

  And since you had seen the, the, the, how steadfast the Japanese were, you all just thought, "Yeah, I might be home for a year, but I'll be back over there as a, as a battalion executive officer, and a battalion officer, or whatever."

• 3:41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, all my friends that came back and they ended back up, preparing, preparing for that.

• 3:41:12Jocko Willink?

  So about a year you spend at Quantico, at the basic school, teaching the young Marines?

• 3:41:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and the first what's called PCS, Platoon Commander School. I went through the first as a captain. And then I went through orientation class because I became an instructor, you see.

• 3:41:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so they sent you through a school.

• 3:41:31Speaker 01

  They sent you through.

• 3:41:31Jocko Willink?

  To be a platoon commander even though you'd already been a company commander in combat.

• 3:41:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, but anyway, I had to learn the academics of it.

• 3:41:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:41:39Speaker 01

  Basically, and.

• 3:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 3:41:41Speaker 01

  And then, then I was company commander, then the next I'm company commander at the Basic School. And here I have, I have a platoon of second lieutenants, just recent graduates from Naval Academy. And the platoon is senior NCOs, and none of them wanted to continue. They just wanted to retire at their rank, you know.

• 3:42:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:03Speaker 01

  They weren't going to be back to a second lieutenant. And I'll never forget, one of the first things I had to do was give them a lecture on formal guard mouth. And I'd never been to a formal guard mouth. And I told them, I told these guys, I said, I never, I've been in combat almost this time. I'd never been to a formal guard mouth. So, so I, I had a felt presentation, a move that felt around, you know. They didn't give me a bad time. They'd all, they'd all been through it, you know, but I never, never had been through it. You know, and I, I told the major about it and said, he told me, he said, you figured it out, you figured it out.

• 3:42:42Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. On August 15th, after night of devastating bombing raids, bombing raids on eight Japanese cities, the Japanese announced their intention for surrender.

• 3:42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:51Jocko Willink?

  For Americans and most of the, and this is after, obviously, the bomb.

• 3:42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:54Jocko Willink?

  You know. For Americans and the rest of the world, the announcement signaled the end of World War II, even though the formal surrender didn't take place until 2nd, 2nd of September. A few weeks later, our classes were terminated and orders were cut by thousands to release men from active duty. I was asked whether I wanted to stay on and take a regular commission in the Marine Corps. I was tempted. I'd started as a private, made it all the way up to captain at age 24. No small achievement, and there was the potential for further advancement in the post-war corps. At first, I said yes and signed my, the requisite papers, but after sleeping on it, I changed my mind. The next day, I withdrew my papers. Shortly thereafter, I was released from active duty. I bought a 1940 Chrysler convertible.

• 3:43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:37Jocko Willink?

  And in October, I drove across country to Spokane.

• 3:43:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:43:40Jocko Willink?

  A five-day journey.

• 3:43:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:44Speaker 01

  Then I went to work, after I went through college, I went to work for North American Aviation. And I was there for six years, and then Lockheed, and I was there for 23 years. And I was on primarily on the exploration of space, you know. I was involved with the first flights to Mars, and the first flyby, it was a failure. We provided the vehicle that did the injection, took it to it, and was gonna, as it flowed by, and then take pictures of it as it flew by. And also provided the shroud that protected it getting out of the atmosphere. Well, the shroud outgassed and blew up.

• 3:44:26Speaker 01

  And here I had to take a technician down to JPL, who would provide the spacecraft. And then I had to take down a half of a shroud, and they put it in temperature altitude chamber, and it did blow up. And I had to go back and tell our engineering people, "Hey, it did blow up." And they said, "Oh, no, it couldn't have." They're just, they just convinced you it did. "No, it did blow up." So then we had to work like, the next launch window was just a matter of a couple of months later. So we built a different kind, a different construction. And it made it. And from then on, I was involved in all kinds, I was involved with the tech pictures of the moon.

• 3:45:09Speaker 01

  Where the Boeing provided spacecraft, we provided the means of getting there. And then astronauts, when they prepared to land the moon, well, they were practicing mating with our spacecraft. That kind of stuff. And one time, and then I became the president of the management association, about 3,000 members. And one time, we had, what's his name, the first on the moon? Armstrong, Neil Armstrong. He spoke to us. And I asked him a question, we had about 700 people in attendance. I asked him a question, and he says, "Sometimes you look up there at nighttime, and you have to kind of pinch yourself. I was really there." Can you imagine, can you imagine what his answer was?

