391: From Political Prisoner to U.S. Navy Seal. Drago Dzieran. The Pledge To America.

>Join JOCKO UNDERGROUND< https://jockounderground.com/subscribe/ Retired Navy SEAL Drago Dzieran takes readers behind the scenes of his incredible life, from an impoverished childhood in Communist-controlled Poland to his time as a political prisoner, to his twenty years as a member of the United States military’s most elite fighting force. 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 391 with Kerry Helton and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Kerry. Good evening. We moved out just after 0200. We functioned seamlessly as a unit pushing through the quiet pitch black night toward the compound rising out of the dusty Iraqi streets. Our orders were to capture or kill the target. We had confirmation that the terrorist was in the building. The assault element, including myself, scaled the six-foot concrete fence in perfect silence while the designated security element circled the walled compound to make sure the terrorist escape was impossible.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  We hit the ground with barely a rattle. Within moments, I was shouldered up against the outer wall of a building just inside the fence, a string of men with me. With practiced movements, I set a breaching charge on the door and on my signal, my security element and I began to walk back toward the designated space around the corner where the rest of the assault element were ready, were already taking cover. The moment we began to move, however, I realized with a sinking feeling that the reconnaissance images I'd studied earlier hadn't shown the mound of rubble in the same corner

• 1:19Jocko Willink?

  between the wall and fence. Shit. There was barely enough space left to cover most of the assault element. I wasn't going to fit. And there was no time to scale the concrete fence and take cover. It was a split-second decision. I backed myself as far from the door as possible and then dropped to my knees. I covered my face with my M4 curling up to protect as much of my body as possible. Based on the careful calculations for safe standoff, I knew I would still be relatively safe as far as the shockwave was concerned. I learned early on from my previous direct action

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  missions to calculate the safe distance from breaching charges in two ways. One normally per the manual and one for situations like this, for me.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  The second calculation was important for times when I may not make it to cover, but needed to have an absolute minimum safe distance. It was a distance from the breaching charge that could cause injury, but should not be incapacitating. I was hoping to never use it. Once I knew everyone else had cover, I quietly passed the call over the radio. Turning steel, turning steel, turning steel. And I detonated the charge on the door. The blast blew fragments of the door out right over my head with a thunderous sound that rattled my skull. A shock wave that felt like it lifted me off my knees slammed me back onto the ground. I yelled, "Open, open, open",

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  even as I tried to regain my footing, only to fall back on my hands and knees, bleeding from my nose and one ear. The breach blew the door wide open, and the rest of the assault element was forced to shove me out of their way as they rushed in the building through the smoke. I don't remember pain in the moment. Pain is the last thing on your mind when you're in the middle of an operation. I rallied quickly enough to join my team to clear the building, going room to room on autopilot, ears ringing. We caught our suspect without much struggle, and we returned to base on the high of a successful mission before the sun was even up.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a new book that is out right now. It just came out. It's called "The Pledge to America". It's written by Thomas Drago Ziran. And that is actually a little bit of an excerpt from my life as well, because I had the honor to be on missions like that with Drago in 2003, 2004 in Baghdad and throughout Iraq. I also served in a platoon with Drago at SEAL Team Two, a strike platoon where we served on the USS John F. Kennedy and went over to the Persian Gulf during the millennium.

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  And it was an awesome time that we had and it was awesome to get to know Drago. And he has one of the most unique stories in the world.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  And I know that's a bold statement, but he, when you hear it, you, you'll agree with me. It's one of the most unique stories in the world. And he's sharing this complete story in that new book that's out, The Pledge to America. And it's an honor to have Drago, my brother, once again, he was here, Podcast 276. Have him back again to talk through this book. Drago, welcome back, bro. It's good to see you, man.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Thank you for inviting me. Thank you so much. It's nice to be back. Absolutely. Well, even when you, when you read this, even it just, yeah, I just.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  I remember those times. They were, they were great times. I miss those times.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you sent me some videos and just seeing, it was like, one of the ones you sent me was just us. We're kind of, the vehicles are lined up, guys are getting in and out of vehicles. We're kind of having a pow wow about the finite or the final details of an operation. And, you know, that's what we were doing almost on a daily basis. And you could see that everyone was in that mode. Everyone just knew what was going on. Everyone was confident. We were so engaged in those missions all the time. And what a little, what a little like window into the past to see what it looked like. Cause now, you know, I'm sitting there watching a video of it and you're like, man, that really happened.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  And that happened over and over and over again.

• 6:07Jocko Willink?

  Dude, the book is incredible. The book is, there's so much detail in it and.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's weird, but when you would tell me stories like this about your past, we would kind of like laugh about them. And you know what I mean? Like, it's just basic teen guy humor.

• 6:28Speaker 01

  Curiosity. And it was saying like, what? That's weird. That's funny, you know? I was like, how the hell did you end up in prison and stuff like this? But you know, we're all, because we're mission oriented, we're focused. And that was just like funny story to say, maybe to just to take us away, take off the edge a little bit between missions and stuff. And, but you know, I think, and I was the same way. I didn't think much of it. People were always telling me, you need to write this in the book, you need to write in the book. And I was like, oh, well, maybe one day. But I think it is important to read it, I think, today. Because our country, I think, needs unity. I think we need to go back to basics.

• 7:14Speaker 01

  And then look at America again, how great country it is, how great country we have. I want this book to be a prism, to be a lens that you can see even closer and better the virtues of America, how special country it is. And that's just, that was my goal, that after reading this, knowing about the communism, socialism and other cruel political system, you will appreciate our country, our America more. And, yeah, I'm kind of scared that it start looking slowly, more like a mirror from the place, of the place I escaped from.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  But, again, we need unite. We, our country will not move on for the better future if we are divided. So. I hope it will help people understand the greatness and uniqueness of America.

• 8:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the greatness and uniqueness and also the threat. It's very sobering to read your story and hear your story. And again, I, I had kind of almost like a cartoon image of what you had grown up. You know, where you'd grown up and what you'd been through. And even the last time you were on, on my podcast, I was listening to it again. And you're saying things like, oh, so I was in prison. And you're like, think about that. Think about that for a second. Oh, you know, we weren't sure if we would live or die. And you know, for you and me as grown seals, like, okay, yeah, we were on deployment. We, we, but you were a young person and you weren't alone. There was thousands and thousands of people that were arrested. That there was people that were murdered, people that were killed.

• 9:01Jocko Willink?

  All these things happened. And there's a certain level of detachment from it. When you, when you and I as grown men are kind of sitting around and we're talking about something that's in your past. And I just never really, like I said, even when you were on the podcast last time, it didn't weigh as heavily on me as it did when I read it, when I read it in this book. It's, it's very sobering and the book makes it so real. And the fact that you were able to get out of there, the fact that you were able to get asylum, the fact that you were able to escape the Polish People's Republic. The Polish People's Republic. They just changed the name. They made a little change to the flag and there was rats everywhere.

• 9:46Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. And you never, you never knew what is waiting for you behind the corner. And this is those, the life in the, that was the in typical socialist country. Because I would like to make a point here. That none of these countries behind Iron Curtain, none of these, uh, uh, not Poland, not East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, not even Soviet Union were ever communist countries. We refer to them like this, even I, even in my book, say the same thing, uh, sometimes refer them to the communists. But the bottom line, the fact is that they were

• 10:29Speaker 01

  not communist countries, they were socialist states. They were socialist states run by communists, like my father, high-ranking communist and official in Polish government. So I know this a little bit from both sides, from behind, I had the chance to peek behind the curtain of the socialist state, how it works, a little bit more than, than most of the Poles had the chance to see.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, I wanna go through some of the book here. It's, like I said, it's a heavy read. You know, a lot of parts of it, you're, you're, well, we'll get into it. But I wanna start at the beginning, um, with, with where you started. And you say this, "My life began in October 1960, 15 years after the end of World War II." So that's closer than you and I are right now from September 11th, right?

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  So, World War II was fresh in the memories when you grew up. Poland was still a place of desolation and despair. People were still trying to rebuild their lives after the Second World War, but this time under the terror and totalitarian state run by communists and Marxists like my father.

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:39Jocko Willink?

  That's where I spent the first five years of my life, or the first years of my life amid the rusting ruins of the old bombed-out Poland and cheap scaffolding of the new.

• 11:49Speaker 01

  Yes. And there was nothing unusual for me. I thought that was, I thought this is the way the life is. I didn't know any better, I didn't know any different. And... I remember playing in those ruined buildings, sometimes trying to destroy it too. I thought it was fun, you know, we didn't have any, but the supervising us, we just cut loose and go. So, we were dirty. So many times I came, like, almost like, all painted in tar because we're playing with tar. Our hands, we walk into the barrel, then our legs above our knees even, all in tar.

• 12:30Speaker 01

  So my mom just had a heart attack every time she saw us coming up from this excursions. But I thought it was fun, you know, we're always, we're always dirty too, but my mom had to clean us.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  You say we were, with me were my parents, Stanislav?

• 12:50Speaker 01

  Stanislav, yeah.

• 12:51Jocko Willink?

  Stanislav and Florentina.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Yes, that's my mother.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  Following my arrival, my brother Slavic.

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  And my sister Justina.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yes, I had two siblings.

• 13:02Jocko Willink?

  Thankfully. My pronunciation of Polish is atrocious.

• 13:06Speaker 01

  It's good, actually very good.

• 13:08Jocko Willink?

  Together we lived in a standard multifamily home, a two-floor by-the-book communist build in a town called Zielona Gora.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yes, it's good, translating is a green hill. It's a beautiful town, you know, it's like, it was, I think it was founded in like 1200 year. So, it is, yeah, it's very beautiful, has a lot of trees. The only thing what was sticking out for me was the gray buildings of, they call it like socio-architecture, socialist architecture, that's what they call it in Poland. Everything is gray, everything is the same. It looked like a project, projects, project houses maybe in our country.

• 13:53Speaker 01

  But kind of much worse because again, everything is decrepit and everything is being, I mean, you can see it on YouTube, some of the videos from the communist times in Poland. Even I'm watching sometimes and I gasp, I was like, good God, I can't believe I lived through that. But, yeah, you know, I have this distance now, living in prosperity, living in a beautiful country as a free man. This is a little bit different now perspective than it was then.

