361: You Can't Change The Temperature Of The Ocean. It's Gonna Be What It's Gonna Be. With Vietnam SEAL, Gil Espinoza.

Fire Fighter and retired Navy Frogman, Gil Espinoza. 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 361 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. In March of 1969, the RAND Corporation, a semi-private think tank that specialized in research and analysis for the Department of Defense, published a report titled "The Navy SEAL Commandos: A Case Study of Military Decision-Making and Organizational Change," as far as I know, the first academic-level study of the SEAL teams. The report's author was Francis J. Bing West, a former Force Recon Marine and Vietnam War veteran, whose investigation had begun a year earlier and whose research had produced

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  a raft of documents, dozens of interviews, and the firsthand observation of several SEAL missions into the Rung-Sat and Mekong Delta. From this research, West had produced an 18-page report, whose introduction provided a brief description of SEAL training, training he estimated at a cost of around $14,000 per man, plus an overview of the SEALs' commitment to Vietnam at its height, a commitment that never exceeded 150 SEALs, or roughly 1,150 fewer than the in-country height of the Green Berets' total complement. It was a commitment that stood out in even starker relief when placed next to the author's

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  obvious admiration for the SEALs' progression from lackluster coastal raiders to the war's most aggressive, direct-action commandos. Admittedly, commandos who had had no business becoming such, and thus had drawn the interest of the same preeminent think tank that had created the US military's nuclear defense strategy. Intended as a study on organizational change, the report's true purpose had been to discover how the Navy could have possibly succeeded in creating a land-focused commando force, a force that even the Vietcong had reportedly dubbed "The Men With Green Faces," a color not normally associated with the Navy's traditional medium.

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  It was a puzzle of personal importance to the author as the Marine Corps, the far more likely branch of service, had never succeeded in creating anything similar. Ultimately, the author decided the most important factor in the SEALs infringement was owing to the SEALs themselves and the culture that weighed upon them. Drawn from a notoriously selective training program that produced few qualified candidates, the SEALs naturally had had to find a mission that kept casualties low, a circumstance that might have pushed them, like the LERPs or the Force Recon Marines, into a reconnaissance role.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Had they had anyone to pass the intelligence to? They hadn't. Nor had there been any great pressure from the Riverrine Force to engage in any sort of Green Beret-style advisory duty or civic action. Organizational orphans, with no larger force to support or control them, and possessing no love or admiration for the Vietnamese, the SEALs had set out into the swamps, not to prove themselves, their training had already done that, said the author, but because not to go would have been inexcusable to the others. They had developed a collective value system which emphasized physical hardiness and courage,

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  and they liked to fight. So when the tactics of patrol and ambush had proved unproductive, nobody not a SEAL, meaning no Blue Water Superior Officer, had ordered them to try something else. They had just done it. What strikes me as most remarkable about the SEALs' story, the author concluded, is their performance and their ability to learn and adapt in a decentralized, sub-optimizing environment.

• 4:12Jocko Willink?

  The Navy's traditional latitude and the UDT's traditional adaptability created what several unidentified SEALs soon described to a documentary filmmaker as the war's unsung soldier and what we consider without question the best troops that the country has. Both descriptions notable because they didn't use the word sailors and just short of the Reader's Digest appraisal that had dubbed them the war's super commandos. By the end, these would be assessments that were next to impossible to dispute.

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a little excerpt from the book by Water Beneath the Walls, a book written by Ben Milligan. He's been on the podcast a couple of times. He's a former SEAL and this is indisputably, speaking of indisputably, this is the best book about the history and the emergence of the SEAL teams that's ever been written.

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  And that section that I just read is from a section of the book called culmination, which is where the roots of the SEAL teams finally grew into what we ultimately became from our frogman forefathers. It was in Vietnam where the SEALs proved their metal as a maritime direct action force. And it is an honor to have one of those Vietnam era SEALs here with us tonight, Mr. Gil Espinoza, to share his experiences and lessons learned. Gil, thanks for joining us.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 5:58Jocko Willink?

  I heard you, uh, I heard you kind of smiling at some of those descriptions to that in this book with what was going on.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it's a...

• 6:09Speaker 01

  It's kind of interesting of how that I think even he looks at us, he's in the teams, he looks at us, but every frogman has his own way that he looks at things, every single one of us, right? And, and I'm just thinking about other people, you know, they say even Roger, right? His whole, his whole mindset and how he looks at it can be totally different and even operational, even combat, you get done doing something and years later, you're bullshitting with somebody and it's kind of like, no, we didn't do that, we did this. Ah bullshit, I'm sure it was generals. No, I think it was tax collectors, you know, go, are you sure? The whole history, right? And then you have a guy that goes, was it generals or was it tax collectors? And another teammate go, well, that guy wasn't even there.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  So some of our stories, I think some of our stories get conflicted with other people's stories. But you do remember the ones that were, that were specifically yours that came from here. And we're talking about the heart of the frogman, you know, that, that I see where he's, he's writing from, you know?

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. No, he does a great job and, and actually it's pretty incredible, some of the stuff that he documents. For instance, there's a, a scene where Rangers are being overrun and he's got quotes of as they're making radio calls, hey, we're being overrun, we need more support, God, you know, the, the commanders not with them and he's saying, do the best you can, God speed, that kind of thing. And you read it and you're thinking, oh, you know, he did, he seemed to have done a good job, sort of, sort of coming up with what the dialogue would be. And then you read the footnote, it's not something he came up with, it's documented. These are, there were people writing down the radio calls and it's exactly what these guys said.

• 7:56Jocko Willink?

  So he, he's just a very, it took him seven years to write this book, incredible book. But nothing better than the horse's mouth and since we got the horse here.

• 8:06Speaker 01

  I've been trying to write a book since I gave thought in my head as, you know, leaving Vietnam or being on the fart department and wrestling in college, I mean, the whole thing of coming back home and looking back into where it all began from being a little boy.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, let's get into it. Where did it begin? Let's, let's start at the beginning.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Well, you can tell I'm not as big as Echo or you, right? And then when you go to class, you look around, I mean, look at guys like you and I went, "What the hell are you doing here?" Right? But as a little kid, I was raised in Boulder. Moved from Rocky Ford, where I was a little kid, to Boulder and I left all my family. My grandmas, my aunts, my all my cousins, everybody. Everybody in my family and we're moving to Boulder someplace I never knew.

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  And this is with your?

• 8:52Speaker 01

  My mom and dad.

• 8:53Jocko Willink?

  Your mom and dad.

• 8:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  What made them decide to move?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  Economics. They actually were migrant workers. My dad became a subcontractor. And then later on, it just got really, really hard. And we had an uncle that owned a barber shop up in Boulder. So the family moved where the family was, right? Just like now, right? Everybody moves where you have somebody to get a foothold in. And so in kindergarten, this kid beat me up, right? So my brother, I'm kind of whining. My brother said, "What happened? What's up?" I said, "Well, that guy, John Amaya, beat me up." John Amaya, I know his brother. So they drags me to his place. And my brother was my hero. When I was like five years old, when I was five years old, I was doing chin-ups.

• 9:41Speaker 01

  When I remember when I was one, he'd hang me on a door and walk out and leave me. He'd come around and I got to around one or two and finally he'd look around and I remember I was like three or four, I could get my elbow up on the door, right? And he'd have me doing chin-ups. We had a rope for a swing. He had me climbing up that rope when I was five. When I was five, I could-

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  What year is this? So this is like 1953 or 19... Because you were born in what, 19?

• 10:03Speaker 01

  Forty-seven.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Forty-seven?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  So-

• 10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I was five years old, I was 53.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  So your brother had, your older brother had like a early start on the physical culture?

• 10:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. He was a wrestler.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so he was a wrestler.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  He was a wrestler. And then when he went to Boulder, he's kicking the hell out of the guys in Boulder, but there was still the underlying racist stuff.

• 10:24Jocko Willink?

  And so what? And so what are you, you're Native American?

• 10:27Speaker 01

  Well, from the Pecaries, my grandma's Pecaries, but we identify mainly as Spanish.

• 10:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:33Speaker 01

  Not Mexicano, not Mexican, because our people did not come up from Mexico. They came from- You know, from Spain, from through California, then to New Mexico, through establishing through the Spanish land grants, and then with the mestizos, right, the Native Americans, the blended, but blended culture, right? And so then, everything subsistence living, then the government comes in and says you got to pay taxes. It was all subsistence, so how are they going to pay taxes when they never really made any money? But you would trade ten chickens for a, for a cow or whatever.

• 11:06Jocko Willink?

  So they were doing old school barter?

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Old school barter. And then, uh, they had to sell their land and then move. And my, my, my dad's family had some Spanish land grant stuff, so his stepfather, my dad's dad died when he was like, baby. My dad says the government came in and gave all the men shots, depuria shots, and, you know, guys died. And so they moved and got up to Rocky Ford and established themselves as a community. My, all my cousins lived on one block. There was my uncle, my grandma, my other uncle, my, all of us lived on one block. And literally, there was a train track in the back of our yard. And, and there was one, you know, it was kind of like a cul-de-sac that went out to a main road, and on the other side was a ditch, water.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Smelled kind of like the Mekong. So, when I was in Vietnam, I sit there and go, what? Kind of smells, you know, kind of smells like that. So it was between a railroad track and a river, right? And we were always told, don't play on the tracks, and don't play on the river. Six, five years old, we had a pipe that went across that river, right? It's a slow man, it's a slow ditch. Our deal of manhood, or whatever it was, as cousins, we were all about the same age, was to go across the ditch, hanging upside down, going up, none of us knew how to swim.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  But that's where I'm getting to the point of being the young boy, little boy, right? No fear. You don't have that until somebody tells you, "Don't go into the ditch, you're gonna drown." You don't know what drowning is until somebody, until you do one bit of swimming pool and you go, "I could drown," right? But you don't have that fear. You know? You don't, you don't know that you're, you don't know that you're black, you don't know that you're brown, you don't know that you're white, you don't know any of that stuff. You're a kid. Right? Intelligent, loving, caring, that natural curiosity and zest for life, that powerful person as a little boy. Well, I got my ass kicked by John Amaya, right?

• 13:05Jocko Willink?

  You didn't know you'd get your ass kicked until John Amaya kicked your ass.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was climbing ropes, I was having a good time. I'm a kid, and I think all kids are like that, right? Initially, we're all, we're all, they're all like that. And so, my brother takes me over there and he says, "Had this kid come out," he goes to his brother, "they come out," and I'm like, "You know, in order to maintain that part that you're intelligent, loving, caring, with that natural curiosity and zest for life, you're having these natu- physiological releases, which are laughing, talking, crying, shaking, sweating, yawning, and all that stuff, right, to keep that, to keep that, to keep that intact, right?" So I'm going through all that stuff, and my brother, I had a warrior brother, right? He wanted to make sure, he knew I was gonna get my ass kicked when I was a kid. So he took, because I'm sure it happened to him, but he was my older brother, I didn't know that.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  How much older was he than you?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Nine, nine years old.

• 13:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang, so that's a big spread. So he's a real, like, hero to you?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Oh man, yeah. He's a chief, retired Navy chief, he went to the Navy. How'd I wind up in the Navy? So, this kid comes out, and my brother looks at me, goes, "Now, remember, remember that little, he showed me a duck under, right? A duck under and a high crotch and to throw. He said, "Just do that." I'm going, because, I mean, I couldn't really do it to him, my brother, but he would show me. I said, "All right," so I came up, the kid come underneath, I grabbed him with the duck under, threw him, threw him down, he says, "And when you throw him down, sit on him and make him say uncle." I mean, that was an old rule of the old days, right? Throw him down, I'm, "Say uncle," you know? "Okay, uncle." My brother, you know, then he says, "Don't even..." Don't ever let anybody, you know, don't let your brother mess around. Anybody mess with my brother,

• 14:44Speaker 01

  you just let him know I've got his back. So I go to school, back to Liberty, right? Grade school in Rocky Ford, and everybody, watch out for that little guy, you know? They call me Tuffy, you know? I didn't know. So then when we left Rocky Ford, I'm crying all the way from Rocky Ford to Boulder, and my dad gets tired of it. He says, "God damn it, give me..." He stopped at the overlook. You ever been to Boulder, Colorado? No. When you come down into it, it's beautiful. I didn't. So I'm crying, and my dad grabs me, pulls outside the road, grabs me and throws me in the back. I don't know if I'm going, right? As we were coming over this hill, I'm thinking, I don't have anybody, that aloneness of being alone.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  Like when you start training, right? Or you go in the Navy, where you feel that you're alone. Or any time that you left islands, right?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  And for a little boy to be alone, that was the beginning of being a frogman. I look at it now, right? And so when we came over, I looked, I peeked up, because he threw me in the back of the truck, got tired of me being inside, in here. And I think the thing is, we, those of us who are introspective or really searching for what is, who we are, right? That little boy is always who we were, but it gets covered up by all the bullshit. Well, when I went over and I looked, I saw these mountains, and in my heart, I heard, "No, we're here, and we'll be your friends forever." And it was a squan of brave.

• 16:16Speaker 01

  I look at him, I could see the silhouettes of him. I went, and I looked down, and I saw the shining lights. And it, it's the same thing that I got when I saw Point Loma, when I was going to Vietnam, right? And I saw Point Loma, and the finger is pointing that way to Vietnam, right? But when I sensed that, I went, "Okay." So I go to school in Boulder, and a goddamn Charlie Mestas beats me up the first day.

• 16:47Speaker 01

  You know, and my brother, I was like, uh, uh, seven or, uh, seven or eight. And I didn't want to tell my brother because I didn't, you know, I, I didn't want to go.

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  Didn't want him to set up another prize fight for you.

• 16:58Speaker 01

  Right. So I got my ass kicked for five days figuring it out. And that's when I understood the inside warrior. The inside warrior is the one that talks to you, that goes, boom, you get hit here. And it's kind of like figuring stuff out. It's like your first wrestling match or jujitsu or your first appointment, right? And I felt that that's what I was doing. I was, I was sensing and understanding it. And then one day the outside warrior came in. I grabbed old Charlie, man, I hit him with that high cross, dropped him down, you know? And just started, and two times in my life, that time when I started beating him badly. Another time when I came back from Vietnam and got in a fight with a guy.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  It felt like, and you never see the Patriot, you know, when, uh, he hacks up that guy that kills his son? When I saw that movie, I started crying because that's the way I felt, right? That's totally not out of control. You don't ever have these flashbacks where you're totally out of control. And it's always, it's always, the inside, the outside warrior always understands what's happening and what he's doing. It's just that when does he feel like stopping? And the inside warrior says, that's enough. But they both cover up the little boy because the little boy would have never wanted to have that fight in the first place. He wants to be a little kid. So rather than asking myself, and I did ask myself, what's wrong with me? That's not even the question.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  The question is, what's wrong with Charlie? Why, why is he, why is he jacked up, you know? And then later on, I kind of became Charlie. But when you find out that you can wrestle and you're a pretty tough guy, then you're picking on guys that you know you shouldn't even be picking on. But they don't know how to wrestle. They're big guys, they don't know how to wrestle, but you do. So I, uh...

• 18:52Speaker 01

  I won that fight and then what happens is another guy named Terry Fox, big guy, he wanted to beat the hell out of me. So I'm like, what the hell? Trying to figure this out. And that was the very first time that an ally came in. And he was Mike Martinez. And he said, hey, man, he says, he's too little for you to fight. He said, will you fight me? I understood allies, you know? And so I called him Uncle Mike. Let everybody know he's my nephew. What grade are you in at this point? That one, that was in, that was in second grade. Damn. You know, so, so that happened. So that was my life, right? And

• 19:34Speaker 01

  and then I came into this group, it's called the Goss Street Neighborhood, right? It was right after the war. We were all born in forty seven, most of us. The poor whites, the Jews, the blacks that worked on the radio, on the, on the train. The Polish, the, or the guys left over from, from World War Two, the Mexicanos and a couple of Japanese guys, right? This is your neighborhood? That was my neighborhood on Goss Street in Boulder, right? So when people say it takes, it takes a village to raise a child, that's bullshit. Because it takes.

• 20:08Speaker 01

  If I went and I picked up something that wasn't mine, Miss Toledo's sitting on the front porch. Is that yours? No, man, then put the goddamn thing down.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Or you're cutting school. What are you guys doing over here? You mean, you know, weren't you supposed to be in school? Yeah. So there was always this, my mom said, what were you doing over there? And I'm going, well, I wasn't there, lying right away, you know, kind of like going through SEAL training, man, you start, lie, cheat, steal, do whatever you can do to get through this training, but don't get caught, right? Oliver and Chief Allen, don't get caught. That's Miss Toledo and Miss Martinez, Miss Savanis, you know, don't get caught. And then when you got caught, my mom. How do you know that? This is a little bird told me. So I'm like, who in the hell is this little bird?

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  It's a little bird called a rat.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  It was all of them, you know, but that was that neighborhood of caring people that really care about you, about what's going on, not because you're Mexicans, or not because you're Spanish, not because you're white, because this is your neighborhood, this is where you belong, this was my, and it isn't an identity thing, it's a belonging thing that you know they're invested in, in you. And, and the deal was, all of us are going to go to school. We're all not going to cut school. There was a black guy, and we, and we had to give up our language, those of us were Spanish, right? Don't speak Spanish in school. So we're getting ready to go to school. Um, well, this is in high school, but in, but in junior high, it was, it was the same thing. I go to junior high, there's this guy Nick Crispin, right?

• 21:37Speaker 01

  The badass kid in school, the ninth grader, and I'm seventh grade, little. Beat up this kid. I said, I don't even know that kid. Well, if you don't beat him up, I'll beat you up. So it's like, ah. So I don't want to get beat up, so I beat up a kid that, I beat him up. And so then, but then what happens inside, right? That heart, that, that thing that comes in and goes, this isn't right. So I went up to, to the guy and I said, hey, look, man. I said, we might as well fight now because I'm not going to do that again. Oh, no, you're cool, you're cool. And I, inside I was crying because I beat up a guy that I didn't. And, oh, no, you're cool. And so then I understood, a bully.

• 22:18Speaker 01

  I understood what they're going to make me do if I don't make a choice, right? So I go through that, I go to the bathroom. Nick's, there was a guy named Nick, this guy named Chuck, and this guy named Rich. I won't say their last names because they're all dead, but I don't really like those guys anyway. So I'm in there taking the leak, and the guy comes in and says, hey, what are you doing here? And I look up and says, oh, seventh grade, right? It's this innocence, right? The innocence. And, uh, I said, so who are you? I said, I'm, I'm Gil Espinoza. Well, yeah, I said, who are you guys? Well, we're here to beat the shit out of you. I'm like. Come on, man. I'm so little, I'm so little, it's about like this, I was like four foot, I was small, I was smaller than Hurley,

• 23:03Speaker 01

  shorter than Herbie Corral. Herbie Corral. That's why he and I are, we're good buddies, you know, because we're both little guys, because there are little guys in the teams. For sure. And then there are little guys in the teams and big guy, big little guys like Kirby Corral's a big little guy. You know, there are other ones that are, you know, they're like you guys but shrunk down. I was a skinny guy, a hundred, hundred and twenty pounds, you know, carrying ninety pounds of gear up in the, up in the Maokua. And when I was working with the, with the prus and working with the Vietnamese SEALs, I carried the, an M60 with eight hundred rounds. When we went heavy on the border, right? So.

• 23:41Speaker 01

  And so. So what happened, so did you fight these guys? Well, so then what happened, this guy, Bruce Mc, Bruce McDowell steps in, he was from Hawaii. And he steps in and he goes, what's going on in there? And I'm going, those guys wanted to beat me up. And he goes, oh, he's, he's, hey, guys, you're way too big for him, but that little neck, he's, he looked at me, he's really cool, he says, if I stay here, you want to fight that little guy? And I'm already. I'm shaking, man, I got tears in my eyes, I'm like, I'm alone. And you're in seventh grade? I'm in seventh grade, I'm alone. And all the guys from God Street, we, we came to school together, we didn't realize that, that the classism was happening. There's classism and racism, right?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  Well, the classism took all of us poor people together, right? Didn't matter whether you were white or whatever, that was, they called our street Sin City, we didn't even know it till we were already men. We didn't know that that's what they called our neighborhood. And so. I'm going, yeah, he says, well, okay. So I hit him with that move, man, high crotch, come around, boom, hit him, put him in the urinal. And next thing you know, I.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Outside Warrior was working, man. It was high order, right? I love the word high order when we went in the teams, man, because that means you're high order. It's a high order detonation, man. I was in it. I took him, I put his head in the toilet and I sat on his back and started flushing it. And I was screaming, you know, like when, when you, when you're in the cold water, that whole thing. You know, just keeping your shit together, right? And I'm screaming, next thing I'm picked up out of the, off this guy. Bruce McDowell takes me over, sticks me in the corner. He says, breathe. And I'm like, you know, breathe. He tells those guys, get the hell out of here. And I'm like, and so he says, hey, he says, calm. You know, calm down. I'm like, breathe. And I'm breathing. He says, uh,

• 25:35Speaker 01

  he says, uh, did you ever wrestle? I wrestled. My brother taught me wrestling, but he went in the Navy and I'm alone. He said, look, wait a minute, wait a minute. He says, you ever think about wrestling? We have a wrestling team here. I said, no. He said, well, and you'd be wrestling guys your size, not big guy, little guys your size. He says, you ought to come out. Maybe. Right? So that I did. And that was the beginning of another evolution, right? So I went to wrestle, but I found out I was wrestling, I was wrestling for all the wrong reason. I was wrestling to learn how to fight, wrestling to learn how to protect myself, wrestling so that I didn't have to, if the bully came, I didn't have to bow down to him, that I didn't have to serve anybody.

• 26:20Jocko Willink?

  Those seems like actually good reasons for me to wrestle. You said those are the wrong reasons. I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, I tell kids to wrestle all the time. And I tell them, you're going to be able to take care of yourself, you're going to get in good shape. I'm like, those are good reasons.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Those are good reasons, but I wasn't happy doing it. Do you know what I mean?

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  There are kids that are happy. They love the sport and all. I was a two-time state champion. I took fourth one as a sophomore. Do I, everyone's going, hey, yeah, you know, running around all the stadium and everybody's high fiving me. I'm like, well, there's one down. And next year's the next year and every son of a gun I have to wrestle. I'm going to kick the shit out of everybody until they know I'm there. And so that's the two, two things, right? Ego and heart and what you want.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Right, what do I do him out of? A lot of us went into teams out of the ego thing. Those cats that were the swimmers and all that kind of stuff? They were successful because they beat guys who were the same as them and they happened to have a little bit more talent. So they win. What was it ego or was it heart? When you're a wrestler and you go out there and you're getting your ass beat every day. Like I had so much respect for the kids that weren't as good as I was, but showed up for practice for me every day. And I'd, and I'd make him hurt. I'd make him cry because that's where I was getting my stuff, right? My wrestling coach was a UDT guy, right?

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  So what was his name?

• 27:40Speaker 01

  Harold Ashenbrenner. He helped start the, um, the museum in, in, uh, Fort Pierce.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  So was he a World War II guy? Or Korea guy?

• 27:48Speaker 01

  Okay. In the gap of Korea and Vietnam, right? Actually Russell Campbell, who wrote the book, probably was, Russell Campbell's called Seal Team? Was, was his instructor. He didn't even know how to swim either. He had to walk on the bottom of the pool carrying rocks until he learned how to swim. That's the other thing about the teams. A lot of these guys didn't, they didn't swim well. They swam long, but they didn't swim well. There were other guys that could, I was number one swim pair without fins. You put fins on me, I went to number 10. And those guys with big, big legs?

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:23Speaker 01

  Shit, they kicked up and they were number one. I'm out there freezing in the water. You know, but yeah.

• 28:28Jocko Willink?

  So you get, so you figure out about wrestling and did, was there a wrestling team at, in seventh grade?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 28:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you immediately, or very soon after you, you, you started actually wrestling?

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I actually started wrestling.

• 28:42Jocko Willink?

  And now you started to learn and you took to it really well, obviously?

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. Yeah. And I think of my brother, but there was always that, that thing, you know? And

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  Wait, what thing? The thing of I want to be able to protect myself, want to be able to kick people's asses?

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:57Jocko Willink?

  And it was a little bit more ego driven?

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Survival.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say maybe just protection of, of like, oh, like you said, not wanting to bow, have to bow down to people.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 29:09Jocko Willink?

  So your, your brother had joined the Navy?

• 29:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  And what year did he join the Navy?

• 29:14Speaker 01

  In 56. And on that wrestling team, he was on Boulder High Wrestling Team that I eventually went to, but he was kicking shit out of the doctor's son. So they said he had a heart murmur. And

• 29:26Jocko Willink?

  And what, they wouldn't let him wrestle?

• 29:27Speaker 01

  They wouldn't let him wrestle, but my brother went into the Navy. He had no heart murmur. My brother was a corpsman. He finished up over here with SEAL Team, right? And in Vietnam, he was, he was working medevacs. Couple SEAL Team guys got hit. I'm there at the same, we were both Vietnam same time, right in sixty nine. And he was sixty seven or sixty eight and in part of sixty nine. And he's sitting there checking all these guys out, you know, the helicopter bringing them in. He said, I started looking at him. Shit, I couldn't tell anybody. They all looked alike, right? He says, then I thought, what the hell am I doing looking at these guys? My brother's like this.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  He's a Kirby Harrell, you know, he's a little guy. All these guys, you know, the guys he, because it wasn't just the guys wounded, but they all actually did the extrication. Right? So they just, they flew them out. So he was a corpsman and it, it got him.

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  So did you, at what point did you start thinking about joining the Navy?

• 30:22Speaker 01

  Well, my brother went in the Navy and so here I am. When I graduated, when I, when I came back from Vietnam, I'd been back about ten years. Thought of Harold Ashenberger. So I called him up.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  Hey, do you remember, I was a hundred and three pound state champ, man. Ninety five and a hundred and three pounds. When I went into the teams, I weighed about a hundred and twelve pounds, a hundred and fifteen, a little.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And there's still two guys littler than me. The Waller Wonder Brothers, they're, they're in team two or something like that. And there was like Mike Walsh, he wrote a book. Mike Walsh is about like me, but he's, he's about like I am now when he went, when he went through, you know, I weigh more than I did then.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  You were a hundred and twelve pounds in BUDs?

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:09Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking crazy.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  I was a hundred and twenty pounds when, when I got burned in Vietnam after the, the water and all that stuff. Carrying ninety pounds of gear, trying to keep up with everybody, but I was selling them water. Because I drink water and they're sweating and stuff.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  You didn't need any water.

• 31:26Speaker 01

  I didn't need water and wrestlers don't need water. In those days, we, you know, we drank, we didn't really drink any water. We took salt tablets, right? Before practice. All this stuff to kill you, right? So I had a big triangular water bath, you know, so I'd sit there and we'd be operating and ask, have you got some water? Yeah. And they were all outranked me. So I'd have them in the water and they'd take drinks and I'd count the swallows. One, two, three bucks, five bucks, ten bucks. You know, so I'd make money on patrol. And then I'd borrow money from them because I didn't have any money when we were, and so it kind of balanced out, you know?

• 32:03Speaker 01

  But uh.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  So, so you get to high school, is, did you play any other sports besides?

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Cross country.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're a good runner?

• 32:09Speaker 01

  I was a good runner. I was too light to play football on a lightweight football team, but when we played in the green field, I mean, just no pads, no nothing. I was one of the fastest runners and I'd hit you so hard, I'd almost knock myself out. So, so they didn't want to come around the corner because I don't want them to come past me. And, and, and we would have, we would play football and that football would eventually turn into a fight. You're gonna fight somebody, right? And I, they wouldn't with me too much because I was a good wrestler, you know? But uh.

• 32:39Jocko Willink?

  Are you getting good grades?

• 32:41Speaker 01

  I was struggling with my grades. I didn't understand, and that's why when my kids, when they're growing up, I says, how do you teach? Because I found I'm more of a, I'm more of a hands-on learner, right? A visual learner. So concepts that I would get in my mind would be kind of hard. I found that out when I went through training. All the shit I needed, everything I needed to know, the, the dive physiology, anatomy and all that, I was kind of struggling with that, right? But I got it because I, it was the body, right? Triceps, biceps, heart and all that, and that was, I dug that, right? But the demolitions, right? Mark 23 mod one, Bangalore torpedo, HBX, rate of fires, this and that, I'm going, oh shoot. Took the first test, I'd already gone through, I'd already gone through hell week. I already went through dive phase.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  I already went through everything. Hell week was a trip, but I learned that because, you know, um, Crawford? Okay, so I'm, I'm sitting there struggling.

• 33:37Jocko Willink?

  Was he in your class?

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's my class.

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  Crow daddy.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Hey, we were in the same boat crew in hell week. He told me a story about hell week that I did, that I didn't know that I did, but he remembered that I didn't.

• 33:47Jocko Willink?

  He was my XO when I checked into team one.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  I love him.

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  Yep, friggin' awesome.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  I think I might even given him that name, Crow Dad. I even changed the other guy's name from John to Jonah. And he still goes by Jonah. But um, yeah, I, I, he said, wha- what's going on? I said, man, and I'm sad. Uh, two guys died out there before in San Clemente in my training class, right? So

• 34:11Jocko Willink?

  Are these the guys that drowned, get hung up on a Jap Scully?

• 34:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, Groko McCall. So he asked, "What's going on?" And he says, "They're gonna drop me." I said, "Why?" He said, "The demolitions test." So he came over, got a piece of paper, and says, "Okay, write down, man." And there was this old barracks, man, we had to, under a blanket with a flashlight. Mark 133, mod 1, 133, mod 2, Bangalore toward Pito. All of the demolitions that we were gonna be tested on, I wrote them every night for a week. Every night on a piece of paper. He said, "That's what it's all about." I said, "Okay." And then what they were used for, right?

• 34:57Speaker 01

  So I go take my test. I was like, "You guys, you got one hour to get your test done." So I grabbed my piece of paper and I start writing it out. Instructor come by, Espinoza says, "You got an hour." I said, "I know." "You got an hour?" I said, "I know." Just looking, he's like, "Fuck you." And then he walks, takes off, and I got it done. So then what I could do is I could take that paper, I could look at it, see the question, read the question, look at the answers, the answer's right there. But for me to get it, you know? And then when I went to college, well, that's another, that's later, but I didn't believe. I graduated with a 3.95, you know? I wanted to be a teacher, right?

• 35:39Speaker 01

  But there's reasons I wasn't a teacher, but, so I understood that was my way of learning.

• 35:45Jocko Willink?

  But it took, so in high school, you weren't doing great?

• 35:47Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 35:48Jocko Willink?

  But you graduated, what year did you graduate high school?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  Sixty-six, sixty-five, and then I went to Navy in sixty-six.