• 3:45:54Speaker 01

  I have no idea. His answer was, "I've learned to live with it."

• 3:46:00Speaker 01

  That just brought down the house.

• 3:46:01Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 3:46:02Speaker 01

  Oh gee.

• 3:46:03Jocko Willink?

  And then what, when did you get married? When did you have kids along the way?

• 3:46:06Speaker 01

  That was in, that was in, just a minute here, forty, forty-seven.

• 3:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 3:46:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:46:21Jocko Willink?

  And, I mean, this, this book is just, like I said, I've read a fraction of it. Probably read less than ten percent of it tonight. The, the amount of information, the amount of detail, the stories are just unbelievable.

• 3:46:38Speaker 01

  Okay, now, this other one, this other one, you get that one, and it's entirely different. See, this is, this is based on interviews primarily. And this is based on some talking to people, but mostly I'm talking to the natives, I'm talking to the Japanese, I'm describing what, what it's like now, what the landscape is like, all the debris lying around.

• 3:46:59Jocko Willink?

  So it's almost like this book should have been written first, and that one should have been written second?

• 3:47:03Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know. You see, see, the thing is, this is too broad, whereas this is getting done detailed and detailed with the people, you see? And, and that's mentioned in, in, in the, in the prologue.

• 3:47:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:14Speaker 01

  Or the foreword.

• 3:47:15Jocko Willink?

  In the foreword, yeah.

• 3:47:16Speaker 01

  In the foreword, that's where it's mentioned, that's the reason it's different, entirely different, and I didn't even intend to write this, but, you know, here, I had all of these, all these tapes, and not only that, a little, little, little tape recorder, and the one Japanese I ran to, Akio Tani, he was doing the same thing, so anything I said, he was recording, and I'm, and so on. And so that's when I decided, okay, that was eighty-two, then eighty-five, well, in eighty-three, I took a group out as a tour guide, then eighty-five, I went, I went to Japan, went on Space A, and so here I interviewed him, and that was, that was really interesting, I'll tell you. This guy, this guy, Tani, he drove me all over the place, we had Yasukuni Shrine, and

• 3:48:00Speaker 01

  the, you know, the Empress Palace, and all that kind of stuff, and just a lot, and then went, went into a, a TV studio, and all that kind of stuff, it was incredible. And then he, then he pointed out, you know, the thing was so firebombed, you know? And, well, this is all new, all new.

• 3:48:20Speaker 01

  But then everybody's so friendly to me, you know, I just couldn't believe it. Yeah, then he built, he built a, he built a, a battleship. This, uh, that was a Japanese battleship that had, that shelled Guadalcanal. He, and he made it, he, and it, it would, uh, it was radio controlled and it would fly, it would, it would fire from the guns with a photo flash. Flash out.

• 3:48:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:48:43Speaker 01

  And, and he had it in his garage and it was eight foot long, is the same size as the actual drawings of the, of the, uh, of the battleship.

• 3:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 3:48:53Speaker 01

  So he made it the same size, okay. And, and now he, uh, he came down with cancer and we, we, we corresponded for about fifteen years. And, uh, so then he wanted, now here he had this thing, what should I do? It says, well, uh, you know, there's, there's a museum back in Kalamazoo, uh, Guadalcanal veterans. And he did, he sent it back there and it's in the museum now.

• 3:49:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 3:49:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. I have a, I have a picture of it in my, in my book here summer.

• 3:49:26Speaker 01

  And then, and here, I have a lot of, a lot of little cartoons he drew. I said, what happened here? And so he drew, he drew it out, this is, this is what happened. Or he'd send me something about here, uh, here he is just starving there. And now here he's dreaming of a meal that later on he will had. Stuff like that, it was just incredible.

• 3:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, this stuff is, is, uh, amazing. These, the, this book is, is like I said, this book is amazing.

• 3:49:54Speaker 01

  Well, that's thanks to my co-author, he know, he know how to craft it. All I did was, hey, yeah, this is correct, yeah, yeah, oh, but there's more of this, and there's a little more here and this and that. The main, the main was on Saipan, I just, I had some doubts because he had, he did believe in some conspiracy theories about other things. That's the reason I'm a little concerned. But, but overall it was okay, it was good.

• 3:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's a, like I said, it's an incredible book to read. I know I've had you here for just about four hours talking, but I wanted to, I wanted to kind of close out with one last thing, one last section of the book, and you already kind of mentioned it a little bit, but the way it's written is just, uh, just such a fitting close to this.