• 14:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you didn't know any better. You didn't know any different. We lived downstairs, which had two rooms for us and a third room for an unrelated, single man. A single bathroom and one rudimentary kitchen. We all shared on the first floor. Upstairs, there was a duplication of downstairs floor plan with another unrelated family occupied. Which is crazy, right? You're just living with randos.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Now it is crazy. It's like somebody moved to your house. The government came and said, okay, this guy is going to live with you right now, or this family we're gonna put into dead room. So that room is no longer yours. They're gonna leave. You're gonna be sharing your bathroom and kitchen and everything that you have up there. So for me, it was like, I was born to it, right? It didn't bother me. But my mother, she was crying about it, saying, this is not the way to live for people.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  And my father was, of course, communist. He was afraid to say anything. He was even afraid to send us to church. That guy still remember. I was passing like a football through the window because he didn't let us go, didn't want us kids to go to church. Because he was afraid he's going to lose his job. The faith, the family values are totally incompatible with the socialism that was the democratic, that's how they call it, democratic socialism in Poland at the time. So they always talk about democracy, about how democratic socialism is great. And I didn't know any better until I started eventually growing up and learning more about

• 15:55Speaker 01

  what is really going on in socialist Poland. I call it communist because everybody says, everybody calls it, everywhere I read, it is being referred as a communist state. But again, like I say, none of them were. There's a reason why they were not so. Communist state. That, uh, and I can, we can, we can dwell on a little bit more. Go ahead. But so, uh, so, uh, unlike in communist state run by a typical clean communism, uh, in socialist state, you do have private property. You do have private business you can own, but majority, the, the, uh, the, the, the, the key infrastructure is owned by government, is, is ruled by government.

• 16:40Speaker 01

  Uh, same with the police and, and, uh, military, everything is run by the government. But, but you can have some small properties. Of course, you know how it ends up. If you, if you are part of the government, go along with, with them, they will let you exist and keep your little business. But if you sway, uh, away a little bit, or you are not convenient for socialist state, they will ruin you. They will just take your business away, or they will stop your, the supplies, or you, you won't be able to make any, uh, to do any business. So they, um, they control everything. Right. And this is what happened to my family.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Now people say, well, you, there was communist system, you guys didn't have a private property. Well, we did have a private property, but the government ultimately own it. And, um, like in case of my uncle, uh, who, oh, he despised communist and, and the whole state. He was the concrete guy, right? Yeah, the concrete guy, yeah. He, so he decided to, he seen how poorly the, the, the, the socialist system operates. So he decided to just compete with them. He knew that, uh, he, he was expert. So he started building those bricks and, and selling the bricks to, to, uh, to builders. Bricks, the, uh, the cedar blocks.

• 18:04Speaker 01

  And to the point they, that some of the private businesses stop doing, stop buying from government. Because, uh, basically he was competing directly from, from, with the brick makers and the cedar block makers, uh, run by the government, government state, by the socialist state. So the, the police came in and told him, hey, you need to scale down because you are competing with, with government here, uh, and you need to stop. He said, I can't, you see, I just put the, got a loan. I bought the truck, I bought this, and, and I'm barely making end with end, but just, uh, I'm running, this is how I run my company. And they, they say that if you don't scale down, uh, y- y- your business will not prosper. And uh, he didn't.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  So the uh, anti-fascists, that's what they call themselves in Poland. But they were socialist goons. They were just people who, they tried to protect the society from Nazism and fascism. And my uncle, because he had his own business, he was labeled fascist and Nazi. So they came and destroyed his machines, they wrecked his business. And then uh, when my father went to police complaint, he knew who it was because they, they, they usually, the, the communist state, the socialist state, use their uh, those naive young guys, young people from schools, from factories, they organize them in like, you know,

• 19:31Speaker 01

  we need to be patriots, we are very patriotic, there is a fascist up there, let's, let's you know, take care of that. And uh, they, they went, they destroyed his business. And then when my uncle went complain about it, the police, they, they arrested him, they beat him up, they tortured him for a night and sent him home and say, if you do it again, we'll do it again. So my uncle fixed that, fixed the machine, started doing the same thing again. And things repeat itself again. I think it was like three times until he finally didn't have any resources to rebuild it. And they did, they ruined his business. But this is, this is nothing unusual what I'm describing here. It was quite common in Poland. If you didn't go along with the socialist state, with the ideology, with the party line,

• 20:16Speaker 01

  the communist party line, there was socialist state run by communists mostly. And uh, then they, they ruin your business, they destroy you. Or if they couldn't do that, they kill you. There, there's a lot of, there are graves across Poland and not only Poland, all socialist states.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Right now, where a lot of these people who oppose socialism in Poland, they were murdered. And that thing didn't happen just overnight. What happened is, after Second World War, when socialism was brought on Russian bionets, I shouldn't say Russian, Soviet Union bionets. We need to distinguish the Russian people and Soviet Union and communists. But, so, when it was brought to Poland, the, not everybody who was not even, who was deemed a possible, not sympathetic, sympathizing with the socialism and Communist Party was, was under observation.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  I mean, it was like totalitarian system suddenly thrown on Poland. And, and this is something that we need to be careful in America. We just need to make sure that doesn't happen here, because it is very easy to, to, to fall into that thing. So, people who came back from the West, who were fighting the Adolf Hitler and the Hitler Socialist Germany, National Socialist Germany, they, they were arrested, most of them were arrested. Even the heroes, even like Polish ace with most of the kills in Second World War,

• 21:59Speaker 01

  on Polish side, his name is Stanislav Skalski. He, he returned to Poland after Second World War. He was arrested, he was sentenced to death on espionage charge. So, most of those prominent heroes of Second World War were sentenced to death. Not, not every sentence was carried out, but at that time, many of them were sentenced to death and on espionage charge, or working for the West, or sabotaging something, or just being not good citizen. And, and eventually came to the point that if you steal a food, you could be sentenced to death.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  And there was, that sentence is carried out for people, let's say, selling food on black market, or manipulating food in Poland.

• 22:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so even though there was a facade that you could have private property and you could run your own business, the ultimately the the government had full control and they would impose their control and make people fall into line.

• 23:12Speaker 01

  Absolutely. There was no such thing like you permanently own anything. You may think you do until that you are proved wrong by communists. And this is like my father said, you know, uh, cause I had a, I went for a year to live with him because my mom couldn't afford to feed all three of us. So so my father was very adamant about it. He say, look, the socialism is such a great system, for some reason, people do not like to subscribe to it. So we need to make people aware how great the system is, and if they still don't buy into it, we basically need to cancel them out of the society. We need to just silence them. And I say, what if that doesn't work?

• 23:57Speaker 01

  Then we need to physically silence them. That's my father's words. And there was nothing unique at the time. That's, that's how my father perceived his role in society, building this better, uh, more humane socialist state that everybody gets equal part, everybody contributes uh, equally to it. And even that doesn't work, but they realize that does not work. People don't want to vote for them. So the next thing came fraudulent elections and next thing they came to uh, just canceling people. So there's a lot of authors, poets, uh, painters, you know, the people who make statues. They were totally removed, uh, actors.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  They were canceled, they were removed from, they were not allowed to play i- in the theaters. They were not allowed to play in the movies. And their names were silenced, even famous people who were well known in Poland at the time. They were silenced to the, by, through censorship to the point that like the next people, four, five years later, nobody knew his, their name. Nobody remember who they were. And they were very, again, uh, at one time prominent and very uh, uh, famous people. So the, this is the, what

• 25:19Speaker 01

  What we need to understand is that eventually people realize that this whole socialism is a hoax. It's just the tool for the government to control people and people revolt. So they don't vote, they don't vote for them. So now the socialists, they need to do something about it because if they give away the power, the people will eat them alive, they will hang them from the lantern posts. And we wanted to hang these communists from the lantern posts if you could get away with it. For all the perversion, the poverty they throw on Polish society. But eventually, you know, this is what I have to resolve to the fraudulent election, to the terror.

• 26:01Speaker 01

  And the only saving grace, I think, for Poland and other countries is that Joseph Stalin and the Polish communists did not have access to computers on the scale we have now. They didn't understand social science. So they resort to terror because that's what socialism eventually has to end up to keep people in line. They missed one thing. If Joseph Stalin flowed Poland with people with no loyalty to Poland. So if he would bring people from different republics, if he would bring people to Poland, other countries,

• 26:46Speaker 01

  and flowed the countries with people with no loyalty to these countries, there would be no Poland, there would be no Czechoslovakia, Romania, there would be one big Soviet Union.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I can't even imagine like the, like your, and you, so you get into this. So your father, he's a card-carrying communist with Poland, with the Polish government. And he's working for the Polish government. Your mom, on the other hand, hates communism, hates Marxism, hates socialism. She, you say this, "She saw the communist regime as nothing more than occupiers by a different name, like the Nazis during World War II and the Germans during World War I. She was a devout Catholic too, which didn't sit well with my father, who believed, per the party line, it was necessary for communists to be atheists." So you've got that going on in your family.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  Your father doesn't want to spend any money on you. You do say this. "We couldn't afford to buy the state required school uniforms and our grandma, an accomplished seamstress, made them for us. Instead, the richer kids were quick to point out that our uniforms were not purchased and were homemade. Most of the kids at this time were wearing these homemade uniforms. And I decided to beat the rich kid who opened his mouth first about the uniforms. They left me alone and had never heard about my uniform again."

• 28:11Speaker 01

  That's what I started learning, that violence works. At least in Poland at the time. They wouldn't work today. Today Poland is a different country, but at the time, it worked very well. But it is just odd here, one thing, when you say my mother was totally opposing the socialism and socialist state, because she understood it. She understood very well. She knows what happened in Soviet Union before the Second World War. But my father's mother hated socialism and communists too. And I talk about it. I remember that she was the one who taught me how to pray to God. And we always prayed to God for, no, to be good to everybody, to us, to help us get through these hard times and to get the fucking communists out of the country

• 28:56Speaker 01

  as fast as they can. So it was like, my father didn't know until when he heard it, he freaked out.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  You got in here, this is how you got to pray with your grandma for health, happiness and liberation. Kneeling next to me, my grandmother would say things like, "Please send the communists back to where they came from and please take the red Satan away from Poland." And I would repeat word for word after her. After repeating words a few times, I had to ask, "Who are these people?" "They are evil. They kill people and keep people in prison. Real demons."

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Yep. And for me, for a young kid, you know, learning about the hell, about the demons, I thought that this case, so I had to actually ask her, ask my grandmother. So grandma, they have those horns and tail, the pitchfork and stuff. She said, "Well, not that you can see it, but those are that type of people, just what you described. They just hide, but you can recognize them by their deeds, the atrocities they commit against other people." You see, like this is like my mother's family was very humanitarian side, humane.

• 30:09Speaker 01

  My father's family, the, the, his parents, my grandparents, they were. My father was not. He was totally sold out. I can't see why, but, uh, nah, we can talk about it, but, but he was like totally, uh, sold out to the depraved and perversion of socialism.

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  This, I, I can imagine you got this one kind of argument. They would get, they would get in fights, your, your father and grandmother. And you say here, he'd demand that she never talk about communism and socialism. Don't talk to my son about that. That's you. Uh, we're building a socialist paradise for all of us. I am not evil. In response, my grandmother would become very still. She would rattle off the names of people she knew who had been imprisoned, disappeared or murdered from memory, dozens of them, years after the fact.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep. Those names mean nothing to me at the time as a kid. I didn't understand a lot of that stuff. I was just too young to maybe to understand it. But I knew there was something wrong and that, that my grandmother, my father's mother was very adamant about it and she never, uh, she never approved, uh, what my father was doing until, uh, until she died. So, um, yeah, that's, that's kind of sad. This is how socialism tears the families and, and friends and, and the, the fabric of society very quickly.