• 35:56Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do in the, in between time?

• 35:59Speaker 01

  In between time, I had a wrestling scholarship to University of Northern Colorado.

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 36:04Speaker 01

  So, well, actually, Northeastern Junior College, so I was wrestling, right? Went home on break, walked into this bar, and one of the wrestlers that was one of my heroes, his name was Johnny Manzanera, he's from Lafayette. He was just, went to junior college, was a tough guy. So

• 36:22Speaker 01

  But go back to Harold, right?

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  This is your UDT wrestling coach.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  He says, "Did you ever go into teams?" I said, "Yeah." He says, "Do you remember what I asked you gonna do when we were in the wrestling room?" You know, like when you wrestle and you all just kinda laying around? I said, "No." He said, "I asked you, what are you gonna do when you get out of high school?" And you said, "Well, I'll go in the Navy." And then I asked you, Coach asked me, "What makes you think you're man enough to be a frogman?" And I told him, "Coach, if you're man enough to be a frogman." "I know I'm man enough to be a frogman." It was just one of those things, right? Just one of those things. And so, um, yeah, I...

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  So, so you said you were home on break from your wrestling scholarship?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  And you said, did you say you went to a bar?

• 37:09Speaker 01

  Went to a bar, it was called Grandma's Bar. And we all tell them, "Where are you going?" "I'm going to Grandma's." They all thought we were going to Miss Toledo's house, right? We're all going to a bar, sneaking in, seventeen years old. But I was in college, right, you know, as a freshman. Walked in and I see my buddy, Ronnie Manzanera, say, "Hey, man, how you doing?" He's like from Lafayette. They used to go, wrestlers from Louisville, Lafayette, we'd go to Boulder and we'd wrestle 'cause we're all in three different leagues. And we'd prepare ourselves for the state tournament, right? 'Cause we're all... And that's when we really knew that we were state champions, 'cause we could whip those guys. And they were state champions, 1A and 2A. So it's, "I'm the real champ," you know? And so, yeah, it was, um...

• 37:51Speaker 01

  "How you doing, man?" He says, "Start crying." I said, "Wait, what's up, man? You okay?" He said, "They killed my brother." I said, "What?" "They killed Johnny, he was the big red one, man, small arms, you know?"

• 38:07Speaker 01

  And I grabbed, it was the first time that I'd lost somebody from, from my family, from... You know, when you talk about family, it's just big. And from Louisville, Lafayette, Latinos...

• 38:20Speaker 01

  And I hugged him and we cried and then we sat down and "Let me have a beer?" He said, "Yeah." And pretty soon, he was telling stories about his brother. And we were all laughing and crying and, and everything. So then I went, after Christmas break, I went back to school. And I was wrestling real well and I was doing real well. And when I went, it was just like I had to tell the coach. I said, "I'm not coming back." He said, "Why not?" I said, "I can't." If you think about, I was raised when President Kennedy got assassinated, right? That's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. I always felt that my brother was serving in the military. My uncles were, were in World War II, right?

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Uncles that were in Korea. And we all served in, in the military. And, uh, so then it was like, "What am I doing here? Wrestling, which wasn't real.

• 39:16Speaker 01

  Trying to get laid and my friends are dying." So I said, "I've joined the Navy," but there was the other side of that. My brother had gone around the world. I'm going, "Well, I won't go around the world before," because I'd taken the, I'd taken the tests, you know, UDT, you know, in, in, um, in boot camp. And I passed all that. But I wanted to, I wanted to party. Oh, I got stuck on a ship in Long Beach. That's where I, that's where I got that, right? Seventeen, eighteen years old. And, uh...

• 39:49Speaker 01

  So wait, so you get to boot camp? So I get to boot camp. And, and you, so you had the plans of going into UDT? I, I had the, the thoughts about going UDT. Yeah, I wanted to be a frogman. Just because of my wrestling coach, because he's talking about the cool shit, man, blowing stuff up and, you know, dropping pickup and jumping out of airplanes and I go, "Whoa, that, that's..." And then the one thing I liked best of all of it, man, you get to wear aviator shades. Work out, lay in the sun and get to where swimming trunks and chicks dig you. So I'm going, oh, I could do that.

• 40:25Jocko Willink?

  I used to say, man, I used to be a 35 year old man and didn't put a shirt on at work unless it was like inspection day. Man, just never, why, you know, pair of shorts, that's it, man, pair of shorts and jungle boots, living the dream.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  That's it. And, and we had a blue and gold, man. We had the original blue and gold. That was it. Guys would wear the blue and golds off, off, off duty and they'd say, you gotta be wearing less of a uniform, man. But we would wear whatever we wanted to wear, you know?

• 40:51Jocko Willink?

  So you, so you take the screening test to go to BUDs?

• 40:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:55Jocko Willink?

  In boot camp?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  I took the test and, uh, I was the only guy out of my whole company that passed. One other guy went with me, but he had false teeth, so he about drowned. He didn't make it. So, so then when, so then when I really decided to do it, cause I was on a ship, man, I got tired of it as a machinist mate. Stinky, we did our sea trials and all that stuff in the hole and everything like that. But even then, I was doing chin ups on the steam deals and I was doing pushups. I'd, I'd go work out by myself on, why are you doing that stuff? Part of it was the wrestling thing. Part of it is, right? It's always there. That's, that, that's.

• 41:35Jocko Willink?

  Part of it was your brother hanging you off of a door when you were four years old.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  There was part of that. I mean, it's stuck, you know? And, and, and if you think about it, when you're doing that stuff, that is the time that you're revealing yourself to yourself. That, that little boy, you always, and when I'm doing that, even now, what worked out over, over at the amphib base.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  I can, I can, I, I, I feel the young boy. I feel the little boy coming up. I feel that, that spirit of, of peace that I have that is young and that is strong. Even, even when I got a jacked up shoulder, I got a left knee replacement, my ankle, I'm looking at that, you know? It's, uh, and so, yeah, it was, uh.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  It was, I was looking out the end of that ship and here come these guys swimming by because I'm sitting on that ship saying what the

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  Where was that ship stationed?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Well, it was stationed out of Long Beach.

• 42:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you were in Long Beach.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  And we pulled into San Diego.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  So we're over on 36th, over by the bay, when guys used to do the training in the bay.

• 42:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  And I'm sitting looking out there and stinking and everything. We had to help the boardroom and blow the tubes so we're all black and I look and here come these guys swimming by.

• 42:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know they're heading to a keg too.

• 42:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, who are those guys? You know, those UDT guys. I'm like, hell with this. So I put in for it and my XO wouldn't let me go because I was too little. Oh, you're too little, you'll never make it. God, I hated, I hated that sabotaging belief from the time I was a kid. You're too small, right? You're too dark. Even when I was wrestling in high school, my wrestling coach took a team to Japan. I was a two-time state champ. They didn't take me or a guy named Joe Silva, right? And I, and I said, well, why? What's the deal? Well, Gil, you really don't look like what the Japanese think Americans look like. I'm like, huh? I didn't understand that, right? What? And so the sabotaging belief like that, right? Is it ego or what is it?

• 43:32Speaker 01

  But it is something that says, uh-uh, you're not going to make me beat up somebody. You're not going to make me do those things because that little boy that's in there knows who he is, right? Is being revealed. It's being revealed. That was part of that pain of hearing that was revealing, right? So I'm looking at these guys swimming, so hell, I want to do that. And that coach, I mean, the XO said, you're too little or whatever. Next thing you know, there I am over at the training. I had to, I had to do this. They took us, they says, why don't you go down to Harper Barrett chamber test? I said, okay, I did that in Long Beach. Do the PT test again, the run, the swim and all that stuff. And then we want you to go down to the tugboat and there's a diver down, a class A diver.

• 44:16Speaker 01

  I said, all right. So I go down there and there's a chief, you know, those old chiefs, the diver chiefs, right? The hard hat helmet. What you doing, kid? I said, I don't know. They told me to come down. I want to go in UDT. Uh, oh yeah, come on over here, sit down. So they put that, the big old boots, right? The big old heavy boots and they folded all the, the, the, was it class one dive suit?

• 44:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the old school dive suit.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  Whatever they call it, you know? And then they put the helmet on me and I'm sitting

• 44:46Speaker 01

  I go over there, go to the ladder, go down, he says, and just walk around down there. There's some eels over by some rock. Just kind of make yourself at home and we'll talk to you and check you out. I said, oh.

• 44:54Jocko Willink?

  This was your first dive ever?

• 44:56Speaker 01

  Ever. First time I'd ever been underwater. I didn't know anything. So I go down and he's like, uh, how you doing now? And I said, oh, I'm doing fine. He says, uh, everything good? I said, yeah. So what you know, there's water coming in my left leg, you know? Oh yeah, don't worry about it. Says water will come in your left leg. I said, alright. He said, let us know if it goes into your right leg. So a little bit, I'm still walking around. It was 15 minutes, right? So I'm walking around, it goes in my left leg, I'm on my right leg and I'm going, hey, you know, this, uh, this, this suit's leaking. Yeah, okay, we know it. Don't worry about it. Let us know if the water gets up to your chest. I didn't know anything about pressure, right? The, the pressure in the helmet's not going to go any deeper. I'm going, I said, hey, you know, the water's up on my neck.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  Nothing. Nobody talks about, say, hey, uh, the water's up to my neck. Maybe you guys might think about pulling me up. Nothing. So then it was like, I'm, I'm wanting to die. So I went over to some rocks, I laid back on the rocks and I reached back. I thought, well, if I can grab the ropes, if I can grab the hose, I'll pull myself up. But they had it tended, so there's no way I could, I could reach it. So in my mind, Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, I'm gonna die. And then they, next thing is, it's quiet. I didn't, I didn't pray it out loud. He pulled me up. Yeah, you passed, kid. So about three days later, and then they'd already had my orders and I show up at the area.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  So show up the area and I look at guys like Echo and look at guys like Jaco and I'm going the same question like, what the? What am I doing here? Right? I'm just a little guy. I'm wandering around here and I saw another guy, Latino, Gregory Garcia. I looked him in the eye, said, hey, man, how you doing? This is two little guys. Good, where you from, man? I said, I'm from Fresno. He said, I'm from Colorado. He goes, you speak Spanish? I said, no, me neither. So we're like, you know, but we're the only two and that was in 41, right? And so

• 46:55Jocko Willink?

  So you're 112 pounds.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:58Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking crazy.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Well, give me the advantage, 120 pounds.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  Even 120, man, because I'm just, there's so much physical stuff they have to do with like carrying logs, carrying boats, like.

• 47:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so people would sit there and say, like, I was under the boat for a while. And then they go, you two little guys, me and Gregory Garcia, we're in front, right? And then they got two medium sized guys and then there's two tall guys. So our boat was like this. So going up Mount Surrabachi was cool because it stayed level. But when you come down the other side, the first three times it wasn't good because we would crash. And then we really got to run fast. I mean, we just was sprinting downhill in order for us to make it, you know? So there was a disadvantage.

• 47:38Jocko Willink?

  So what's your introduction to BUDS like? Or it's UDT trade? How do you guys say that?

• 47:43Speaker 01

  UDT RA.

• 47:44Jocko Willink?

  UDT RA. What was your introduction?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  When I first got there?

• 47:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got there.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Well, when I first got there, everybody just kind of wandered around, you know, with like, this was in 41, right? In 41.

• 47:58Jocko Willink?

  This is class 41.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Class 41. And this is going to show something with you that was really painful for me in 41. And so, um,

• 48:08Speaker 01

  there's another little guy, his big mouth, man. Another guy. And then there's another guy, Black Cat. Beautiful. What's it doing? I'm going, Jesus crimin, man. And there was another little guy, Mel Tanaka, he graduated, he's a, he's a teams. And, um, Artie Reese, I don't know if you've ever heard of him, he's another little guy. And so.

• 48:33Jocko Willink?

  You guys had a little mafia, little, little guy mafia.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  They were little guys. But they outweighed me by about 10 pounds, 15 pounds. But, but, uh, it was,

• 48:46Speaker 01

  it was.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  I didn't have any focus, you know, I was just along for the ride, doing whatever they were gonna do. And so, um, it was like, there was no like this prep stuff. It was like, we got there for one week, everybody kinda got to know each other, the second week, we're running. We're in, we're in class, we're in training. And we're doing all that, the whole physical thing, getting us ready for Hell Week, right? And so during Hell Week, uh, it was the last day of Hell Week before you secure, it's a Friday afternoon, is it Saturday they secure? Right? I think they secured on Saturday.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  When Hell Week is over, you mean?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:27Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's been Friday and it's been Saturday, depending on like what era?

• 49:30Speaker 01

  Well, it was Friday, and then that Friday night, they do a paddle, and then they secure Sunday, right? So that, we were doing a swim.

• 49:39Jocko Willink?

  So this is in Hell Week?

• 49:41Speaker 01

  This is in Hell Week.

• 49:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  We were doing a swim. And, uh, down and back, down and back. And when I got, me and Gregory Lee got out, we got, these guys were getting out of the water, I said, "All right." So we, I'm glad too, cause it was cold. We get out of the water, and when we get out of the water, there's Chief Allen. Says, "Okay, you effin' quitters over here." And I'm like, "Well, I didn't quit." Says, "You're out of the water." I just, "Yeah." He said, "Get back in the water." By that time, my, I was cramped up. There were like about sixty guys got out, I mean, almost, almost the whole class got out. And so, I said, "Well, I didn't quit." He says, "Get in the water." And I went, I couldn't, I didn't know that if I'd have got back in the water, that I would have felt warm.

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I didn't know that. So I went with everybody else. So that night, that was Saturday night, I could see him coming around for the last paddle, and I looked out the back window, and I just start crying. I said, "I didn't quit, man." So I went back to the instructor shack, and there was no bell. It was on the door. Espinoza reported, "Anyone speak to you, Chief, Chief Allen." And, uh, "So what do you want, Espinoza?" I said, "Chief, I didn't quit." I said, "I got out with everybody, but I didn't quit." He says, "You fucking quit." I said, "I didn't quit." I said, "I want back in." He says, "You can't get back in." I said, "I gotta get back in."

• 51:09Speaker 01

  Someone gonna tell you this, he says, there's only one way that you may have a chance. Says, you gotta go talk to the captain, Captain Myers, command all amphibes, right? Have the whole command and talk to him, maybe you might have a chance, but I doubt it.

• 51:22Jocko Willink?

  So what day of, what day of Hell Week was this?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  It was the last day of Hell Week. We'd already gone through Hell Week, we'd already gone through all the rolling around and all that bullshit.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  So you're done with five days of Hell Week?

• 51:34Speaker 01

  We were in the, we were in the sixth day of Hell Week.

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  So it's, it's pretty much over?

• 51:38Speaker 01

  It's pretty much over, it was the last evolution, it was the swim.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  And then we get in boats and then we paddle. Right, it was late, it was late in the afternoon, probably about five or six o'clock at night, or in the, just, you know, like out here.

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 51:51Speaker 01

  Starts, starts, the sun starts coming down by the six.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  So you, you guys finished the swim?

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Well, those guys that finished the swim, those guys that were with me, that I was with, we were out. We're all quitters, right? I couldn't, I said, I didn't quit. In here, right? So I went and I told Chief Allen, I said, I didn't quit. Slams the door and says, get the fuck out of here.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  So I went back to the barracks. And I was broken, man. Because I wanted to be a frogman. And so the next, that was, that was Saturday morning, Sunday came, and all the guys in the class were barely walking. And they're sitting there looking at me, you know? And I'm looking at them and like, and I'm sure they were saying, fucking quitter, you know? And I don't really wanna say that word, but that, so...

• 52:44Speaker 01

  That, next day I put on my dress blues, man, I go to, the guys say, hey, Espy, where you going? I says, I'm getting back into training. So I went, got breakfast, went over to the, that, knocking on the door, oh, well, we go in. And these other guys said, ah, we'll go with you. Right, about twenty guys. Go with me. Crow Dad knows this story. Twenty guys go with me.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  These are guys from your class?

• 53:08Speaker 01

  The guys that were all-

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  That had made it?

• 53:10Speaker 01

  No, that had quit.

• 53:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  All the quitters, right? All the, all the guys that had, that had made it to that phase of Hell Week. And there were even some guys in forty-one that quit after Hell Week. Forget it. See, people, it's just the training, man. It's not the real world ops. So when people talk about, oh, going to Frogman and, oh, yeah, I'm a, I did Hell Week and all that bullshit. But you go, then you still gotta do world ops. That's, that's what they don't, that's what they don't tell you about. That's what you don't see. That's what the hero bullshit is bullshit. But when you get out, like Roger Hayden does his trip with UDT, gets shot, gets Bronze Star from there, then he goes to SEAL Team and they look at him and say, eh, new guy, huh?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  Because when I met him, he goes, those sons of bitches SEALs, he said, they said they're because I'm a UDT guy that I didn't do anything. And you know, and you know Roger. So he's those sons of-

• 54:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's some big balls to call Roger Hayden new guy.

• 54:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was a new guy. Well, he was. He was a new guy. I'll tell you something more about that later on. But so,

• 54:13Speaker 01

  I'm in there, the captain walks in.

• 54:14Jocko Willink?

  So did these twenty guys that came with you, did they also want to get back into training?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yes. So they all come with me, right? Skipper walks in.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  We're waiting, told them what, you know, what we wanted. He goes back out. The one day, for five days, he never talked to us, never acknowledged us, nothing. So from twenty to thirty guys, people said, fuck it, they ain't doing this. They're gone, right? At the end of the, end of that week, there were six of us. Me, Schellenberger, Mo, Steele, Garcia, right? And McGee.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  So the next week, that Friday, he had us come in. We came in, he said, "What do you want?" I said, "I looked, I looked at the guys, you know, I looked at them and says, 'I didn't quit.'" "So what about, what about you guys?" And they just looked at me and was like, "I didn't quit either, right?" Six of us. Says, "Well, we wanted to get back into the next class."

• 55:18Speaker 01

  "Get out of my office." So we leave. Weekend. So the next week, I show up, it's the guys, "What are we doing, SP?" I said, "Going back." So we go back Monday. He comes in, the whole day. We sit there, he walks in, walks out, walks in, leaves. And then he comes in the evening, he says, "Okay," he says, "I'll see you Friday." "Don't come in, be, see you Friday." So that was another week. We came in that Friday. He said, "I talked to your instructors.

• 55:51Speaker 01

  I told them who you were. I asked them about what went down, and they're willing to give you a chance. But I have a condition."

• 55:59Speaker 01

  We're like, "Okay." He says, "One of you quit, or get hurt, for any reason, you're all gone."

• 56:13Speaker 01

  I looked at my guys, I said, "Look, guys,

• 56:18Speaker 01

  this is important.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  If you don't want to do this, don't do it, because I gotta do it, right? I don't want, I, I had a hard time being a loser. I had a hard time, like, letting guys, you know, with the, to, even when I was getting beat up, the inside warriors working and going, "Now, you're gonna figure it out. You're gonna, you're gonna take care of this." And I wanted the chance to, to push it all the way, right? And it was like, "No, we're in." We all agreed, right? So the first day of 42, first day of 42, Oliver comes out. Espinoza, Garcia, Schallenberger, Steele, McGee, and Mo. Lester Mo, he was the one who got, went out of our class that got killed. Second-class torpedo man.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Out of the six of us, two of us became SEALs. We were drafted into SEAL team. We didn't go UDT, like you used to have to go to UDT training. And then you go to do tours of UDT and then you volunteer for SEAL, right? So.

• 57:20Jocko Willink?

  Did you go, did you re-class up? Did you start with a brand-new class?

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:24Jocko Willink?

  So you went all the way back through first phase again?

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Started all over and here they are. We're up there in front. We're front and center. They said about face, facing the class. These motherfuckers are quitters. Don't walk to them, don't talk to them, don't be around them, don't hang with them, because that's who they are. So everybody's just kind of looking. All the cats are 42, right? And so they put us in the same boat crew and it was miserable, man. I mean, it was, but me and Garcia were the two little guys in front and Schaller and Steele were a little bit, a little bit higher. And McGee and Mo were taller, so our boat was pretty, it was a lot better than like this. It was kind of like this. And they put, they put it on us. And I look at some of the guys like now in my class, they sit and they sit and look over us and see what was happening to us, like, well, shit, they ain't quitting. You know? And

• 58:12Speaker 01

  so then we get ready to go do Hell Week. So I'm, I'm looking at my guys.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  By the way, it takes like months and months and months to recover from Hell Week. So you had been through Hell Week all the way until the last day.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:27Jocko Willink?

  And then you just went right back into a freaking class.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Then, then there was like about, I don't know, like there's probably about the three weeks or something like that and it was the next class.

• 58:35Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  We still had blisters on our ass and our feet, you know, and our hands were, were still jacked up. So, so we're, we're looking at each other and said, okay. This is it. We're, we're, what's going to be painful? But what they did then is the officers picked people in their classes. That's how I got wound up with Crowdad. Right? Mr. Kirkland picked me, uh, Crowdad, uh, Courtney, Ingalina and Paselt.

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  What, for like their boat crew?

• 59:03Speaker 01

  The boat crew. There were six of us. Me and Paselt were two little guys. And then, um, Courtney and Crawford were a little bigger and then Mr. Kirkland. And I forgot who the other guy was.

• 59:16Jocko Willink?

  They do it all by height now. So they take all the smaller guys, put them together. They take all the tall guys, put them together.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Ours were pretty much together. Six, there were six of us in the boat crew, not seven. And we were the number one boat crew. We won. We won this. And I was, the crowd tells the story of when, uh, cause we did all those harassment things. Well, I did one where I had to run on my knees like this and, and the guys were, Chief Allen comes out there and standing in front of me knocking this around and, and I go, hey, guys, help me. So we as trainees, right, in forty-two, a lot of guys think outside the box. There's, there's a lot of guys in forty-two, but we are the ones that challenged our instructors. Olivera, sing a song, Indian guy, right? One little, two little, three little Indians, bang, bang, bang.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you fucking think you're funny, do you? You know, sticks us out on the swimmer line, right? We're out there on the swimmer line and he goes, all I need is one of you to quit. So I'm way at the back end. F you, Olivera. F me, I'll F you, you sons of bitches will be out there all night. And we were because it was, you know, the tide goes in and out. And then Chief Allen was sitting there. There used to be a lady called, well, Wolfman Jack was one guy that was going on. It's Wolfman Jack. I'm doing soul music. And then, uh, there was a lady named Sister Margaret, black lady. And she'd be like, do you have problems? Do you have pain in your heart? If you don't know what you're doing in your life, Sister Margaret, call her at three five five, three five eight five. And it was like,

• 1:00:45Speaker 01

  F you, Sister Margaret. I mean, our guys were fighting, we're fighting back, right? We're fighting back for that humanity. They're, we're fighting back to reveal that. That's why forty-two is a pretty tight class and big. You know, because the nature of that,

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Offense.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  The nature of that class was set like that. And when we went through training, those guys helped me get through this evolution. Chief Allen lost his glasses. Crawford said, we went out looking for his glasses and you went over, oh, I got it over here, killer whale. We called him Killer Whale, right? And I stood up and they found it in the sand and I stomped on him.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:01:23Speaker 01

  And I picked him up and I go, here you go. He looked up and he goes, straightens him up, puts him on and goes.

• 1:01:33Speaker 01

  Cool. Walks off. Crawford, his heart fell through his ass. Oh my God, he's gonna kill us. But that's what, that's what they want. Your structures aren't there to kill you and make you. They want, they want, now I see it as totally different. Not break you down to make you. Lot of, that's, you didn't hear a lot of these SEALs, right? Well, they break you down so we can mold you right back. Uh-uh. I'm seeing it now, they were breaking me down. So that little kid, that little warrior Espinoza in there, that, the young kid that wants to, that is peeled off, right? Through the hurt, through the fear, through the mistreatment, all that is pulled off. I'm not ever gonna be the same as those other, however you, you, you become a success.

• 1:02:15Speaker 01

  But that little boy, I wanna get back there because that's the whole and complete person that I was. So when I strip off all the bullshit, right? Without the socialization that comes in through the society, or the socialization that happens in your own family, the pure thing, you know, your, your kids fighting each other, or brothers fighting each other, or in your neighborhood, Bobby Servani's, you know, gonna pick on him because he's black, he looked like Cochise, and, and he was the target of every teacher we had. Through racism and classism and everything else, how's he gonna get power to fight back? Right? How are you gonna take somebody that, that is in a community? If you were to take in our family, our community, our SEAL community, our family community, we all fought back.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  So that's why there were so many of us, and that's why we were all, even though later on in our lives, we do things that cause discord between me and you as a teammate. The bottom line, the one thing that we did have was that relationship of understanding that we were being revealed, not created, we're being revealed that, yeah, well, in order for me to do this, in order for me to be, my notes, you don't have a Rolex, but the whole SEAL team, real SEALs got them.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  No, I just got a tie and X. I'm not in the real SEAL category anymore.

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you, in Vietnam, we'd sit and we'd pull the covers off our Rolex.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys get issued, you guys got issued those?

• 1:03:39Speaker 01

  Two of your Rolexes, yeah.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  See, that's, you know, I got some, I was, I'm gonna file that with the complaint department, man.

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  You should, you should.

• 1:03:45Jocko Willink?

  I got that.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  That's how we knew who we were, you know? Matter of fact, I'll tell you a story about this thing, but, but you know, that...

• 1:03:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, I always say that, well, when people ask about, you know, buds, which was buds for me, it was UDT RA for you. Like, they don't teach you anything, and they don't teach you mental toughness. You just, the people that don't have it, go away.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Right. You sort, it's sorting itself out in you. And, and, and, uh, and, and you know, the beautiful thing about it too, is that when you're both doing that, and you and I are in the mud, and we're crying, we're sitting in the mud like this, and you look up, and I look at Garcia and go,

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  he goes, "Okay." All right, and then both of us cry that, right? You know, or pat on the ass, or, "Hey, we can do this," you know? And, and Chief Allen, you know, he said, especially on the race piece with that, about who I am as, as a human being, right? The great spirit that I am, the light that's in me, that, that, that moves forward, right? Me and Gregory Lee Garcia, because we got rolled to 41, right? We're sitting there looking at each other, "Oh shit, man, we're, we're screwed," you know?

• 1:04:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. Did you ever know MacIntosh?

• 1:04:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  So MacIntosh, yeah, so Butch comes walking in, now he was in my class. He comes walking in, he goes, "Hey, you guys in the 42?" We go, "Yeah." He goes, "Oh, so am I." He says, "And I'm glad, I'm glad to see you guys, man," he says, because, and we're like, "Why is that?" He says, "Well, we gotta stick together." I said, "What do you mean, we gotta stick together?" He says, "Because we're minorities." I said, "I said, hey, I says, me and Garcia, we know we're minorities, but you're a white guy." Because he's, it's his complexion. Do you know Butch?

• 1:05:26Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  It's MacIntosh?

• 1:05:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, that's right, because he's from like, the islands.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  St. Thomas VI, yeah.

• 1:05:32Jocko Willink?

  He's from the Bahamas.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  So he's sitting there, and he says, "No," he says, "uh, I'm not a white guy." I says, "Yeah, you're, you're white." He goes, "No, man," he says, "I'm from St. Thomas VI." So Gregory Lee goes, "What's the VI?" "This is the Virgin Islands." So I'm, we're Fresno and Colorado, and I said... You mean, there's virgins on the islands? They name them after? No, man! He says it's named after red beard or black beard, the pirate. He says, "The days of the Caribbean." He says, "Rum, rum and lobster and, and the islands." That's where I'm from. My momma's, I said, "But you're still, you're still, you're still a white guy." "No," he says, "I'm black from my momma," he says, "and I'm Dutch from my papa." I says, "But, I says, "You're, you're, you're a white guy." He goes, "No."

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  And he takes his foot like this, he stomps it down, he goes, "No! I'm a soul, man." So, so I go, I go, "I don't know, man, I think he's still a white guy." He says, "No, no, no." So, the very first day of training, Chief Allen gets up there. Espinoza Garcia, front and center, right? The six of us, right? The other four, we try to be shallow, we try to sit in the silence. We try to sit, we don't want to be, you don't want to profile yourself. You don't, you, sometimes you are profiled, it's just the way it is, right? Understanding that it is, that it exists, right? So, he yells at us, "Front and center." "Hoo ya, Chief Allen, Fireman Espinoza reports as ordered, Chief."

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  "Hoo ya, Airman Garcia reports as ordered, Chief."

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, you guys, he's looking at us, he goes,

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  I'm gonna use the word "N," right? Espinoza, "You seen," he's big, black and beautiful, he's like you, right? He said, "He looks, he goes, "You seen any N's around here?"

• 1:07:25Speaker 01

  It's gotta be a trick question.

• 1:07:27Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like a trick question.

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  Sounds like a trick question. Could be, 'cause that's what you do. The whole training is that. Think about it. The whole training is that when an instructor has an event with you, there's something that they want out of you. They're guiding you, or they want to provoke you either anger, or whatever that stuff. And it's, and I always learned, it's always better to cry when you're in pain than, than to be in anger, because the results of anger can, it's a hard deal, right? So, I said, "No, Chief Allen, I don't, I don't see any. I don't see any around here." Garcia? "No, Chief Allen, I don't see any around here."

• 1:08:04Speaker 01

  He says, "Well, from now on, for the rest of this class, when I want an N front and center, he says, "When I want an N, you two come front and center, right? Do you understand that?" So I'm going, "Well, Chief, uh..." And we just got done with the, you know, we're with swimming trunks on our boots, right? I said, "Uh, I think, I think McIntosh." So he goes, "Who?" I said, "McIntosh." He goes, "Where's he at? We're all out there, right? We don't have suntans yet. We're, we're out there." And he goes, "I said, the guy, oh, we're on the far left." He goes, "Far left?" He goes, "Yeah." "McIntosh, front and center, so McIntosh. He doesn't run out there like we do, you know, we're military.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  So McIntosh lopes out like a, like a gazelle. Jumps out, loping, comes out in front of the chief. "Erwin McIntosh reported to the chief." He goes, "McIntosh, are you an N?" "No, Chief Fallon, I'm a so..." Chief Fallon looks at him, he goes, "Turn around." So he did an about face, looks at the back of his head, "Turn sideways, turn sideways, turn sideways again." So he turned sideways, he looked at him, he goes, "Yeah, McIntosh," he says, "I think you are an N. As a matter of fact, you the ugliest motherf- N I've ever seen in my life.