• 3:50:35Speaker 01

  Well, this is about the guy that lost his life.

• 3:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so it says this, on October, on, on 22th November, 1993, the 50th anniversary of the Battle for Tarawa, I attended this, a ceremony in Yonkers, New York to rededicate

• 3:50:50Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 3:50:51Jocko Willink?

  Anthony O'Boyle Memorial Park.

• 3:50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50:54Jocko Willink?

  In the name of the fallen private from my platoon.

• 3:50:57Speaker 01

  He was well known there in that town.

• 3:50:59Jocko Willink?

  Also attending were Anthony's good friends and foxhole buddies.

• 3:51:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:04Jocko Willink?

  Bill Crumpacker, did I say that right?

• 3:51:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was with us.

• 3:51:07Jocko Willink?

  And Dick Stein.

• 3:51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Our company commander, John Murdock.

• 3:51:10Speaker 01

  John Murdock, yeah.

• 3:51:12Jocko Willink?

  And several other Tarawa veterans.

• 3:51:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:14Jocko Willink?

  As well as a member, as a number of high ranking Marines, including Lieutenant John, General John J. Sheehan.

• 3:51:21Speaker 01

  You probably heard of him, haven't you?

• 3:51:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:23Jocko Willink?

  Then a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

• 3:51:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:26Jocko Willink?

  It was a cold gray day with an icy wind blowing off the Hudson River.

• 3:51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:31Jocko Willink?

  Quite a contrast to the tropical heat and brilliant sunlight on Bejio when Anthony had met his end.

• 3:51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:37Jocko Willink?

  Shot in the head while peering over the seawall on Red Beach Two. Anthony had fallen back into John Murdock's arms, still alive but unconscious, his body twitching, his eyes open but empty. John held him for a brief time, spoke to him, and then set him aside on the beach among the bodies of other slain Marines, where he died a few minutes later. All the solemnities appropriate to the occasion were observed. All the rites were performed. The colors were trooped, speeches were given, music was played, prayers were offered. We

• 3:52:16Jocko Willink?

  sang the national anthem, the Marine hymn, and Amazing Grace. There was a presentation of military testimonials. Proclamations were made. John Murdock gave a talk about Anthony, then presented Anthony's brother with the Purple Heart, a fitting gesture from a man who comforted Anthony in his final moments of his life.

• 3:52:40Jocko Willink?

  An honor guard fired a 21-gun salute. Taps was played. We all wept. Our tears were shed in both sorrow and joy.

• 3:52:53Jocko Willink?

  There was cause for both. Anthony's life had been short, his dying hard, his glory everlasting.

• 3:53:03Jocko Willink?

  There was no bitterness, no disillusionment, no anger.

• 3:53:09Jocko Willink?

  His life had mattered, his death also. And we remembered both and knew that both had meaning and purpose.

• 3:53:21Jocko Willink?

  The biographical sketch in the program for the ceremony expressed the feelings well in this regard and serves as a fitting epitaph for every Marine in the Second World War.

• 3:53:35Jocko Willink?

  And here's what it read. If the world had been different, if he had been born at another time,

• 3:53:44Jocko Willink?

  Anthony, with his sunshine smile, could have married, raised a family, had grandchildren, and lived a quiet, typically traditional, American life.

• 3:53:57Jocko Willink?

  But the early 1940s were not normal times. A fascist dictator threatened to conquer Europe and forge an alliance with the militarists who controlled the Japanese government. In their distorted plan for world domination, an unprepared and unsuspecting United States became a primary target. The American people were shocked into action by the Sunday morning arrival of Japanese bombers over Oahu.

• 3:54:27Jocko Willink?

  Like hundreds of thousands of other young Americans, Anthony felt compelled to volunteer to serve his country. He simply could not stand aside while America was under attack. Anthony gave his life on Tarawa for his country, his corps, and for his fellow Marines.

• 3:54:49Jocko Willink?

  He was not a famous hero mourned by millions, extolled in the press, immortalized in magazine articles or books. He was no one special.

• 3:55:00Jocko Willink?

  Just another Marine, private first class.

• 3:55:05Jocko Willink?

  The American people should thank God eternally for Anthony and his fellow Marines, soldiers, seamen and airmen, who preserved and won a magnificent victory over a wickedly evil enemy.

• 3:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Semper Fi, brother.

• 3:55:27Jocko Willink?

  You are not forgotten.

• 3:55:30Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Dean Lad has left the building. And actually, who has joined us in the building?

• 3:55:38Speaker 03

  Looks like Jason Gardner.