• 31:38Jocko Willink?

  Which is one of their goals.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  They said the goals they have to, they have to, because this is, for them, that's to stay at power. It is, uh, nobody will vote for them. But if you can turn one citizen against another citizen, it's much easier. You cater to one, you cater to another one, and you cater actually to both. And both were hoping that, yeah, you'll be with them against the other people and the other side thinks the same, the same. And this is how you end up eventually with, uh, with, uh, with being the broker.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Between these two groups that dislike each other or they work against each other. So the socialists, the communists will place themselves in the middle and being those one, the brokering the peace and this is how they, and even that didn't work them to get elected. So they had to resort to fraudulent elections. And then, and then once they borrow themselves in society, once they establish the pattern of fraudulent elections, you can get them out. Basically, it took Poland five decades to clean these parasites out of Poland and be free.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And you can see how Poland immediately after just got rid of the socialism, how Poland flourished. I mean, look at the Putin, you know? This guy is, we tend to call this guy an idiot, a stupid. He's not good guy, but this guy is extremely smart. This guy, I wouldn't call idiot, somebody who rebuilt broken empire, put it back together and is threatening entire West again. So we just need to be careful and don't dismiss the threat from people because we don't like them. We might not like Putin, but he's extremely smart and well versed and he did a lot to

• 33:36Speaker 01

  bring Russia back into the picture and start threatening everybody.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  When you talk about growing up in this system, in the book, you say this, "The state infiltrated every aspect of our lives. Learning the Russian language, for example, became mandatory when I entered fifth grade. Even at that young age, I was precocious. I openly questioned why we had to learn Russian when there were people who didn't even know Polish fully. After all, the Russians were occupiers." That didn't go over well in my school. My mother was no longer teaching in the same school as me and I was unable and was unable to provide me the usual first line of punishment. So my teacher immediately pulled me out of class and marched me straight to the principal's office. Once I was standing in front of him, he called the police.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  On their way to school, the police grabbed my mom out of her school across town and sat us all down for a talk. In addition to the uniformed police officers, a member of the state security police in plainclothes joined the police during the questioning of my mother. If this happens again, if we hear anti-communist and anti-Polish sentiments expressed again, they said, "He's going to an orphanage and you'll be facing prison time for failing to teach your children the right way to think."

• 34:48Speaker 01

  That's correct. That's what happened when, uh, and it was not even political from my side at the time. I was just a kid and...

• 34:55Jocko Willink?

  You're just a kid going, "I don't want to freaking learn this other language."

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I have enough problems with Polish language. So what the hell, I do learn something else that I will never use. And, and my mother also tells me that it's just a language which, uh, is used by our, the occupiers of Pol- occupiers of Pol- Poland. So it was not that political at the time. I was just being kid and say, "Fuck it. I, I don't want to learn that." But this is how it end up. But also, if you think about it a little bit more, this is the, the rules and the regulation that laws that were in Poland in, in effect, allow the state, uh, the state to take the kids away for such reasons

• 35:42Speaker 01

  that you would never think. My mother would not never think that there are such regulations that would allow us to be placed in state government, state orphanage, because we don't like, because we are being taught not to like socialism or just taught...

• 35:58Speaker 01

  You know, that we do not like socialism.

• 36:02Jocko Willink?

  And the speed at which the government gets involved in that process. From classroom to principal to state police and uniformed officers talking to you and your mother. You know, same day.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  That was like forty minutes, an hour. So the teacher took me out, the teacher was, she had a Russian name, I think. She was one of those Polish Russians. And, um, and yeah, so they took me to the principal's office, they sat me down there, they called police. And I didn't know that the time, that's the world police is coming, they're gonna arrest me. No, they came with my mother, because they go, they arrested my mother, detained her, pulled her out, they bring her in the school, in the office, and they threaten us. I remember my mind was shaking and I was scared too, because I've seen my mom being so scared.

• 36:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and that's how they, that's how they slowly get control and break people. Because what is your mother? She's like, okay, listen, do I want to lose my son and go to jail? Or am I just gonna tell him, hey, be quiet and comply? So, a lot of people are like, hey, I don't, I don't have time for this kind of trouble. I don't want this kind of trouble, I don't want to lose my kid, and I don't want to go to jail.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's a lot of people like this, like, we don't need that, just go, go, go and say this.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  Go along with it.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Go along with it, but that creates two different problems then. Once, it teaches kids to be this genuine. It teaches kids to lie and cover it up. And also teaches them that you don't stand up for your rights, for, for, for what is right. You just do what is safe. And I remember, you know, many times going to school and my mother always, to me and my siblings, say, do not talk politics at school, do not say, do not get provoked, don't, don't say anything that could be taken the wrong way. Because we may lose our family, they might separate us.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  And the state, it was, it did happen, I mean, this, I got away, but there's some people who didn't. And some people, because of something like this, they lose kids and they, if they didn't straight themselves up, they eventually, some of them disappeared, then like, the kids stay in orphanage forever, until they grew up, never seeing parents again. So, this is the socialist state, is the control, the amount of control that government has.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  is so pervasive that even maybe like my father, maybe he was, he was an evil man. He just totally believe in the socialist system and to implement at any price. But even so, so, so this is just so pervasive. It, it, it creates people, basically allow them to justify almost any action, anything again to protect their ideology. And you know, we've seen this also in Adolf Hitler's socialist Germany, National Socialist Germany, where, you know, if you were just speaking up or you were inconvenient for

• 39:11Speaker 01

  the Hitler's National, what do you call it, and that's the APED, the Socialist German Workers' Party. If you were not convenient for them, you could end up in concentration camp. And that eventually, whether there was Adolf Hitler Socialist, National Socialist Germany, or Poland's Poli-Socialist, they both end up, Socialist Poland, they, they both end up having concentration camps. And the concentration camps, actually, that's not the German invention, by the way about that, this is another socialist state invasion, the Soviet Union. As a Soviet Union, as the Union of Socialist Republic, right?

• 39:55Speaker 01

  Not Communist Republic. They had a Communist Party, the Communist Party ran that show, just like in Poland. But also for the facade, they had many other political parties in Poland too, maybe two, three or four other parties. I don't remember their name, because they mean so nothing, like nobody even care about them. But they always say, hey, you know, this coalition, we work together to build a better socialism, to build better Poland. And you know, on the graves of opponents of socialism.

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  You also see...

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  Like for instance, in America right now, the the educational system, there's parents that are they're saying, hey, teach my kid how to do reading, writing and arithmetic. Teach them, that's what, that's what, that's what you should do is teach my kid. And they're teaching them all, a whole slew of other things. Oh, God, yeah. That parents, that parents say, hey, actually, I don't, I don't really want you to teach my, my kid that when they're in third grade, when they're in second grade, when they're in fourth grade. And what I've heard some of the educators saying is, well, you don't get, you know, you don't get to tell us how we're gonna, what we're gonna teach your kids.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  That's exactly my mother was told.

• 41:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  In communist socialist state.

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  Like you, you, you, hey, no, Mrs. Ziran, you can't tell us what we're gonna teach Thomas. Thomas is our kid now.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  So in Poland, if you do that, if you still insist, they will brand you terrorist. You, you were actually literally branded terrorist. And so the kids cannot grow up in a terrorist family. And they didn't tell you that you, because you oppose social, because you oppose socialism, we take your kids, we say you are, you, you, you, pretty much your views are aligned with the terrorist totalitarian something and your kids do not belong to you, which we cannot allow your kids to grow up this way. So we, as a government, the socialist government, will step in and will provide the education that we need.

• 41:53Jocko Willink?

  It's what's best.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  It's what's the best for the socialist state.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  What they think is best.

• 41:58Speaker 01

  What they think is best, yes.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  For the best.

• 42:00Speaker 01

  But you know, the first thing that, that what people need to remember in, in those socialist states, attacks on families, of families' values. Those like, you, you don't need a wife and a husband, why would you do that? All it is, we need to, what needs to happen is kids need to be learning how to be good citizens. And of course, by that they meant socialist, citizens of socialist state. And the kids.

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  What they mean is obedient slaves.

• 42:27Speaker 01

  Obedient slaves, yes. And those kids from those families that oppose, they never had the chance to go to college. That was just that their, their end of education was at the, at the high school level, the most. And because to get in college at the time to Poland, it was free, but only for the politically aligned kids. So, and also if you did during the college, if you deviate any. You could be removed very quickly if you deviate any from the Socialist Party line. So they have a special points for being a member of Socialist Youth, of Socialist Death, Communist Death. There were points for parents being in the party.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  There were points for having a family aligned with the Communist Party in Socialist State, Socialist Poland. So these are the warning signs. This is something that we... You know, I'm seeing some of these... Many things that you just mentioned. And it really worries me. We need to be very vigilant because it is very easy to fall into the totalitarian government that eventually will tell you what you can, what you cannot do with yourself, with the kids. Then you will be eventually forced to do things, take medications, don't take medications,

• 43:53Speaker 01

  or you will not allow to take medications though because suppose evil is not enough, just like happening with... I describe in the book, a friend of mine, when his mom died, basically, they decided not to provide her with medicine, not to treat her because she was older. They need... There was very scarce medicine, and they needed for younger people, supposedly. I believe more for like party-aligned people. So that's how evil system is. It's not easy, it's not very difficult to implement. All it is, all is needed, just in different people who are afraid to stand up for what is right, who are terrorized easily by the state.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  And I think there's a good example for us could be some of these people I describe in Poland at the end of my book, how they were schooling Socialists and Communists judges, and how they stood up to the totalitarian government. And again, what is happening here kind of a little bit worries me, but we need to be very careful because the first thing that socialist state will want...

• 45:12Speaker 01

  It's violence. Violence either way. They need violence. Well, there's many things. They need a villain. But every socialist state will have villain. Poland had a villain. Soviet Union had a villain. Germans had a villain. So everybody in Soviet Union, there were kulaks. First, they were wealthy peasants. Then there was doctors. Stalin died during the purge, dead purge. And so didn't follow through quite well. But in Poland, there were Jews. Then there were educated people. So there was intelligentsia, what they called. So intelligentsia is bad. We need to promote people from these peasants, from workers. If you are coming from an intelligentsia family,

• 45:56Speaker 01

  you are scrutinized very well. In Germany, there was, of course, Jewish nation. But this is all by the so-called, like my mother called it, relative morality. So your morality is not based in faith, in something solid. Your morality is based in ideology that can change, in politicians' view, that we know changes. And this is very dangerous, because look what happened in Adolf Hitler's socialist Germany. When he was able to pervert the most civilized nation in Europe at the time into euthanasia of sick people, on handicapped people,

• 46:41Speaker 01

  into concentration camp, into gassing people. Eventually, they turn them on to the Jewish people, the exterminating entire nation, trying to do it. So that relative morality is very dangerous. We need to also make sure that we understand it here, not to fall into that relative morality model. And another thing too, like in Poland, they were always saying, "You need to be tolerant. You need to be tolerant." "Oh, this is intolerant. You can't do that. This is intolerant." But I say to it, like my mother always say. Uneducated tolerance is as dangerous as intolerance.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  You need to educate yourself what you're about to tolerate before you start actually promoting it and tolerating. And you know, like, we would never tolerate murderers, right? But if you subscribe to this more relative morality in Adolf Hitler, they did tolerate euthanasia, right? So you need to be careful.