• 1:09:30Speaker 01

  Hit the bay and take these other two N's with you, man." So there we were. We would be in class, we'd be in class, Chief Fallon, "Hey!" We'd look, "All you N's hit the bay." We'd run, hit the bay, get wet, and we'd come back, you know, recover, right? We'd come back and sit in class. So, that's what he gave us. You know, he, he gave that to us to say, it, it's kinda like a letter that I wrote to a girl that I thought I was breaking up with, you know, about, "Oh, I love you, dah dah dah dah dah." And somebody says, "Oh." And she didn't come back to me, right? But it's just, they say, "Oh, oh, she gave you a beautiful gift." "I go, "What kind of a beautiful gift is this? We still broke up?"

• 1:10:12Speaker 01

  "No, the deal is, you wrote how you can love somebody. That's what you're looking for. That's what they did. They gave us stuff and put us in that pain so that we would reveal ourselves. So we could say, "Well..."

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  And then one day he comes out, he says, "All you nanans hit the bay while me..." I knew who I was, right? Me and Garcia, we're standing there, and all the white guys, gone, and the two Koreans and two Turks, man, they're in the water too. They're in the water, right? So, so that happened a couple times, a couple evolutions, right? And so finally, Yonki Tu comes up, he's a Korean guy who goes, "Epi, epi." Yeah, he said, "I no understand. I no understand, nanan. We said, 'Oh, we water.'" I said, "You, from now on, you an nan." "Oh, okay, okay, okay, I understand." And so then, the two Koreans stood, the whole class went in the water,

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  and Mark Schallenberger, who looked like howdy doody, he's got little blue eyes, you know, got teeth that actually later on, Olivera knocked, broke his teeth. Pushed on his head on a, on a, on a swimming pool, right? And the water is decked and hit his teeth. Chief Allen comes up to him and goes, "Schallenberger?" "Who, yeah, Chief Allen?" I said, "I thought I said, 'All you nanans hit the bay.'" "Who, yeah, Chief Allen?"

• 1:11:39Speaker 01

  "I said, 'All you nanans hit the bay.'" Schallenberger stood up, says, "Chief Allen, today, I am an nan."

• 1:11:48Speaker 01

  He looks at me, goes, "Cool." Walks off. So then the rest of the class, the rest of the class are going, "What the hell is going on with this stuff?" We told him, "Hey." Tell me, he says, "Hey, I'm..." So then after that, everybody knew, and the Koreans knew, but we didn't tell the two Turks.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  So the two Turks are in the bay, then we finally, we told them. But, you know, and the very first day of training, like in 41, Olivera comes up, right? He comes walking up, got his ball cap, chew here, scar there, little blue slicker, cut off, you know, the instructor shorts, the big diver socks with his shiny Cochrane boots. He comes walking up, got an umbrella, walks up, and we're all standing out there, and he looks at all of us, walks out cocky.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  Looks at Olivera, says,

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  "As you can see on my slicker, it says Big G, Little O, Little D. There's only one Big G, Big O, Big D, and that's the creator of the universe. And he's the creator of you and me.

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  But God's not here. But I am. So for the next eighteen weeks, when I tell you to run, you will run. When I tell you to drop, you will drop. When I tell you to shit, I'll tell you what color." He did an about-face, popped up his umbrella, and walked off.

• 1:13:16Speaker 01

  That was another one of those, "Espinoza, what the... What the hell are you doing here, right?" So those two instructors are... were Moy's pitcher. You know, and you asked Moy about when he... when, you know, he's told a couple hilarious stories about... What class was Moy in? He's probably like, um...

• 1:13:38Speaker 01

  He's probably about two before me, maybe thirty-nine, maybe thirty-seven.

• 1:13:43Speaker 01

  So, you know, he's an older guy, you know, I think probably thirty-seven, something like that. But anyway, he did his stuff. And he tells a cool story about being with Olivera. They'd lost one of the boat crews somehow, because they were trying, during Hell Week. So they went out in a vehicle, trying to track them down, find out where they are, and they ran. They'd buried themselves under their boat in the sand. So boom, they hit it, and they lost control of the vehicle, and they come back around, and everybody's up and about, you know, and he says, it's so cool, because Olivera just comes and says, "Yeah, we catch you hiding like that again," he says, "and we're gonna run over you again." You know, kill you. It's like, he says, "We didn't know where they were at," you know? But there's a lot of, there's a lot of that stuff, you know?

• 1:14:28Speaker 01

  But, yeah, so those, those two instructors. And so then, when...

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  We graduated, right? We went through the training, you know, and we were in different boat crews and

• 1:14:40Jocko Willink?

  And I assume all six guys?

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  All six made it. And two of us went in SEAL Team. We were drafted in the SEAL Team.

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  When, when I met you for the first time, you were telling me about, um, one of the instructors saying to you, can you change the temperature of the water?

• 1:14:55Speaker 01

  That was Olivera.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  What happened with that? Tell us that one.

• 1:14:58Speaker 01

  I'm freezing my ass off, right? You're 120 pounds, right? I grabbed the big guy. Wasn't, wasn't a homophobic thing at all, man. I was, you know, they're putting off heat, man, and I wanted some of it. So I'm sitting there crying. Olivera, come on.

• 1:15:16Speaker 01

  Who you Olivera? What's the temperature of the ocean? The temperature of the ocean is just too warm, Olivera. And I'm crying. I got tears. Because, and I'm glad I was wet, because I don't, no man wants to see another man cry. So I'm crying. He says, uh, can you change the temperature of the ocean? And I'm thinking, well, if I piss in my wet suit, little bit, but I'm not, I'm not wearing a wet suit. So, and I don't want to be a smart ass, right? Because just want to be a, all these guys, I said, oh yeah, I told you, struck into this when I went through training and I, bullshit. I mean, if they wanted to hurt you, they could hurt you anytime they wanted to, right?

• 1:15:57Speaker 01

  That's the power. That's, it's like society. There are some people that are here, that are here. How do you want to function in it? You can be in it and be in pain, but you're not, you're not going to give it up. So, I'm there in pain. And, uh, I said, no Olivera. He looks at me and says, and it doesn't matter what the temperature of the water is, does it? No Olivera. Two days later, I'm freezing again.

• 1:16:25Speaker 01

  Kind of remind me when I was crying and the, when the little kids were gonna beat me up. Okay, says, uh, uh, can you change the temperature? What's the temperature of the water, Espinoza?

• 1:16:36Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't matter what the average temperature of the water is all over.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  He goes, "Espinoza, the temperature of the water is toasty warm." So, so then I understood, right? I can't change the temperature of the ocean, right? And the thing about the teams is you only see the days yesterday, right? Those two things in my life were very powerful. Same as that fire that hit me, right? But that is that piece I'm telling you is being revealing. The one thing I did have, though, was to say, "I can't change the temperature of the ocean, but I'm here if I..." I always thought of being with my six guys, right? That not one of us gave it up.

• 1:17:24Speaker 01

  And that I can't give it up. I gotta, I'm choosing to be here, 'cause at any time I can leave. Anytime. Nobody's telling me to stay here. Nobody's telling me to be whatever. All the hurt and fear, I've changed. I'm changing, I'm evolving. And that day, it was like, three choices. One, I can quit. The second is, I can be here in misery. Or I embrace it and say, "This is the cost." I say, "What it costs." And in order for me to be where I want to be, there is going to be the point where,

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  and I think guys get it after they've graduated and go into, downrange into the combat area, I'm gonna die to do this. I would rather die than quit. That is part of the cost. And that's what I love about my brothers. When I look at them, and we come to all that point, right? And we go out into our world and we understand that and we bring that into ourselves. And then, those cats that have all these bad behaviors, the racism, the sexism, the hetero, well, all that bullshit, all those really weird behaviors, at one point in their life, they were clean and, and a child. They were for real.

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  And then after that, they go back and they pick this shit up, bring it back, because that makes them feel comfortable of where they were. They don't want to live in that, that, that, that spirit of being free, of being who you are, because it makes you accountable to everything that happens to you. Good or bad, psychological bullshit. When I got on the fire department, I was dead. I'd, I'd become inhuman. I remember getting into Vietnam, my dad would say, "Gibby." "So, you remember, you're a human being." And I almost, almost lost that. And I remember seeing a jar of ears, right? Wasn't my platoon, don't know who did it or whatever, but my officers, being leaders, came up and, old Bosun Campbell, man.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  He was an enlisted guy who became an ensign, retired, actually as a lieutenant commander, I think. He says, "See this shit?" We're all like, "What, what is it?" You know? And then we, he says, "We don't do this." "We're not gonna, we're not gonna, get rid of this, get rid of this jar. We don't do this shit. Anybody we kill is gonna have a weapon. Or if they're collateral damage with people that have weapons, we're gonna do that, but we're not gonna do this kind of stuff afterwards." And I guess it was one of the things with the Prou program that was kind of weird, because they kept body counts like that, you know? That inhumanity thing, that whole CIA bullshit, you know, the, the whole Prou thing, you know, that they're all cowboys, you could do whatever you wanted, you know?

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  And, uh, you know, I, I think when I was there, a man's inhumanity in a man, you know, I, I was, I was with my buddy Nice, right? We were working for the company and doing stuff, and we took a break, went to Saigon to party, hopped on a helicopter, took off. I believe my cousin with the Prou program. It was crazy, but, party with this, I saw this, I was always practicing my skills, my language skills, and I saw this little Vietnamese guy looking at me, I'm looking at him, I said, "Hey, Lai De." Comes over, "Ante Ni, what's your name?" "Hau Toi Tente." You know, I said, "Oh." "Ata un beer?" You know, "You drink beer?" "Yeah."

• 1:20:57Speaker 01

  He looks at "An mi?" I said, "Yeah." "Ya Phan No?" "Yeah, mi, yeah." So, so his friends came, we sat and we drank, liked him, you know, we connected, you know, you know, sometimes you don't even know somebody, but you, you feel good with them, right? We did that for two days. Third day, we had to leave. And when we left, because he was trying to learn English, I was trying to learn English, Vietnamese, and hugged each other, "Catch you later," and we take off. Noise was going, "Oh shit, I'm in this Vietnamese." They don't know I'm an American. But we were in civilian clothes, and they don't know who you are. You know? But, so Bill was sitting like this, you know, looking around. But we spent three days there. And when we took over this group, which was a Green Beret group, which was the pre-program,

• 1:21:42Speaker 01

  my cousin was a Green Beret and another guy. Matter of fact, when we flew in, he was flying out, did the Green Beret hand salute, wearing his aviator shades and stuff. And this guy is a, is a black sergeant. Can't remember his name, but he said, "Oh, you just, you just missed Captain Pacheco." And I'm like, "Huh." And I said, "What's his first name?" He told me. I said, "From California?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "That's my cousin." "Ah, bullshit." I says, "His mom's Aurora and his dad's Celestino." "Yeah." I said, "Yeah, he's my cousin." So when I got back, country, right? I started asking, I says, "You ever hear this?"

• 1:22:24Speaker 01

  I mentioned the name, I mentioned the caseworker, I mentioned the sergeant and, and the name of the city, and he goes, "Why are you asking me this?" I said, "Do you remember when you got relieved and you hand saluted some cats coming in, in civilian clothes?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "It was me and my mate." "Bullshit." You know? Then he asked me, he says, "What about, was there was a guy with the white scarf of Vietcong?" He says, "Do you ever run into him?" I said, "Yeah, he shot the shit out of us, you know, but we were using the Army tactics. We weren't using SEAL tactics." Right? And, and how we would patrol and our warning orders. They were, they were, you know, doing a fast, a warning order and the brief op and then, and going.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  We never left, we never, it was like right away. It wasn't like, uh, an hour, going an hour later, we, we popped out right away. Because we knew about that, the intel leaks. And so...

• 1:23:22Speaker 01

  We, when we got back, we decided to do a quick op. I said, "Let's just go out, work." So we grabbed like five guys and we took off. Didn't even tell the rest of the group. We went out, night, early in the morning, got a hit. We went and checked the bodies. And there's a kid with a white scarf. And the kid with the white scarf was the kid that we drank with in Saigon. I looked at him, man, and I got, you know, I got emotional. And I told, I told Noyce, I said, "Come here, man." So Billy goes over and looks and he goes, "Oh, man, that's a..." I think his name was Tran, but yeah. He looks at me and he goes, "Man."

• 1:24:03Speaker 01

  You know, and that's when I understood that warriors, right? That the ideologies of countries, right, use us. That we go fight these wars. We go do whatever that is. But, um, I wrote it, you know, I, my God, I wrote it on my phone. Right now, I'm kinda...

• 1:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, someone on the other side is doing the same thing.

• 1:24:35Speaker 01

  Doing the same thing, but we're human, you know? There was that, there was that connection. That we as soldiers are fighting these wars for other people's ideologies. But if they'd have left us alone, we would have been best friends. So when I got on the fire department, guys are playing, "Oh, you gotta remember where you're from." You know, you, you, you know, all this bullshit. And I'm like, "Did you ever kill a commie for mommy, mother?" You know, like, "No," you know, "didn't..." There's a whole thing about how I fit into the fire department. But, but I would tell them, I says, "I've killed, I've killed a better man than you." And meaning it. Because that guy and I would have been friends. We laughed, we drank, we smoked cigarettes.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  And, uh, and when we left, we, we felt sad. That, that it wasn't gonna work. And then, and then you meet him on, this is a small world, man. You know? And, um, and my heart broke that day, you know? And I told this story to my grandson. And he, he put it like in a poem, but he said, "Uh, and his heart was crushed." And that was...

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  That was, that was, that was hard, you know? Other than, uh, and then getting connected. There's a guy named Tick, Vietnamese guy, our point man. We got jagged up one time. He said, "S.P." He said, "Let's go. We go kill communists." So, "Let's go." Buzzed. We went out, we set up on a, we set up on a river, waiting. Nothing happened. To the world that could ever see, but him sitting beside me, right? And thinking, "Okay, we're going to war. And if it happens, we are together." Didn't say a word, but the connection, the spiritual connection, the blending of us

• 1:26:32Speaker 01

  as warriors, you can't, you can't buy that shit. You can't create it. You can't form it. It, it, it exists in spiritual sense, you know?

• 1:26:44Jocko Willink?

  Let's go back to, just to cover this part of your history, to when you graduated BUDS. Cause you mentioned it, but you didn't go into too much detail about that. You were one of the few guys that got selected to go straight to SEAL Team, SEAL Team One, without going to UDT. At the time, the normal procedure was, guys graduate BUDS, they go to UDT, the underwater demolition teams, they do deployments there, and then they can volunteer to go over to SEAL Team, which is gonna be more land-based. Still, still foot in the water, but gonna be more land-based. But you went straight to, straight, you got ordered straight to SEAL Team One.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Why do you think that was?

• 1:27:25Speaker 01

  Well, Captain Shabel, um, not actually, Captain Anderson, was the commander when we were selected. He actually lives in Ignacio, uh, New Mexico. No, Colorado. And, uh, when we'd get together, he'd say, he says, "Yeah, S.P. knows, he says, 'I picked you, you and Shikowski.'" He knows all the names, right? I said, "What was with that?"

• 1:27:55Speaker 01

  He says, "We weren't getting, we weren't getting the guys that were volunteering from UDT because we were getting shot up." I mean, and I think even Roger Hayden, that's why Roger, I mean, he, he got shot up and stuff in UDT. He goes, "I don't want to get my ass shot if you're doing UDT. I want to go into SEAL Team and figure this shit out. I want to, if we're gonna, if we're UDT guys, we're gonna be running SEAL Ops. I want to know what I need to know to do that." And so, the whole switch up in operations from the water work to the land, the guerrilla warfare, right? UDT, all the water work, explosive up to the berm line, and then we're from the hinterline in as far as we can go.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Now, you guys, she, you're going in big old huge helicopters taking them. I'm going, "Hell no, man. I'd, I'd rather be in the jungle," you know, just, and, and they weren't getting them. And so what he did is he, he had the instructors start hand selecting guys that they think could transition. And then they took the, the, they took the volunteers, they, they, they took the volunteers, the UDT guys, and, and it's really, God, you know, the way things work out, guys like from 38 and 39 are marrying up with guys from 42 and 41s, right?

• 1:29:19Speaker 01

  So a lot of the guys in those classes, like, like Crawford, right? He was part of the Dirty Dozen, right? And his instructor was, one of our instructors was Barry Enoch, right? And then some of the guys that were with him too were out of class 38, 39. And the guys that I operated with, like Hyatt and Richards and DeAngelo, they're from 38, 39, right? So, this whole...

• 1:29:47Speaker 01

  Group, when you talk about only 150 guys. I mean, they were making multiple trips. I'd have made two, but I broke my leg in a platoon workup, right? And, uh, and I about cried. I did cry because I was in Babo Hospital and felt like, it felt like that damn hell week when the guys are going around in the paddle, you know, and going to finish up hell week. I'm not going.

• 1:30:12Speaker 01

  I, that's what I'm gonna do. That's what I want to do. And there were no doubts. And I think, I think if you had the doubt, and I don't know how guys work now. If you have any doubt, you don't belong going, you know? Take off, I told guys on the fire department, you don't want to do everything, take off the damn Maltese. If you don't, and all we had was the little gold wings, but I remember Chief, Chief Stone, we're going through SEAL training, SEAL cadre, right? We're out there in Nylene. We lived in boxcars. There was only two girls in the bar. That place was lunar face and crater face. And everybody was hot on them and they make them feel like queens, you know? Well, the desert boys didn't like that. So one day, like, either the desert boys came down and there was a a tussle in the bar, right?

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  I don't know where Chief Stone, he's a little guy like me. He's a Korea guy. He's, he is a Korea guy, but also a raider. Army, army, you know, the army raider guys, right? Ranger, whatever, you know, because there were the Green Beret guys, but there were also the Rangers.

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  And I was sitting there having my little beer and, you know, the guys are all laughing and everything and he comes in there. "God damn it." Says, "You MFers," and he's the guy, he's the guy when we're standing, going with training, he goes, "Yeah, I want, I want two rows of corn here. Two rows of corn here. I want my M60 men over here, my M16 here, my Grenadiers over here, my Stoner men, and if your officers with your M16s, I want you over," you know, assigned, right? He said, "When that left foot hits, you got the M16, I want that, that." He says, "And if you on the M16, I want, whoop, whoop." He says, "You Stoners, I want some singing, hmm."

• 1:31:56Speaker 01

  Says, "And the officer, every once in a while, boom. And then you Grenadier, I want you every fourth time your left foot hit, I want boom." You understand? They're all like, yeah, we understand. So he'd stand behind us, okay, let's move. You know, we were like, we were like a rock and roll band, man. But really looking at the rate of fire, you know, and the intensity of it, right? So we were trained in that small group of what it felt like to be powerful. Powerful, invincible, right? And so they would grab the guys from UDT. They would marry us up into this SEAL cadre class. And there's a book, Vietnam Seals or whatever in Vietnam. And my cousin found the book at Annapolis.

• 1:32:41Speaker 01

  She went to Annapolis. And you can see up there, it says SB and Mo, the boat, how they were assigned. And they're doing the instruction. That's how basic it was, you know? Because they weren't getting guys to do it. So he wanted, and I think that was the beginning of transitioning the UDT teams. I mean, the kids that are going through BUDS now are just saying, well, we can save this time. Because when we went to jump school as SEALs, right? The UDT guys had already gone through jump school. But those of us who went through the SEAL cadre that hadn't done that trip weren't airborne yet. So we go to jump school. And we were in shape, man. So we were out there doing the run around.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  We ran at least three or four guys into the dirt. You know, they sit there, get your 10 chin ups and I'd do one for the army. I could do 50 of them at that time because I was a little guy, right? One for the army, one for the Navy, one for the Marines. Oh, yes, more, give me a couple more. And I did, I'd get all the way up to about 47, 45. And then I'd, instead of yelling, who ya, I'd yell airborne. Airborne Sergeant, you know? And they, they didn't know who we were. I always thought the other thing was so cool about being in a team, they didn't know who we were. We, matter of fact, me and my partner, we were in, we went in, we didn't talk to anybody, right? Didn't talk to any of the army guys. Is that airborne school? Airborne school, yeah. We didn't talk to anybody.

• 1:34:09Speaker 01

  And they assigned guys that put us up into this barracks where we were at. So who are you guys? Where you from?

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  Just walk away, just, "Hey, come on, man, you guys talk." And you talk to each one of us, and we just don't say anything, and you know, and then we turn our head and we're like, you know, just playing that, whatever that role is. But nobody had to tell you. It just happened, it was just like everybody would pick up on the energy of everybody else. That's the other thing that's created in, in the training class. You can see him, I, there's a group of kids from Team Eight when I went to a golf tournament, I could see when they came in, they're all picking up on the energy of each other, all wearing shirts that they got from Walmart. And one has a cat, one has a bird, you know, wearing their flip flops, I mean, that whole, they're so out of uniform that they're in uniforms, does that make sense?

• 1:35:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, you could tell who a Frogman is just by the stuff that he doesn't wear to, not conform, but he is conforming, right? So, you know, it, uh, but anyway, back, back to Chief Stone. He yelled at us, "You sons of bitches are living on the reputation of dead men." "Get all the money you got out of your pockets, leave it for him, and I'll meet you back at the area." And then we just had a big old hole in the earth that we threw wood into, out on an island, we built a fire in, and you sleep in these box cars with the, these springs, and you put your bed in there like a mummy thing, and then you wake up in the morning, there's a damn snake in there with you, you know? But that night, we operated all night long.

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  I mean, it was, it was kinda like a, almost like a two day op, all night, the all night thing where no sleep. And you were glad that you went through Hell Week, because you could operate like that, you could, you could do that. And, um, and, and he never scolded us after that. You know, he told us, "You sons of bitches are living on the reputation of dead men." Made us hurt. And, "You're not SEALs yet." I understood it. "You're not SEALs yet." So, I finished SEAL Cadre, right? Those of us who made it through, and Garcia and McIntosh, "Hey, I'll meet you at the Trade Winds, Trade Wind Bar, that's where we all hang out, right?" I said, "All right." So, we, we show up, we show up there, and, and the night before, I'm gonna meet him next, the night before,

• 1:36:30Speaker 01

  I'm sitting there and I have me a beer, and this lady comes up, sits beside me, she sits right beside me, and I'm like...

• 1:36:40Speaker 01

  You're one of those FNGs? I'm like, I don't know, this is FNG, I don't know what that is. It's a fucking new guy. I'm like, well, yeah, I guess I, I guess I got my Rolex, right? I got my Rolex. Yeah, I'm almost a new guy. I got my Rolex.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Well, I'm Chief Gustav's wife. So I'm gonna tell you something. I can out-drink you, I can out-fight you, and I can out-f you. I'm like, oh, oh ma'am, can I, can I, can I buy you a beer? The chief, the chief's like, and I'm like, 20 years old, I'm sneaking into the bar, right? And so she says, F and A right, right? So I, you know, you can have mine, I just got it. But anyway, she says, I'm gonna tell you something. She says, the chief has three tours of Vietnam. He's never been hurt, never got anybody killed.

• 1:37:43Speaker 01

  He says, we lost a couple of guys, and I think by that time Funk had gotten, all the guys that got killed were on stupid shit. Like Funk, they had him, had him tied, and they were gonna show these senators how we do stuff when we capture people. The boat broached, he went into the, into the river. Found him four or five days later, and the way the water runs is so dark and, and the current, killed him, right? We, we, we kill our own for stupid shit, or guys drilling it out in 82 millimeter water and it kills guys. My corpsman, they went to Vietnam with this, he switched out with a guy that was a regular corpsman that was with Marines. He switched out with him so that he could, this other guy could get his pay, right? And Doc Maynard's walking with another guy, that goes off, they're walking by and kills both of them.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  A guy named Van Hooy, who had like, well, he rode everybody, man, he had his shit together, right? Doc Maynard, uh, um, that's how you lose guys, right? But, um,

• 1:38:44Speaker 01

  I lost track. So what'd she tell you? So she told me, she said, "Yeah, thank you."

• 1:38:50Speaker 01

  "So, don't get him killed. And if you don't want to do this job, if you don't know where you're gonna go..." And this is for my wife, right? And sometimes, I guess, my understanding is some of the wives take on the personality of the officers' wives, start their little stuff, you know. My daughter is the wife of an officer, Marine Corps officer. And, but she let me know, the human piece, right? This is a family. I mean, they have, there's their family, and this is what it means to her. And I'm responsible for myself to make sure he doesn't get killed. And I have to learn that stuff, not just for me. And I understood that, that sometimes in the teams, you say, "Well, I don't want to let anybody down," right?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  It isn't that at all. If I could do anything like that, and then you let yourself down, and I have, I mean, I'm not sinless, you know? But I know that when I, when I come to that point where I do something I don't want to do, and don't do the things that I should do, the greatest disappointment is in me because I don't have power over that. Or I chose to do whatever I did. And so I looked at her and I went, "No, ma'am," I said, "if I, if I..." I don't know where I'm going. I mean, I just graduated SEAL training. I don't know where I'm going. I said, "I, I promise..." And Chief Gustavos is a cool dude, you know? He was a good operator and everything, so I got that.

• 1:40:16Speaker 01

  So I, next day, told MacIntosh Garcia, "I'll meet you," you know? "All right," you know, so we get together. And it was early in the day, and you never, there was a trade-in bar when you went. Was it in IB? No, it was, it was right just where the little, it's on Orange Avenue, down from McPease, between Danny and McPease is where the ice cream place is. Yep, no, it was gone. But, anyway, it had swinging doors. You walk in there, you walk in, and a lot of, a lot of character and a lot of who we were as the, not just the operational piece, but interpersonal piece, right?

• 1:40:56Speaker 01

  So we walk into this place, swinging doors, and we look down, and there's this guy. Got chaw in his mouth and smoking cigar. He's by the bathroom, and you weren't sure whether he was... The bathroom had a problem with plumbing or there was him, he's eating boiled eggs and drinking beer and he went to the head, it was like huh, and he had a full growth. And I'll just, the guys and those guys on the team will know that it was tobacco, right? Cause he had a lot of tobacco, right? So he looks down at us and me, McIntosh and Garcia. And so, says, "Hey, you guys the FNGs?"

• 1:41:31Speaker 01

  I already knew who I was, Miss Gussel will already told me who I was. We go, "Yeah." He says, "That's all we need in the teams is more F and N's." Mexicans and N's.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  So I was like,

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  "Hoo ya," you know?

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  So, we just looked at each other. But the cool piece about it, we already knew who we were. Chief Allen already established it for us, Oliver already established it for us. I don't know who this cat is, but he's an operator and he has every right to say whatever he wants to say to me because I've done anything, right? So I missed my first platoon, I go over, do my trip, do my Vietnam thing.

• 1:42:12Jocko Willink?

  Well, what happened on your, you broke your leg? In your first workup? Were you parachuting or what were you doing?

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  That's what I tell everybody. Yeah, I was parachuting and rappelling was one of the other things. And when I got to Balboa Hospital, it was like, "How'd you do that?" Well, I'm sure I was rappelling.

• 1:42:32Jocko Willink?

  How far away from deployment were you?

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  Two weeks.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh. You were getting ready to go on deployment, what happened?

• 1:42:39Speaker 01

  So what we did, what we were doing was doing a compass course, right? Alpha brow, you had these different legs and we went by ourselves like about four minutes behind each other. So we'd, we'd cover each other, right? Not, we didn't go in pairs, we went in singles. And so I'm, this is like a 10 mile deal, right? So I'm up on this rock and I'm looking, thinking, "Oh shit, I got another, I don't know, maybe a mile to go down this other rock." I had my blackface on, have all my stuff, I got my weapon in this hand, I got my compasses and everything. And I'm looking and here comes a guy on a horse.

• 1:43:16Speaker 01

  He says, "How you doing?" "This is good, how you doing?" He says, "Doing fine." "I went on a nice ride today." I said, "Oh." "Light, heat, steel, do whatever you can to get through, but don't get caught, right?" I said, "You happen to be going by that rock down there." He says, "I'm going right by that rock." I said, "How about a ride?" He says, "Sure." So I get ready to shift my, you know, my hands over to a weapon to reach up to grab him. He goes, "Oh, no," he says, "you're little enough." He says, "I'll just pull you up." I said, "All right, so put my foot in..." That's the other thing you learn is don't let anybody else have control over your shit. Right? You just don't. Don't do it. You gotta do your own stuff. So he reaches down, grabs hold of me, slings me up. Next thing, he falls sideways.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  So he lets loose on my hand, so I take my hand and I grab up like this. And I grab, hold the saddle. I have my weapon here and I stick on this side. That horse takes off.

• 1:44:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 1:44:11Speaker 01

  Next thing, I'm running. Next thing, it's like, "Oh, this thing in my leg." I look at my feet. They're both above my heads. I have my maps here and I have my weapon here. And when I hit, it was like... And I went, "Oh, shit." So he scampers off. Then he comes back, "You OK?" I said, "No, man, I don't think I am." He gets off his horse and he said, "Well, let me..." And he gets a little bag and he cuts my laces off and looks at my leg. And then I took my little .38 I had, you know, hand weapon.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Doc Maynard was my corpsman, right? He's when you swapped out. He's the guy who got killed. Doc Maynard comes down. And by that time, another guy comes by on a horse. And he says, "What's going on?" He says, "I think this guy's got a fracture of the lialis, you know, looks like a dissofibrular break. He's got pedal pulse." I didn't know what any of that stuff was. I'm just a soldier, man. And, uh...

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  I said, "So what's going on? How do you guys know this?" He says, "Oh, we're doctors. We're up here on the little..." I said, "No." So they splinted and everything. By the time Doc got there, I was already squared away. He says, "You have any drugs?" I said, "No, we don't have any drugs." He would give morphine, but then with the morphine shredded, he always had to do the doc. He didn't want to do that. And so the doc said, "Well, here." And he gives me a pint of peach brandy. "Just drink this." Got in a little jeep that the doc kept me, this kind of kept track of us. By the time I got to Balboa, man, I was jacked up. So they had to wait, give me a block. And so then my platoon came, because I was in the hospital, and they all gave me a kiss goodbye, man.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  And this guy, Alan, took my job, and I hated him. I was so envious and so hurt and so pissed off that he's got my job with my platoon. And in that platoon, with Mihaich, Mihaich and I were the point men in that platoon, right? And I wanted to go work. So that means I had to stand down again. And all these guys that I was with, right? So then I had to do, it took me two months, right? So I'm in Balboa Hospital. I got my foot up like this. The SEAL team on it, once they found out who I was. Guys from Kason were coming in. They were shot, jacked up, man. I'm sitting there watching them come in, and they put this guy beside me.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  This little machine is going in. I mean, people were jacked up. I saw war from that. I saw the damage. This machine goes off, stops, a little light. So I push the button, "Shh, shh, shh," and it started back up again. So it happened about four times. It was like in the middle of the night. I pushed this button by myself. My team's gone. And I pulled the cord for the corpsman. He doesn't show up. Finally, when he does show up, I said, "What do you need?" He said, "What's this?" It went off. "When did this happen?" I said, "I've been for four hours." So he grabs it and takes off. Then he comes back. This guy comes back about two days later.