• 3:55:39Jocko Willink?

  Jason Gardner is randomly, we are in Spokane, Washington. Spokane?

• 3:55:44Speaker 03

  Spokane.

• 3:55:45Jocko Willink?

  Spokane. And since you originally linked me up with Dean Lad, you were on a random flight somewhere?

• 3:55:55Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:55:56Jocko Willink?

  And you saw, what was he, just wearing like a Marine Corps hat?

• 3:55:59Speaker 03

  Sure, he's wearing a Marine Corps hat, sitting there, and I struck up a conversation with him, and then the next thing you know, he's like, "Oh yeah, I was at Guadalcanal in Tarawa." And I was like, "Holy cow." And he goes, "I wrote a book about it." And I'm like, "You gotta be kidding me." He's awesome.

• 3:56:12Jocko Willink?

  Just so cool.

• 3:56:13Speaker 03

  Sending you texts from the flight.

• 3:56:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's so funny, because you and I were just standing out there talking to him. And you know how you get, you know, you and I are used to hearing all of our friends say like, "Oh, when I was in Baghdad, or when I was in Marja, or when I was in wherever, when I was in Ramadi." And we were just standing out there, and he's like, "Well, you know, when I was in Saipan." And I was like, "That's so much better. So much cooler than we are." Dang it. And that is the most ridiculous. What those guys went through is completely ridiculous. And I know, I mean, I've since, you know, with The Old Breed is kind of the stamp, the way that I learned like what those guys went through, Sledge, Eugene Sledge.

• 3:56:57Jocko Willink?

  But this book is just right there with it, man. It's right there with it. And you're just getting gut shot while you're 500 meters from the beach at Tarawa.

• 3:57:10Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 3:57:11Jocko Willink?

  There's no way you're gonna live, and yet you live. And then, and then guess what? You go to Hawaii for six months, and then you're hitting the beaches of Saipan. And then you barely survive that. And then guess what? You're hitting the beaches of Tinian. And by the way, all of this is after you were at Guadalcanal.

• 3:57:29Speaker 02

  Crazy.

• 3:57:30Jocko Willink?

  It's completely insane. And by the way, when he got back, he got back in forty, August of forty-four. When he gets back, he has like thirty-two days leave. One day for every month that he was overseas. And then he's like, none of those guys thought the war was gonna end. They just got done literally killing every single Japanese except for seventeen on an island. They all fought to the death. And then they think, okay, there's however many millions left in Japan. And we're gonna have to go kill them all. We're gonna have to kill every single one of those people. That's what they were thinking. So he was thinking, cool, I'm gonna be on shore duty back here, training Marines for a year. And then I'll be going back overseas as a, as a company commander or as a battalion XO or whatever.

• 3:58:17Jocko Willink?

  Totally nuts.

• 3:58:20Speaker 02

  They came up with a bomb that ruined a perfectly good war is what I heard somebody say on this podcast.

• 3:58:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that was, uh, that was Jim Kunkel said that. Good. So anyways, A, it's, uh, it's so awesome that, first of all, that you met him. It's awesome that, I mean, it's, it's just amazing to be able to sit here and talk to these guys. And one of the reasons that we're able to do this is because of the support that is given to us from you, the listener.

• 3:58:48Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:58:49Jocko Willink?

  And what we've tried to do is set something up where you can support not only this podcast so that we can continue to go around and talk to the Dean lads of the world and capture their story. But also while you're doing that, you can support yourself.

• 3:59:02Speaker 02

  Yes, while you're on the path.

• 3:59:04Jocko Willink?

  It's a mutually supporting.

• 3:59:06Speaker 02

  Scenario.

• 3:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Scenario.

• 3:59:08Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:59:08Jocko Willink?

  Which is a good thing.

• 3:59:09Speaker 02

  So on the path, what's the, the first thing that comes to mind, obviously, in my opinion? Jiu-jitsu. So when you do jiu-jitsu, you need a gi, you get an.

• 3:59:19Speaker 03

  Origin?

• 3:59:20Speaker 02

  Origin gi, yeah, a hundred percent. That was a common question when we started this. Hey, I'm starting jujitsu. Good, of course, that's good. What gi should I get? Common question. Easy now. Answer's easy now.

• 3:59:30Jocko Willink?

  You know what? If it wasn't for that question, we wouldn't even be connected to Origin Gi. It was that question.

• 3:59:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59:35Jocko Willink?

  And me telling people to buy Origin Gi's even though I didn't, wasn't connected with them yet.