• 47:49Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit in the book. Your father takes a job in 1967. You're seven years old and he, he basically abandoned you guys.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Took off, yeah.

• 48:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, it could be a number of things that he was having a little success in the Communist Party. Your mom is still being Catholic, being religious. So he felt like there's some, some things going on that wasn't going to help his career. You say, "We moved, we moved to a little apartment across town, almost six miles from where we'd been living before at that age. In that place, that was a huge distance, especially because you had to walk or take the bus everywhere. Our beds were narrow and mattresses were thin, much like the walls, to be able to sleep on cold nights. We shoved our beds together and slept head to feet and side by side. To say Polish winters are very cold to be putting it mildly. It was bad enough that we had to stuff our coats with old newspapers to keep warm.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  The fact that we couldn't afford to replace them with coats that could actually keep us warm was worse. It turned out that my father was refusing to pay child support, so while we were trying to hide our crinkling coats from other kids, he was buying a new life for himself. The court eventually forced him to start paying, which he did. He was always late."

• 49:05Speaker 01

  Yes, you know, talking about those beds, actually, we didn't have two beds. We had just one bed and like it was like single bed, but you know, we're small, me and my brother. So me and my brother slept in one bed, had the toes to, you know, had the toe and my sister slept with my mom. But yeah, we didn't have two beds. I kind of like, I think misquoted there that there was just one bed that me and my brother slept on. Eventually, you know, like my mom was able to procure another bed. So we, you know, we, we lived in a two-room apartment at the time. So was here, you hear two room, you mean two bedrooms. There was not like that in Poland. In Poland, it was just two rooms, it was two rooms.

• 49:48Speaker 01

  So, so me and my brother were sleeping in one room. And my mom, uh, with my sister was sleeping in another room. There were little tiny rooms. But you know, there was such a big, uh, for us was like a, we have our own apartment. Because there were a lot of people that did not have even that. There were people living, uh, with parents and grandparents in one, in the studio. Bigger studio, just so you, and it didn't even have a bathroom. You have to go outside to the common bathroom. So this is, you know, there was the desolation after Second World War. And also the socialism, uh, economy that ruined Poland even deeper and, uh, and, uh, and put people into slavery.

• 50:32Jocko Willink?

  You say on top of the, on top of all this, we were often hungry. That loaf of bread my mother got, if she was early and lucky enough. You couldn't buy more than one loaf at a time. People could get violent if you tried. This meant we were forced to learn ways to be less hungry. Soon my brother, my brother learned how to make french fries from potatoes. I learned how to-

• 50:50Speaker 01

  It was tasty, it was really good, yeah.

• 50:53Jocko Willink?

  I learned to spot the schoolchildren of wealthy Communist Party members by their sandwiches.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 50:59Jocko Willink?

  These were some good looking sandwiches too. While my siblings were eating thin sandwiches with butter or margarine, if there was no butter, only, often only sprinkled with sugar. These rich kids were eating theirs with fresh meat and all the best fixings. Dressing smeared across their smug faces. There were two ways to get your hands on things in those circumstances. Money and violence. Since we were poor, I used violence. This is where I learned that violence works. If it did, if violence didn't work for you, it meant you didn't apply enough of it. I'll be the first to admit, I was a bit of a bully as a kid.

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you know, this is something that you just have to help yourself as much as you can. And at that time, um, I was, I envy these younger, uh, these kids for having this like a nice tasty sandwiches, you know, like when I look at it, I, I salivate. And, uh, so I figure out that I would just, I would just like to try at least sandwiches like that. You know, we never had one. So I just walk up, I just grab the sandwich, the guy, I bite, I bite it. And I was hooked. I was like, okay, so this is what's going to happen next. You, tomorrow you will bring two sandwiches. And if you don't, you won't eat. I guess I'm going to eat your sandwich. So one sandwich is for me, one is for you.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  For parents, you can just tell them that you are growing up, because our parents, everybody, I think every kid knew, hey, you are growing up, so you need to eat more, you know, eat more.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Maybe because our food was very bland, we didn't have like very tasty food. So I didn't want to eat, I didn't eat a lot. So my mom always had to like, you need to eat because you're growing up. So I advised this kid, hey, you know, just tell them that you're growing, you need more eat. And from what I find out, his parents were very happy, say, yeah, our kid is eating well, you know, he's having two sandwiches now. Every break, what they didn't know that he was eating just one, and I was share with me. So it was helpful.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  It's funny that the, or it's not funny, but you know, you hear people that lean towards socialism. Oh, so they're, they're so anti-rich, you know, they, they think all the rich people have all the money. And here you are talking about, it was the communist kids, the kids that were, had the communist party connections, that parents, those are the rich kids, because they just took everything from everybody else. That's what happens.

• 53:19Speaker 01

  This is how it works. I mean, remember, the socialist economy is very inefficient, it just does not work. And, and so people are people, whether you are communist, no matter how, how well meaning communist you are, you're gonna help yourself, you know, you can't help this, so you're gonna help yourself here. And you're gonna go bring the, so people can eat, but at least you can eat. And this is how people start starving and it just does not work.

• 53:51Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Again, I'm fast forwarding through the book. There's so many good stories and insightful. You want to know what it was like, get the book. So you have something, so you can understand what, what communism does to, to a people and to a country. Fast forward a little bit, you say, by the time I was entering eighth grade, my mom couldn't afford to support me by then, almost 13 years old, plus two other children, so she did the only thing she could do and sent me to live with my father.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  She didn't have much choice. I mean, there was, we're growing, the food was expensive and we have, we were living in this little tiny apartment with two rooms, so just basically one bedroom apartment. So she had to do something and she just, she sent me to live with the father. And it's kind of funny story because he showed up, he picked me up, he didn't like it already, but he didn't even tell his wife, the cure, the wife that he had, that he's coming with me. So basically, I show up on the doorstep, he just told her, wow, he's going to leave with us.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  And I remember her, she goes, what? No way. I was like, I would just wanted to punch that bitch.

• 55:08Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's crazy to hear when you're only thirteen years old.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  We don't want you.

• 55:13Speaker 01

  But there, I just remember that my mom, she knows that we need it, that that needs to happen. So I kind of like swallowed my pride, just look at her and just say nothing and walked past her.

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  Was your, was your dad's living arrangement better? Did they have like a nicer apartment and stuff?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they have actually three rooms. So here, there was one room, the bigger room, and two smaller bedrooms. So, so when I walk into that family, his family, she had a son already from previous marriage. And so they kind of let me have one of the rooms and they both stay in the big room. Because there was, in Poland, there was not a division between bedrooms. There was no bedrooms. There were rooms. So you had one room, you have one room and we, my father and his wife had another room. And I thought this like, great, that would be awesome. The only thing that, you know, what would happen there was not quite awesome.

• 56:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, this is where you started learning to fight for the first time.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I already went there. I started fighting right before I went to my father. So I joined the police boxing club. That was my boxing was my first thing. And I was really good at it. Actually, I was so good. And also, what kind of motivated me is because like I didn't have a father. So the coach, at one time when I, as I described, I beat up one of the kids who beat up my younger brother. And I broke my hand. But he came to visit me and kind of like sit down, you know, talk to my mother, talk to me. And I was like, holy shit, I must not disappoint this man. I must just do the best I can.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  So I started beating people up with the gloves up there because I wanted to a pin scheme, you know? And he really said how good I was. So when I went to work, so I was already pretty good, you know? I had a good punch, I knocked quite a few people out, like that guy who beat my brother up. And that's actually a funny story, you know, because I was always, I was not very strong at the beginning. I was just bullied because I thought that my mother is a teacher, so who is going to challenge me? So I never had to hesitate to punch somebody or beat somebody up. And of course, it didn't work that way always.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  But, but just from the very beginning, I remember like when I was being bullied when I was a kid. So there's not like I could come to my mom, say, mom, can you go beat him up or something? There's like, I didn't have an older brother, so I had to figure something out. So I found like a big steel pipe. I put in my bookcase when I was going to school, from school. Because kids used to follow me and just kick my ass sometimes, like around the block or they push me into the entrance of the apartment and beat me up up there. So later, the word starts spreading that those kids who follow me in my apartment somehow don't show up. The ambulance shows up, takes them out because it was me with my pipe.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  And it worked, you know, it's like, again, violence works. You just need to apply enough of it. So, so that's where I started it.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  So I was already fighting by this time and then so from the pipe I move on to boxing, gloves and that and then there was become kind of like well known because I'm quite few guys and I didn't have to wear the pipe. I don't know. I tell you what, some of these pipes, guys who I piped, it's like, I, I really don't know because they didn't, they didn't move when I left. And this is where the word spread out, no way. When they follow me in the, in the, into the apartment, they don't come out. So kind of they left me alone.

• 59:03Jocko Willink?

  They got piped.

• 59:05Speaker 01

  I, I know how to say it right away, but you know what I mean.

• 59:07Jocko Willink?

  Definitely.

• 59:10Jocko Willink?

  They got piped. So when you're, when you're in around Warsaw, you start, you know, you're kind of just like doing some sort of, uh, almost like extortion, hanging out with guys, getting money, making things happen.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Well, because I, I had no fear of, of, of kids, especially after the boxing thing. I was just like looking for the challenge. And I remember, uh, I, I think I started off wrong food because I was always trying to be like, my mom told me, well, I beat up the girl in the first grade and I kick her so strong and we were just starting first grade and they just like told me, oh Drago, this girl is your girlfriend. And I was like, I don't need no stinking girlfriend. I woke up and I kick her. She just fall, they carry her to the, uh, emergency, to the school, to the nurses room. And I was just proud. I was like, yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  This is like, how old are you? Like six, seven?

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  Six, six, yeah, six going seven.

• 1:00:06Jocko Willink?

  So they told you had a girlfriend and you went and kicked her?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, okay, I don't need a stinking girlfriend. I have no girlfriends. I don't need that. And that was happened that my mom work at the same school at the same time. This is why I was like a, I was a bully. I was like, my shit don't stink. But, uh, so I'm sitting in the, so my mom was in the class, got quiet. I'm just like looking at her like, that doesn't, doesn't seem good. She looks up to me, she looks around the class, she looks at me and say, who did you hurt? And I just like thinking what to say, but the entire class like, that guy, him, that, I mean, that, that girl right there, that girl. So my mother looked at the, at this girl and she's still crying there. So she was all bruised between her legs, apparently.