• 1:47:13Speaker 01

  He's a Marine. He's got a patch on his eye. His leg is jacked up. And he's got wounds in here. He looks at me and he says, "You're the guy who's pushing the button?" "Oh, yeah. Yeah."

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  He said, "I was drowning." Says when the button would go off, he says, "I would start drowning." He says, "And you push the button and it'd suck that stuff out of my lungs." So, he and I became good friends and I was only there for another... I went back and checked him out. Later on, he had like a floppy leg and his eyes missing. When I went back and saw him, he says, "How you doing?" I said, "I'm doing great, man." He said, "Well, they're gonna send me to MCRD." I said, "Really?" "Marine Corps recruiting station, right? He's gonna receive troops?" He says, "Yeah." He says, "And check this out, ESPN." He got his patch on his eye and goes like this. Marine Corps emblem inside his eye. He says, "I'll be receiving those guys." He says, "Look me in the eye, boy." So, he was a cool guy.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I miss my platoon. And so then, when I'm there, I have SEAL Team One on there and this guy comes walking in. Got his Rolex, got his ball cap. And I look, his cocker and jump boots and shit. And I'm going, "Oh, it's the team guy." So, I said, "Hey, man." I was at the gi dunk with the CBE and...

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  This is at the hospital?

• 1:48:31Speaker 01

  At the hospital. And so, I look at this guy and I say, "Hey, man." He says, "You in the teams?" I says, "Yeah." I said, "So am I." He goes, "So what the fuck?" And walks out. So, I'm like, "Oh, you rude son of a bitch." You know, I mean, I'm pissed off. So, I did about another month there. And then, I left, right? Went back to the SEAL Team area. He says, "Okay, ESPN, you're back. Here, Locker 69. Go take it and change, put your new gear and stuff." I said, "All right." So, I go over there and I look at the lockers. They're like, they're like this, you know, like these spaces here. And there was a window at the end and mine was at the end. So, I go over there and I look. There's...

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  When I go in or walk by the lockers, there's that guy that told me. So, what the fuck?

• 1:49:21Speaker 01

  So I walked by him, he just kinda looks at me, I don't know if you rec, you know, just kinda looked at me, I kinda looked at him and I went and there's a name up there, so I grabbed it, pulled it off and I threw it in the shit can. And he goes, "That was a good man." I was just, "So what the fuck?" He looked at me, man, and he was like, "We're gonna ra, we're gonna dance, you know, we're gonna dance." And I backed up into the corner and he just looked at me and he goes, "Fuck you." Turns around, walks out and I went, "Wow, that was pretty intense, you know?" And so then, we, we go out, and they said, "Okay, we're gonna start signing platoons, Alpha Bravo, Echo Platoon, right?" So they started naming names, Echo Platoon, Espinoza, I'm going, "Oh shoot, man, that's cool."

• 1:50:06Speaker 01

  So it goes on, ta ta ta ta ta ta, and then, uh, they call that guy's name. He comes walking to my platoon, I'm going, "Oh."

• 1:50:14Jocko Willink?

  And you guys are both in Echo Platoon?

• 1:50:16Speaker 01

  Both of us in Echo Platoon, and I pulled that name tag and threw it off. Then later on, I found out that he was with a guy named Anton that had gotten killed in a firefight, then McGuire rigged him out, he got hit two times. I, they went, they went in two helicopters, two and a half, and they dropped everybody off, so they were patrolling. They took Anton and moved him up forward. And, um, never really was, never was really a point man, right? But they had moved him up out of, out of his, out of where he normally does. He stepped out and in a jungle, there's a lot of times you, you just step out and it's a base camp. Right? And, uh,

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  and if you're not really quiet, they know you're coming. And so he stepped out, they got engaged, he got shot, killed the two Vietnamese, another American, and two guys wounded.

• 1:51:15Speaker 01

  When I talked to my partner and I learned about this.

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  So that was what the op was, right?

• 1:51:22Speaker 01

  So I didn't know that Anton had gotten killed and then I understood what had happened. We were in the same platoon for three months and didn't talk to each other. I didn't talk to him, he didn't talk to me. We'd look, we'd work and do stuff and there was like the visual connection about what we're doing, but it was like, um, hard. It was hard. I'm not gonna.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  It was like.

• 1:51:56Speaker 01

  I don't know. Like two invisible forces that had no way to communicate. It was like a big wall, you know? And then one day I'm walking to the trade winds to go to the trade winds to have a beer and he pulls by in his car. Reason he was in there because he'd gotten drunk and broke out his teeth. That's why he was there. And the only words he ever said, Espy.

• 1:52:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, he says, uh, where are you going? I said, I'm going to the trade wind. You want a ride? I said, I hate walking, man. I said, yeah. So I get in there, didn't say a word. We drove up to the bar, right? Parked right in front. We get in, there's nobody in there. Right? Well, except for Tobacco Lewis. Remember Tobacco, right? The guy? I'll tell you about, I'm kind of digressing. Went down to the same place where me, Macintosh and Garcia came in there. And when he said, all we need is Team Smaura ends and, right? So I told you about that, right? So.

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  So that was Tobacco Lewis?

• 1:52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Okay, we ratted him off. That was that goddamn Tobacco Lewis. And so, so we come in and, and, and I could, and he's still sitting down there, right? So we walk in, he just kind of looks at us and Hyatt says, uh, you want a beer? I said, yeah. And there, and there was a keg in the trade winds.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  Is Hyatt the name of the guy that you had not been able to communicate with?

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love him.

• 1:53:19Jocko Willink?

  And now he says, hey, you want a beer?

• 1:53:20Speaker 01

  He's my best friend, yeah. In the teams. Yeah, I shouldn't ratted him off, but he's, he's, he's okay. So.

• 1:53:29Speaker 01

  He says, "You want a beer?" And I said, "Yeah." So he pours a beer, pitcher. And guys would buy kegs of beer for getting divorced, getting married, uh, getting promoted, getting demoted, getting killed in Vietnam, coming back from Vietnam, anything. There's always, there was always a keg in the afternoon.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  Monday, you know, Wednesday.

• 1:53:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there was always one there. So there was always a keg. So like about three o'clock, probably about five. I mean, guys would all get in there and drink a bunch of beer. And then it would go on. So we drank that keg, that, that, that pitcher of beer. And then he said, uh, and I said, "Hey, you want another pitcher?" He goes, "Yeah, sure." So I poured him a beer. We sat there, sitting at the corner. I'm sitting right here. He's right here. The door is right there. You always, I always sat there because you don't, you know, you don't ever walk in that door either without kind of check because you could get hit pretty easy. I mean, there'd be some good fights in there. It was a wild place. And, um, "Do you want to hear about Anton?" I said, "Yeah."

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  So he told me about the helicopters, about getting hit and then getting out and saying, "Man, I don't know how we flew out of there," you know? I mean, everybody was wounded. The helicopter was shot. Everything was, he said, and he didn't get hit. He's never been hit, right? I, I was with him. Anyway, he was sharing that story with me, you know? And then he's crying and I'm crying. And guys, it was so beautiful about the bar was, man, the other guys would come in, they go, they got a thing going on, not, not interrupt you and not look down on you. Guys were having their own memorial times for themselves in your own space, in your own, and respecting it, you know?

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  That, that was, it was kind of like the womb. I mean, that bar was kind of like where guys would come in with pain. They would come in with anger. They would come in proud that they have kids, you know? It was, it was a place that, that everybody felt safe, you know? And, uh,

• 1:55:39Speaker 01

  So he, that's when he became my teammate, you know, of him sharing that with me, you know, and we did a talk one time for Sea Wolf Gunships, you know, he'd come to Texas and he says, "Espy, you wanna tell me that story about the Sea Wolf Gunships?" And I go, "Well, you tell." He goes, "Oh, no, you say you like, you like talking. You say you tell." So I said, "All right." So we got shot at, you know, we were on a dike and these guys shot at us. And so we're, and Hyatt had his shit together. The officer we had was a young guy, right? So he's like, "Well, do we engage him?" You know, and Hyatt, we look out there and he goes, "That's..."

• 1:56:19Jocko Willink?

  You mean engages?

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  Me, shooting.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  Engage who?

• 1:56:22Speaker 01

  The, the guys that were shooting at us on this little, kind of like a little dike, you know, we were up on top of the dike. So they were shooting up at us. Well, the first thing, if somebody's shooting at you from down below, they got something, you know, but, but he was a brand new officer. Actually, he, he relieved Bosn Campbell, who'd stepped on a booby trap. That was, that was another op that we were on. Lit him up, appointment, got some strap on his ass. And Doc Maynard was with us and he had me walk the point out. And, uh, but I'm kinda getting a little crossways here, but, um, where was I at?

• 1:57:01Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, just basically you were talking about the trade winds and how that's kinda when you guys got tight. And I mean, I suppose the next thing is, so you're doing a workup and preparing to go back to Vietnam, or preparing to go your first deployment to Vietnam?

• 1:57:14Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:57:16Jocko Willink?

  And, and what's that? Is that like a six month cycle? You go to Nylund?

• 1:57:19Speaker 01

  It was a six month cycle. You go to Nylund, you go Quea Maki, do the jump thing, you do, just mostly, you know, patrolling.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  And how many, how many guys you got in your platoon? Is it 14?

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, 14 guys. And, uh, and he told me, he says, "Espy," he says, "You stay with me. You won't get hurt." I said, "All right. This is my sea daddy, man. He my partner."

• 1:57:39Jocko Willink?

  This is Hyatt?

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, uh, matter of fact, I have this watch because of him. We come back from Vietnam. We go in there. He says, "How much money you got?" I said, "I don't know." So catch your money out. So I got the 125 bucks. He just grabs it. I say, "Hey, man." I said, "Give me my money." He said, "We're going out and partying tonight." I said, "Nope." So you're coming with me. So we go to the PX.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  I said, I didn't nothing into PX I want. He says, yeah. So we go in there and he looks at the lady, he says, I want that one and that one.

• 1:58:12Speaker 01

  Two Rolex, and she puts them up. I said, lady, I says, I don't want a Rolex. So she puts it down. It's the lady says, she wants a Rolex. So she puts it up. I said, lady, I don't want a Rolex. So she puts it down. So finally, he says, lady. She puts it up. I said, lady, and she goes, little fella.

• 1:58:35Speaker 01

  He's a lot bigger than you. And today, you're buying yourself a Rolex watch, you know? It was that kind of a thing. And we went, we took a break one time, went to Na Bay is where he operated. He had, this was his third trip. Two with SEAL Team and one with UDT. And they threw us, they threw us out of the base for fighting. And so we had nowhere to stay, except for

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  places that he knew. You know?

• 1:59:01Jocko Willink?

  Back out in town?

• 1:59:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, out in town. Yeah. Yeah. So we were out in town hiding. We were out there hiding, right? And so at night, during the day, we'd kind of hang out. And then at night, the Viet Cong would come in. So we'd be sheltered in these places. And the Viet Cong would be in these places that we were at during the day, partying and drinking and dating girls or whatever. And, and we were, we were hiding. And then in the morning, the Viet Cong would leave, and then we'd wake up, you know, for three days, we did that. That close to the enemy is cool. You know, they don't even know that you're there, you know? And so that was our, that was our relationship.

• 1:59:39Jocko Willink?

  So when you're, you finish your work up, and now it's time to, now it's time to fly to Vietnam?

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  Now it's time to fly, man.

• 1:59:46Jocko Willink?

  Did you leave from North Island?

• 1:59:47Speaker 01

  We left from North Island.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  What, like a C-130?

• 1:59:50Speaker 01

  C-1, yeah, the little one, little C-117.

• 1:59:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang, okay.

• 1:59:53Speaker 01

  Cargo plane, right? So that's, that's where we went. And we staged all our gear and everything. We get in there and

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  it's loud and it's

• 2:00:01Jocko Willink?

  What year was this?

• 2:00:02Speaker 01

  69. It was March, March. Yeah, March of sixty nine.

• 2:00:07Jocko Willink?

  March of sixty nine.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  So we we we getting ready to roll, looking at the rivets and stuff, looking at the chief that comes in there to fly the airplanes. Big old belly, got his chief's hat and.

• 2:00:18Jocko Willink?

  And he's the pilot?

• 2:00:19Speaker 01

  He's the pilot.

• 2:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's pretty cool.

• 2:00:20Speaker 01

  And you look out the window and like the airplane has all this grease and oil and stuff. We go flying like this. Next thing is like. Goes like, what the hell? You know, we turn off and and so we get ourselves back together. I go, what's happening? He says, oh, I was looking at the lights. So I was looking, the green light and the red light, the green light and the red light. Pretty soon I said, well, the green light and the red light, they're on the wrong sides. He wasn't following, he's coming right at him, right? So he he turns off. So I'm going, oh, man, I don't even get to Vietnam, that's happening. So then we get to Hawaii, right? So we go in and Hyatt, Hyatt says, uh, hey, let's be, I said, let's uh, let's have a Mai Tai drink contest. I said, cool, all right.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  We go in, man. Next thing you know, I'm waking up. I look down and there's a tomato stuck on Hyatt's face. Where I was on the upper rack and I'd thrown up, it was on his face. Bosun Campbell, we go, you sons of bitches, I told you, we're kind of looking around and Hyatt gets up, his hair is sticking up in the air, you know, and I'm looking at him. He said, I told you guys, we're leaving at zero six hundred. You guys are late to chop, I mean, the airplane is rolling up and. The number, now he says, and the rest of that goddamn platoon never told you guys, god, get your asses, and we're like grabbing stuff, you know, and like grabbing my boots, putting stuff on.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  And I asked Bosun, like I say, hey, Bosun says, who won the Mai Tai drink, he got, who won the Mai Tai drink, Ozzy, a son of a bitches? He says, you guys got drunk, then you got in a fight in the bar, they threw you out, and then you guys stole a damn bus. That the Navy bus, you know, that they're driving around. And we threw the sailors off the bus, stole the bus, and then the the shore patrol tracked us down, and we got in a fight with those guys on the bus. Then they arrested us.

• 2:02:13Jocko Willink?

  One night in Hawaii, right there.

• 2:02:14Speaker 01

  It was one night.

• 2:02:15Jocko Willink?

  It's one night in Hawaii. They need to get you guys to Vietnam stat.

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  True, yeah. We were, and there's another platoon that was before us, uh, I think it's. I can't remember who's platoon, I don't think it was Kraut ads. But anyway, their officer was in Vietnam waiting for him. Well, they got in the same fight, but it was the whole bar in that fight. And I went to Barbara's point to see that bar, it's now a, it's now a gym. But they got there and they got in a fight and the officer's sitting over there back in Vietnam waiting for his guys to show up and where in the hell they at? And he gets this communicator that comes and says, "We don't know who they are. We don't know where they came from, but we know they're headed your way." And those guys have gotten in a fight and they started to fire in the bar and the whole, I mean, and if you think about it, right?

• 2:03:02Speaker 01

  Think about somebody that's going to go to war. You're internalizing that shit. And so you are loose. You know, it's like, and, and so you want to try to take these people and tell them that no, you, you, it's, it's.

• 2:03:18Jocko Willink?

  Follow the rules.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  You can try.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that is something that in, in the military, certainly in SEAL teams, you know, you're like, you're parachuting, you're diving, they're doing a bunch of dangerous stuff. And when you're young, you're like, well, you know, I could die tomorrow. So I'm gonna have a good time tonight. That's what, that's what we're doing.

• 2:03:38Speaker 01

  And the consequences, right? The consequences of mistake are brutal. They're not, you can, if you're working on an officer, a finger, whatever. But we, we fuck up out there. We mess up out there. Um, and the same thing when it came on the fire department. You know, two guys got killed in my, my fire training. And I thought, okay, Vietnam, probably gonna get killed. Got on the fire department, maybe. But this is really a kind of a lame kind of job. I mean, you fight some fire, you do some, I saw it totally different when I got there, right? It transitioned, it changed for me about, especially when I went up in rank. It's like being a platoon leader. You know, the other guys do whatever they want to do in the platoon. But as a platoon officer and the platoon leader,

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  than as a battalion chief when I was in the fire department, I'm responsible for them, to keep them alive. I become Chief Gustav's wife.

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  You know, and, and so, um, yeah, it was, um.

• 2:04:40Speaker 01

  You really transition a lot about what that means and those consequences and what's real and what is it to be a real frogman, right? There are the machismo crazy cats out there, but they, are they good operators? Are they running on their ego or are they running on the teams? You know, do you love the teams or do you love yourself? Right? And a lot of the cats that love themselves wound up in trouble. They're willing to make that or create that for some reason. I look at some of the events, you know, of how guys are getting killed now and I'm thinking,

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  it's like when we got shot at and then the officer says, we take them under fire. We look at him and go, are you fucking crazy? If we take them under fire, they're gonna know how many of us there are. Right? So then we start receiving fire, so we cause an extraction. There was nobody coming to get us. The army, sometimes the army slick guys would not come in, but a Sea Wolf.

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  They're coming.

• 2:05:46Speaker 01

  Oh, they're coming now, you know?

• 2:05:48Jocko Willink?

  I've had quite a few Sea Wolf pilots on here. It's freaking awesome.

• 2:05:52Speaker 01

  And so when they lock and load and they're dumping their ammunition just to get four cats up, I mean, that whole thing is on fire, right? So we're running, so we had no air support until those Sea Wolf guys said, well, we're coming. And a couple of Air Force guys, yeah, we're in our little phantoms and if you need some help, we can help you. And so I'm at the back end, right? Everybody's running, blow everything up on the backside of the blue strobe, right? So I got a blue strobe lit up and I'm running, I got an M60, I'm running heavy, running an M60 and Hyatt's up ahead of me and Richard's, he married his sister, Richard's sister, and we're all, we're all, we're good mates, man.

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  There's some bars in San Diego that remember us.

• 2:06:39Jocko Willink?

  You're still not allowed in.

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Just by being crazy, yeah. So I'm running and I fall in a hole, I mean, and these guys, Air Force guys are coming flying like this, right? And when they're lighting their stuff up, it looks, it looks like it's sort of like about 10, 15 feet up in the air because you're running. But they don't tell you, like you see the movies, I mean, they don't, and you're getting support. They don't talk about the, in those days, the links were rolling out. So you're running along and all the casings and stuff, I mean, it's beating the hell out of you and you're running like this, you know, trying not to get them down your shirt and you're running and they're flying, it's like two of them

• 2:07:18Speaker 01

  in the water and, I mean, the casings. And I fell in this hole and it wasn't even that they could hear me because the whole world behind me, I could feel the heat and everything behind me blowing up.

• 2:07:30Speaker 01

  They just stopped. They ran back. One grabbed the barrel, the other one grabbed the butt, lifted me out of the hole. They took off running and I'm like

• 2:07:38Jocko Willink?

  Your feet aren't on the ground?

• 2:07:41Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, when we did, then finally I got my feet, you know, and then we got over to the the Sea Wolf was loading, dumping all that ammunition on the other side, the side that we were coming on, they weren't. Right? And so we jumped in and then they, they started dumping it all and then that helicopter was trying to, and everything, everything is gone. Well, I told that story and then when, and Hyatt told me to tell it with the Sea Wolf guys, right, he's in Texas. And so then he says, you tell the story. I said, alright. So then I feel okay, I'll tell the story. As close as I could get it, because everybody has their own story. And

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  then I saw Hyatt get up and he walked over up to the podium, you know, when I was, I was there and he comes up beside me. He says, rather than opt it. As we just told you about, he says, I didn't realize how much that helicopter meant to me and how safe I felt once my hand touched that helicopter. Then I knew I was okay. And I never, I never ever thought that, because he was always so calm. He's one of the, we all, our platoon, we were a bunch of calm people. You know, and, and that, and when you have that in your platoon. Uh, except when you're yelling and they're running away from you, I'm in a goddamn hole,

• 2:09:03Speaker 01

  you know, it's like, you know, uh, everybody is like that. It's that calmness that keeps you right. And, and if your officer's calm, even Bozak Kavil, when he got lit up, you know, he really did a real easy transfer to, to Doc Maynard. And they, they, an Air Force helicopter with doctors happened to be coming in. We were in a booby trapped area, so we're trying to secure the area. We're receiving fire from a little hooch down there. And me and Hyatt lit that, that up. There was that whole thing, the whole dynamics of, like, when I wrote that piece about the flash, right? The flash of war,

• 2:09:39Speaker 01

  you know, that whether you're creating it or whether it's being created for you, the, the inside warrior's working and figuring it out. The outside warrior is non forgiving and violent, right? And they're both standing out. And, and I think, you know, the, the little boy in there is, is, is watching that happen. And, and I think the whole war piece is totally alien, because that's not where we really want to go. So those of us that pay that price, you know it's going to cost you something, even in the training, because paying is going to cost you something. When I got back from Vietnam doing my, out in

• 2:10:24Speaker 01

  the world, I thought that was me. That's just the way that I am, you know? I'm fighting, I'm moving on, all that kind of stuff. That's who Espinoza is. It was all my behaviors. I, I confused my behaviors for who I, who, who I am. And I let loose of it, because then I was alone again. I lost all my teammates. I wasn't in my platoon when I lost them that time. When I came from Vietnam and I left, right? I'm alone again, right? And it's taken me now. To come back to that space of understanding my life, right?

• 2:11:02Speaker 01

  That's crazy. I'm seventy-five years old trying to figure this stuff out. And then I look at guys like you. You got your podcast, you got your thing going, your jitsu. If they'd have had MMA when I was coming back from the, I'd have been the. I was going, I was going to Five Points in Denver to fight mostly black guys because that's where the danger was. They had guns and knives. And that was, you get in a fight in Boulder, right? With the hippies, I mean, there's this.

• 2:11:28Speaker 01

  There wasn't much satisfaction. Too much. So you might go to, might go to, might, might go to this place called Peggy's Hilo and you get a hook up with a cowboy, you know, at least when you're fighting those guys is in the dirt. You know, but, and I remember going, going in there and this one big brother's in there. He goes, I'm looking, cause I'm checking security, right? The other thing is looking at the environment, those challenges, right? I'm looking at the bar, where's the security at? Where's these guys? Who, whom are watching out for? It was like being, working with the Prue program and knowing that you had, out of the fifty guys you got, there's probably eight or nine of them that are Viet Cong, that are, that are Chu Hoys or they're, they're, they're working both sides.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  That was exciting. That was the, the cool thing about when I was with my, my partner and I, working that program versus working the Vietnamese SEALs. Vietnamese SEALs, we knew, and I did that with two East Coast guys first. So I worked with them and then they took another West Coast guy in my platoon that worked with those guys, with the Vietnamese SEALs. And then they said, oh, by the way, you guys have that expertise. Why don't you and me and, me and Bill, we went and worked for the Prues? We did that. That's where I relieved my cousin, right? That whole thing, that whole challenging thing about depending upon the, the spirit and the understanding, the awareness about who you are. It was exciting, you know, and I wasn't getting that, you know?

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  So I was creating the tension. Outside warrior creates the tension so that, and that's who you think you are. And it's, and so then you live your life out like that. You're a frogman. I'm a genuine, nobody say genuine barrel chested, anti-magnetic chrome plated Rolex wearing, K-Borg carrying, root and tune parachute, ever from frogman who can, you take forty men, forty days to track me down, I can see in the dark, breathe underwater, and I can fly, you know? That whole, that whole thing, you know? And, uh, so it's, uh, so that's, that's who I thought I was. When I got on the fire department, I'm going, I look at all these, these guys don't even train, you know?

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  And then two guys get killed in training. Then they're blaming everybody. Oh, you know, you got this and this and that. And then none of you guys wanted to train. This is our fault. So then when my buddy got killed, it's kind of like, what do I do here? The word sacrificial responsibility comes up. Sacrificial responsibility? Right. Christ, Jesus, man, he didn't have to die, he's God and everything else, but he's going to go, shit, I gotta die for these morons because they ain't gonna figure it out, right? And so here you are, I'm going to Vietnam, I'm going with these guys, why? That's not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country? So you go, okay, I'm here.

• 2:14:23Speaker 01

  Where can I go? My coach told me about being a frogman, right? Then you get there and you see these guys and you see these instructors bigger than life, and nobody knew who a SEAL was. I knew what a frogman was, I wanted to put on my, wear my swim trunks and get a suntan and all that stuff. Then there's the choice. You gonna choose to do that or not? Are you gonna choose to be part of this family or not? And there are kids in their own families right now that are choosing, they don't want to contribute to that, about the reputation of your family. My dad told me one time, man, he said, Gibby, he said, the only thing that I ever gave you was my last name. Don't be dishonored on it, right? And this, this same guy in fourth grade education, right?

• 2:15:10Speaker 01

  The biggest thing that I learned from him was part of preparing me for the teams. We were hunting. And my dad said, Gibby, we shot an elk. We tracked him down. It's getting cold. It's night. I'm freezing. We're poor. We had cotton gloves. Ain't none of this cabela shit, all that, right?

• 2:15:28Speaker 01

  I'm wearing two pair of Levi's. It's cold. I'm 10 years old with my dad.

• 2:15:35Speaker 01

  We shot him. We gotta find him. We're Indians. We don't leave, we don't leave stuff out here. We'll track him. We'll make, we'll find him. I didn't realize because of our subsistence, we, we killed an elk hunting in the wintertime. And we fished all summer long. That's how we ate. And we would plant stuff in the garden and we'd raise chickens and rabbits. That's how we ate. That's not a bad diet, but hell, man, you get tired of getting eggs. You get plucking chickens and skinning rabbits and he has me up there hunting, right? I'm going, Dad, come on. You know, it says, nope. So we track him down. There he is. There he is. There's the elk. So

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  we're tracking. You can see a little bit of the blood. The wind's blowing. It's getting cold and everything else.

• 2:16:17Speaker 01

  Sometimes I was fishing with him at night. I didn't want to be out there freezing my butt off, man. And it's when I would get cold out in Coronado, man, I remember being a Barker damn freezing my ass off with my dad. But I never thought about what the temperature of the water was, but I knew it was cold. So, so I'm, um, we, we find the elk and he says, okay, Gibby, says, now you gotta go back and get the hunters. Get the rest of the guys. Mr. Mr. Chavis, my brother, Mr. Gomez, you know, going,

• 2:16:48Speaker 01

  Dad, see, Dad, I says, I don't know, you know, he says, look, he grabs me, looks at me right in the eyes. He says, listen, what you're feeling is fear. And I understand it.

• 2:17:04Speaker 01

  Don't be afraid.

• 2:17:12Speaker 01

  Okay. So I take off, you know, and I went and it isn't like left and right. So then when you're talking about the spirit of God, right? This whatever is that guides you. And when you're in combat, whenever you're doing stuff, a lot of guys, a lot of guys have this. A lot of times they think it's them, but then there's other things that put you in a different place. And the only thing that, that you survived and other guys didn't is time and chance. Right? And making a decision when we're the other, to think however it gets you there, whatever it is. And you can't feel sorry that you survived and they didn't. That's life, right? So my dad sends me to go find these guys. I'm going, I'm looking at the track and it was like, I don't know where to go.

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  And then in here it's like, and I go and I find it. I find, hey, my dad shot an elk and I grab him and they, oh yeah, okay. And they follow me out, they grabbed their guns, they grabbed poles, they, we go out there and we find my dad and he's out there

• 2:18:14Speaker 01

  smoking cigarette, looking at him.

• 2:18:18Speaker 01

  And it's Seth, you know, and they're all, ah, that's a big elk, you know, and my dad had had me. We always carried a little bag that had a hatchet, bone saw, and there's knives in there, right? That's what he gave me before he told me, go get the hunters, right?

• 2:18:32Speaker 01

  So I went up to where my dad was and he grabbed my face like this, you know, looking down at me.

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  He says, I knew you could do that, you know? And when, and when I, when I read like in the, in the, that where God, when, when Christ got baptized, right? That the word says that, so this is my son, of who I'm well pleased. I thought, I thought when my dad grabbed my face and told me that, I thought, wow, man. It was my responsibility. But my dad was sacrificing my life for a deer to go get those guys, you know? But, but, but you understand what I'm saying? It's, it's like, uh.

• 2:19:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and people say, "Well, it's a calling to be a frogman." Well, there's a thing, I think, our egos, saying, "Well, can I make it? Can I not?" Some guys can say, "I never had any doubt," right? That they've been supported with their families all the time, right? My family supported me. I remember writing a letter when I was going back into 42 about, "Mom, I really want, I want this more than anything in the world," right? And my mom knew, now, 50 years later, right? They did that class on 2:30. My mom says, "I knew you were in SEAL Team, but I didn't know that's, I didn't know that's what you were doing." Right? I mean, that's even after Vietnam, right? "I didn't know that that's what you were doing."

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  But I do remember my mom, actually, my sister said, "Oh, Kevy, yes, Mom almost got in a fight with Ms. Martinez." "What, really?" She says, "Yeah." She said, "She told him you were going to Vietnam." And she said, "Well, all he is, is gonna do is be fodder." "You told me my son's fodder, and I'll kick the hell out of you." You know? Not always supportive. My mom was kinda domineering and kinda mean, really. But, I knew they were always there for me, you know? And even when I came back from Vietnam, my dad, you know, after my workup, after I did all my stuff,

• 2:20:49Speaker 01

  Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Young Socialist Republic. I'm going to school at CU. I got a letter when I was getting back from Vietnam to wrestle at the University of Colorado. A dream I thought was already gone. I was, I wrestled 118 pounds, right? So, I barely make it 120. Now, I didn't really have to cut. I was still just a little guy. These guys, my kids, we'd go to reunions, just sit there and looking. And they finally got to the age where they went, "Dad," you know, it's just, "You're the littlest guy here." "I'm the littlest guy of my life." But, you know, when I got that letter, it's like a whole new thing. I didn't fit. I wasn't brown enough to be brown. I wasn't white enough to be fight. I was a Vietnam vet.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  I just got done killing a commie for mommy with my teammates and stuff like that. And they're telling me, "Viva la raza, atslan," and all that. It's like, "I'm an American."

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  You know, my people have always been from here. And it doesn't even have to be that they're from here, but this is what I feel in here. It's from my heart, from my soul. It didn't come, but it did. The ego is, yeah, I could be one of those frogmen. Till you start getting shot at and then you're asking yourself, you're going, what the? What am I, what am I doing here? And then you come out with all your teammates and everybody, you know, like after the op, right? You all sit there looking at each other and go, wow. Wow, that was, that was pretty intense, you know? You get guys, yeah, it's like, and the guy that was always pretty cool was Lou, you know, when I got, when I got hit, you know, he was pissed at me.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  He motherfu-

• 2:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you get, when'd you get hit?