• 3:59:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, dang.

• 3:59:41Jocko Willink?

  So that's pretty cool to think about. So Gi's, rash guards.

• 3:59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59:45Jocko Willink?

  What are you wearing on your legs right now, by the way? Like right now?

• 3:59:49Speaker 02

  Some American denim Origin jeans. What are you, you two, Jason Gardner?

• 3:59:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, we're three for three right here.

• 3:59:55Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah. Things are awesome.

• 3:59:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59:57Speaker 03

  Every time I wash them, they get better.

• 3:59:59Jocko Willink?

  They get better. They're so nice. And you know what is coming out right now? The Delta 68 jeans, which are named after the Mekong Delta, which is where our forefathers served in Vietnam and where our forefathers in the SEAL teams wore blue jeans because they were tougher and way cooler.

• 4:00:20Jocko Willink?

  They're like lightweight though. So anyways, jeans, uh, you can get those there too. T-shirts, sweatshirts.

• 4:00:28Speaker 02

  Supplements.

• 4:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 4:00:29Speaker 02

  Keep you in, on your game and on the path. Big time. Molk, extra protein in the form of a dessert. Joint warfare.

• 4:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Or is it dessert in the form of extra protein? Because I'm kind of thinking it's dessert in the form of extra protein.

• 4:00:42Speaker 02

  Actually, I utilized that combo the other night. It was like, it was straight. Here's the thing, I had some pumpkin pie with it though. I had a thing of pumpkin pie. Is that a violation? It was a dessert for the pumpkin pie. It's like a dessert for the dessert.

• 4:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Somebody asked me if we were gonna make pumpkin spice, uh, mulk.

• 4:00:57Speaker 02

  What, like seasonal or just?

• 4:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Seasonal. Even if it's, the whole idea of it was wrong.

• 4:01:02Speaker 02

  No, man, do it.

• 4:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Because that reminds me of pumpkin, pumpkin spice latte, which I know is like a thing for people with like, uh, weird, uh,

• 4:01:11Speaker 02

  Hipsters?

• 4:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Hipsters.

• 4:01:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:01:13Jocko Willink?

  Hipsters.

• 4:01:14Speaker 02

  Hey, man, still.

• 4:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Are you a pumpkin? You're giving me a look over there.

• 4:01:17Speaker 03

  No, I was just thinking about, uh, you know, as long as there's enough fat with what you're eating, that dessert, it's gonna blunt your insulin response, so you're okay.

• 4:01:26Jocko Willink?

  Fire it up, dude.

• 4:01:27Speaker 02

  Jason Curtin is over here.

• 4:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Coming, he's got you covered, man, right there.

• 4:01:31Speaker 02

  Being critical of my biochemistry over here. Alright, cool, man. Hey, thank you. I'm gonna talk to you more about that later.

• 4:01:36Jocko Willink?

  If you want to drink something for some henergy, we'll call it.

• 4:01:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:01:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If you wanna drink some, you can try some Discipline. Some Discipline Go, some Discipline Powder. And right now, I'm completely on this kick of the Jaco Palmer, which is the best thing I've ever made.

• 4:01:56Speaker 02

  So the Discipline Go, you know, the energy drink that cans? Is that Discipline Go or just Go?

• 4:02:01Jocko Willink?

  It's like, Discipline, right? It says Discipline in small letters, but it's Go, I guess.

• 4:02:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's Discipline Go, but it's the in-energy drink form.

• 4:02:09Jocko Willink?

  This is where some big marketing person is gonna be like, hey, you need to rethink your marketing plan because it's like, no, I don't care.

• 4:02:19Jocko Willink?

  Stop.

• 4:02:20Speaker 02

  See him channeling BTF Tony.

• 4:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna say, my marketing advisor is Tony.

• 4:02:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, makes sense.

• 4:02:26Jocko Willink?

  He's like, no.

• 4:02:29Speaker 02

  No. Either way, that in the form of an energy drink, those I've been on, I've been like, I don't wanna say addicted, I'm not gonna use that word.

• 4:02:38Jocko Willink?

  I won't use that word for you, but my wife the other day goes, hey darling, how many is too many of those things to drink in a day? And I'm like, probably four. And she's like, oh, okay. And I'm like, how many you been drinking a day? And she goes, well, at least three every day.

• 4:02:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, she wanna know if she meets the threshold, right there.

• 4:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Joint Warfare, don't forget about that. Clear oil.

• 4:02:59Speaker 02

  That'll keep you in the game big time.