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  She pulled me out by my ear. That's very common in Poland. Teachers used to do it, just pull you by the ear and pull you out of the bench. She pulled me by my ear. She stand me in front of the class. She pulled my pants down and just start spanking me. And start spanking me so hard and so long until I broke down and start crying. And she said, "Don't ever, you know, you want to fight, fight the guys, fight people like you, don't ever touch a girl." And so that was it. I mean, the embarrassment, you know, my pants down, my butt red from the, and the sound, being spanked in front of the whole class. And, and, and that was not enough too, because when I came home, that thing repeated itself. But I never touched the girl after that.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  That was like there was ingrained in my, in my head, "Do not, you cannot do that." And that was just that, that, uh, uh, yeah, that was, that was so embarrassing. And I think I learned the lesson forever from that. But anyways, so I went to Warsaw too, and so I was like trying to be very nice guy. And so there was some of, one of the guys, I didn't know the then dynamics, the gangs working in Warsaw at the time. So one of them was just harassing one of the girls, so I went and knocked him out. Turned out to be, he was one of the, those, those, those guys, those little gangs. So they came, they came to me and say, "Look, you're gonna, this is what's gonna happen.

• 1:02:23Speaker 01

  We're gonna buy us the wine, gonna extort the wine from these guys, but, uh, and then it will beat you up, everybody from this gang is going to hit you and then, you know, who leave you alone." I say, "I'm fine with the wine, but if you're gonna hit me, I'll hit you back, I'll knock you out." And so they kind of let me along, but eventually, they were doing the same thing I did, I mean, that mentality was the same. So I say like, "Okay, so I bring you the wine, and, uh, but you know, if, if, if you try to hit me, I'll beat you up, and really bad." So they, they didn't, we just drink the wine and say, "Hey, let's go extort, this time not the sandwich, just let's go extort the wine from these and these guys." So we were just targeting guys and say, "You bring the wine." "No."

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Well, they would punch the guy a few times, then he brings the wine, we punch him again, and then just leave him alone. But what they told these guys, these poor victims, that, you know, you can be abused and like if you want more wine, we just call the same guy we just beat up who brought us the wine, say... More wine and so he was bringing the wine to us and I was what fourteen fifteen years old so we were the drinking and smoking and I was bad I mean kind of not good person outside that what I mean I was not good person at the time.

• 1:03:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's uh you're you're definitely heading down the wrong path again this is you you go into these kind of details in the book um really it's it's fascinating to read. Um I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here just to touch base again on the on on what you're dealing with with the communist situation you say when the government executed citizens they were called bandits and insurrectionists and enemies of the state people who are trying to upend the successful socialist system societal values had changed and the thinking became that these people should be isolated from society in some cases executed for opposing

• 1:04:24Jocko Willink?

  socialism and the official communist party line show trials were publicly prosecuted a lot of charges against said insurrectionists were completely made up evidence was made up and there was no opportunity to challenge the charges people were harassed by state security police and publicly humiliated they were isolated from friends and business the communist regime was relentless in pursuit of dissidents they did not need to have any evidence they would manufacture evidence they were there were countless victims to this day no one knows how many polls continue to find secret graves oh sorry to this day no one knows how many and polls continue to find secret graves of opponents of socialism

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  and communism in prison courtyards forests and other obscure places to this day polls are searching for the graves of their world war two heroes who disappeared or were outright murdered by the communists upon their return from the war.

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Yes, that's something that I mentioned at the beginning here when we start talking about it. This is how a socialist state persecuted the opponents or the people who they perceived could be opponents. It could be something that you just, you just came back from the West and you witnessed too much. You witnessed how prosperous the West is. That was enough to put you on the list. And then if you are still speaking out and talking about it, you could disappear. I think one of the last graves that they, that was discovered in Poland was what, maybe like, I think, a year ago? I believe, when they found, and this is not all, they are still looking for it. There are still so many citizens missing from socialist times.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  And they never thought they would be ever found at that time. Because there was no, there were no computers, there were not, the science was not there to help find these people. They are finding them now and they are still looking for many of them. But this is the socialism. You say earlier too about these fake charges, the spies. Yes, they were, all were branded. None of these people were sitting there because, for political reasons, according to socialist state. There would be disgrace for socialist state to keep political prisoners. So they were all criminals. They were, I was criminal, I was never like, political prisoner, he's not political prisoner, you broke the law. And what was the law? Well, you can't print, you can't have a free speech, basically. They would say free speech.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they would say, they would say you violated the tax code or you violated the printing law that we had for

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:06:59Jocko Willink?

  the government distribution or whatever.

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Right, so there was always some law, law to put you in prison or, or, or, or, and slave you. And this is something that, it stays with me today when I see sometimes, well, I don't want to go there, but this is something that we need to be very careful. Because it's very easy to brand people spies, brand people criminals, and then prosecute them. And they will not even have a support in society if you are, if you are able to brand them as criminals. Just that they were, that their crime was exercising free speech. Well, there was no free speech in Poland at the time, but trying to speak your mind.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  People didn't know about it. There was not being told why the person was executed or why the person was imprisoned. They were told they were spies. They were told that they violate the law, they violate this, violate that, and they are not political prisoners. They were very adamant, the socialist regime was very adamant, that there are no political prisoners in socialist state. They all are criminals. I was criminal.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  That's disturbing.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. After my father kicked me out and back to my mom, I thought I would be done with the upheavals for a while. Upheavals being getting transferred back and forth. The back and forth had began upsetting and had been upsetting and stressful, and I was excited to go back with my friends and classmates in 1975. But I was also drinking and smoking and had decided to take up karate. After getting a taste of boxing in Warsaw, I was in a lot of trouble with my mom, to say the least. So then you start training in karate as well?

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yes, that was something I was so fascinated about. There was the first ever in Zelona Gora, in the city of Zelona Gora, Karate Kyokushinkai section was created. So I said, I need to join it. I just was too young for it. So I was really good with my pencil and pen, so I just fake my ID. I just take my ID, I change my date of birth, and I sign up in the Karate Kyokushinkai.

• 1:09:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and Kyokushinkai is savage karate. It's brutal.

• 1:09:22Speaker 01

  Kind of, yeah. I kind of like, I tell you that, at least at the beginning, every time I was going to training session, I was a bit nervous. I was like on my toes, because I know I will be hurt. And you know, that's just like... We were hurt, you know, but even just the methods that they train us, you know, you have to stand up, you know, take the, you take the san chen dachi position and they kick you in the stomach so hard that you just fly. Like some, some of us make it like I was a very light guy. So actually I ended up usually making somersault and falling on my face and my knees. Because from the kicks or you know, lay on the floor and the instructors, they run on your stomachs and stuff.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  But after a while I got used to it, you know, it's like, I'm tough, you know, I'm not going to give up on this. And we're learning and we're actually becoming very effective. I was supplementing my boxing skills with the, now with the kicks and some sweeps. So I was like, uh, unbeatable on the street and I liked it.

• 1:10:26Jocko Willink?

  You, uh, you're, you, from everything, when I would watch you fight, you have a very, and it might've seemed natural. It might've when I watched you, it like seemed natural because you've been doing it for a long time, but you, you clearly have a natural gift for fighting. Like when I would watch you throw punches, when I watch you throw kicks, when I would see you hit people or kick people, I'd be like, oh, you look like a really good fighter and you are a really good fighter. But just the, the fact that you were doing this at a time when really a lot of people weren't doing this and going out. And I know you, you spent a lot of time in the streets fighting and I have no doubt that you were unbeatable in the streets.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  At that time, yeah, there was no challenge, especially with these techniques that people didn't know at the time because it was not popular in Poland. Yeah. Yeah, that was savage.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Were you, how big were you back then?

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  I was fighting, when I was fighting in the, for the championship of Poland, uh, it was in Tekon, though I was fighting 169 pounds. I was light, but you know, I was beating big people because like, you know, small guys. They usually don't pick the fight. Usually the big ones, they're the ones that say, I'm going to kick your ass, especially you're small. So the most of the people that I fought at the time, they were bigger. But they were also easier to, you know, they were easy to topple, like they were wobbly, more wobbly. And I was able to just kick their ass. And I was beat up too. I mean, there's not always a whatever fight, but eventually we end up like a challenge. How many fights you can go without losing one?

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  And I think I went to like a, I think like almost close to hundred. And but it was like a street fight. So so there was also too that we are picking up these fights. We're not like, at that time, when the part that we like, becoming that kind of competition, there was the, we were just picking up the fights. It was not like people were looking, trying to fight us. But we use it as a training. We pick up these fights not for, there was no cameras at the time. So we use like a, we go and four or five of us from the club. This was when I was doing Taekwondo and I came to different city, switch from Karate Kyokushin to Taekwondo. So we're going in groups and say like, okay, so we knew where to find people to beat up.

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  Like, you know, just drinking beer somewhere or, you know, places where are rough. Rough places in Poland were like rough, rough here, even extra rough. So we go up there and then we just pick the guy and then, you know, beat the guy up. And then we get together, have a drink and talk about it. Because we didn't have a cameras like today. You can video it and you can say, okay, critique. So we critique each other.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  You do a debrief.

• 1:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, debrief, yes. And so like your kick was kind of good, but you skip the guy on the shoulder. You didn't hit him in the head. You actually kick him, like there was no effective. So this is the briefing then. And then we're going reenacting it too. So creating how we were the fights and we become really good at it. So we can so good to the point that eventually we stop beating single people up. We're looking for more at one time. So it was like, I remember.

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  And the news spread around city too, there's people like, well, there's like, be careful about these guys, if they walk around, just walk away. And it happened that people could recognize nice ass, because we'd have a lot of people. But there were some people who didn't, especially if there were two or three of them. So we just walk up to the guy, just grab the beer off his hand, spit it and give it back to him. You know, it's gonna be fine, right? Especially if you had two, three people around, so he was there. But even then, you know, like eventually, we ran out of these people too. So if we found somebody like this, we sometimes, the rule was, who spats the group, who wants to beat, beat up, then he's the first one to do it. But when we

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  start running out of people, we had to draw the, draw the lots, strokes, yeah, who is going to beat these people up. And this is how we trained. And we find that was very effective, which, you know, a lot of the techniques that later I, I kind of mastered, and help us to also fight in the, in the, in the dojo, in the gym, because it seems like it was less stress up there. It was like everything by the rule, you know, there's not like you're gonna fight somebody, gonna stab you. But on the street, you had to be careful about it, so.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and in, in the book, you go into some details, you, you guys were training like two, three hours a day.

• 1:15:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:01Jocko Willink?