• 2:22:30Speaker 01

  I picked up some shrapnel up by Cambodia. You know, we would, we'd be on these barges and they'd float down river and we'd operate off them. And uh-

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  So is this when you got there, that was the first thing you got tasked with? What was the first thing you got tasked with when you got on the ground? What was your job? Did your platoon all operate as a platoon? Or did you immediately get shaved off and uh?

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  No, first of all, like for the first three months, you know, we were all operating, it was all platoon operations down in Sadek off of PBRs, right?

• 2:22:58Jocko Willink?

  And then what were you guys doing? Uh, were you guys doing ambushes, raids?

• 2:23:02Speaker 01

  Ambushes, prisoner snatch. We'd like find out where the tax collectors at, we'd use the intel and capture them.

• 2:23:10Jocko Willink?

  Who's getting the intel? Were you guys getting it yourselves?

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  Mostly, yeah, well, we had like the Nilo out of Saigon. Some of our officers, Captain Schible was there, Anderson was there. Some other team guys, they were getting the information.

• 2:23:23Jocko Willink?

  So you'd get a target package, like, oh, here's, here's a grid location for a little village somewhere?

• 2:23:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:31Jocko Willink?

  And they'd be like, it's, it's this hooch over here is where this tax collector is, this Vietcong tax collector?

• 2:23:36Speaker 01

  The VCI, yeah, this is where he's supposed to be, right? So we'd go down and get him. Or we would just go sit and watch and sit there for two days and see what boats come, where they come, just hidden.

• 2:23:48Jocko Willink?

  So you do, you do just like a reconnaissance, just wait and watch?

• 2:23:53Speaker 01

  Do an assessment, wait and watch, how many weapons?

• 2:23:55Jocko Willink?

  Were you mostly going in by the water in this first three months? Like just waterborne operations?

• 2:24:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, on PBRs and our, our own LSSCs and uh, LCPL. It's a big boat with a minigun on the back and a couple of 60s and-

• 2:24:10Jocko Willink?

  And so would you insert at night? They just kind of drop you off?

• 2:24:12Speaker 01

  Most of the time at night. We liked operating at night more than during the day. And then we'd sit during the day and watch it all. Wouldn't even know, wouldn't even know we were there.

• 2:24:21Jocko Willink?

  How many guys would you have out in those recons?

• 2:24:24Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:24:25Jocko Willink?

  Would you take the whole squad?

• 2:24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'd take a platoon depending upon, uh, like if we were expecting something big. Or we'd just do seven man teams.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  And were you usually a point man?

• 2:24:36Speaker 01

  As point and rear, kind of like go back and forth, you know? So when I, but when our point man went on R and R, he went to Australia and then I, I ran point for a while.

• 2:24:46Jocko Willink?

  What'd you carry for a weapon? Did you carry a stoner?

• 2:24:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, a stoner. Except when I was with the Vietnamese and I carried an M60, you know?

• 2:24:54Jocko Willink?

  How come you carried an M60 when you were with the Vietnamese? How come you switched from a stoner to a 60?

• 2:24:59Speaker 01

  Because I just wanted something big.

• 2:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Something bigger.

• 2:25:01Speaker 01

  Like the, like the, like they had their M16s, right? They didn't, they didn't have stoners. When we worked with Vietnamese, they didn't have stoners. There was only M16s. But I just felt, uh, I wanted something big.

• 2:25:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:14Speaker 01

  You know, and, um.

• 2:25:16Jocko Willink?

  You want that big.

• 2:25:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. And with the two Vietnamese, there was another Vietnamese guy. There was only one M60. So I'd made two 60s, right? And, um, that's just, I don't know if it's a, I don't know if it's a logical thinking, but that's. And then, uh, my buddy Bill, he was a radio man.

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  So working with the Vietnamese as an advisor, I dug, you know?

• 2:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. When you were doing the, with the first three months, so you're doing ops. You guys are carrying, compared to what we have to carry now, the modern guys with body armor and radio. Everybody's carrying a radio. Everyone's carrying body armor. Everyone's wearing a helmet. Everyone has night vision. It's like even the weapons, cause you get your weapon, but then on your weapon, you put a laser and you put a scope and like it is. If you put a light, like everything's just, you guys look like super slick compared to us.

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  We were, we were quiet.

• 2:26:11Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:26:12Speaker 01

  Wear a pair of Levi's, a couple, you know, our, our stuff where our, some guys wear the stuff on the outside. But if you went around the rung side, you'd want to put your stuff on inside to keep it from getting muddy.

• 2:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Put your bandoliers on the inside to keep it clean?

• 2:26:25Speaker 01

  You'd wear your, your.

• 2:26:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your web gear?

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  We did, if you carried, if you, if you, if you did it like this, right? If you strapped them on there, you didn't really wear web gear, right? You could wear the harness, right? Just the harness. And then other guys had their vests made up, like what you're wearing now, the vests. Guys would go to the parachute loft and have them created, right? For their M16 magazines and things like that.

• 2:26:53Jocko Willink?

  So you were wearing jeans, though?

• 2:26:55Speaker 01

  This is the one, this is the one bullshit thing about all these guys and these frogmen SEAL Team guys, right? Oh, yeah, because it was better than the BDUs and all that bullshit. You were, you were Levi's and they're wet and they're muddy and they're heavy. And you get chafed and all that, and try to take a shit with a pair of Levi's, you know?

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  So why'd you wear them? Because it looked cool?

• 2:27:21Speaker 01

  Combat qualified, man. You want a combat qualified pair of Levi's. So when you got home, right? It makes more sense, right? When you got home, you walked along with your Levi's, man, you know? That, that was the main reason.

• 2:27:36Jocko Willink?

  From the Delta.

• 2:27:37Speaker 01

  These are from the Delta, man. These are, yeah, whatever, this is on five combat ops, you know? Or what, I mean, that's what it was about.

• 2:27:44Jocko Willink?

  I make a pair of jeans right now and we call them Delta 68s.

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep, we make a pair of jeans and we call them Delta 68s in honor of you guys wearing them back in the day.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  That's cool, that's cool. Yeah, so, yeah, we, we, that's, that was why, you know? Because there's nothing, nothing cooler than walking downtown San Diego or downtown Coronado with four guys that have combat qualified Levi's on. And you're going to run into some Marines and they're going to sit there and look at you like.

• 2:28:13Speaker 01

  It's just, you know, even these watches would get you in a fight with them. I was sitting at the, you know, the daylight cafe down in, in Coronado?

• 2:28:21Jocko Willink?

  No. Oh, the day and night cafe?

• 2:28:23Speaker 01

  The day and night cafe, the little long booth?

• 2:28:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I've been there.

• 2:28:26Speaker 01

  I'm sitting there with me and, me and Hyatt, right? So we're eating and this guy comes up behind us and says, oh, you look like you're one of those little wetback frogmen.

• 2:28:35Speaker 01

  So I'm like, ah, shit.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  It's going to be one of those nights.

• 2:28:39Speaker 01

  It's going to be one of those nights and Hyatt looks like he's. Hey motherfuckers, the only one to call him when we went back would be me, it's not you and I don't call him that. I told him, I said Lou, I said be cool man, it's alright. So I get done here, I says I'm gonna kick the shit out of him. He says, okay Espy. So and I just almost finished, so I finished up and I turned around.

• 2:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Big boy?

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  Oh, it's a big guy, I went, hey man, I'm gonna tell you something. And so when I did that, I just, one hand behind his neck and the other one underneath his throat and I hung on. Right, he moved and my, my heels were still arced on the wall, you know, like this. And I hung on, and then Hyatt jumps on top of the bar. Karate, right, so. Yeah, stay where you at motherfuckers. You know, and I'm just hanging on, you know, all this kind of stuff, you know, those guys are looking at Lou, you know, and he's like, no, like Bruce Lee, whatever thing and they all like, like that, you know. So finally the guy, they choked him out, right, and hung on and came around and choked him out.

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  Now I got mad, backhands him, my watch pops off into the street, right? Ah shit, so then I kick him and my shoe goes off into the street.

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  You need to secure your gear better.

• 2:29:59Speaker 01

  Hyatt just looks at me, like that, you know, come on Espy, let's leave this joint, so. We go out and I pick up my shoe and I put it on and got my watch and put it on and this way, so we, he always thinking, right? So we walked to the corner and we get out there and he says, let's look, so we peeked around the corner, says they coming? I said not yet, and he says, well, let's get the, out of here before that big son of a bitch wakes up. He says like, because I got him by surprise, you know. But, but, but that's when you grab hold, it's like grabbing hold of the tiger, right? You, you, you know that if you let loose. He's gonna jack you up, you know, so, you know.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  So you guys would run recon, look at a target, and then when you were gonna go hit the target, what was that, what was the normal profile of a mission like that? You take sampanz in, did you go in the night?

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  To you, cool up, we did, we did work for the PDU program. This is a, this is a, an operation, right?

• 2:30:56Jocko Willink?

  So say, explain what the PDU is.

• 2:30:59Speaker 01

  It's Province Reconnaissance Units, right?

• 2:31:01Jocko Willink?

  So these are Vietnamese?

• 2:31:03Speaker 01

  They're Vietnamese, they were not SEALs. The SEAL program had its own stuff, Vietnamese.

• 2:31:07Jocko Willink?

  So they had Vietnamese SEALs, and then they also had the PRU, the PDU.

• 2:31:11Speaker 01

  Province Reconnaissance Units, and they worked for the company, right? They had a caseworker that usually in charge of them, and a senior officer, American officer, or an enlisted, right? My buddy and I relieved those guys, and he was E4, and I think I was E4, right? But we were operators, right?

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  So then you, so how many people are in a PRU? How many Vietnamese did you have in one of those groups?

• 2:31:35Speaker 01

  About forty in the group.

• 2:31:36Jocko Willink?

  So there's forty Vietnamese, and there's two of you.

• 2:31:40Speaker 01

  Two of us.

• 2:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Two American advisors.

• 2:31:42Speaker 01

  Right, and then the caseworker, and then an interpreter, maybe two interpreters, and out of that forty, probably about five or six of them you can count on being Vietcong.

• 2:31:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you live with them?

• 2:31:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, lived with them on a bay, like a, like a villa type thing. And, uh, yeah, you just stayed with them.

• 2:32:00Jocko Willink?

  And then what was the op tempo like?

• 2:32:03Speaker 01

  Probably, you know, we'd go out, um,

• 2:32:08Speaker 01

  depending on the, that was what was spooky about it, because a lot of their intel came from them, right? So they could set you up. They could set you, the, the, the guys in the company could set you up to be hit, so you had to kind of figure things out, and that happened to us a couple of times. It was, and we, and we got hit, and we figured out that there was two guys that were kind of, that,

• 2:32:35Speaker 01

  When they were around, things happened.

• 2:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:32:38Speaker 01

  When they weren't around.

• 2:32:39Jocko Willink?

  So what'd you do about that?

• 2:32:41Speaker 01

  Well, I told the one guy, my interpreter, I says, "Tôi biết, tôi thấy anh là sao." You know, "Tôi không thể, tôi không thể." You know, "I don't like him. I think he's a very bad man." And says, "If you see," you know, and then, "Did you see what's happening with this guy?" He goes, "Không có gì." He says, "I take care of it." So we have another op. The guy didn't come back.

• 2:33:08Speaker 01

  So, because he, my interpreter, that guy was, and he works with my cousin,

• 2:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  Right, was...

• 2:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Good and trustworthy.

• 2:33:15Speaker 01

  And that's it. See, some were good and trustworthy. Some have, they're there, the sacrificial responsibility, the thing that they feel from their heart was right on. And others, and others were victims. They're in the military by being a victim. I mean, the war's going, where they gonna go?

• 2:33:31Speaker 01

  You know, where they gonna go?

• 2:33:32Jocko Willink?

  So you were about to, you were about to tell about an op, like a standard op that you did with the PRU?

• 2:33:38Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah. Um, one of our guys, SEAL Team One guy, comes up to us and says, "Hey, I need some gunners." Right? "I have like, I have two boats, probably about six guys in each boat. We're gonna do a pre-op. We're gonna go get these tax collectors, right? All I need you guys is to be shooters." "All right." So, uh, my officer, well, my LCPL Black Mac was with me, me, Hyatt, Black Mac. And I don't know if Macintosh was on it or not. But, um, so here we are in the Sam Pans, four Sam Pans, right? There are two,

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  Black Mac, another guy, and me and Hyatt. And we're gonna, we're gonna take the bodies. We're gonna, we're gonna tie them up, and we're gonna take the bodies.

• 2:34:24Speaker 01

  Launch off of a PBR in Sam Pans. Cruise up this little river.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  It's nighttime?

• 2:34:31Speaker 01

  It's nighttime.

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  You guys, are you guys dressed like Vietnamese? Are you guys in black?

• 2:34:34Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Or you guys just...

• 2:34:35Speaker 01

  Well, see, that was our platoons too, though. Some guys were black, some guys were black pajamas, were Levi's. Other guys would be wearing green tops.

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  So you're just, you're kinda mix and match?

• 2:34:45Speaker 01

  Always. We did a blocking force one time, and an army guy says, "Who the fuck are you guys?" You know? Hyatt says, "Well, we're frogmen."

• 2:34:56Speaker 01

  There's a whole, we were gonna, we were gonna, we were gonna kill a Colonel in his helicopter, you know, but we didn't. But, so the, the op-

• 2:35:05Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you didn't.

• 2:35:07Speaker 01

  So it was I, Hyatt was sitting, "Hey, gun up like that," and I'm going, "Oh shit, we're all gonna shoot this guy."

• 2:35:11Jocko Willink?

  Why? What was the Colonel doing?

• 2:35:13Speaker 01

  We were, we got ambushed. The arm, we were, we were doing a blocking force behind an army unit. That's the other thing too, we'd work with some armies. So we were doing a blocking force behind an army unit. They got sniped on, so this guy, the Colonel, comes flying over and he throws a CS grenade out. So the CS grenade goes out and pins his guys down. They're getting sniped at. The rest of us, and we're in our different shit, Levi, some of us, we're laying up along the bank, and the helicopter lands right outside of us, right?

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  Lands right outside of us. So he comes walking along us, we're laying up the bank, and, and, uh, he walks by Hyatt. He's sitting there looking at us, and Hyatt says, "I guess you're the dumb motherfucker that threw that CS grenade out." So he looks at us and he goes, "Guys, who in the, who in the fuck are you guys?" And I said, "We're, we're just the blocking force," you know? And so, "Well, I'll, I'll talk to you when I come back," right? So he goes over there and these guys, they did, they did medevac, they got these guys out, they were wounded. I think one guy got killed. But so then, he comes back out, and he says, uh, "Yeah, well, we'll see who you guys are," you know? And I said, "I don't give a shit who you are," I said, "But you throw another CS grenade out of there," he says, "I'm gonna shoot your fucking helicopter out in the air."

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  He just looks at him, goes back to his helicopter, and when he gets in, he sticks his CS grenade out the loose end, he's got his stoner, and he goes like this, and I go, "Oh shit." So I grabbed mine, and the other five guys, they grabbed theirs. We're up there, and I'm thinking, uh, he pulls the trigger, that guy's going down, and he pulls it back in and leaves. Those were the guys I was with, and we all-

• 2:36:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:53Speaker 01

  It could easily get out of control.

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:55Speaker 01

  You know? But everybody did maintain.

• 2:36:59Jocko Willink?

  All right, so, so back to this PRU or PrU op that you were kinda like saying was a good one to highlight.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:09Speaker 01

  The Prou advisory, team guy, got this information, right? He says, "I just need you guys to come in and back me up." Because we had the stoners. He had, I mean, some of those guys, all they had were the carbines, right? M2 carbines. And maybe, maybe a 116. And with those guys, with the Vietnamese SEALs, you might find an M60. With the Prou's, you wouldn't. When stuff went down, he can't call any American Air Force or air support or any of that stuff. And they don't fly support for anybody. And they were doing everything like from the bush, right? Kind of like guys that worked with the mountain yards, right?

• 2:37:49Speaker 01

  So he says, "I got this intel, says we're going to snatch these guys, says you set up security." Says, "We'll throw them into boats, you guys package them and we'll get our way out of there, we'll grab one of the..." Because we could use our boats. If we're going on the op, he can use our boats, right? Tie the sandpans alongside of them and they can go. So, so here we are, Hespinosa and Hyatt in the back with the sandpan. You ever paddle a sandpan?

• 2:38:18Jocko Willink?

  No, I have not.

• 2:38:19Speaker 01

  They're like P rows. Did a P row, like the guys in the, um, the Cajuns down in Louisiana?

• 2:38:26Jocko Willink?

  No, I haven't been in one of those either.

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  They're a bitch, man. So we're paddling.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Is it like, so it's like a canoe? I've been in a canoe before.

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  It's like a canoe, but the sandpans are like, they got, they're like flat bottom little thing and they go like this and they're, they're pretty tilty, right? And you gotta paddle them. And I thought, he, I thought he really knew about canoe. Well, we were both figuring, we're sailors, right? We're frogmen, we can figure anything out. So we're paddling, and the rivers aren't very, very wide. We hit this bank and we're kind of going like this and we're following these guys up and they're... So we're stroking, trying to, you know, get up with them. So then we go into an area and it was like, here's where the hooches were, right? The hooches right here.

• 2:39:09Jocko Willink?

  So the hooches are along the bank of the river?

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  Right, along the bank of the river. So we came in, we set up support, set up security for them. He's got his Prou's up here. And then, um, he's...

• 2:39:24Speaker 01

  He says, "Okay, it's the same four-corner security, right? Anything that comes out the walls on the two corners, you shoot them." So we're, "All right." You know, because that's how we did it, you know, because in a hooch, if you don't have your free fire, you know, the two corners, somebody's gonna get hurt. So when anybody comes out here, you can, you can shoot them. These guys are gonna shoot, you know, the four corners. So, "All right." So, we're sitting down here, we paddle in. It's supposed to be quiet. It turned out to be a John Wayne fight. "Oh, do my, like, you know, and guys..."

• 2:39:59Jocko Willink?

  Wait, so a John Wayne fight is where they know you're there?

• 2:40:02Speaker 01

  It means when they got inside, the cats that were in there were fighting back. You know, because they were Vietnamese, they were the pru guys. They weren't, they weren't team guys, you know, they weren't, they weren't us.

• 2:40:13Jocko Willink?

  So the prus go into the village?

• 2:40:15Speaker 01

  Go into the hooch.

• 2:40:16Jocko Willink?

  Go into the hooch, and they get into a gunfight?

• 2:40:19Speaker 01

  They get into a gun and fight. Fighting.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:40:23Speaker 01

  So, a guy comes flying out the hooch, and the guys on the corner, you know, kill him, right? And so then there's this thing going on, and then one guy comes out on our side, running right in front of us, Black Mac. This is the very first time I ever saw this, right? Had an M70 grenade launcher, right? And usually, if you're going through the, like, dense jungle, you carry the flakette rounds, or the, you know, like, canister rounds, right? Well, this was kind of gonna be in an open area, so he did an HE round. And this cat goes running, they popped one flare. Then in the firefight, there was, the river goes right like this. There were some people down here in Viet Cong, right?

• 2:41:05Speaker 01

  So when we had the firefight, they were getting hit over there. These guys are running out the back. Black Mac shoots this guy in the back with that grenade, I mean grenade launcher. And all they saw was two hands and two feet flying through the air.

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  I don't even go, wow, man, wow. You know how everything kind of goes slow motion? And there's noise, but it seems like it's quiet. You don't, you know, you, you, uh, I don't know, disconnect or whatever, but anyway, it's, it's all just happening and, and, uh, but you know, you're okay, right? And everybody's calm about it. And, uh, the guy that was running the op captured these two guys, right? So when we had them packaged up, these guys started opening up to where we were.

• 2:41:55Jocko Willink?

  So Vietcong started engaging you guys? The, the Vietcong that were a little bit off the target?

• 2:42:00Speaker 01

  Right. They're engaging us, but we need to go out over here. So we grabbed the two bodies, put them, they threw them in, because there was, there was four guys. This is the op where one of my friends said, oh yeah, I says, uh, didn't we, uh, capture some generals? We wasn't even on the op. And it was in a memorial day, it was in a memorial day thing. He shows it to me and going, so I go, hi, and I says, was it generals that we captured? Wasn't it just some VC, I think it was two VCI guys and a tax collector? Cause yeah, that's what it was. And he says, well, I said, why? I said, because the guy who told me about the story, he says, he said it was general. See, he wasn't even on the op.

• 2:42:43Speaker 01

  I said, oh, because your, your stuff get, and not, and not that anybody's taking credit for it. There's, there's another op that one guy did try to take credit from me. It's called the Donk story, but.

• 2:42:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:42:55Speaker 01

  And another.

• 2:42:56Jocko Willink?

  So in the meantime, how do you get? So you gotta, you gotta leave the area of operations. And you have to go by this group of Vietcong.

• 2:43:05Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:43:05Jocko Willink?

  That are engaging you.

• 2:43:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're shooting over here, right? So then we didn't know that there's other guys on this side. So they start shooting back at these guys.

• 2:43:14Jocko Willink?

  So we had friendlies. Those are friendlies up there?

• 2:43:18Speaker 01

  No, they're Vietcong too.

• 2:43:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so that, so there's Vietcong on both sides of you?

• 2:43:22Speaker 01

  On both sides of us. Here's the place we're going now. We have these guys here and we're paddling out between them.

• 2:43:28Jocko Willink?

  So you're going to paddle out between Vietcong on both sides?

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:43:33Jocko Willink?

  This is not good.

• 2:43:33Speaker 01

  This is not good. The one thing that was good about it though, it was a black night. It was a dark night, so we weren't silhouetted on the river, right? For the short time that the flare went up, we saw what was going on. We know we were going out, so we took off. But they had this thing going on and it was like,

• 2:43:57Speaker 01

  another one of those, what the hell are we doing here, right? But by the time we got out on the river, because there was the two Vietnamese sampanes, and then Black Mac and two Vietnamese in that, the third sampan, me and Hyatt with our guys, we passed everybody. We were waiting out on the river for these guys to show up. It was like, I'm going, are we lost? Where are they at?

• 2:44:21Speaker 01

  And then the boat, because the radio was with Mac, with Black Mac, so he had the...

• 2:44:26Jocko Willink?

  Was Black Mac the platoon commander?

• 2:44:28Speaker 01

  He was the assistant.

• 2:44:32Jocko Willink?

  Why'd you call him Black Mac?

• 2:44:33Speaker 01

  Because he was a Black Mac. We had Black Mac, and we had Pink Mac. Macintosh.

• 2:44:39Jocko Willink?

  You called Macintosh Pink Mac?

• 2:44:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, Pink Mac.

• 2:44:42Jocko Willink?

  And we were talking...

• 2:44:43Speaker 01

  Ambimony too.

• 2:44:45Jocko Willink?

  So I was, you know, Echo was asking about Macintosh. And he was like, you know, he goes, wait a second, so was Macintosh a black guy? And I said, I was like, no, no, he's a white guy. He's as white as me. And then he asked you the same thing, and you're like, no, he legitimately had, his mom was legitimately black.

• 2:45:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:45:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, for me, this was news, and I knew him like for a long time. He had freckles, his last name is Macintosh, he looks like a complete white dude. I mean, it makes the story even funnier.

• 2:45:18Speaker 01

  You have to concentrate on his face.

• 2:45:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:21Speaker 01

  You'll see the black features if you really start looking close.

• 2:45:24Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I knew him for a long time, hung out with him. If you would have asked me, I never would have said that guy's black. Other than the fact that, you know, everyone knew he was like from the Virgin Islands.

• 2:45:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:45:36Jocko Willink?

  And that's what was, that's, but I just figured he was some white guy, you know, that grew up there.

• 2:45:42Speaker 01

  If you think about it, that's the way SEALs are. We think we know who they are, but they're not.

• 2:45:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't know. But anyway, we got those two guys out and it was a cool op. And then the guy that was running the op, he was just so happy because he'd been trying to catch those guys for a long time. So stuff changes. It was always a dynamic. The intel was always dynamic. So something that was good today was different. I think it's kind of like the way the app counts is what I'm understanding is they're moving all the time.

• 2:46:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you always have to adjust for that. And it's interesting, you know, the fact that, you know, we're working with Iraqi soldiers or the, I didn't fight in Afghanistan, but guys that did, uh, work in Afghanistan had to deal with the same stuff. You know, you got these, you got these partner forces that you're working with. Some of them are, most of them are good. And, but you got four or five of those guys that are definitely suspect. You got two or three of them that are bad. And, you know, uh, one of my friends got shot up pretty bad, um, by a guy that they thought was, you know, was there to go do, do a mission with him. Um, he's a special forces guy. Uh, what about the, uh, what about the Donk op? What happened with that one?

• 2:46:59Speaker 01

  Oh, that was, that was going on to football island, man. And me, Tick, the Vietnamese, the kid that was sitting beside me. I loved him, man. He was a guy who told me, he said, Espy,

• 2:47:13Speaker 01

  I'm on for my country what your country has for you. Says, you know, says you seals, you come and then you'll go. I said, but I'm gonna die here. I'm gonna fight here. I've been fighting before you got here. This is where I'm gonna die. Nah, hell no, Tick. Says, we're gonna be together. I'm gonna get out. I'll, I'll become an officer and I'll come back and I was even going to join the Vietnamese Navy SEAL team, right? That's, that's where I was going with it. But I needed a break too. I wanted to get out of, you know, there's, there's a thing where you realize that if you don't have, you're not all in, you're gonna, you're gonna get killed. And, and that's what my respect for the cats like you and guys that have been in for thirty, you know, years,

• 2:47:53Speaker 01

  that, like Hayden, like Hayden, Chaldecas, um, um, guys like Frisk and Croadad and, you know, those guys. Um, sometimes there's the little break of war between, after Vietnam, that space, and it, but then there's more of it. But for me, it was like, I need to get, I need to get out. Uh, and I had the offer to wrestle Team Ranger Colorado. So, so there was with Tick. And so he says, uh, Football Island was, there was a bunch of cats there, and we wanted to pull an op on it. So what we did is we did three people,

• 2:48:30Speaker 01

  three SEALs and Tick, got our little sampan, went up to Football Island, is, not any wider than this, the room.

• 2:48:42Jocko Willink?

  So like ten, ten feet across, twelve feet?

• 2:48:44Speaker 01

  Ten feet.

• 2:48:44Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is how big the river was, or how big Football Island was?

• 2:48:47Speaker 01

  No, that's how big the river was.

• 2:48:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:48:48Speaker 01

  Football Island is probably about three clicks wide, probably about two clicks, three to two clicks, you know, wide and long. But we didn't have a lot of intel on it. And then during the day, there was a lot of, you know, they would, they would move around, right? So what we wanted to do is find out how many were there. So we went in at night, went in with the tide, sampan, just the four of us, went in, crawled up this little river, then, then it narrowed to probably to about that wide.

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  So like six feet?

• 2:49:20Speaker 01

  Six feet, right? But way out was the big river, and that's what we came in on. We came in with an LSSC, right? With the sampan attached to it. So they'd launch us, they'd cruise on up the river, and then we turned in and went, did our Aevop. So we're in there and we're sneaking peek, we got up there, probably, when we first reached the mouth of the river, we heard just

• 2:49:49Speaker 01

  She was like.

• 2:49:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh oh. Is that them signaling?

• 2:49:53Speaker 01

  That's them signaling, right? But it was right near the bank where we were going up. So go, oh, sons of bitches are, I mean, they're right there, right? So we stayed low, low paddle, paddling up, just kept going, went by them. Probably about two minutes, three minutes up. You know, not that far up, maybe, maybe about five minutes. So then we got to where it was easy to pull in. There was like, like a shallow bank that we can get in. So we hovered up the boat and we crawled up. Picking up, like picking up and looking and Jesus, those cats were smoking cigarettes. They had their weapons kind of stacked and talking. And then there was this thing that went like this.

• 2:50:34Jocko Willink?

  How many?

• 2:50:35Speaker 01

  Probably about 50. That's a big group of cats.

• 2:50:39Jocko Willink?

  That's a big group of cats.

• 2:50:40Speaker 01

  There were.

• 2:50:42Jocko Willink?

  Did you have a stoner? Did anyone have a 60?

• 2:50:45Speaker 01

  Well, no, no, no, we're going.

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  So four stoners?

• 2:50:48Speaker 01

  Three stoners and a tick with 16. So we, so we could, we could have fought.

• 2:50:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:54Speaker 01

  But we don't, we're not there for that. So we'd hear this. You know, just what it was like a, like a dog, it made like a real hollow sound. It was a little piece of wood, little piece of wood like this, had two serpent's heads, had a hole drilled through it, and then there was a line that was cut out that would make that hollow sound.

• 2:51:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, it's almost like a percussion instrument.

• 2:51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it had a place where your thumb would fit and where your finger would fit. I didn't know it at the time, we just heard it. So then we get up there and we're laying. Out on the river, we hear this. Oh. Oh. Well, the boat, and we were up there, just, we, we were, we were just kind of hanging out for probably about. Forty minutes, maybe, maybe an hour. We caught it just when the tide was full. And then it started running out, right? Well, the cat's out on the river, hooked up on a barge, I mean, on a sandbar. So the Vietnamese guys are there and they're going, and then one guy was hitting his little dunk.

• 2:52:02Speaker 01

  He said, "Oh, it sounds like the Americans are stuck." Yeah, and then one guy says, "Should we go? We should get the guys and we'll go kill them." "We're just hanging out here, you know, and let's just take a break. Let's let them live tonight." And so Tik was like, "We're gonna have to get out of here, right?" So this one guy gets up and he says, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna go take a leak." So he goes over with the little thing, and I'm laying here, and Hyatt's laying there, and he takes this thing and he puts it down.

• 2:52:35Jocko Willink?

  This is the percussion instrument thing?

• 2:52:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, he puts it down. And so then Hyatt, Hyatt was the platoon leader, right? He's the one who's calling the op. I'm here, Tik's here, and Rich is over here. So Hyatt said, "Well, let's go." So I'm sitting there looking, and he laid it, when he laid it down, it was like right in front of me, and then he started pissing between me and Hyatt. So they're like this, going like this, like, you know, you can feel the, like, rain fitting on the top of your hat. I'm sitting there going, "Son of a bitch." And so the other guy said, "Hey, you want a cigarette?" "Oh, yeah." So he turns around, goes back over and gives this guy a cigarette. Hyatt says, "Move, man, I grabbed that thing, put it in my pocket."