• 4:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Molk, we already did. Oh, and then Warrior Kid Molk for the little kids. So instead of feeding your kid actual poison?

• 4:03:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03:07Jocko Willink?

  Actual poison, which is what, uh, normal chocolate milk and strawberry milk is. It's poison for your child. You might as well just give them Strick Nine. Is that what it's called? Yeah, just give them, just give them Strick Nine.

• 4:03:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, okay, alright.

• 4:03:24Jocko Willink?

  So get the Warrior Kid, get some, get some tea, too. Winter's coming. Get that little, get that little.

• 4:03:29Speaker 02

  Jaco White Tea.

• 4:03:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep, get some.

• 4:03:32Speaker 02

  There it is. This is all at originmaine.com. Also, when you get Faithful Warriors, I got it on the website, no worries. Under books from the episodes. I think I'm gonna list the other books as well that he sort of mentioned.

• 4:03:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah, you're gonna have to dig through some of those.

• 4:03:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll try, I'll make an attempt. Faithful Warriors, a hundred percent will be there, um, you know, so you can get that. Good support on that one. Also. We have a store. Jaco has a store. Actually, we it's all it's everyone's store now. That's what it is.

• 4:04:01Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna change the name to everyone's store?

• 4:04:03Speaker 02

  Maybe. Maybe I'm gonna I'm gonna ask BTF Tony, he might uh you know suggest that one.

• 4:04:07Jocko Willink?

  Just go communist on it and call it the people's store.

• 4:04:11Speaker 02

  Maybe. It it would fit is what I'm saying. Anyway, it's called Jaco's store. Currently, Jaco's store.com. This is where you can get more rash guards. Rash guards more, how should I say representative directly of the game, the path.

• 4:04:26Jocko Willink?

  You know what's funny? We just took it for granted. We just talked about Origin. We didn't say that it was made in America. After we just talked for four hours with someone that fought to keep America free. And then we didn't mention the fact that everything at Origin is made 100% without compromise in the United States of America.

• 4:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:04:44Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty cool. Just saying.

• 4:04:45Speaker 02

  The cotton is grown. See, and that's the part two. Like you can say, yeah, 100% made. I took all these materials and I made them right here in America 100%, which isn't even bad. I'm not even hating on that. That's good. But wait, wait, what about the materials, though? You know, okay, I get it, man. Okay, all good either way, but what about those materials? You know, the Origin materials, that's that's grown in America. So.

• 4:05:10Jocko Willink?

  Jaco's store.

• 4:05:11Speaker 02

  Our rash guards are made in America as well from Origin. So boom, you know, in the game.

• 4:05:15Jocko Willink?

  T-shirts, truckers hats, beanies, hoodies.

• 4:05:19Speaker 02

  Light and heavy, whatever you need, whatever you like. Oh, heavies are in. Well, it depends on what you mean. They're heavy technically, but you know.

• 4:05:30Jocko Willink?

  He lives 20 minutes from the Canadian border, bro. You don't have heavy for him. We need heavy for him.

• 4:05:36Speaker 02

  You are right.

• 4:05:37Jocko Willink?

  So all that stuff is at Jaco's store.com. So there you go.

• 4:05:41Speaker 02

  Yes. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you not if you haven't already. Contrary to what Jaco says, I'm not saying you don't. What do you keep saying?

• 4:05:49Jocko Willink?

  You don't think people subscribe to the podcast. You keep needing to tell them. Kick in an open door.

• 4:05:55Speaker 02

  If I remember correctly, which I probably don't, but if I do, I my initial contention was that we don't have to say to subscribe to the podcast. We don't have to say, hey, subscribe, you know?

• 4:06:07Jocko Willink?

  What do we have to say then?

• 4:06:08Speaker 02

  Nothing. They'll be like, oh, I'll just subscribe to this podcast if I like it, kind of thing. That's I think, I don't, I don't know. I think that was the whole contention. Nonetheless.

• 4:06:16Jocko Willink?

  Why is it even there then? Why are we saying it?

• 4:06:19Speaker 02

  That's the whole reason I brought it up at that time. It's like, why are we even saying this? Remember?

• 4:06:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but then some guy.

• 4:06:25Speaker 02

  Sent you a message that said I haven't subscribed.

• 4:06:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 4:06:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's like a good reminder. And then you're like, see? Yeah, okay, it's all coming to see. Thanks.

• 4:06:33Jocko Willink?

  All right, so subscribe to the podcast.

• 4:06:35Speaker 02

  If you want.