  You were working out.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  You're doing everything right to, to be ready to scrap in the streets. Meanwhile, you say this, as I grew older, my understanding of what it meant to live in communist state grew with me. I started listening to Voice of America, the BBC, and Radio Free Europe years before. Without anyone knowing, I began tuning in shortly after my run in with the state security police. After I'd questioned my teacher about being forced to learn Russian, I had been told about these radio channels by my mother's brother. And this is where you tell the story about your uncle Adam.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  My uncle Adam.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  And he's the one that, you know, showed you how to listen to these banned radio stations. So this is where you start seeing sort of the outside perspective of what's going on in the rest of the world, and what's actually happening to you all in Poland.

• 1:15:50Speaker 01

  Yes, well, and again, I didn't have a father at the time, so I was looking up to my uncle and he was a big guy. He was, he liked to beat people up too, so Roxanne was always idolizing him. And, and he was like, you wouldn't want to mess with him. But he told me about it, because you know, we knew the story, him being beat up by the police, being kidnapped from the street by the police. So I, he taught me how to listen to it, because he said, what you hear is, is full of propaganda. It is indoctrination. It is censored. You don't hear the true, you don't hear everything. You need to listen to outside. And thanks God for Voice of America. You know, that's like, you could go to prison that time for

• 1:16:35Speaker 01

  listening to it. BBC, Radio Free Europe. And you know what is actually fun, I just need to digress a little bit on that. When I came to America eventually, when I moved to, to where I live now, where I live, there is a Radio Free, Free Europe radio station there. It doesn't, it's not active anymore. But this is where those transmissions I was listening to was from. And I was able to actually visit that radio station. It's almost like a museum.

• 1:17:14Jocko Willink?

  Where, where, where was the radio station located?

• 1:17:16Speaker 01

  Uh, in Mason, Ohio.

• 1:17:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:17:19Speaker 01

  So I was able to tour it, because you can, and see it. So for people, that was mostly like a technical curiosity. For me, it was much more.

• 1:17:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's amazing. And this is where you started getting information. And there's just so much, there's, you know, we kind of take it for granted. You know, the fact that we can get information, then again, you got to pay attention to the information that you're getting because a lot of the information that you're getting is screened and is being censored. So that stuff is happening. People are getting banned, people get shadow banned, people get suppressed, like all that stuff is going on right now. And you got to pay attention to it. You, you do talk about this, uh, I wanted to bring up this one section that you, you talk about in the book. You say, "One of the greatest examples of socialist censorship and suppression of information is found with the story of Captain Wito Pilecki." Am I saying that right?

• 1:18:13Speaker 01

  Pilecki.

• 1:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Pilecki.

• 1:18:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:16Jocko Willink?

  In 1940, Captain Pilecki, one of the Polish army resistance leaders, volunteered to allow himself to be captured by the Gestapo in order to infiltrate Auschwitz concentration camp.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna say that again, everybody. This guy, he's a, he's a Polish resistance leader and he volunteers to be captured so he can go into voluntarily into the Auschwitz concentration camp.

• 1:18:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  It was there that Captain Pilecki organized the resistance movement, which included hundreds of inmates. He created the report that was smuggled out detailing the horrors and atrocities occurring at the camp. This report made it into the Allies' hands, but it fell on deaf ears. Captain Pilecki escaped Auschwitz and later fought the Warsaw uprising in 1944. He was a great Polish patriot and a great inconvenience to the socialist regime in Poland. In 1947, he was arrested by the communist state security police and charged with anti-Polish activities. He was then subjected to torture and to show trial.

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Captain Pilecki was officially executed by the Polish socialist government in 1948 and was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Poland.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  They still can't find where, uh, they are still, uh, the Poles are still looking for him. He is a national, national hero in Poland. And that's, he was, uh...

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  In resistance, the Poland during Second World War has the largest, the biggest, the largest partisan army in entire Europe. So he was part of it. And the task was now, because there were already reports coming that something is going on in these concentration camps. And we need to, that atrocities happened, but they need somebody to witness, to write reports and send these reports, smuggle these reports back. So for him, chance to escape the Auschwitz were very slim, but he, so basically, he volunteered for the one-way mission.

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  And he did, he accomplished, he sent the, he sent the reports, he described what is going on there. And of course, he tried to escape, he was successful, he did escape. But there was very inconvenience for the socialist state, because he was fighting on the wrong side, he was fighting, fighting on the Allied side. He was not part of the Soviet Union army, he was not part of the Soviet Union, the Polish military sponsored by Soviet Union. So hero like this, especially with his courage speaking out against the socialism, was very inconvenient.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  So he was promptly arrested and as many of these heroes at the time, he was promptly arrested, sentenced to death in the show trial and executed. And he was fully, when Poland became free, he was fully rehabilitated, was exonerated. And actually, today, there are streets, places and schools named after him in Poland.

• 1:21:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that just shows you how.

• 1:21:43Jocko Willink?

  How horrible and evil this is.

• 1:21:46Speaker 01

  It is evil, you know, let me just throw something here too, because even I remember, there were a lot of monuments, they were totally destroyed because they were not supporting socialist narrative. Monuments of freedom, monuments from previous Poland, where Poland was not socialist, that was destroyed. The history was so twirled and so twisted, that I didn't even know about some of these heroes, or about the Polish squadrons, Polish fighter squadrons, fighting in Battle of Britain. You know, all of them was suppressed here and there, a little bit show up, but it was mostly very heavily censored.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  But you know, during Battle of Britain, the most effective fighter squadron was Polish 303. There were movies made about it now, but at that time, being a member of that squadron could mean death sentence in Poland.

• 1:22:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward a bit. By early 1981, after the communist government raised food and fuel prices and lowered working wages, solidarity had a membership of about 10 million people and represented most of the Polish workforce. This is when my mom became involved with the trade union, and the first time in any Warsaw Pact country that an organization was formed independently from the regime, with real elections and everything. Through the union, strikes began, bringing entire industries to a halt. State-run companies were losing money, and they were deeply in debt to the West to boot. Desperate, the authorities tried to strike a deal with the unions. The agreement at the end of the day was to allow the trade unions to exist in exchange for fewer strikes.

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  This was just a ruse in preparation for martial law to take down the first independent trade union of the Warsaw Pact. At that point, I was more firmly entrenched with the anti-communist solidarity movement, and I'd regularly stay late at the headquarters at Lotz. Am I saying that right?

• 1:23:56Speaker 01

  Lotz, yes. It's not a wood, but a lotz, yeah. That's how you pronounce it.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Now that I was in my early twenties, I had a lot more flexibility to do what I wanted, within constraints imposed by the regime, of course.

• 1:24:12Jocko Willink?

  And this is a historic day, on December 13th, 1981, around 10:00 in the evening, people started coming to tell us of their parents and other family members who were being arrested throughout the city. The state security police had come to their homes and their family members were gone. We knew that something big was about to happen. We braced ourselves for whatever was going to happen next. People started calling their friends in other countries outside of Poland, trying to organize routes of escape and chains of communication in case things went badly for us. Someone at the HQ turned the TV on, mentioning something about a government message being broadcast. General J- how do you say his name?

• 1:24:53Speaker 01

  Jaruzelski. Jaruzelski? General Jaruzelski.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  General Jaruzelski.

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, Soviet.

• 1:25:00Jocko Willink?

  Who is more Soviet than Polish, appeared on the screen. And he was sort of like, at this time, was sort of the military leader of Poland.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  He was the military leader of Poland, yes.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  He looked grim in full uniform with the Polish flag looming over his shoulder. "The National Council, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution, has introduced martial law throughout the country," he read. "This is the last chance to pull the country out of crisis and save it from disintegration."

• 1:25:29Speaker 01

  Yep, there's always excuse for something. So the mantra was that this is about uprising to happen, people are about to over- ready to overthrow the socialist legitimate government. It was never legitimate government, it was never, they were, all the elections were fraudulent. But, so, that was the mantra. And to save Poland from the mayhem and upheaval and possible Soviet invasion, the General Jaruzelski had to do that. This dispute, and my opinion is absolutely baloney, this is bullshit.

• 1:26:09Speaker 01

  That was just another attempt, one of the last attempts to so- to save socialism in Poland. Besides, they understood, not only in Poland, but in other war-soaked countries, that if socialism falls in Poland, it will fall everywhere else. And it did, including Soviet Union later in nineteen nineties. But that was the, the, the, how they imposed martial law. There was one, there's just one night, they arrested, they were running, started running up at midnight. They started running up people, like on the mass scales, in every city, every town in Poland.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  It was well organized and it, uh, I, I remember that's how the communications were cut in Poland. The telephone lines at midnight went blank, the TV went out, there, there was no radio stations, nothing. They were just blank, nothing. A lot of people died too, people in emergency, having heart attack. There was no way to call, all the telephones were shut down because they were trying to save Poland from the insurgent, for the insurgence. Uh, Polish, uh, people who are opposing, uh, who are trying to ruin Poland. This is how they explained it.

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  This is what they viewed it as. Uh, you say it's believed that over twenty-five thousand patriotic Polish citizens were arrested one night, December thirteenth, nineteen eighty-one.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  Yes, and, yes, that's, the, the thing is that at the time, the socialist state uh, was very adamant about it. These people are not arrested, they are interned. We don't keep them in prison, we keep them in internment camps where they are safe. And we do it for their safety. We do it for safety of Poland and for safety of Poles. Not that they didn't, they did commit any crime. This is why they are not prisoners, they are internees. But they were potentially dangerous to the state. They could be dangerous to the state. So we just headed up and, and kind of interned them, sent them to, uh, vacation homes, sanatoriums. That's how they explained.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  But in reality, they were just arrested, thrown in jails and prisons around the Poland.

• 1:28:26Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, when the President of the United States Ronald Reagan announced sanctions against the communist regime on December 29th, 1981, polls, including myself, were cheering. Yes. Even further infuriating the communists and socialists. This is when the phrase was coined, uh, I'm not even gonna try, how do you say it? The worse, the better. The worse, the better, that's how do you say it in Polish? Yeah, that's one thing. If gozry tym lepiej. Yeah. If gozry tym lepiej, the worse, the better. The worse, the better. It meant that the more sanctions put in place to ruin socialism and communism, the better for Poland, polls and freedom. Anything that even remotely hurt communists was cheered by the polls. The Polish people were ready for any sacrifice just to get rid of the hated oppressive socialism that my father worked so hard to put in place.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  Those of us who escaped or who were left out of the mass arrests met on the streets in the days following and discussed what we could do to resist the blatant show of terror and authoritarianism. The country faced, the country was faced with news, blackouts and total censorship. So we decided it was going to be important for someone to tell the truth of what was going on. We found one guy who had a typewriter and another who had a printing press. So me and a couple of my friends decided to report on what was happening on the ground. In the back of my mind, I kept thinking about what would happen if we got caught. Being found with an unregistered typewriter or God forbid, a printing press usually meant spending some time in prison. My newspaper was really only a double sided, single page leaflet that we produced, but the messages it contained were dangerous enough that I could have been imprisoned.

• 1:29:56Jocko Willink?