• 2:53:16Speaker 01

  We slid out, and then we're on the low, the, the current is starting to move out. So it was, it was pretty cool. So we weren't like, we were going out with it. Those boats are, so we get out there, and then we pass by the guy that shot. You know, it was like, and I didn't, I didn't really understand it, but then Lou, he says, "I can feel the fucking bullets going into my back, man." He said, "I could just feel them all the way." Well, you just get that, it's not reality, right? There, there are things that... I'll get into that a little bit later, but so we went out and it was so dark that when

• 2:53:58Speaker 01

  those guys were still sitting there, we pulled the boat up there and we said, "Hey", so let us push you off. We pushed them off the bards and then we took off. But I had that donkey, I put it in my pocket. So I told this story to a buddy of mine, Andy Willingham, right, team guy. And he said, "That's cool, man." And I showed him the little thing, you know, because I brought it back. And he was in class 41. Tough guy, man. Just, actually, he had a tussle with a guy, I'm not going to say the guy's name, but he's an east coast guy, the real high end, that ran a lot, officer, that is high profile and shit. And we were in the trade wind bar and he's starting this east coast, west coast bullshit. And Andy

• 2:54:40Speaker 01

  Willingham tells him, "No, you don't shut the fuck up. I'm going to knock you out." Andy's dad used to bet money with all these guys down in the south, and he was a relative of Strom Thurmond. And he used to knock donkeys out with that 16 punch. Well, the guy goes, "What?" "Out." He drinks his beer and says, "I'll catch you later." And he takes off. And that guy's a very famous east coast SEAL, you know, big name, high name. That's never going to be on the history books. But that's how things happened then, you know, it wasn't, you know, the guys that are high order, top end dudes, with the big reputations and stuff like that,

• 2:55:22Speaker 01

  they're just regular guys. You're just a regular cat. You know, we're all, we're all like that. And I, and I, I think the sense, we're, the media gets hold of this thing and sensationalizes everything about, you know, we're, that we are anti-magnetic, genuine, I mean, all of that stuff, right? But, but when, when you, when you're going to screw with the frogman and you're out somewhere, you're not going to just have to kick the hell out of one guy. There are going to be 10 guys with him. You don't have to prove that, you know, I mean, this is, this is where the power is at. Everybody knows that, right? And, and when it goes down, where's the calmness, you know? And you know...

• 2:56:05Speaker 01

  The one thing is that in a millisecond of time, you're both a coward and a hero. And when shit goes down and you find yourself somewhere, you go, how the hell did I get here? When you can run as fast backwards as you can run forward. And each one of the incidences look alike, they smell alike, but they're not alike. You know, it's a totally different thing and each one has its own. Evolution is the same as a fire, it has its own character, it has its own. And what I used to say in Vietnam, it's not the thing you see that's gonna kill you. And I'd tell my guys in the fire department, it's not the thing you see that's gonna kill you. What is? It's the thing that's sniffing around with Jaco's name on it.

• 2:56:49Speaker 01

  It's going, where is he? And that's where the training comes in. And if you have the training, then you have the millisecond of saying, and there's that spiritual thing that says, we're in the wrong place. Or don't. And when I look at ops, you know, like our new guys now, you guys, right? The young guys that get killed in Afghanistan, we're actually like, where was the discussion? That was pretty jacked up from the beginning. But because we are who we are, we give the space and time to say, I wasn't there. They were there. That's their op and however it went, however it went sour, whatever happened, it's the thing that was sniffing for them and they didn't see it.

• 2:57:33Speaker 01

  You know, no matter how well trained you are, sometimes it's just not there, you know?

• 2:57:39Jocko Willink?

  What did you do with MAC, with SOG? Did you work, did you do SOG, any SOG operations?

• 2:57:46Speaker 01

  The MAC VSOG thing was the proof thing.

• 2:57:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:57:50Speaker 01

  So that they had, that was their.

• 2:57:51Jocko Willink?

  That was their.

• 2:57:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's their, that's their thing, yeah.

• 2:57:54Jocko Willink?

  Got it, so those are the ones.

• 2:57:55Speaker 01

  And I didn't even know what it was. They just sent me and Bill over there, you go in there, these guys are leaving, take over. We're like, alright, you know? And the only reason they sent us for that is because I was with the Vietnamese SEALs with two east coast guys. And I worked that, so then it was kind of like, hey, we want you to, because I could speak, I spoke better Vietnamese than I did Spanish. You know, so

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  And you just pick it up from, how'd you pick it up?

• 2:58:20Speaker 01

  From the appointment, from, from Tick and Kwan and Unloch and all the guys, all the guys that I operated with were Vietnamese SEALs that all the rest of the Americans operated with. So when Tick said, "Yeah, I'm gonna be here, but you guys are gonna leave us and I'll probably die here", all of them were killed. Lakh, Hung, Tick, all these guys. So, that's how I picked it up. There are guys that went to Vietnamese language school, they didn't send me, I spoke better Vietnamese than I did than the guys that went to Vietnamese language school because they personalized it. MacIntosh could speak Tagalog.

• 2:59:01Speaker 01

  Cause he, in Vietnam, he had the little thing on learning all the, all the Tagalog phrases, right? And, so, I was invested with Tick and I was invested with the liberation of South Vietnam. And I think there were a lot of, I think there were a lot of Vietnamese, a lot of SEAL Team guys, Vietnam SEALs, that that's how they felt. And then after it went down, I mean, I talked to some guys, I said, "Well, yeah, I'd like to go back someday." And I had some partners, so I didn't leave a damn thing over there. Ain't no reason for me to ever go back there. And, and I think what happens is, there's a romance.

• 2:59:47Speaker 01

  There's a, where you romanticize the memories, right? People romanticize wars. They romanticize of what it is or they think about what it is. I think those of us who be there see the nakedness of it. You know, see the, well, the deal, right? The flash of, that changes your life. That changes everybody's life. And, and we think sometimes that you can only see that in war. We got people in communities that, that are going through the same thing. Of trying, going through post-traumatic stress in their own neighborhoods, you know? And

• 3:00:26Speaker 01

  But what I went through has given me language to what happened in my life. That I'm now able, through reevaluation counseling is one where I have the picture of who I am as a human being. Advanced reticular therapies, the vision thing that some guys are doing that. They gave me mental pictures of where I'm going. And then this lady's really helped me with, it's called Rewired Creator. But where I've come to the point where I'm not going to settle for, that, like I said earlier, you know, my convictions and my wants need to be stronger than the than the alternatives that I settled for in the past, that it's okay to do this. You know, I can't do that anymore. And I gotta forgive myself for the sins of my past, right?

• 3:01:11Speaker 01

  That's a big, and when I was in Coronado this last time, the reunion, I go there, I go to Danny's bar and I have a beer with Mario Maestis. I mentored him, I was his wrestling coach in Colorado, right? Bad dude. I'd wrestle him and then be like, okay, you know when you wrestle the guy and you know, he's getting stronger and tougher and then you go, oh shit, I hang out here a little bit more, he's gonna beat the hell out of me. That was him, you know? And I... That family and that relationship and what we create for each other,

• 3:01:53Speaker 01

  it's beyond just a happening, it's all, it's beyond just being a frogman. There's the whole spiritual connection to those old UDT guys that didn't know shit. They went and they picked them up, can you swim? Yeah. I remember asking one of my old World War II guys, I said, what did you, what kind of weapons you carry? Oh, I had my Cribbers, my swimming trunks and my Flair. I said, what about weapons? I said, we're just doing drop and pickup. And he says, if you miss the boat, he says, you're swimming in with the fleet. You know, with the guys that are landing on the beaches and there's usually a marine laying around. You can just take his weapon, he didn't care. That was their character, that was, that's who we're born from, right? That's what the tad pulled a frog, you know?

• 3:02:42Speaker 01

  And Chief Stone, man, we're living under the reputation of dead men. Like, just the people, they're gonna sit there and say, "Oh, that's your reputation," right? But each one of our generations, those guys behind us, are building their own generation. They're building, they're building, where's it gonna go? If it's left to the people that operate... That tobacco Louis, when I came back, I was by myself, he's sitting there in the Trade Wind Bar. I look at him, I come in, I go, "Shit, they still sitting there." "Hey, ask me, yeah." So I come over to him, I say, "Hey, man, how you doing?"

• 3:03:24Speaker 01

  He grabs a pitcher of beer. "As I understand, you're a pretty good badass little operator." "Take my drink," right? See where it is, the transition to being called that, not called, and you couldn't... I mean, like now, it's called SEAL operators. Nobody would ever have called themselves an operator. The only person that could call you an operator is yourself, is your teammates. The guys that were with you. And when they say that, and somebody else says it to you, it never came from you. It came from the cats that were with you. And there are some cats that were never called operators.

• 3:04:08Speaker 01

  They're Vietnam, they're SEALs, Vietnam guys, they're team guys, but not at that level. At whatever level that is. And it isn't mean to put one type of operator over another operator. You know, it's just that you are. Not better than all the rest of the operators in the world. Because then it becomes the ego thing. But from here, if somebody calls you that and you almost cry, it means something, you know? And I went, "Yeah, you know, have my drink with him."

• 3:04:49Speaker 01

  You know, and I had, you know, you have these, these guys that, they say that are bigger than life. And actually, they're not bigger than life, they're people that know how to connect with you. That are...

• 3:05:03Speaker 01

  They give you life more than anything. You go, yeah, I can do that. I can be this. Olivera Chief Allen, Barry Enoch, you know. Uh, no, I was fortunate, man. I walked with some, I walked with some good people, you know.

• 3:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys, did your platoon, did you lose anybody in your deployment?

• 3:05:25Speaker 01

  Doc Maynard transferred, he rotated with the Army Corps, he was a Marine Corpsman, so that that Marine Corpsman could get some money, right, do the shipover stuff? And he was the one that was walking by with Van Hoi, Doc Maynard and Van Hoi were walking by when they drilled out that 82 millimeter mortar and killed five SEALs.

• 3:05:49Jocko Willink?

  And he just happened to be there?

• 3:05:51Speaker 01

  Just walking by. And then they'd had a, I wasn't there because I was working with the prus, but another buddy of mine named Dee, they were having a party, you know, they're changing out. I was thinking it was crazy. But anyway, at that party, uh, because we were coming over and they just had a party and they were still doing a little bit more operations. And Van Hoi told Dee, he says, "I'm gonna get killed here this time." "Is that what the hell it's about? What are you talking about?" He says, "These guys are careless. They're dangerous." Says, "And I've talked to them about stuff." He says, "But we're gonna mess up." And they did. And he had already like three or four trips, you know?

• 3:06:36Speaker 01

  And, uh, and he was one, he was one, he was a cool, Van Hoi was, he was a rock star. And, uh, me was the very first time we go to, going to relieve a platoon, then they grab you like this. "Hey, how you doing? You're espionage." "Look, what?" "I think I'm shaking hands with a dead man." "I said, "Well, you think that's funny?" You know, they would do those kind of things, you know? And, uh, so then I did it when I left.

• 3:07:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:07:16Jocko Willink?

  So how was it coming home?

• 3:07:21Jocko Willink?

  Did you think you were going back to another platoon? Like you're gonna do it again? At what point did you make the decision like that you're gonna get out?

• 3:07:29Speaker 01

  I got the letter to wrestle to University of Colorado, which was always one of my dreams. Cause I was raised in Boulder. And I thought, man, I'd love to wrestle to University of Colorado. Babes and booze in Boulder, my hometown. Her bombs, bullets and bullshit.

• 3:07:44Speaker 01

  I kiss, I kiss hide on the lips and I said, hey, man, I'm gonna catch you later. I'm because I got, I, I wasn't ready. I wasn't right. You know, I, I felt that. I felt that thing that if I, I go back again, I'm, I might get whacked. And I needed to, I needed that time away. You know? And if I had that space and I had that time and I wasn't ready, then I'm cheating. My, I'm, I, I may be the wing link in

• 3:08:09Jocko Willink?

  You're letting down the team.

• 3:08:10Speaker 01

  In another's operation. So I'd rather not be there, right? And, um, so, yeah, and, and saying goodbye to those guys was really hard, you know?

• 3:08:25Speaker 01

  And then all the other stuff, you know, there's the, the people talk about some of the movements that are coming now about gender and all that other kind of stuff. You know, we dealt with that in the teams a long time before that, you know? Uh, we're gay guys or whatever it is, you know, the,

• 3:08:40Speaker 01

  like in, in community, you know, we, we allow for everybody to exist. Not in the teams. I mean, in the teams was all, but we were in California. So, I mean, all this stuff they're talking about now is already all the gay thing, the whole, all of that stuff is. So when I went to school at CU, there were, there was a lot of people trying to surprise you about things. The vive la raza thing about how violent they are. I'm back from Vietnam is like,

• 3:09:05Speaker 01

  you know? Wait a minute, you know, uh, no, I, I.

• 3:09:12Speaker 01

  Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Young Socialist Republic, the Viva the Aslan thing is like, and I was raised in Boulder, right? All this stuff's going down, I'm like, what happened? In my life, when I was a kid, it felt like my days were black and white days. Vietnam was a green and black. When I came home, it was all technicolor, man, all chicks getting, come and ask you if you want sex. You know, it's like, what happened? You know, this free love and all that other, like, where's, where's the moral conviction? Where's those things? It was like, there weren't any.

• 3:09:47Jocko Willink?

  What year was it that you got out?

• 3:09:48Speaker 01

  Sixty-nine. Seventy, I got back in Vietnam in sixty-nine.

• 3:09:51Jocko Willink?

  So it's just like the height of mayhem in America?

• 3:09:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that whole thing was going down. And I remember at a party, this guy was talking about the, the Chikara movement, right? As there was another kid there, he was from Del Norte, and I'm listening to him, this guy Falcone was really an activist. And I said, well, I don't agree with that, I think it's kind of bullshit, you know? Because I just killed a commie for mommy, I'm back here, I'm from Boulder, and, and he said, well, you're a sellout. I'm a sellout? Because I love my country because of what I did?

• 3:10:36Speaker 01

  And this kid, Marty Martinez, he says, yeah, he can say whatever he wants, and he backhands him. So that's kind of a cheap thing, isn't it? So you don't like it, let's go outdoors. It's all right. So we go outdoors, and I, I forgot where I was, right? So I walked out, and as soon as I-

• 3:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Is this the other time that the outside warrior kind of got the upper hand a little bit?

• 3:11:02Speaker 01

  Well, what happened, what happened was, he hit me, right? So I turned and I looked at him, and I said, you, I said, I've been slapped by women harder than you can, you just hit me. I says, just stand by, because I'm gonna kick out of these three guys first, your little girlfriends, and then you. He says, oh, no, no, man, he says, you gotta, then it was reminding me back when I was in junior high. Fight this guy, and then they go, oh, no, you're okay, you're cool. I says, bullshit. I says, you are manipulating these young kids into what you think it is, but they're not, but they're being manipulated, and it's not creative thought. I said, so I'm gonna tell you what. No, no, you're cool. I said, no, no, I'm gonna go back in the party, me and Freddie.

• 3:11:46Speaker 01

  I says, you come back in there, I'm gonna kick you inside there, out. I says, as a matter of fact, when I go to a party, if you're there, you better leave. And if I'm there, don't come in. Later on, he got killed by threatening some old guy in New Mexico, right? So I didn't fit. Asked my dad. Hey, man, I said, did I screw up? Vietnam and all that? My dad, I love him, man. He's the guy that grabbed my face, you know, told me I was, don't be afraid, right? My last name's the only thing I gave you. So he takes me over and he makes me stand in this, we put tiles in the bathroom, not the stick and kind, not,

• 3:12:30Speaker 01

  not this court, I mean. So we did that and he had me stand there and.

• 3:12:36Jocko Willink?

  This is after Vietnam, this is when you asked him if you had screwed up?

• 3:12:40Speaker 01

  This is when I was going to school at CU, right? Cause I came home and they were still there. Before, my dad told me, we're moving. I said, why are you moving? We're afraid of you. We think you're gonna kill us. I said, why? What do you mean? He says, the way you are, the behavior, the way you look at us, the way you carry yourself sometimes. Says, we think you could kill us. That's when I understood where the, that's where the outside was, I started looking and going, what the? And there's another couple of other things I'll get to a little bit later about what happened, but he had me stand there. He says, you know, the way we are as people. He says, the man can say that they own the rivers, the mountains, the valleys,

• 3:13:24Speaker 01

  even the buildings that they built. Says, the air or the sea. He says, but they don't. But I want to tell you something. That square tile that you're standing on.

• 3:13:40Speaker 01

  Everywhere you walk Gibby. That's when he loved me, when he called me Gibby. Gibby's different than Espy, you know, and Gil. Says, uh, everywhere you walk.

• 3:13:51Speaker 01

  It's paid for by you. By the blood of yours and your friends.

• 3:13:57Speaker 01

  He says, and you did it for your family. You did it from your heart. So it's paid for us too.

• 3:14:04Speaker 01

  He says, you'll never be ashamed about what you did and who you are.

• 3:14:09Speaker 01

  Cause that. You own it.

• 3:14:13Speaker 01

  So when I walk into a villa, all right, this place right here, right now, it's mine. This is your. This is yours. But this little chair here. It's mine. And I didn't understand that. But somebody has to tell you so that you do. And my dad, fourth grade education told me. In the Indian way, you know? And, uh.

• 3:14:37Speaker 01

  He gave me so much power. When I came back, uh. I didn't fit. So when I wrestled at CU, it was just wrestling. That's what I'm saying. I couldn't get it. I had to go to, I had to go to five point. I went to the Nationals two times. If I beat this one guy, I would have been sixth in the nation, right? But he ran. I beat a national champ that another guy knows, but they. They ripped me off. And actually, when my wrestling coach. Talked to this guy, said, why'd that happen? He said, I just couldn't let that Mexican kid beat. This kid, right? Alright. I understood that. No big, I'm, I'm a frogman, you know? I fought for my country and not diff. You know? I, uh.

• 3:15:25Speaker 01

  I just fortunately I had a pop that told me that, you know.

• 3:15:30Speaker 01

  When I went hunting with him one time later as a man.

• 3:15:37Speaker 01

  We killed an elk. I was just back, it was probably, that was later. And we were getting him up, he says, Gibby, he says, "You're hunting," he says, "you go up over the ridge," he says, "and you scare down an elk and I'll kill him." I said, "All right." So I'm up there walking up on the street. And he wouldn't, my mom wasn't gonna let him go. But she said, he said, "What if Gibby goes with me?" "Well, if Gibby goes with you, you can go." I said, "Dad, I don't wanna go." He says, "You, you go with me." I said, "All right." So he tells me these orders, "You go up on top," he says, "you chase down the elk and I'll kill him." And we'll be, you know, it's all right.

• 3:16:18Speaker 01

  So I'm up there humping, I'm like forty-seven years old, I can feel my heart, you know, like when you're on ambush or something like that and you feel your heart beating in your head, your neck, you know, I'm thinking, "I'm gonna have a heart attack up here, my dad's not coming up here and they're gonna find me a bag of bones, right?" So anyway, I came down and he was driving. He had, so I got in here, I put my weapon here. You're supposed to have your weapon where you're hunting, right, with you. He said, "Well, you drive." So I went around the truck. As soon as I got hold the door, I heard the sound, man. Somebody's shooting at us, went right over my head. Two of them. And I said, "What's going on?" I said, "Oh, Papa," he said, "whatever's happening, they're shooting at us."

• 3:17:00Speaker 01

  And then I grabbed his weapon, "So I'm gonna shoot somebody." And he goes, "No, no, no," he says, "there's the elk, it's coming this way." So instinctively, I drew up, I was gonna shoot the elk, and my dad goes, "No, no, no," he said, "that's my gun." And when we went, my dad, I said, "Dad, I don't want a gun." He says, "No, I'm just gonna be with you, no, no, no, you gotta have it in case you get hurt, so you got a gun." So, all right, so he locked and loaded the round for me. I shoot, clipped him like this, I took the second shot. And then I was, I locked and loaded, and I'm running, next thing I'm just running after this elk. And I heard my dad as I was running, he says, "I'm gonna shoot him again." My dad, "No, no, no, Gibby, he'll fall, he'll fall." And when I got there, the elk fell.

• 3:17:45Speaker 01

  And I looked at him, and the elk goes.

• 3:17:53Speaker 01

  And I felt the spirit, you know, it was like, and I saw him die, you know? And I hadn't done anything since Vietnam, right? And, you know, like sometimes when you see those guys and they're, they're gone? When, when you know that the spirit was there, but they're gone? It was like that again. Those aren't flashbacks. People go, oh, I had a flashback to Vietnam. Those are re-stimulations. You know, you know where you're at. You, you have a choice to do whatever. A lot of guys bullshit themselves out. They quit on themselves. They give themselves an out of being responsible for themselves. That's how I think, right? And so, I looked and I'm standing there and my dad comes up behind me.

• 3:18:36Speaker 01

  Uh, and I had my H harness with my K bar and stuff. He says, "You okay?" And I turned around, I looked at my dad, he goes, "You're not okay." He says, "Give me your knife." He says, "Go get the truck." The little bag that had the hatchet and the, and the knife and the bone saw and all the stuff. He's, so I go to the truck. I get to the truck and I'm like shaking like this. It goes, "Oh, man, God, you know, wait, what, what am I doing here? Why did I even..." So, we grab, I get the truck, I come back over to him. My dad looks, comes over to him and he looks at me, he gives me a hug. Got me like this. "Well, the knife with the blood."

• 3:19:20Speaker 01

  I'm like this going, "Shit." So he says, looks at me, he says, "Forget that Vietnam bullshit. Cause I need you to help me right now. Hold the legs." So I'm holding the legs, right? Where there's place where all the, it's all in like a pasture, right? Where they'd cut the, the stuff down, right? The, um, stubble, right? I operated up the plate or reeds up by Cambodia, right? And that was a pretty flat place, but that's what it looked like.

• 3:19:55Speaker 01

  And I could hear, isn't it like, but I could hear them in, in the heart of my mind, right? Thinking and shaking.

• 3:20:13Speaker 01

  And so then, we got him up and everything, he caught, shoots a gun, his buddy comes down, we load him in the truck, we take, get in the truck, and my dad says, "Okay," he says, "now we pray," right? It keeps the liver too, you know, in the Indian way, right? So, we pray, and he grabs my hand, says, "Heavenly Father, I thank you, I thank you that my son is with me, and I thank you that you gave this elk's life to bring him home to me."

• 3:20:50Speaker 01

  Pops, man, come on, you know? So then that night, I couldn't sleep, it was in like a little tear, teardrop trailer, man, it was freezing in there, right? We're cold, my dad's rubbing my back, I said, "Dad, I'm gonna get outside," so I went outside and I looked up at the sky.

• 3:21:08Speaker 01

  And up in the sky, and there's two times I've seen it, one, when I did a Native American sweat with a guy that was a Vietnam vet that invited me to be part of the American Indian Veterans of Colorado, his name was Wendell Irving, one of the greatest honors of my life. That was the beginning of me stepping out of all that, the oppression of Vietnam and

• 3:21:29Speaker 01

  losing myself, losing the humanness that I was, and, and that piece, the young boy being revealed, right? I looked up and I went, "Oh, man, God, this, this is too much, these hunting trips are too much." And then again, in the spirit, the same way those mountains spoke to me and said, "We'll be your friends forever," right? And the way that Poet Lomond says, "I'm with you," and that's the way to Vietnam.

• 3:21:58Speaker 01

  I heard him say, I heard the spirit, it was like, "The same way that I gave that elk's life to bring you home to your father, I gave my son's life to bring you back home to me." It was the beginning of, of the spiritual thing, you know? And I, I, you know, I'd accepted Christ and all that kind of stuff, but...

• 3:22:20Speaker 01

  It was different because then it was blood again. Like the war, like Vietnam, blood again. The blood sacrifice of things changes things. If people knew what war was and what the blood was, like the people in Ukraine right now, they know. The Americans don't know. I mean, they'll kill guys in the ghettos or whatever over meaningless stuff, right? Because you want your car. Or you want his whale tail, right? Right now, I am Jonah and the whale, right now. Because I'm trying to sort things out, and where am I going with this 75 years?

• 3:23:03Speaker 01

  Where am I going for the next 25 years, right? Where am I going? This is part of that challenge. This is part of it. And where does that come from? That comes from being a fraud man. That comes from not being afraid of being cold. I hate it. I hate it more than anything. But I'm not afraid of it. Right? I'm not, and you know, people say, "I'm not afraid to die either," you know? You're not gonna know until somebody's there to kill you. I mean, that's the reality of it. I look out there and I see all the MMA guys, man. They're gonna go out there. The one thing that I admire about all of them is going out there.

• 3:23:47Speaker 01

  They're the ones that's gonna know. Not the cats sitting around outside that aren't in the arena, that aren't in there getting their ass kicked. And then even though they are, which is the one that has enough that's gonna pull them out? That isn't gonna be ego that pulls them out, it's gonna be their heart that pulls them out. Those are the true champions. There's a guy with all the talent in the world, he can kick shit out of everybody. But if his heart's not right, I mean, it's on ego. He's an angry person. And I was that angry guy one time. I sit there looking in the mirror and going, you know, the face of death was mine. Like, what? And then I'm gonna have kids. I can see, I can see some, the guy was with the reunion, the young SEAL, man. What do I do?

• 3:24:31Speaker 01

  How can I do this and still love my babies, little kids? I said Barry Enock did. He would sit there and hold my babies and Barry Enoch is one of the baddest dudes in the valley and one of the nicest guy, you ever meet him? Barry Enoch? He's a true mentor of teams of, he was with Crow Dad, you know? And it's bigger. So my pops gave that to me, you know, 4th grade, you know? Then he, when I was wrestling in high school, he never, my sophomore, he didn't go see me.

• 3:25:14Speaker 01

  And, and then one day I was driving, told him, I need to go to a wrestling camp. I gotta lift weights and this and that, use some protein. My coach wanted me to do that stuff. My dad said, well, I don't know about that. He says, I got you a job. He says, and if you make enough money, he says, you can go to your wrestling camp. He says, now shut up and eat your beans, right? Protein. I went, I said, well, what's my job? He says, hanging drywall. So I was 98 pounds, man, hanging drywall with grown men. I had to get on this, on a scaffold, I mean, on a horse, to get on a horse, to hold that up. But there was nobody that ever wrestled that was stronger than me. And so all of that prepared me for the teams when shit hanging on the, on the bottom ring

• 3:25:58Speaker 01

  of a helicopter in the air and on 500 feet, going through training, right? Through Bud's training, we did the drop out of the helicopter and pick up, hanging on and no big, no big deal, you know? That, how do you get there? Right? It's each of those little life, life things and, or annoying that Chief Allen's on my ass, you know? I was doing drop and pick up with him, right? And they were telling you about what that is? And I'm sitting there going, you ever do drop and pick up?

• 3:26:32Jocko Willink?

  Yep. They don't do it anymore, but I do, yeah.

• 3:26:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, there was one, East Coast guys told me, how do you do that stuff? Just sitting there, just jerk you out? I said, well, you gotta be swimming backwards. He said, oh, really? And they were teaching them to do that, you know, kick and go. So he says, yeah, he says, it's gonna look like the boat's gonna hit you, but don't stay there and it'll pull you in. So I'm like this, oh bullshit, you know? I stroked out, boom, the boat goes by. Chief Allen comes back the next round, he says, Espinoza, don't move. Who you, Chief Allen? He takes off, comes back, I swear he's gonna hit me again, so I...

• 3:27:07Speaker 01

  So then the third time, he didn't say anything, he just turns around, comes over and going, this coming at me, it is really coming, I'm kick stroking and gliding, he ran over me with that boat, boom, man, my face piece was hanging down and stuff, and then he pulls by, last time, he grabbed me, when that boat grabbed me, and I hooked up, he threw me, all the guys ducked, as I fly from, the boat's about this big, huh, everybody's ducking, I'm flying through the air, and I caught the other side, you know, I never, ever, never, ever missed a pickup again.

• 3:27:45Jocko Willink?

  So what'd you do when you graduated from college? Then you wrestled all, all your years of college?

• 3:27:49Speaker 01

  Yep, I wrestled four years of college, qualified, qualified for the nationals two times, and then, it was like, Brad Leach was the sheriff, and, um, what am I gonna do? Right? I was gonna, I was gonna teach school, I was doing my professional year, teaching school, and this kid comes up, and I was with my mentor, my proctor, and he says, uh, you see this kid walks out of the classroom, he says, uh, hey, get back in class, the kid looks, says, fuck you, I'm like, what? You know, he walks out, and I said, hey, what's, what's the deal with that? He said, uh, no, man, he says, uh, you can't, I said, you can't grab his head stuck in the locker, kick him in the ass and tell, he says, no, no, you can't do that, they'll arrest you.

• 3:28:32Speaker 01

  I says, well, I'm not gonna be a teacher, and I graduated, and I was, what am I gonna do? I didn't wanna teach school, so Brad Leach was the sheriff, and he says, uh, how would you like to come on to police department, says, and we'll, um, start dive rescue teams, since you're in the teams, you can shoot and stuff, and do that, so, uh, it was like, um, come down, do the polygraph, and gave me the whole test, I did everything, polygraphed the drug thing, I was just from CU, right? Says, you ever done any drugs? I'm going, what do you mean? You know?

• 3:29:03Jocko Willink?

  Clarify.

• 3:29:04Speaker 01

  I said, you know, they gave you those pills in Vietnam, you know, that speed, and they kept us awake all night, that was the only thing that I'd ever done, and maybe down in Mexico, a little bit of white pills, you know, just a party for the weekend, but, uh, so I thought, okay, smoking grass, I did. So how do you justify, well, if you take a lid like this and you smoke it and you share with people, you actually only smoke about that much, maybe quarter of a lid. Ah, other than that, did you do any more drugs? I said, oh, no. Okay, I passed that. So then Bradley says, oh, yeah, he says, you, you're good. Says, well, come on, we'll get you to the academy, give you a gun and you can.

• 3:29:43Jocko Willink?

  This is for sheriff.

• 3:29:44Speaker 01

  Sheriff. And I went, I said, okay. So I go home Sunday, go to sleep, wake up and it was like, wait a minute. Ain't no way I could be a cop. If I can't take crap from a 13 year old kid, I'm gonna kill you. I mean, I'd fight guys at the bar, right? But if I'm going to be stalked by somebody and you're gonna pull a gun on me, I'm gonna kill you. So I thought I can't do that either. So then the fire department came up. So I couldn't be a cop, couldn't be a teacher. There was a, there was a, there was a movie called Kung Fu. And it was like grasshopper stuff. It's kind of like, everybody in Boulder was kind of like, oh, the essence of life. Shoot, I learned all kinds of lying.