• 4:06:36Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Podcast. There's also some other podcasts. One of them is called the Warrior Kid Podcast, which you may or may not know about. It's for children. It's for parents. It's for everyone in the world. And then we have another podcast, oddly enough now, which is called the Grounded Podcast.

• 4:06:49Speaker 02

  Grounded Podcast, yes. This, I guess it was formulated kinda with the offshoots of conversations about jujitsu in life, right?

• 4:06:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, here's the thing. There's some things that we talk, that you and I talk about, and then that you and I talk about with everyone that we know.

• 4:07:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:07:05Jocko Willink?

  That doesn't quite fit in the purview of Jocko Podcast's actual, right? Like, the Jocko Podcast is for Dean Lad.

• 4:07:14Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:07:15Jocko Willink?

  It's not for Dean Lister.

• 4:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Not that Dean has, Dean's been on it, but like Dean's, you know, we, we, we covered the primary Jocko Podcast type stuff from him. But Dean has other information for us, other things that we talk about that.

• 4:07:30Speaker 02

  That is the perfect way to put it, actually.

• 4:07:32Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. So subscribe to those podcasts. And also, if you want to get some, some soap, because you probably need soap. In fact, I'm gonna go and say you do need soap. Get it from IrishOaksRanch.com, from Young Aiden, who's making soap on his farm. From goats, which are not allowed to sell goat milk in California, cuz, speaking of communists, they like to control everything out there.

• 4:07:52Speaker 02

  But you can sell goat's milk soap, though. You can sell the milk for consumption direct.

• 4:07:56Jocko Willink?

  Nope. Nope. So get some soap and stay clean.

• 4:08:01Speaker 02

  Also, we have YouTube channel if you're interested in the video version of this podcast, we want to see what we look like.

• 4:08:07Speaker 02

  Maybe not me, maybe Jaco. Well, actually, we already know what Jaco, if you want to know what Dean Lad looks like.

• 4:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:08:12Speaker 02

  Ninety-eight?

• 4:08:13Jocko Willink?

  Ninety-eight years old. Just in here, just so good to go. Maybe. And he, I, we should have gone like on a full fitness diet, like longevity protocol. What's he doing?

• 4:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08:27Jocko Willink?

  He's, what's he, what's he doing?

• 4:08:28Speaker 02

  Get me on that path.

• 4:08:30Jocko Willink?

  Not to mention, he took a, took a round through his guts. That guy can't be killed, bro. He's the, he's the ultimate.

• 4:08:37Speaker 02

  He's still rolling.

• 4:08:38Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, and then we got Psychological Warfare. If you need some little mental spot, you can get that. It's available on various MP3 platforms. Me talking to you about your moment of weakness. If you need a visual version of that, go to flipsidecanvas.com. A little company run by Dakota Meyer. You can get.

• 4:08:57Jocko Willink?

  You can get art there. I said it.

• 4:08:59Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 4:09:00Jocko Willink?

  And then also books. You want to exercise your brain. So get this book. This book is epic. Faithful Warriors. A Combat Marine remembers the Pacific War. I, like I said, I read 10% of it at most on this podcast. I didn't touch. There's huge pieces I didn't even touch in here. So order that book. Leadership Strategies and Tactics Field Manual just got cleared by the DOD. So we are clear hot. It's coming out January 14th. And you're probably thinking, oh, well, I'll wait a little while to order it. And if you think that, you're not getting that first edition. And then I will look at you with shame when I meet you. So, no, seriously, Leadership Strategies and Tactics, preorder it now so the, so that the publisher knows how many to print.

• 4:09:45Jocko Willink?

  We all know that this has been a problem for some people in the past, me included. Way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. Order those books immediately for your children and for every child that you know.

• 4:09:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, get them. I, I've been buying them for the kids libraries.

• 4:10:00Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 4:10:00Speaker 03

  So I got the three Warrior Kids books and Mikey and the Dragons, brought it down to the school library. Here you go. And I just realized I gotta go get it for the little town libraries too. So more kids than just the ones that I know.

• 4:10:13Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. And the teachers, have they been reading it in school with your kids?

• 4:10:17Speaker 03

  Uh, the, the fifth grade teacher.

• 4:10:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right. Cause I got a bunch of letters from the kids.

• 4:10:22Speaker 03

  You did. Yeah, they read it.

• 4:10:23Jocko Willink?

  They're in the game.

• 4:10:24Speaker 03

  They are. They have a pull-up bar in their classroom.