  After printing a few hundred copies, we walked the streets pressing the censored newspapers or the uncensored newspapers into people's hands and leaving them in high traffic areas of the city, while desperately hoping one of the socialist sympathizers would not turn us in. Following the implementation of martial law on that night, December 13th, 1981, in my city, thousands of us would turn off our city lights every month. On the same day that started martial law to show solidarity against the regime, whole city blocks would be completely dark except for a single candle in every window. Twenty, thirty, forty apartment buildings all in a row, each twenty to thirty stories tall, each window with a candle in it.

• 1:30:40Jocko Willink?

  If you didn't see a candle in a window, you could assume the person living there was someone who supported or worked for the regime. I'll never forget the sight. It was one of the most powerful and beautiful demonstrations with the polls showing solidarity with each other and against the regime in overwhelming numbers. You know, that sounds amazing.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  It still brings almost tears to my eyes thinking about it and remembering that. So, polls were, any means of protest, anything they was criminalized, anything you, you, you just the socialists and communists did not like, communists like my father, could put you in prison or get you killed. So, polls found a way. They, they, on the day that, uh, that martial law was imposed every month, on thirteenth, they turned the lights off in their homes. And so, you can, you can see entire city almost black out with, uh, single, uh, what do you call it? Candlelight, single candlelight in the window.

• 1:31:42Speaker 01

  So, there was such a powerful message. And what they tell polls to, that in oppose, opposite what propaganda was saying, millions were supporting the solidarity and freedom against socialist state. There was not like what you heard in the news and press that is a fringe of society. There's only very few people who want this crazy concept of freedom or something that is just, just crazy. And there's very few of them. But here, then, you can walk through the... The streets and can see it yourself, you know, there's like thousands, thousands of people who oppose that socialist terror and oppression. So that was very inspiring, you know?

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  This is how you can, people can, I guess, when everything is taken away from them, they still protest and they still show that what, what really is happening. So, yeah, that was actually interesting.

• 1:32:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was amazing to read about. Um, fast forward a little bit, some resistance figures I knew quickly became very loud and outspoken, creating their own circles that people flocked to. New organizations were established every other day and just kept getting bigger and bigger. We didn't realize that some of these organizations were actually being established by the state security police who collected names and information and were then able to arrest opponents of so, of socialism in one fell swoop. Because my group was very small, no one thought to try and join us, let alone infiltrate us. We kept a low profile and covertly distributed our resistance literature out in the streets. I'm sure the police had been following us for a long time, but they didn't get anyone until early nineteen eighty-two, when I was walking toward the printing press down a tiny little street.

• 1:33:21Jocko Willink?

  I happened to look up and notice someone was watching me. He was maybe a hundred yards away and staring directly at me. Of course, I thought that was strange, but I kept walking and got to the building. I climbed the stairs to the third floor. Suddenly I heard footsteps thundering over my head and a bunch of doors flying open. I had at least eight or nine guns pointed at my head. It really was like an old school police standoff. They eventually got me to the ground and handcuffed me. I stayed down there with boots on my back, next to my resistance friends who were already handcuffed prior to me showing up. They waited for others to show up, but no one did. The state security police hauled us off to their headquarters that same night. They stripped me of everything except my clothes I was wearing and carried me off to a dark, smelly, cold prison cell.

• 1:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Even for all my trouble making over the years, I'd never seen an actual prison cell close up. I'd only ever been in a holding cell. This was far worse, reeking of piss and shit and mold. There was, there were people huddled somewhere in the dark, but I couldn't see anything. I stood there until someone called out, hey, you, just sit down somewhere. I had to feel my way around with my hands on the walls, blindly managing to find, or barely, blindly managing to find a spot on the wall among a dozen other people. Eventually, when they turned the lights on, I was able to see it was a small room with steel doors with a raised bed in the middle that was more like a low pedestal, a few people could lie down on it at any given time. And there were food rations, but they were so small, I was soon painfully hungry.

• 1:34:48Jocko Willink?

  Apparently, others were in a similar state. One prisoner, a real mean-looking guy, came up to me sometime after dawn and said, "I'm gonna eat your food today." I wasn't about to give him the chance, not even a slim one, I knocked him out. And when he was laid out unconscious on the ground, I carefully lifted his upper lip and using my knuckles punched his two upper front teeth and to drive the point home. No one was going to mess with me in here. I pulled the knocked-out teeth from his mouth, put them in my pocket, and then I ate his food.

• 1:35:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that was, you know, I'm still kind of like, I'm still sad that I lose those teeth, because I was hoping to one day to make a necklace out of it, you know, and carry it, but just during one of the searches, they discovered the teeth. So, yeah, I was hungry. But this is something that we also need to look out, watch out for the methods the totalitarian states operate. They will have a very small things that you wouldn't think is a torture, but it is. So basically, in Poland, the secret services, the secret police were doing, they were just limiting rations and keep you cold. So it was not like you just die of it, but it was enough to kind of ache at you and slowly dismantle your defenses

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  and eventually you start talking. So that was very common technique. And actually, I have to mention, the same technique was used on Chief Gallagher here by NCIS in the break in California.

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  What, cold and lack of food?

• 1:36:20Speaker 01

  Yes, cold and limited food rations. So he was always cold, they didn't allow him warm clothes, and the food rations were very small. And again, this is not the rations to starve you to death, it's just enough to make you uncomfortable, out of balance. And this is actually well-described in one of the research papers you can find on the official CIA website. I forgot what's the name of it. Basically, there's that techniques of that used by...

• 1:36:53Speaker 01

  Soviet secret police against political prisoners. So there was what was described there. At that time, I didn't know there was a technique. I was just hungry. The guy told me, he said, he's going to eat my food. I say, hell, no. And I knocked him out. But but now since I was when I came to America. I learned about freedom. I learned about these techniques. And it really came to realization that this torture, very subtle. But they were conducted in Poland against political prisoners.

• 1:37:28Jocko Willink?

  You do end up. Someone asked you what you in for, then you say solidarity. And then then they know that they'll they'll help you out, right? Now you kind of find some brotherhood in there. During my time in the State Security Police HQ at LUDZ. Did you say it's like woods? Is that what you said?

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Would you would you?

• 1:37:45Jocko Willink?

  That's.

• 1:37:46Speaker 01

  That's how you pronounce it.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  LUDZ?

• 1:37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, would you? Yeah, but.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, L is like a L, like a wood.

• 1:37:52Jocko Willink?

  Wood.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  This is L with the slash. So this is how we pronounce. But I said it one time to my to my wife, she said, it sounds like like Wuchy. Something, something like female. So actually, it's a lot. L O D Z. This is how you spell it.

• 1:38:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm gonna say Wudji then.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay. I don't know if I'll remember it, because why didn't they just spell it W O O D Z I E? And then I just pronounce it right. Instead, it's L O D Z.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  L O D Z, but it's O with the little apostrophe, a little point above it. And and that makes it O.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  LUDZ. Wudji. Wudji. All right. I was interrogated from anywhere from two to three times per day where they asked me the same questions over and over. While in prison there, the police raided my apartment and destroyed everything. They kept me there for three weeks, asking the same questions repeatedly. Sometimes beating me when I didn't answer the way they wanted or didn't answer at all. At the end of my stay, they announced they had everything they needed to put me in jail for life. And that I was soon going to the big prison.

• 1:38:57Jocko Willink?

  That same night, without explaining anything further, the police marched me out at 2 a.m. in handcuffs. The police kept moving and under the cover of darkness, they hauled me out into the street and shoved me into the back of a civilian car. "Where are we going?" I asked. "When we get there, it won't matter to you anymore." The thought crossed my mind that maybe they were going to kill me. I prepared myself to fight, getting my blood up while I sat handcuffed in the backseat of the car. I knew it was a lost cause, but I would not go quietly. My plan was to hopefully knock out the two cops with a good kick when we got out and make a run for it. It was naive, but I had no other option. The whole time I was brainstorming, they drove for almost four hours in and out of

• 1:39:38Jocko Willink?

  town, over and over, aimlessly, until 6 a.m. when they brought me back to the cell at HQ. When I got back, confused by the change of plans and jittery from my adrenaline, I saw some of my cellmates were crying. They thought I'd been taken out and shot, and they were the last ones to see me.

• 1:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's how socialism works.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  They were sure I'd be the next... They were sure they'd be next as the last people to witness me alive. Communism doesn't like witnesses.

• 1:40:04Speaker 01

  True. Yep. I didn't even understand that the stress I put on my fellow cellmates at the time, because, you know, I was taken away. I thought that I could be shot, but I didn't think they would worry about that. That's somehow until I came back and they explained it to me, why they are so nervous, the guys with the tears in their eyes and saying, "Dude, thank you for coming back, because we thought that we are next, because they're the last witnesses who saw me." So, what happened, well, he was taken by the police, never came back. And they were afraid, genuinely afraid for their lives. And that's how socialist state operates, the terror, the terror.

• 1:40:54Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Four weeks after my arrest, I was transported to an intermediate prison. The police investigation was done. Now they were gathering materials and evidence to build a case against me. The absence of a confession or any proof was no obstacle for the communist regime. If they lacked evidence, they would make it up. But even though I knew they had a bunk case against me, I still didn't have an attorney to help fight it. And going up alone against a corrupt justice system usually never ends well. I was initially placed with common criminals, the worst of the violent criminals in a single cell. Some of them were snitches for sure. The prison walls were made of concrete reinforced with rebar. The whole place was cold and quiet. Mold was everywhere. It was huge. The windows

• 1:41:37Jocko Willink?

  were very high on the walls with bars keeping us in and metal shields on the outside of the windows preventing us from being able to look out. How many of us were there? How many of us there were and for what crimes was anyone's guess? The prison administration's intention was to break me down by putting me in the worst cell. The biggest guy of the group tried to strong-arm me into conforming to the cell's imaginary hierarchy of control. Of course, it did not end well for him. I applied a significant lesson I learned on the street. You finish the fight when you are done with the fight, not when he tells you he gives up. If you stop before submission, he could turn the tables and take you down. Despite this guy's screams to stop, I didn't. I kept beating him until he stopped screaming and stopped moving.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Fell asleep, yeah.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  That, that works. I mean, this is something that I learned on the street very quickly, you know? When you fight, I mean, like, not in the ring, but when you fight on the street, you fight when, until you decide that is enough, you don't let any even, even small glimpse of the... That this guy can control anything, especially not to when to end the fight. If you let him control that before you totally destroy the guy. Uh, he may turn and this often happened to us, you know, I learned the hard way. The thing I got beat up like this, so you don't stop until the guy is not moving. He may scream the bloody mortar, stop, stop, I'll give up, I'm, I'm, I'm your friend now, you know, but hey, you know what?