• 3:30:29Speaker 01

  I could pick up on chicks, right? And talk to people and, and, and go into, you know, in school, it kind of. So it's like, what am I gonna do? And so then they were having affirmative action hiring for, um, people of color, right? 200 people are gonna hire one guy on the fire department. I didn't know about it. Ms. Martinez, who's, who, my mom was gonna kick the shit out of calling me father, right? She calls up and says, hey, they're hiring firefighters in Boulder, gonna hire one. She said, why don't you try it? So I'm like, sea, air, land and fire. Four elements of life, you know, just like the directions, north, south, east and west. I mean, it was all coming together and I was really getting sensitized to this, uh, I

• 3:31:13Speaker 01

  almost became a Buddhist, you know, I was thinking about all that stuff. So I said, yeah, okay, I'll try it. So I did. And I was, I was wrestling at CU, right? And I was running 15 miles, you know, I was, I was in good shape. And, uh, at that time it was pushups, situps, chinups and all that other kind of stuff. So I kicked everybody's butt on that, right? I had an Afro, my mustache, my, you know, cause I had a, you know, you gotta look cool up there at CU, you know, with the whole hippie looking thing, right? And so, uh,

• 3:31:47Speaker 01

  I do the interview and stuff and they're like, "Oh yeah, you really, the SEAL Team, what was that?" I says, "Well, not really much." I says, "You know, got to wear shades, wear swimming trunks and just kinda hung out on the beach and stuff." "With red boats." "Oh, okay." "So that's Navy?" I said, "Yeah." I didn't tell them what the team, no, they wouldn't know what the teams were, you know. I did have a jacket, had UDT on it because SEAL Team didn't have a, but I had a UDT patch, right? My, in my fire now, it's all, all gone, but, uh, oh, I hitchhiked home from the Navy. When I, when I- When you got out? When I got out, nobody picked me up, because I wanna know what I fought for, right? Two old ladies picked me up in New Mexico, these other Mexican guys picked me up and

• 3:32:30Speaker 01

  wanted to frisk me, I had my 38 in the back, and, uh, I, I, they frisked me, but I was sitting in the back, I think I oughta pull this thing out and say, "Okay, guys, everybody out of the..." But I didn't. Then when I got, we're in the Colorado, some coyotes were, were stalking me, you know, I'm thinking, "I'm gonna come back in Vietnam, I won't get eaten by the damn coyotes." Then a guy in a tractor trailer truck tried to run over me, thought I was a cow, he stopped, gave me a ride into Colorado. Anyway, that's how I got home from the Navy. But, so I said, "Yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll do this." Took the interviews and everything, he said, "Well, yeah, but you got that, uh, good stuff there, boy," you know, and I'm all white haired guys, blue eyed, you know, from Nebraska and, and,

• 3:33:17Speaker 01

  so, I'll just try it. I said, "Well, you shaves off." I mean, my hair's been cut shorter, I can shave my mustache, I'm not... Okay. So I show up, um, I was drinking, you know, I was still, I was still over here. Yes, I was going, I didn't know I was going through post-traumatic stress. Uh, when you look at the behaviors now, I know I was, but, um- And the behaviors are drinking, fighting- All of that stuff. Just the whole nine years. Racism, sexism, you know, screw the white guys and whatever. So, I'm telling you about, you know, you finalize yourself as a frogman and you, you're pretty clean about who you are, right? But then, when you don't fit, you don't feel that you don't fit, then

• 3:34:00Speaker 01

  you start bringing all this stuff back, right? That's, that's the socialization piece, because that's easy to fall back into, right? So, and I got out of the fire department, I was like, this guy says, uh, "Yeah, kid."

• 3:34:15Speaker 01

  Know where you belong? Says, uh, we're gonna get along fine on this department, right? So I put up with that for about, well,

• 3:34:23Speaker 01

  five months later, I was drinking, and I was, it was already the beginning. I, I lacerated my liver, three holes in my duodenum. I got this, this cut here, I have one down my leg, lacerated my liver, riding a motorcycle, drinking and going back over to Denver. The one thing cool about those guys was they covered for me, because I had no sick or vacation. We worked every other day for three days and then we were off four days. So if you'd have ten days off, you had to off for a month. So twenty guys, twenty shifts were covered for me, and I paid those shifts back when I got back to work, but I kept my job. So I'm going, well, that's pretty cool.

• 3:35:05Speaker 01

  Waking up at seven o'clock in the morning, the same thing as waking up at seven at night if you're drunk. And every other day thing was gotta call up, oh shit, I'm sick. Hey, uh, you know, I'm calling in sick. They go, oh, you're on a four day, you don't come back. I said, when do I go back? Three more days. Oh. So I'd use all my sick, my vacation, there's times I wasn't coming to work. I mean, it, it was, it was hard because it was so free. I didn't have

• 3:35:30Jocko Willink?

  Structure.

• 3:35:30Speaker 01

  Structure, and even when I was wrestling in college, my wrestling coach, I wanted to go back to the, I wanted to go back to war. I'd be drunk, I'd smoke a cigarette in the bar and saying, hey, man, I just want to let you know I want to leave.

• 3:35:42Speaker 01

  Shelby Wilson, Olympic champion. He said, well, Gell, he says, if you want to quit, I'll tell the team, you can go.

• 3:35:51Speaker 01

  Son of a gun. So, I didn't quit, I struggled the, the last, you know, I struggled, you know, staying in college. Because of that quit thing, if I, I couldn't let them, I couldn't let myself down to let them down, because I have never quit anything in my life. Right?

• 3:36:12Speaker 01

  So. So.

• 3:36:14Jocko Willink?

  So how long did it take like at as a firefighter? At what point did you start to kinda figure out that maybe all this drinking wasn't so good for you? Maybe that you were had some stuff you needed to sort out?

• 3:36:29Speaker 01

  Well, finally, who it was, right? I'm on the first fire call. I go out, put a cup of coffee down. We go out, go on a call and there's this guy trapped like this.

• 3:36:40Jocko Willink?

  In a vehicle or the building?

• 3:36:42Speaker 01

  In a vehicle, car wreck. So I'm looking and I'm like, what do I do? He says, here, hold the hose, kid. So we're doing extrication. We'll tell you what to do. Car catches on fire, open up. I'm like, all right. So I'm sitting there watching this guy and they're trying to get him cut open and stuff. And and I remember it had that, I'm not gonna drink anymore. I'd had that, I think it's a diuretic. So anyway, I took a cup of coffee, right? First cup of coffee, man, sit there and boom, get a call. I put it down, we take off. I'm sitting there watching this guy and all I could think of when I was watching was,

• 3:37:24Speaker 01

  look, man, why don't you just hurry up and fucking die? Because I know you're gonna die. My coffee's getting cold, you know? That's where I was.

• 3:37:32Speaker 01

  So they cut him apart and he died, right? So we go back, I grab my cup of coffee, take a sip, it's cold, and I went, okay.

• 3:37:43Speaker 01

  What's happening? What's happened to me? When my dad told me, he says, don't forget that you're a human being, right? And I saw this go down and I had no feelings, nothing. It's like getting disconnected over in Vietnam, getting disconnected.

• 3:38:04Speaker 01

  This space and time and not discharging, you know, because when you're there, I wasn't discharging anymore. I wasn't crying. I wasn't laughing. I wasn't mean, even now, sometimes some kids will say, well, Mr. Espinoza's really doesn't have a sense of humor. Because sometimes I don't, you know, even on the fire department, I'd look at somebody and they'd say, well, I think this guy's trying to kill me, you know, but so it was like, okay, that was the thinking about it. And I, I became very best friends with this guy named Billy Duran. He was an Air Force guy, right? He's a firefighter. So as I got on the fire department, they told me, you remember where you belong and this and all that kind

• 3:38:44Speaker 01

  of stuff. And then about the fifth year, I mean, four years, because it was easy. I was drinking. I was getting paid good money. I spent most of my money on a bar tap. I'd buy in for everybody, you know, I wasn't even taking vacations. I was just using my time and drinking and fighting and whatever. And I was not happy. It's kind of like, what am I doing here? So then there was a training fire. I was the second guy. I was, I was, I was the third engine to go in and do this training fire.

• 3:39:25Jocko Willink?

  So the training fire, they set a building on fire that's going to be demoed or something like that? So they're just taking advantage of a building that's going to be demoed?

• 3:39:34Speaker 01

  What they were doing is they were doing smoke training. And in the smoke training, there was a new lieutenant. So this older lieutenant was trying to

• 3:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Train the

• 3:39:43Speaker 01

  See how that kind of macho man he was, see whether he could really fight fire and what kind of a smoke user he was. I was at another station, Billy Duran and this other young kid had one month on the job. Well, if you burn tires, it's a hydrocarbon. The temperatures in this chicken coop, over the period of time, there was three or four other revolutions that had happened in that same building. It lowered the flashpoint, right? So at one point, it ignited, killed Bill Duran, killed the other kid, the lieutenant that was in charge, he suffered some burns. The lieutenant that was in charge of the engine company, 80, 80% burns on his body. So he died, you know, he got burned up and Billy died. And for me, it was kind of like, there was, there was something was going

• 3:40:27Speaker 01

  on too, because I was pretty violent and

• 3:40:32Speaker 01

  Previous, you know, when, when that happened, I got fed up with everything, right? And so one day, knowing how I felt about not having any feelings, billyed around getting killed, all this petty ass bullshit, it was like, for instance, a black guy was walking with a girl, right? And I'm sitting there and they go, "Look at that." And I said, "Look at what? It's that black guy with that woman, white woman. What do you think about that?" And so what I think about it is, is who's me walking out there with that woman? You'd be on the inside looking at me and saying, "Look at that guy, what's he doing with that white woman?" You know? That's what I think about it, you know? Doesn't mean nothing to me.

• 3:41:17Speaker 01

  And so then it was, so then I got fed up with that. So I was in a dive locker, right? Cause I'm doing diving, kind of trying to reorganize the dive team at my level. And one guy was talking about, he had a little booby trap cleaning up petty ass bullshit, you know, kind of like cleaning up, he was an officer, set me up that I didn't clean up the space in, uh, on the engineer's room. So I set one up in the officer's room. He didn't clean it up. He got on me for not cleaning up mine, so I got on him for not cleaning up his. He said, "Why didn't you just clean it then?" I said, "Why didn't you just clean yours?" As a matter of fact, I grabbed hold of the door, closed it, and he says, "What are you doing?" I said, "I want to, man, today you kick the shit out of me, or I kick the shit out of you, because I'm tired of all your white man bullshit and all of this traditional firefighter

• 3:42:02Speaker 01

  bullshit." He goes, "Whoa, whoa, wait, wait a minute, Gil, wait, wait, what do you mean?" I said, "Where are you from?" He said, "Well, I'm from Lincoln." Yeah, I said, "Where's your people from?" "Well, we're Germans." I says, "Were you raised here?" He said, "No." I said, "Well, I was raised here. My dad, we're from the Pique's Pueblo." So I'm from, I was born in Colorado. I says, "And did you ever kill a commie for mommy?" He goes, "What?" I said, "Did you ever, you ever in the military, did you ever kill a commie for mommy, man?" "Well, no, you know I'm not. I'm not in the military." I says, "Well, they don't give me this shit about where I belong and, or anything else." He said, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute, Gil, I don't know where this is coming from." I said, "We don't know where it's coming from.

• 3:42:45Speaker 01

  This is affirmative action bullshit that all you white guys are talking about." I says, "And I'm not buying into it. I'm a frog man." He goes, "Whoa, wait, wait, wait a minute." He says, "You know..."

• 3:42:57Speaker 01

  On this fire department, if they have fires, they want you with them because you're a good firefighter. Extrication now, you're good, you're good at extrication, they want you with them. They go into a bar fight, they go into the bars, they want you with them because you know most of the guys anyway in Boulder, right? EMS, they know you know EMS. And they can count on you, on the engines. Says, but, there's more to being an all-around firefighter. And you're not doing it. I said, what, yeah, what's that? He says, coming to work on time. Coming to work, not being on suspension, and not being, um, hungover.

• 3:43:40Speaker 01

  Boom, man, in my mind, I heard my dad say, give you...

• 3:43:46Speaker 01

  The only thing I give you is my reputation, my, my last name, don't bring dishonor on it. And then he says, you know, I said, what the, I don't give a shit, I says, I'm getting connected to go to Saudi Arabia as a weapons instructor. Got connected to, it was called Brown magazine, Soldier Fortune magazine. I already got accepted. And they're gonna give me a hundred thousand for the year, but if I got killed, they, my family didn't get it. It was totally disconnected, total, you know. And I said, I'm, that's what I'm doing, so I don't give a shit. But, and I was gonna put my two weeks notice, that was a Friday, I said, I'm gonna put my two weeks notice in and be gone. He says, well, when you do that, he says, everybody's gonna be glad that you're gone.

• 3:44:30Speaker 01

  Because your reputation sucks.

• 3:44:34Speaker 01

  So I went over to the door, I opened it up, I stepped out and I closed the door and left him in there. I went over to the, the dorm where the beds were and I laid down, I thought. Shit.

• 3:44:47Speaker 01

  I can't leave here until my reputation's right. So the next day, I go to, Monday, I go to the chief. So I'm gonna tell you what, man, he says, I'm gonna come to work on time, I'm not gonna be hungover. I'm trying to max out my, my vacation days, my six days, and that's why I'm giving you my word as a... As a, as a man. My word, period, not as a man. Mom gave me my word. Okay Gil, that's cool. Everything's good. And, um, he actually gave me some space. One of my battalion chiefs told me, he says Gil, and my cousin Davey, when I beat up a guy real badly, and my bat chief sits there and he says, Gil, I don't know if you need a priest, a psychiatrist, a doctor, a counselor, or what?

• 3:45:32Speaker 01

  But I don't know how to deal with you. I said, well, I'm a man, man. I'm what a real man is. I don't need anybody. And there's nothing wrong with this, with me, the whole world's jacked up, but I'm not. I'm right. Everybody else is, you know? So, anyway, I made that commitment to him.

• 3:45:51Speaker 01

  Two shifts later, I'm in a fire. I fall in a hole. My lieutenant falls over me and terrorists later on, tore my ACL out. But I'd given my word. So I ached up my, my, uh, ached up my knee for a month.

• 3:46:11Speaker 01

  And, and worked like that. And so then later on, we're doing training fire. Um, and I jumped off the apparatus and it caught my leg just right. Ah, man. So then I went to the hospital. And I, they said, oh yeah, you tore your meniscus and your ACL's been torn for a long time. So then I had to, I had to rehab. So that was the beginning of me now, becoming a firefighter. That I can't leave until I get all this, all this stuff straight. And so then the, the part of being revealed again. When, when I got on that job, my, when we moved to Boulder, my dad's first job was working at fire station two. Shoveling snow. He was a laborer.

• 3:46:55Speaker 01

  So he comes home and I said, how was you doing today dad? I was like, 10. Well, it was after the hunting, right? Maybe 11. No, I was younger. I was like before the hunting thing. So I was at the fire department. I said, what were you doing? So I was working with the fire department. What'd you do? I shoveled in snow off the roof. I said, oh, I said, what, what were the firemen doing?

• 3:47:18Speaker 01

  Oh, they're in there smoking cigarettes, watching TV and drinking coffee. He says, "I think I could do that job." You know, I said, "Yeah." He says, "Yes, I could do that job." I said, "Cool." So, I became a firefighter. My mom, when I became a firefighter, has a little piece of paper. It was in a book. It's called First Latinos in Boulder County. And I have a copy of it. And in it is a thing that I wrote when I was in fourth grade or third grade. Oh, it's shitty handwriting. So, "When I grow up, I want to be a fireman. I might ring the bell. I'll wear the rubber coat, the rubber coat, the boots and the hat. And we'll go on a fire truck real fast and I'll ring the bell and I might sleep in the fire station." She gave that to me.

• 3:48:03Speaker 01

  And I went, "I didn't even know it, right?" So, my first assignment is station two. I walk in there with my bunker goats, my stuff. The same station that my dad was, right? "But you grew up there, kid?" "All right, put my gear up." And I walked, walked into the lounge. I looked out the windows where I know my dad was looking in. And in here, right? I love God because God talks to your spirit, you know, those things. And it's always a good thing. It's never ever God telling you, "Oh, you fucked up or you're bad or you're whatever it is." It's like, "Hey, now you guys are on the inside." "Hey, pops, I'm on the inside now."

• 3:48:48Speaker 01

  So, so there I was, as a firefighter in, uh... And I did have a little, little bit of trouble. I was blessed by this guy named JJ that became my lieutenant. And when I got there, he says, "I heard some stuff about you and what, what, how are we going to make this work?" And I'd already made that commitment. I says, "I'm gonna tell you what, so you treat me like a man, not like an idiot or a baby or anything else." I said, "We're gonna get along." I said, "But don't mess with me." He says, "Agreed." And, and he actually was my mentor as lieutenant. And then he became a captain. So I became lieutenant. And then when he was a captain, battalion chief came up. He's the guy who came up and says, I think you should be the bat chief.

• 3:49:33Speaker 01

  One position. I said, I don't know about being a bat chief. I know, but you would be the guy.

• 3:49:37Jocko Willink?

  How, how, how many years was this into your career?

• 3:49:40Speaker 01

  Ten, about ten years.

• 3:49:42Jocko Willink?

  So you did a good turnaround. Once your first five years of kinda.

• 3:49:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it was bad.

• 3:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Being a jackass.

• 3:49:49Speaker 01

  It was horrible.

• 3:49:49Jocko Willink?

  Once you squared that away, then you turned around.

• 3:49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49:52Jocko Willink?

  And really got on the path of doing the right things.

• 3:49:54Speaker 01

  That commitment, right? That, that commitment of to myself, to not let myself die for my dad, for this gun. I can't do that, you know? So, yeah, it was, it was the ten years and then. I remember when he told me to go for bat chief. And I tested. And then I became the bat chief. Then all the sabotaging beliefs come in like you're, I mean, you're too small. You're not smart enough. You're not all this, all the bullshit that, that. So I'm going, oh, here we go again. I'm driving a fire truck. I'm a bat chief. I didn't realize that everybody in the county hears what the bat chief says on the air. And that's a lot of pressure. That's like being incident commander, right?

• 3:50:36Speaker 01

  I mean, you've got the op and stuff, all the air op stuff, all the stuff you say. Everybody hears, everybody knows everything that you've said or think about, right? I'm driving down the road, I'm going, oh, my God, I've had a panic attack, man. I pull off the side of the road and go, what the hell did I? What are you doing here, Espinoza? What the fuck you doing here? And so I called up this lady who was part of the reevaluation council. I told her what I was feeling. She said, okay. This just sounds kind of weird, but she said, I want you to say this. I am totally and completely incapable, incapable and incompetent to be the battalion chief. I said, what? She said, yeah, say that. So I went, all right, I'm totally and completely incapable and incompetent to be the battalion chief. So, well, what do you think about that?

• 3:51:21Speaker 01

  I said, well, that's kind of, kind of, I don't know. I said, it's kind of, again, this hard, I'm having a hard time processing that. She says, okay, she said, now say this.

• 3:51:33Speaker 01

  And so I said it again, I'm totally and completely incapable, incompetent being the battalion chief, right? But fortunately or unfortunately, I am the very best person to be the battalion chief. So I said that, I went, so what do you think about that? I went, yeah, I probably am. Because it was spooky, because at that time, if you became a battalion chief, you weren't in the union anymore. And that's why a lot of people didn't want to leave the union. Because if you screwed up, you're gone. That is the sacrificial responsibility piece. That's the piece that says, okay. I was gonna write a book, my book was gonna be called Frogman Out of Water, right?

• 3:52:16Speaker 01

  Because that's where I was at. Now, it's changed because of my fire, I was gonna be Frogman Out of Fire. Because there's a whole nother dimension about losing everything that you ever had in your life. What I just went through with this fire, everything I ever had, except my kids.

• 3:52:33Speaker 01

  The greatest treasures in my life, right? And being good with them and being bad with them. Being a great father with them and being a bad father with them. Being a good mentor with them and maybe not being as good a mentor as I could be. In those three spaces, my dad, he filled those spaces. I would hope that I can fill those spaces for my kids. That's why even sharing this with you is part of me trying to write my story. So that those things, these dimensions, the flavor and texture of my life, they understand who their grandpa is. This is important. That's all I, that's all I have to leave them, right? What comes from your heart and what you say?

• 3:53:16Jocko Willink?

  When, when did you end up having kids?

• 3:53:18Speaker 01

  I was thirty-three. So, and my youngest is forty, maybe forty-one.

• 3:53:26Jocko Willink?

  So were you in, in the fire department when you started having kids?

• 3:53:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got on fire.

• 3:53:32Speaker 01

  My wife, that was crazy. I was steaming, man. I was, she's a Christian girl, I was steaming and I was going, I met her sister, her sister, right? And then she comes in and it's like...

• 3:53:48Speaker 01

  I wrote a poem that says, "She glowed with a light, it was night, I didn't know why, but I cared." "And she's led me softly and gently into the knowledge of love, and in May, we three will be one," right, when I asked her to marry me. Because that night, she, I'm like, "Wow, man, she's hot." And there was a devil fighting with an angel, man, because the devil told me, "Don't go over there." God told me, "Go over there, don't go over there." So finally, my buddy Andres goes, "Jesus Christ, man, you never have any trouble talking to girls, go over there and talk to her." So I said, "Hey, uh, would you like to dance?" She said, "I don't dance." I said, "Well, why not?" She said, "Well, I'm Christian." I said, "I'm a Catholic," I says, "But I dance, I am not dead." She says, "No, I don't."

• 3:54:33Speaker 01

  I said, "So my buddy's looking at me, so you don't want to lose face?" I said, "Well, you mind if I sit down?" "I don't know, sure." So I sat down, and she says, "Well..." So it kind of went on, so finally, she was going to dance with me, and that was in the days of platform shoes. So I was a lot taller than her.

• 3:54:52Speaker 01

  As a matter of fact, later on, she says, "I thought you were taller." I love those things. But anyway, we did dance, and then it was like, and that's what I think maybe when we talk in the spiritual sense, where God was trolling with her, because all I wanted to do is get laid. Maybe that was it, right? Being in the teams, the whole sexism thing, the anger thing, the race, all of that, those behaviors. And then eventually, you know, it was like, I liked what she had, I liked what I was missing, you know? And that's why I'm saying that even after you've accepted Christ, or you get into the Christian thing, that you'll let loose of it, you'll go somewhere else, because the alternatives that you settled for in the past,

• 3:55:36Speaker 01

  if you don't keep it in front of you, it's like seals or guys that operate, but they don't keep the basic training in front of their face, and so then they get killed or they hurt somebody. Or they don't pay attention to it. And that's what happens, that's the way the world is. This is the way that, it's the way that the world is, and if we don't take care of it, then we are like sheep led to the slaughter, man. We're going to be taken out somewhere, you know? And so doing this is part of that.

• 3:56:04Speaker 01

  The fire department saved my life because of that being able to party or whatever that was. And then the responsibility that I had as a bat chief to keep my guys alive, to change. To tell a captain that has 20 years on the job, "Hey, man, I need you to do incident command. I need you to wear your bunker gear. I need you to wear your coat. I need you to tell me where you're going and this and that." And he's telling me, "I've been doing this for 20 years. You've only been on here 10 years and you wouldn't tell me what to do?" Then the frogman stuff comes out. I go, "Yeah." He said, "Well, you don't know as much as I do." I said, "No, but I do know about being in combat. I know about getting shot at. I do know what the war we're fighting. I do know the training that we need.

• 3:56:46Speaker 01

  And the other thing I know is that Chief Gustavos wife told me a long time ago, "If I get you killed, I'm in trouble." And Karen is the one that I'm worried about. And so for me to tell you to put on your bunker gear and everything else is easy. And I'll write your ass up if you don't." You wouldn't do that to me. I said, "Try it." "Oh, God, so good, man. There's a fire alarm. Where do your grades go, man? They go out on the fire alarm." He gets off the truck. I just followed him, just two engine response and then me. I roll up, sit on the corner. I didn't go arrival. I didn't tell him I was responding. I just followed him. And I don't have to run on the fire alarm.

• 3:57:27Speaker 01

  So I'm waiting. I watch him get out of the truck and he looks down the street, sees me, gets back up in his truck, puts on his helmet, grabs his gear, throws it down, puts on his coat, puts on his stuff. He looks at me and he goes in the building. So he had 25, I think it was 2501 at that time. It was engine one. I'm arrival, sprinkler alarm, third floor. So I heard that, nothing visible. I just left. That night, and this is where I learned a lot about, about his example too, was if I'm going to have this stuff going down with somebody, an officer, good officer, takes that, especially an XO or somebody, to another room, not in front of the people.

• 3:58:10Speaker 01

  So he said, "Can I talk to you?" I said, "Yes." My, his office, because the captain had one. He said, "Yeah." Says, "You wouldn't rope me up, would you?" I said, "I saw you." And this is like, I said, "Yeah, we..."

• 3:58:29Speaker 01

  Okay. After that, he talked to me on the radio. Because when we were fighting fires, he loved to see me show up because we'd gone into some fires where other people are bailing out. So he knew how I would fight fires. And I gave him that respect. He gave me that respect and my whole shift after a while, all the promotions were coming off my shift. Because I wanted to do what we did in the teams. I want to teach you to take my job. I want you to be better than me. If you know more than me and you're better than me, when things go down, you'll see what I can't see. That's what I loved about the teams. For one of my misters saying some stuff and then for one of my teammates going, "Are you fucking crazy? Why are we going to do that?"

• 3:59:13Speaker 01

  Well, and it wasn't like, "Who has the bigger sword, right?" It's like, "Tell me why." "Because of this." Yeah, that makes sense. So that's why when we look at the history of the teams, my era and your era, is that I don't know, and I'll never be able to, but that's what I want back in the teams. That's what I want on fire departments. I want all my guys to know more than me because, I mean, there was like, "Oh, why do we want to do hazmat?" Because I brought hazmat in. Because I was the little guy on the end of the ladder, I did ice rescue, way different. That's where the Gumby suits came from me because they shoved my ass out there with bunker gear on. Well, hell no, I'm not going to do this. There's a better way.

• 3:59:58Speaker 01

  Ice diving, we always ice dove in wet suits. There's dry suits, there's stuff that we can wear, right? Swift water, right? Teach guys how to be around swift water because if they don't know, they die. That's the thing. If you don't learn something, you die. The consequences of our mistakes, the consequences of our business being in the teams, being in fire, and being a cop.

• 4:00:23Speaker 01

  Right?

• 4:00:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:00:24Speaker 01

  And, and, uh, so.

• 4:00:27Jocko Willink?

  So you mentioned this a couple of times, but it's a very horrible and ironic end to your fire career is that when you, when you retired from the fire department and you ended up losing

• 4:00:43Jocko Willink?

  everything.

• 4:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:00:45Jocko Willink?

  In a fire.

• 4:00:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:00:47Jocko Willink?

  And was it, it's the, uh, it's the Marshall fire.

• 4:00:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:00:50Jocko Willink?

  December 30th, 20, this is just, just what, last year?

• 4:00:53Speaker 01

  It'll be a year coming up.

• 4:00:54Jocko Willink?

  2021.

• 4:00:56Speaker 01

  New Year's.

• 4:00:56Jocko Willink?

  Um, this fire breaks out, you're retired.

• 4:00:59Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:00:59Jocko Willink?

  You're just enjoying life.

• 4:01:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:01:02Jocko Willink?

  This fire breaks out in, in Colorado, wind gusts of 115 miles an hour. There's 6,000 acres burned, 184, uh, uh, sorry, 1,084 structures either totally destroyed or damaged. $500 million worth of damage. Um, two people killed, some other burn injuries. And one of the things that burned was your house.

• 4:01:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:01:27Jocko Willink?

  How the, how did this happen?

• 4:01:29Speaker 01

  In, in Old Town, that's, my house is in Old Town Superior. They're still looking at the causes of it, but they do know that fire happened and then the wind gusts came in. Like you said, at a hundred miles an hour. And when that, when the fuels are, are that way, there, it's like, you ever take like a, like a torch when you're doing heating a pipe?

• 4:01:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:47Speaker 01

  And go, that's the kind of fire it was. It was a superheated wind driven fire. And so the contact is not only just a conflagration of one structure to the next structure. It's also the, the heat and fire generated by the, by the winds, right?

• 4:02:04Jocko Willink?

  So did you get evacuated?

• 4:02:05Speaker 01

  You know where I was?

• 4:02:07Jocko Willink?

  No idea.

• 4:02:07Speaker 01

  I went, I went and got my ex-wife because there's a marine, right? A little marine, uh, Red Rich. He said, hey, I'm at the bowling alley. You want to come down and watch me? And he always invites me, but I never go. He's a muffler guy and going. So I, he says, well, I'd like to see Rose, cause we were.

• 4:02:24Jocko Willink?

  And this was just a normal night, like you didn't know anything about a fire, cause this thing happened fast.

• 4:02:28Speaker 01

  Nothing.

• 4:02:28Jocko Willink?

  So just a normal night, he says, you want to come watch me bowling?

• 4:02:31Speaker 01

  Bowling, yeah. So I go out, put on my SEAL Trident, put on my marine, the flight jacket with the SEAL Trident on it. So we're going to go see the marine, you know? Put on a crappy shirt, put on my boots, left my dog Chief in a kennel, right? I put him in the kennel because he eats my stuff. So I, that night, that day, I told Rose, "I'll pick you up." Usually she would come to my house, then we would go. If she'd have come to my house, her house would have, her car would have been burned up. I had a little Jaguar that my buddy, the team guy, had sold me, it was in there. I had my coat and we took my truck. I'm in Denver, at the bowling alley, I get this call from a neighbor. "Hey Gil, yeah, you've got to reverse 911, you've got to get out of Superior." "Did you get it?"

• 4:03:14Speaker 01

  I says, "No, I, reverse 911 is where they make notification, that something's coming." Well, I wasn't, I didn't get that notification. Uh, for some reason, I wasn't on the, on the callback. I said, "Really?" He goes, "Yeah." Prior to that, the girl that I was dating, we'd broken up, she called me too and said, "Hey, um, you know there's reverse 911?" I said, "Yeah." I didn't know at that time. Uh, she said, "Well, I can go down, I'm not in town, I can go down and pick Chief up." I said, "Nah, I don't want to, you'd be holding to her, right? I'll find somebody." And so then, then that's when the other neighbor called me up. I said, "Nah, I didn't know him well enough, I'll call one of the other neighbors, guys that were in my neighborhood." They were all gone, they were up on the hill watching the fire.

• 4:03:58Speaker 01

  So then I get the callback from the first guy, he says, "Gil, he says, my buddy that was down there, he says, broke your door down, and he's got your dog." I said, "Broke my door down?" Because I don't lock my doors, you know, that's that kind of the community. He says, "Yeah, he broke your door down." I says, "Broke my door down?" He says, "Don't be mad." I said, "I'm not mad, but he had to break my door down?" He goes, "Yeah, because I was thinking, it was evacuation, not the fire." And so then, uh, um, and the other thing too, then I asked, I asked the guy later on, when I got him, when I picked up my dog, I says, "Well, did you close the door?" Because if the door is open, I always leave the upstairs open, so that my dog can look out. So then what that does is it creates-

• 4:04:43Jocko Willink?