• 4:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Yes. Yes. You know what? That right there, my mission in this world has been accomplished. That there's a classroom in America with a pull-up bar. Every classroom in America should have a pull-up bar and a couple copies of the Warrior Kid. So yeah, check out those books and Mikey and the Dragons. I don't know. A lot of people, as I, as I always say, a lot of people think that's the best kids book ever written.

• 4:10:50Speaker 03

  Pretty good.

• 4:10:51Jocko Willink?

  At least, at least I do.

• 4:10:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:10:54Jocko Willink?

  Dismingles Freedom Field Manual.

• 4:10:57Jocko Willink?

  You can get that book.

• 4:11:00Jocko Willink?

  If you want to get after it. And what's interesting about that book is there's no book like it. And my publisher, I was like, is this the biggest risk you've ever took with publishing a book? And he was like, oh, absolutely not even close. There's no book like it. It's totally outside of any other normal book. So yes, this is a big risk. But it, what did it do? It it outperformed every model of sales that they had created for it. Like even though that well, if it really does great, it'll be here. It outdid all that. So why? Word of mouth and you all spreading the word. So thank you. Discipline equals freedom field manner. And then, of course, there is extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership that I wrote with my

• 4:11:41Jocko Willink?

  brother Leif Babin about leadership, not just in combat, but everywhere. And we have Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems through leadership worldwide. That's what we do. Go to echelonfront.com for details. EF Online, since leadership training can't just be a shot in the arm and then you're good to go. You need to do more persistent training over a longer period of time. That's EF Online. Go to EFonline.com. Check it out. We're doing new modules all the time.

• 4:12:18Jocko Willink?

  Muster 2019. The last muster that we are doing in 2019 is in Sydney, Australia. We are about to head down there. So every muster we've done is sold out. If you want to come to the muster in Sydney, it is a two day leadership conference instruction seminar that is guaranteed to up your leadership game. You will have pragmatic, actionable things to do that are going to make you a better leader when you leave. And what does that mean? That means you will do better in everything in your life.

• 4:12:52Jocko Willink?

  Period. And then we have EF Overwatch where we are taking veterans from Spec Ops and Combat Aviation, and we are placing them into companies in the civilian sector and be on the lookout for EF Legion, where we are taking broad military troopers and placing them into the civilian sector so they can use those military skills, take the principles that we know from the military, that we know from extreme ownership, and put them into your company so your company can win. And if you want to continue to interact with us virtually, then you can do it on the interwebs. Jason is at Jason.N.Gardner.

• 4:13:36Jocko Willink?

  Is that on Instagram?

• 4:13:38Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 4:13:38Jocko Willink?

  Twitter?

• 4:13:39Speaker 03

  Uh, Jason and Gardner on Twitter.

• 4:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I knew there was a difference somewhere in there. Facebook?

• 4:13:45Speaker 03

  Jason and Gardner on Facebook.

• 4:13:48Jocko Willink?

  Which one is your most used social media platform?

• 4:13:54Speaker 03

  I like Twitter the most. No, excuse me. Instagram.

• 4:13:57Jocko Willink?

  Echo calls it the Gram.

• 4:13:59Speaker 03

  The Gram is the deal. Twitter's a bit clunky seeing who wrote what and stuff like that.

• 4:14:05Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting.

• 4:14:07Speaker 03

  But...

• 4:14:09Jocko Willink?

  All right, well, if you want to talk to Jason, that's him. Echo is at EchoCharles, and I am at JacoWillink. That's Twitter, Instagram, and on the FossoBoken. And once again, thanks to Dean Ladd, Lieutenant Colonel Dean Ladd, United States Marine Corps, for his service and sacrifice, and the same obviously goes out to all our servicemen and women out there. Thank you for protecting our freedoms and to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all

• 4:14:48Jocko Willink?

  first responders, thanks for what you do every day to keep us safe here in our homes. And to everyone else out there, never forget.

• 4:15:03Jocko Willink?

  Never forget the price that has been paid for our freedom. A price of blood and horror.

• 4:15:12Jocko Willink?

  A price of sacrifice and suffering. A price that we cannot fully repay. But what we can do

• 4:15:22Jocko Willink?

  is live a life that honors every single sacrifice that has been made.

• 4:15:31Jocko Willink?

  For those that gave their lives.

• 4:15:36Jocko Willink?

  Go out there

• 4:15:39Jocko Willink?

  and live.

• 4:15:42Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Jason and Echo and Jaco.

• 4:15:48Jocko Willink?

  Out.