  A draft.

• 4:04:44Speaker 01

  It creates a draft, a chimney, right? So I'm going, "Oh, that doesn't sound good." So two days later, because they wouldn't let us in, two days later, I called another, one of my firefighters from Boulder and said, "Hey," he says, "Can you get down there and check it out?" I said, "I'll check it out, Chief." So, and I've already been retired for ten years, right? Two thousand twelve, yeah. Did you see it on the news? Yeah, yeah, but it wasn't showing real close-ups. Everything was from way back. Got it. You know, and that, and they were saying that Old Town was affected, but they didn't talk about the devastation because nobody was getting down there. And so, I'm like, well, whatever. Only easy days yesterday, man. Can I change the temperature of the water? No, right?

• 4:05:28Speaker 01

  That's what I mean. The development of that, the revealing of who I am is that little boy going, hey, I can only take care of what I can take care of, right? And one of, one of my friend's friends, well, actually Rose, my ex-wife, right? Her friend said, I can't believe you're so calm about it. You know, other people, I can't believe you're so calm about it. Time and chance, man. A guy gets killed, you don't get killed. What, what can you do about it? You can have, you can have, feel bad about it, but you can't change it. You can have the emotion, right? When we talk about things, we tell story and we have these, because it's emotional, right?

• 4:06:12Speaker 01

  It's emotional because it starts creating in you that piece about who you really are. It starts opening it up for you to see yourself to say, hey, I am going somewhere good or I'm not. Well, he told me he was mad at God. Ah, God, why did God do that? I'm a Christian, I'm a, I'm a bishop and all that other kind of stuff. For me, it was like, why would I be mad at him? He didn't start it, right? And, and he's invisible anyways, invisible God. I'm having hope and invisible thing that I can't see anyway. And, and he's given me another house to live in. He rescued my dog, right? I mean, I mean that whatever the deal is, and... So, and then the guy tells me.

• 4:06:53Jocko Willink?

  So now this is the firefighter that you, that you knew that you said, can you go check it out?

• 4:06:57Speaker 01

  Well, the, no, no, the firefighter that he went and checked out, he calls me up and says, I said, how are things? He goes, better than you, chief. I said, yeah, well, what was left? He said, nothing. I swear to me, nothing. He said, nothing, there's, I said, what about walls, roof? Nothing. So I went over and I looked with my family. The asphalt shingles are usually around, they were in dust. There were no, there were no two by fours in the walls. The only thing that was left were gusset plates. Things that were metal like stove. I had a wood burning stove, the only thing that was left was the top. You know? Um, washer, dryers, all gone, everything.

• 4:07:37Jocko Willink?

  I looked at some pictures online and it just, there's nothing left but sort of the concrete foundations.

• 4:07:42Speaker 01

  Right, and then they took, they took my foundations out. That's the other thing, man. I felt the full force of water. Right?

• 4:07:52Speaker 01

  Through the surf, right? And if you're not prepared for that, it'll jack you up.

• 4:07:57Speaker 01

  Got to see if it's sniffing for you, right? Fire. Air?

• 4:08:02Speaker 01

  You don't have that shoot on, you're gonna die. Right? Land to land warfare, man, it moves, it's always dynamic, the war peace, right? All the jumping, just jumping out of boats and all the whole recovery thing. And fire?

• 4:08:19Speaker 01

  I thought I knew fire.

• 4:08:22Speaker 01

  I put out a lot of fires, I've been to a lot of fires, but that one, it was totally consuming. So when it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah being completely gone? That fire is.

• 4:08:35Speaker 01

  You know, and people would sit there and say, well, that really humbled you, right?

• 4:08:39Speaker 01

  No. Fire, the water, all that, that, that whole, that whole thing. The humbling piece was the generosity of people like Mama Lee. For her to call me up. Say, hey, I understand, you've gone through some stuff, I don't even know who she is, you know? And, uh, so I'd like to, I always want to confirm your number, I want to, you know, want to help you out. And, uh, and when she did, she sent, you know, I said, look, man, I said,

• 4:09:08Speaker 01

  if you're hurt, get to Colorado, I need to give you a hug. And then, so then I did, and that's where I ran into you, right? That fire.

• 4:09:17Speaker 01

  This other guy came up, Revitals is the name of the organization. It's a firefighter's deal. The family, the fire family too, right? And the Frog family, they set up, they set up the Navy SEAL fund for me, right? A guy, Julio Fitzgibbons, calls me up, "Hey, SB." "Yeah." Uh, do you know him?

• 4:09:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:09:37Speaker 01

  "Hey SB." Yeah, he says, "Class 42, right?" I go, "Well, yeah." He says, "What were your top medals?" "What?" "So what were your top medals?" I said, "Purple heart, Navy commendation with a V, combat action ribbon." "Okay, thank you, goodbye." So what the hell's that about? So then I get a call from Dozenbach. Do you know him? Anyway, they're, and so he says, this is a-

• 4:09:59Jocko Willink?

  I think, I think that's Dozer.

• 4:10:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it is. Yeah, it's Chris, Chris, Chris Dozer. Yeah, he says, "Yeah." He says, "Well, I got your name from Fitzgibbons. You submitted your name into the Navy SEAL fund." I said, "For what?" He says, "We're gonna do a fundraiser for you." I'm like, "What?" And he says, "Yeah." He said, "We'll get back with you." Hangs up.

• 4:10:22Speaker 01

  So I'm like, "What the hell's going on here?" You know? And then, uh, this Revital guy, named Jordan Long, he's, he's a firefighter, right? And he was a firefighter that went through some emotional stuff. Quit being a firefighter, but he's, since then, um, started intervention for post-traumatic stress, firefighters and cops, really helping them out. And so he calls me up. "So I want you to come down to this place, uh, you have any coats?" I said, "All I had was that SEAL coat." "My best coat was burned up, all my gloves were burned up, my best." "I'm wearing the raggedy, most raggedy shoes that I ever had." So I show up and, and I loved my gray coat, right? So he has a gray coat there and the gloves, he says, "Here." He says, "You take these with you." I'm like, "It was a warmer coat than my coat."

• 4:11:08Speaker 01

  So God gave me a coat that was warmer than the coat that got burned up, right? "Give me some shoes that are nice and some gloves." And so then, this is how the world goes around, right?

• 4:11:21Speaker 01

  He says, "I got this furniture, this firefighter's, whatever the brother-in-law, brother isn't getting married, but he has furniture. If you want to go up and look at it." I said, "All right, up in Dillon, up in Bailey, Colorado." So I drive up there, this kid had to do this, this kid, "Oh, you have furniture upstairs? We'll go inside." He says, "This is my cousin, he's in the garage, right?" "Oh." I said, "Nice to meet you." I said, "I'm Gellisman." He says, "No, you're Espy." I look at him and go, "What?" He says, "You're Espy." He says, "I know you." I said, "Where do you know me from?" He says, "You were in SEAL Team with my dad, Tom Dixon." I said, "Bullshit."

• 4:12:04Speaker 01

  He goes, "No, yeah, I knew him when he was a kid, right?" So there's that Tom Dixon thing, right? SEAL. I grab all my furniture, I take it back. The house that I have, whatever was referred to by a cop, referred me to another guy, and they got the house that I'm renting right now. I'm with my daughter, and we're looking around, and she says, "Dad," she says, "look at this house." I go, "Yeah, it's pretty cool." And she says, "No," he says, "but the floor pattern, the floor layout, it's the same as Grandma and Grandpa's house in Pueblo. Two bedrooms on the side, front porch, kitchen, and a little basement. And the chief has a fenced yard.

• 4:12:48Speaker 01

  He didn't even have a fenced yard where I was at. I used to have to yell at him, you know? He has a fenced yard, I got furniture from another team guy, I mean, you know, that knows that guy. And now I'm meeting two old guys in the park, the dog park that I go to. And I didn't really know too much about you then, but this kid's name's Artem, right? He's a, he watches your stuff. He says, "Oh, what are you doing?" I says, "Well, I'm gonna go down and do a podcast with this guy, Jaco." "Oh, I know him."

• 4:13:19Speaker 01

  Well, you know, he knows your deal. I'm going, "Well, who is he? I didn't tell me about you." And he goes, "Yeah," he says, "and there's another guy named..." I go, "He's a big guy." I go, "Yeah," he says, "Yeah," I said, "I want to bring us some shirts." He says, "You better take some extra larges."

• 4:13:33Speaker 01

  You don't see how the circle is, right? And there are no coincidences. You know, and that fire, uh, I thought I was a SEAL. I was bad. I thought, you know, there's this thing, a friend of mine, she told me, she says, "I think, you say that you're not a SEAL, you don't identify with it, but I think you do because you've got a lot of SEAL stuff," you know? So then I started feeling insecure about that. I thought, "Well, maybe she's right." But all my stuff is gone, my medals, and people have given me back. I'm consciously, I mean, I got like some coins and stuff. I kinda, I'm hesitant about getting all that stuff back because now I gotta keep it, or I gotta put it on the wall.

• 4:14:15Speaker 01

  Or I just got this thing from Frogman, um, Distillery. It's called, uh, Art of, Art of the Spirit Distillery. His name's Paul. We tapped a keg for Mike Thornton. And I was there for that, one of two SEALs, right? Now I got a hat, you know, and I got two bottles of whiskey. That now it's like, I don't want to get too much, you know? And, um, because I'm thinking, trying to, trying to build my house. That's the other thing is recovering.

• 4:14:46Speaker 01

  The, the, uh, the gap of insurance and all that kind of stuff, right? And I got one firefighter that's a builder that's going to help me. I have one guy who's, and I coached wrestling, and he's a big builder, and he's going to help me. But, um, so where do I feel comfortable in here? Right? I feel more comfortable with the firefighter that's going to help me. Nothing against the other guy, but, uh...

• 4:15:14Speaker 01

  How do I feel in here? And so, and that's going by, I don't know, that's, that's the challenge, you know?

• 4:15:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, uh, definitely a devastating story. Um, and like I said,

• 4:15:27Speaker 01

  But I'm okay with it.

• 4:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I, and that's the amazing thing. I was gonna say it's a devastating story for you to be sitting here talking about it like, not quite with a shoulder shrug, but like almost with a shoulder shrug of like, hey, guess what? I got a better jacket out of the deal.

• 4:15:41Jocko Willink?

  And, and Mama Lee, um, I always mention her charity, uh, Amer- America's Mighty Warriors dot org. We always mention that. And the Navy Seals Fund dot org. That's another group that helps out to my, my buddy Drago. That's

• 4:15:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Drago started that.

• 4:15:56Speaker 01

  And his wife, Rachel?

• 4:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And, and he's a great friend of mine and, and just, and so, uh, anybody that wants to help out organizations that help out, these are two organizations, the Navy Seals Fund dot org and America's Mighty Warriors dot org. Those are two awesome organizations, um, that help out. This is one case of where, you know, a guy that didn't even ask for it, but somehow they figured it out.

• 4:16:20Speaker 01

  They figured me out. It tracked me, it tracked me down, you know? I'm wondering, it's, it was wonderful.

• 4:16:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think that probably gets us up to date of where we are now. Um, Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 4:16:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. What do you weigh now?

• 4:16:36Speaker 01

  About a hundred and fifty-five.

• 4:16:37Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 4:16:38Jocko Willink?

  What's that, what's that workout program that you're, cause you're seventy-five years old and it looks like if you wanted to step out on a wrestling match, you'd, you'd give some people a run. What's up?

• 4:16:48Jocko Willink?

  What are you eating?

• 4:16:48Speaker 01

  It's a Rolex watch.

• 4:16:49Jocko Willink?

  What are you eating? What do you eat?

• 4:16:51Speaker 01

  Um, I'm going, just some protein, uh, do a little bit of stuff called a super pump, uh, this, this is where our supplements go. But I struggle to eat. I, I hate eating, man. But I eat fish and chicken.

• 4:17:06Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 4:17:06Speaker 01

  You know?

• 4:17:07Jocko Willink?

  What about them beans your mom was pushing down your throat?

• 4:17:09Speaker 01

  I'm done with beans. I do like going to Bob's Diner in Louisville and get myself, um, a, um, that's my, that's my little fix, uh, Wells Rancheros with chorizo and, and sometimes a Bloody Mary.

• 4:17:23Jocko Willink?

  What about, uh, what about your PT program?

• 4:17:26Speaker 01

  That, I work out every day.

• 4:17:27Jocko Willink?

  What do you do?

• 4:17:28Speaker 01

  Lifting, right? Chest and tries. I do all the splits, old man splits.

• 4:17:32Jocko Willink?

  Chest tries, back and by, shoulders and traps, legs, something along those lines.

• 4:17:36Speaker 01

  Legs, legs, legs front, legs back. When you're seventy-five, man, it's like, ah. Yeah, I do the front, fronts and back, you know? But I, but I do something every day. My ankle hurts so badly that I don't do a lot of cardio. If I do cardio, it's on the stair stepper. Take it up just one minute at one, one minute at two, all the way up to ten. You know, and then back down. And then that, that's pretty much it.

• 4:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, like I said.

• 4:18:02Speaker 01

  I think genetics, you know? My dad was, my dad was a drywaller, man. He did that stuff till he was eighty-one years old. On the ladder, on stilts with a cigarette in his mouth. I'm looking, I had firefighters who wouldn't do that. You know, I'm like, are you nuts? So then I had to move him in with me. And actually Serena went to college at Colorado State University in, in Pueblo. And she watched him for three years, watching him do his. He was, he was amazing, man. He, uh, gave me all that, uh,

• 4:18:36Speaker 01

  uh, love, I guess, you know? Wasn't, wasn't, you know? Wasn't afraid to share himself. And I, and I was coaching wrestling for, well, about four years ago, for four years. The number one rule? Don't hurt the coach.

• 4:18:54Speaker 01

  I get in me wrestling and tussling, if they got in, someone say, okay, stop, stop, don't hurt the coach, you know? And I didn't realize my, my shoulder was so screwed up, you know? And, uh, so I, at some point, I need a shoulder replacement. At some point, I need to do my ankle. I'm trying to find this Navy doc, if he ever gets, if the VA ever helps me do the community care to get that done. But, um, no, it's.

• 4:19:21Speaker 01

  My brother, five years old, man, had me doing stuff. When I hit the teams climbing that rope or doing that stuff, it was like a piece of cake, you know? And, uh, but it is, it is. It is that time that's mine. You know, and I, and I do, and I do really look at it revealing the little boy, man. You know, because I don't, I didn't, I was living myself with the outside warrior so much that I destroyed so many relationships that I didn't have to destroy. And, uh, and, and understanding that I am worth loving, I'm, I am a good person, you know? And, uh, but now after where I'm at with the, I'm back into the nakedness again.

• 4:20:02Speaker 01

  It's gonna be interesting to see where I'm going, you know, as, as where my life's at. And, um, looking forward to an Olivera or Chief Allen or my Creator, right? You know, I'm not pissed at him. You know, all he's, all he's doing is saying, hey, I want you, and I'm leading you here and, and to keep your ears open. What's an instructor's? Pay attention, right? I used to do that with my firemen, pay attention. I'd look at him sometime when this guy Lieutenant Roseski goes to the chief. Said, yeah, he says, what'd you do to what's his name? I said, I didn't do anything to him, what's up? He said, well, I came over and says, I think the chief hates me. He says, why is that?

• 4:20:44Speaker 01

  It's because he just looked at me and I felt it. He says, and that comes from instructors, right? It comes from the Olivera look, it comes from Chief Allen, it comes from instructor going. It just lives. And, uh, he said, I just told him that's your face sometimes. That's what you look like.

• 4:21:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, Gil, uh, any other closing thoughts?

• 4:21:13Speaker 01

  No, I, I just want to thank you, uh, appreciate the opportunity, Echo, um, that, that I'm here. I was pretty apprehensive about it. I wasn't quite sure, but then it, it just, uh, um.

• 4:21:30Speaker 02

  I'm grateful to the Creator that you're here and that we're here together. And I'm glad, I'm glad you made it through. And just, I just pray a blessing on you. And echo.

• 4:21:42Jocko Willink?

  Well, um, thank you. Definitely appreciate it. Um, definitely, you know, blessed to be here as we all are. Um, and, and just thank you. Thank you for, you know, thank you for laying that groundwork in the teams. The, the, the groundwork that you guys, that, that we built off of, that we tried to maintain the, the reputation that you guys earned and, and we always did our best. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for your service in, in the Navy and the teams. And of course, 30, how many years as a firefighter?

• 4:22:12Speaker 02

  37.

• 4:22:13Jocko Willink?

  37 years as a firefighter. Um, and just that, that level of service. Uh, can't thank you enough. Appreciate you coming. Thank you.

• 4:22:23Speaker 02

  Hoo ya.

• 4:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Hoo ya.

• 4:22:27Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Gil Espinoza has left the building. And I think makes it pretty clear that getting after it is a lifelong mission.

• 4:22:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:22:39Jocko Willink?

  It's a lifelong mission. And, you know, it was very interesting and awesome to hear somebody that's been doing all kinds of things, badass things from being a SEAL in Vietnam, to being a firefighter, to being a wrestler at a really high level. And he's 75 years old and he's like, I'm still trying to figure it out. So, pretty awesome.

• 4:23:07Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. The parts that stood out to me, which is funny, is the black Mac and pink Mac.

• 4:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah.

• 4:23:14Speaker 02

  And you're like, why, why you call him black Mac? I was like, bro, I know exactly why. Cause he's black.

• 4:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:23:20Speaker 02

  So, interesting.

• 4:23:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, you take that, that, that is the, that is the, uh, assumption and it's a, it's a correct assumption to make. Oh, and seeing the teams, whatever. Whatever like if you're Mexican, you're gonna have some kind of Mexican nickname. If you're black, not guaranteed, but most likely you're gonna have some kind of something that has to do with your ethnicity.

• 4:23:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 4:23:44Jocko Willink?

  Because it's like, that's just, that's just how.

• 4:23:47Speaker 02

  That's just how, uh, well, in Hawaii, I told you this before, in Hawaii, race, racial issues is not a thing, not a big deal at all. Everybody's mixed and there's so, and there's so many races or whatever. So to say, oh, the Filipino guy, oh, the black guy or popolo guy. You say popolo for black guy or the holly guy or the Japanese guy or whatever. Like that's not a thing. No one's like, oh, that's racial or nothing. There's no racial sensitivity in Hawaii, cause everybody's something. Um, so I get it, but. So I get that, that kind of like commit where if.

• 4:24:22Jocko Willink?

  That's funny that they called Pink Mac.

• 4:24:26Jocko Willink?

  Because like I said, no, he's a black guy. I'm telling you, bro. He didn't, he did not look black.

• 4:24:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:24:31Jocko Willink?

  You know, he might've had a black mom, but he didn't look black and he's from the island. So he seemed like a holly guy that just, you know. He had kind of freckles.

• 4:24:42Speaker 02

  It's so.

• 4:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So he's a soul man.

• 4:24:44Speaker 02

  But that's the thing too, though. If you're like, if you're hoppa like that and you're half black and you just pull the white side, a lot of times you wind up with freckles. Oh yeah. There's this guy, one of my friends from college, Gerald Lacy, white guy, holly guy, half black. His older brother's like dark skin. He's like a white dude. He didn't talk like white, dude. He's from Crenshaw, but to look at him, you're like, and he had freckles. They call him a, I think, my dad used to always say this, call us red bone when you're a real, real light skinned black person, red bone. For real, bro.

• 4:25:19Speaker 02

  Also, okay, for the black thing and white thing. So my brother Jade's nickname when he was young was Snake, right? And there's a guy in the team that you know, I don't know. I think he's still in, so I don't say his name, but his name is Snake too, cause he has a lisp. And he's a twin too, by the way. But so when we moved here, uh, so Jeremy, my friend Jeremy, he'd always tease Jade, call him Snake, cause that's his little nickname from, you know, when you're a little kid. To tease him. So when we moved here, we met Snake. He's a white guy, blonde haired, blue eyed dude. So but there's Jade who's black, half black.

• 4:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:25:55Speaker 02

  Then there's Snake who's white. So Jade was Black Snake. This guy was White Snake.

• 4:26:00Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:26:01Speaker 02

  Same exact thing. So I understood exactly what it was. This guy's Black Mac. This guy's all pink. That's another level.

• 4:26:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:26:07Speaker 02

  Kind of funny. So I dug it. I mean, I understood.

• 4:26:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was wasn't like I was surprised. He's like, oh, he's black. I was like, okay. Well, yeah.

• 4:26:14Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, but it could have also been like some random story about, you know, oh, we called him Black Mac because he, you know, he got gunpowder on the blah, blah, blah, you know, just whatever. But but it's a good nickname. So I figured we had to get to the bottom of that one.

• 4:26:28Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 4:26:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, but anyways, what a what an awesome opportunity to hear from a guy that's been through all kinds of stuff. And and is still out there trying to learn. So.

• 4:26:39Speaker 02

  Staying active. That's for sure.

• 4:26:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 4:26:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's like saying, oh, yeah, my shoulders like jam. But when you look at seventy five years old, when you look at me like, bro, this guy's like.

• 4:26:50Jocko Willink?

  He looks, what do you, how old is he? How does, how old does he look?

• 4:26:53Speaker 02

  If he said he was sick, if he said he was fifty five, I wouldn't be like, oh, I'd be okay.

• 4:26:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, cool.

• 4:26:59Speaker 02

  Fifty five.

• 4:26:59Jocko Willink?

  Fifty five. You know, you look like you're aging a little bit.

• 4:27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:27:03Jocko Willink?

  Look like you've, you look like you've been rode pretty hard, but at fifty five, you're still doing pretty good.

• 4:27:06Speaker 02

  No, I would.

• 4:27:07Jocko Willink?

  But then he's like, no, I'm seventy five.

• 4:27:08Speaker 02

  I I would look at his body and be like, oh, you're fifty five, dang, you're still getting after it, like lifting and stuff, obviously, you know? That's literally what he looks like.

• 4:27:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:27:16Speaker 02

  Impressive.

• 4:27:17Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 4:27:17Speaker 02

  Hey, pay's man, stay active, you know, stay in the game.

• 4:27:20Jocko Willink?

  Probably that that's got to have something to do with you staying humble.

• 4:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27:24Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 4:27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27:25Jocko Willink?

  You're not like taking it for granted.

• 4:27:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. You know, when mentally you stay in the game, who is one of the, I think, this guy, Tom, he's a wrestler. Here he trains here. He's anyway, he he said something really important where he was like, yeah, my dad, he would like.

• 4:27:41Speaker 02

  He said there was something along the lines of uh don't give yourself like the excuse of age to start going less hard or whatever hey look if you can't go hard you can't go hard like if you're trying to lift your max or whatever and you can't get it then okay you can't get it but don't be like hey you know I'm 70 now or probably a lot of times it starts younger so hey I'm 40 now so I'm gonna instead of getting this hard set of 10 with you know 100 pounds or whatever dumbbells I'm gonna do like 80s seem saying just because I'm getting older now kind of a thing and look I'm not saying go crazy and be dangerous I'm not saying that but that mindset of like hey I'm gonna cut I'm gonna cut myself some slack because I'm getting older just in general is not that good of an idea where it seems like like he wasn't you know Gil like didn't do that no slack he's like straight yeah oh yeah no slack he's like 75 he's like you know I'm really looking forward to like you know really developing and you know like most people 75 bro that's like done yeah bro but yeah so you can just tell by them that he has that mindset you know and it shows

• 4:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Right on awesome well speaking of staying in the game you gotta stay in the game get yourself some Jaco fuel to stay in the game get yourself some joint warfare that's the thing that's gonna keep you in the game well let me rephrase that that's the thing that's gonna knock you out of the game is when the joints break down when the joints break down we break down the machine breaks down

• 4:29:12Speaker 02

  It's true

• 4:29:14Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta be careful that one uh Jacofuel.com you can get it there you can get it at Wawa you can get vitamin shop you get everything at vitamin shop you can get the military commissaries Hannafords Dash stores up in Maryland Wakefern and ShopRite Circle K in Florida HEB in Tejas Murphy's down in the southeast and Meyer in the Midwest that's where you can get this fuel for you that's good for you that's the key component so there you go also you know wrestling he was coaching wrestling for four years that's gonna keep you in the game jiu-jitsu is gonna keep you in the game so you should train jiu-jitsu when you train jiu-jitsu you're gonna need some gear to train jiu-jitsu and you're gonna need a gi

• 4:29:59Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards, shorts, originusa.com, originusa.com, go there, get whatever you need, get hunt gear, get jeans, we got to talk about the Delta 68, the funny thing, so here's the thing, he was like, we didn't wear those because they were, he said, there's no operational purpose. And I was like, oh, just to be cool. He's like, it wasn't even to be cool there. It was to be cool back in America.

• 4:30:26Speaker 02

  Right.

• 4:30:27Jocko Willink?

  Now, I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna make this statement, if they would have had Delta 68s that we make, they would have preferred to wear those, 100% because they're, they're light, they got, they got a little bit of stretch. And fatigue don't stretch, like fatigue jungle camis, they don't stretch at all. Delta 68s got that little bit of, give you a little leeway, not, it's not even a little, it's all the leeway that you need to move. If you want to do a squat, you can do it. You want to do a front kick, you can do it. So the Delta 68s re-engineered, if we could get time travel, we go back in time and just drop off SEAL Team One, SEAL Team Two, they're out there in the Delta, give them some Delta 68s, here you go, boys.

• 4:31:12Jocko Willink?

  So let freedom ride.

• 4:31:17Speaker 02

  Wait, so just to clarify, and this was one of the cooler things that I've heard too, one of many, small, but very cool. So he was saying, you wear them in combat, just so they're almost like got their street cred when you come back, where it's like, these jeans are the ones that I wore, you know, it's not like you can wear your helmet or your night vision goggles, I'm just saying, you know, and be like, yeah, these are the ones, why are you gonna wear that? But jeans, you can't.

• 4:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Have you seen pictures with guys that are carrying like flags, like rolled up on their gear? They'll carry like an American flag like on their gear, like a full American flag. It's the same kind of thing. It's like, hey, this has been on ops with me, you know? I have the little, the little American flag on my body armor, that's like my favorite flag, you know? Little American flag that went out on ops with me, that's what it did.

• 4:32:02Speaker 02

  So let me ask you this, and this is, maybe I'm out of touch, but, so you know how they, they would wear jeans, right? Is that even possible now? Could you ever go on like a, oh, for real?

• 4:32:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can wear Delta 68s all day.

• 4:32:15Speaker 02

  All day, like on a real, yeah, world op mission, whatever? Damn, okay.

• 4:32:20Jocko Willink?

  I mean, sometimes you wear civilian clothes on missions. I've done it, you know?

• 4:32:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Low visibility operations.

• 4:32:27Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah, yeah.

• 4:32:29Jocko Willink?

  And if you really, I mean, if you really wanted to, you could wear them. In the SEAL teams, you can get away with a lot.

• 4:32:35Jocko Willink?

  Now, look, if you're in Ramadi and you start mixing matching uniforms in 2006 and somebody sees you and you don't look like an American, that's not a good call. You want to look like an American soldier or Marine, 100%.

• 4:32:47Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 4:32:48Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, there you go. All that stuff, Origin USA, made in America, from the dirt to the shirt. That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com. Get it.

• 4:32:57Speaker 02

  True. Also, Jaco's store. It's Jaco's store. Go to JacoStore.com. Just link, you'll see them. Shirts, hats, hoodies, some new stuff. Got Shirt Locker, which is a new shirt every month. A lot of people like this one, for real. They really like this one. You know, little bit different designs, but you get a new shirt every month. So, yeah, you can subscribe on there, too, for that as well. JacoStore.com.

• 4:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to that. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to the Jaco Underground. Getting ready to record a couple of those right now. Give some people some backside information about the world. Answer questions. So, JacoUnderground.com, if you want to get involved with that. We got the YouTube channels. We got Psychological Warfare, Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer. I've written a bunch of books. Hey, the beginning today, I read from By Water Beneath the Walls. I was just at the SEAL Team One reunion. I'm with guys, I'm with plank owners, meaning I'm with guys at the SEAL Team One reunion that were the first guys. They were there when SEAL Team One started. They were there. And all these Vietnam guys were, we were talking about this book.

• 4:34:04Jocko Willink?

  And guys were like, oh, there's so much information that I didn't even know. People that started SEAL Team One were like, I learned. So, Ben Milligan, By Water Beneath the Walls. Get it. It's just an unbelievable book. And then, of course, Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. That's another book about war. Gets you, gets you, gets you some insight into human nature. And then, of course, I've written a bunch of books. So, you can get some of those books as well. Echelon Front, Leadership Consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. So if you want to help your company, your business, your team, go to echelonfront.com. If you want to come to one of our live events, check out the events that we have. Also, we have

• 4:34:46Jocko Willink?

  the Academy where we teach leadership online. We got online recorded courses. We do live training on there, extremeownership.com. If you want to help out service members, active and retired, you want to help out their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's Mom Mama Lee. She's got that charity organization. You heard about what it did for Gil today. So get, get involved in that at AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And then of course, we have Drago's Organization, which is NavySealsFund.org, and then Heroes and Horses.org. So those are some good charities, if you want to help the people that help

• 4:35:26Jocko Willink?

  us. And also, if you want to hang out with Echo and I on Twitter, on the Gram, on Facebook. Twitter's reignited. There's lots of people jumping on Twitter right now. Some people are leaving. I don't know what's happening. I've been there. I'm still there. We'll see where it goes. But no matter where you are in the social media world, watch out for that algorithm because it'll sneak up and grab you by the throat. And you're not going to like that. So, that's that. One more thank you to Gil Espinoza for joining us today. Thank you Gil, for your life of service to the Navy, to the teams, and to the Fire

• 4:36:06Jocko Willink?

  Department. We all thank you for that. And thanks to all the firefighters out there. All the firefighters out there on call, keeping us safe, ready to sacrifice your safety, ready to sacrifice your life for us and our families. Thank you to all the firefighters out there. And the same goes to our EMTs, paramedics, and of course, police, law enforcement, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe on the home front and...

• 4:36:37Jocko Willink?

  By with certainty, thank you to the folks in military uniform who go out, protect freedom and liberty around the world. We are eternally grateful for the protection that you provide us and everyone else out there. Like Gil learned during basic SEAL training all those years ago. You can't change the water temperature of the ocean. It's gonna be what it's gonna be. So don't complain, don't whine, don't grumble. Instead, just go and get after it. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco out.