• 1:43:09Speaker 01

  You become my friend when you fall asleep and then you know, when, when we bring you up, you will be okay. And that's, that's how it works. It is, I know it doesn't sound nice, but it's just the safety, you know, for my own safety. If I stop beating this guy up when he says, stop, stop, you know, I'm, I'm be nice. Uh, that most likely he would still find a way to attack me or, or to, to keep his position as the, the, the, the top guy in, in, in the cell. So I couldn't allow them, so the, the, I like, I learned to beat them up until they don't move. When they don't move, then usually when they wake up, they just like, they either go home if they can, or in prison, they just,

• 1:43:54Speaker 01

  pull, hold themselves in the corner somewhere, sit there.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm thinking about too? I was talking about your fighting prowess earlier. And also, you know what I just remembered from when you and I would train is you have a like real explosive muscle. You know, like some people, they have good endurance, some people they're super explosive, strong. You have that super explosive, strong muscle fiber. So like I bet a dude, cause I'm sitting here thinking about this dude like thinking, thinking he's gonna, thinking he's gonna do something to you. And I could just imagine your full force, like explosion of violence on this dude.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that was, yeah, so that's why they fell asleep very quickly usually when they, when they start happening, that's a kind of, um, yeah, yeah, that's, you know, that's, all of us have that power, just sometimes, most of us, and here in America is different. I, I would never, now I'm different, I'm American now, I don't go and beat people up. I, I wouldn't do it, but at that time, there was just the necessity, there was just, you have to do what you have to do to survive. Especially in prison when there was such a brutal place, you know, so, uh, it helped me and.

• 1:45:06Jocko Willink?

  This again, like I was saying earlier, some of the stuff, when you read it, it seems to be heavier. This is one of those things that I, I was reading it, I was thinking, damn. It says, "The discomfort of prison can't be understated. Beyond the outright violence, there were millions of little things that made life miserable for all of us." One of those things was that you couldn't just lie in bed. You had to either sit down on the floor or on the stool, but you could not lean on the walls or the beds. There were four beds per cell, two bunk beds, however, was not meant for the ten or more men that were actually in the small cell. When I'd first arrived, I didn't think much of it, so, and I was so tired and sore from my weeks at the state security police headquarters, that I decided to lie down, even though the other prisoners told me I shouldn't.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  One of the prisoners said, "Don't do it, or they will fuck you up." "Screw that," I said, "I'm gonna, I'm tired and I'm gonna lie down." "My cellmates were smiling and smirking at each other in anticipation of what was to come." "I ignored them and started to settle into the bed, preparing for some relaxation." "Sure enough, as soon as, as soon as the bed, which was a little more than a wooden cot, creaked under me, the guards came down on us." "My resting time was up, they pulled me out of my new cell and started to work me over." "I could hear their punches echoing throughout the prison as they landed on me." "They beat me up and then threw me back in my cell." "When they were done with me, I thought for sure this was the time, when I laid down, they would leave me alone."

• 1:46:27Speaker 01

  "Would you think otherwise? I mean, they just beat you up, right? You just, you can, you are really sore." "You work in the cell, so, wh- why, it's natural, you need to lay down, right?"

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  "I was naive to think, because I could barely sit straight, that they would surely leave me alone and let me recover in my bed." "It was not an act of defiance, not yet, however, it happened again. This time, they beat me with rubber nightsticks in such a way as to not leave many, too many bruises." "This method beating, this meth- methodical beating included multiple hits to my kidneys, and I ended up pissing blood as a result." "Once again, they threw me back in my cell." "This time, I was a hundred percent sure they were not gonna mess with me." "It was impossible for me not to lay down, I could not sit or stand, or stay standing, so I went straight to bed." "I thought they were gonna leave me alone, I was wrong, they were not done with me, the cycle repeated himself."

• 1:47:19Speaker 01

  You know, there was not the resistance at the time. There was just stupidity. I didn't know any better. I was I was never in prison before. I was jailed by something. So why wouldn't I lay down? I was what's a big deal. And then when they beat me up, I assumed that there's gonna be. Well, now I have excuse to lay down. So I kept doing it. But again, at that, at the beginning, it was not just because I was just a tough and resist was resisting. I just wanted rest.

• 1:47:48Speaker 01

  And well, but yeah, that's eventually a.

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  Dude, uh, my buddy Stoner, he was in Sear School. And apparently, you know, they give you like certain information that you're not supposed to divulge. You're not supposed to tell them like, don't tell them what, you know, where the friendly forces are or something. So they capture him in Sear School and they're starting to like beat him and then they're starting to waterboard him. And they're like, they're waterboarding and they're like, where are the friendly forces? And he's like, I don't know. And so then they waterboard him more and like, where are the friendly forces? He's like, I don't know. And then they're like, where are the friendly forces? They waterboard them again and again. And finally, they go admin. They stop and they're like, hey, dude, like, you're, this is horrible. You're getting tortured for no reason.

• 1:48:34Jocko Willink?

  You should just tell us where the friendly forces are. And he goes, I forgot.

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  He could have saved him if he wanted to.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  Exactly. So it's the same thing. He wasn't resisting. He was just freaking forgot where they were at. So there you go. Sometimes better be, better be, uh, sometimes not like heroic resistance. You just forgot some shit.

• 1:48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, the funny thing is the guy beat up and he's just like, well, you know what? I can, uh, I can, I can lay down. I mean, I can do the same thing, you know, because they let me along eventually. They said, so after so many beatings, they're just like, okay. So I lay there, you know, being sore and they didn't come for me. So he said the same thing. He lie on the opposite side. Sure enough, you can just, the doors open again. I said, oh, fuck, that I'm getting ready for another beating. No, they just leave me alone. They just grab the guy and you can hear, you know, at least I didn't scream. But that guy is like screaming like a bloody mortar, ah, and you can hear, boom, boom, boom, just beating up.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  They just, the doors open, throw him in the sound. He gets up, looks around.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  Okay, you get the fuck out of this chair. I will sit. So, because you know, he was like a big hair shop there, so he could throw people out of the chairs. So there was like four stools, so he seated on one stool from then on. I was laying in the bed, laughing my... I was laying in the bed, I was laughing my ass off.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  He couldn't, he couldn't quite take the beatings.

• 1:50:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, he could not. I, I, I think they, they could actually, like, I was a political prisoner, even whether they admitted or not, he was a common criminal, so they actually could kill him. With me, you know, just like, I think they had some kind of, uh, uh, at least those common guards, they were not really, some of them didn't hate us. Even through this propaganda and their training, were trained to, to hate us. They didn't, some of them didn't, but common criminals, I would, I have no doubt they would kill him.

• 1:50:35Jocko Willink?

  You got, look, get, get the book, there's all kinds of stories in here and, and details about this stuff. At one point you get in trouble. I mean, you get in trouble a lot of points. You spend two weeks in solitary confinement.

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  Tiger cage.

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get this tiger cage thing. I mean, this, they took me to a cell, had only an open window covered by a shield that kept me from viewing outside, but did nothing to keep the cold out. I was given a thin blanket, they fed me water and bread on a regular basis, nothing more.

• 1:51:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, then, then, then this time, I was given a week, again, you get in trouble, you're knocking people out, you're breaking shit, you're just being a freaking savage in there.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  Well, some of it was just from the fear that if I fell, you know, they would eat me alive there. So you just have to be there. You don't let, you, you, you, you need to be the, pretty much on the top. If you don't, then you will have to submit to other people and stuff, and I would never let it happen. Besides, you know, I had enough skills and I had enough expertise not to let it happen. So, it was, yeah.

• 1:51:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get this, uh, this one time you get in trouble again. I was given a week of solitary confinement once again, but this time it was in the so-called tiger cage.

• 1:51:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  For a moment, I wondered if there was a real, actual tiger in the basement of the prison, but that was short-lived. When they walked me into the cell, I burst out with laughter. It was so surreal. Within the cell room, they did indeed have a real cage. It looked like a very large dog kennel. They could not understand what was so funny and finding my humor and the absurdity of the situation did not endear me to the prison guards. It was so odd to see this misplaced, misplaced tiger cage within the walls, a cell within a cell. The cage had a steel, had steel bars as big as my thumb and a low clearance, so I couldn't stand upright. My only two options were to sit or lie down on hard steel. They tossed me in and my week started. I didn't hate solitary confinement, not completely. It was cold, dirty, dark.

• 1:52:29Jocko Willink?

  It smelled and the only light in the room was always flickering or completely dark. I only had a tiny blanket and a wooden slap for a bed, but at least I didn't have to deal with other prisoners or guards for that matter. I spent only a few cold and uncomfortable days in solitary confinement before the prison guards came in. I thought they would surprise and supr- I thought they would just send me back to my cell. To my surprise, instead, they say, "We're putting you on a transport." That gave me pause. Where am I going? Russia, maybe? We don't know.

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that was, I remember, that was very stressful for me because that was, we knew that there were ready transports to go to Soviet Union to kind of isolate us, the political opponents of socialism. But, uh, and that was a real fear. And you will see in the end of my book, it was not only me, but other activists actually were talking about it. The Andru Krasowski, uh, who is, who is, I have his excerpt from his defense against socialist regime, uh, the court defense. He talks about it, actually, they were publishing that there are such transports already and could happen. They'd be going to Poland, from Poland to Soviet Union. So I was scared, yeah.

• 1:53:42Jocko Willink?

  So what's the next prison you get sent to?

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  Uh, Krubezhov, on the Russian border. So I actually, I, from my cell, I could see the, the, the Russian side of the, across the river, uh, there was Krubezhov, uh... Prison, yeah, that's where I ended up on Russian border. Well, not quite in Russia, at least.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  You say it was classified as one of the harshest prisons in Poland.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:54:05Jocko Willink?

  Prisoners were separated by blocks with common criminals being in different location from the political prisoners. Prisoners also had more opportunity to interact with like-minded prisoners. It became very educational environment as we were sitting in prison with many intellectual members of Polish society. Doctors, professors, physicists, economists and engineers as well as other hard-working Polish patriots. Patriots. We all shared the same disdain for communism and socialism. One of the routines was to open the windows at 8pm and the entire prison sang patriotic Polish songs that the state hated. Every night, entire prison blocks joined together in singing songs about freedom and independence. These songs carried into the small town and beyond.

• 1:54:47Jocko Willink?

  The local Polish population liked to hear this patriotic resistance. The guards tried to squash it, dragging prisoners away from the windows, but we persisted as there were not enough guards to stop all of us and our determination was strong. In a cold, lonely place like that, morale was vital for our collective survival.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Yes, I know, this is something that, uh, when we opened the windows and hundreds of people start singing the same song. It was echoing in the small town where, you know, where people were living. And that was, they couldn't do anything about, there was not enough guards. So there was not like you just stay there and sing. When they came to the cell with the nightsticks and all that stuff, we're holding the bars. So now it's like, hey, can you move away from the windows? Like, fuck no. So we just stayed there and they had to drag us out. So it took a crew of people to drag each one of us. And then they have to move to another cell and another cell.

• 1:55:48Speaker 01

  So as soon as they leave our cell, we just go back up there and keep singing. So that was really unnerving for socialist regime.

• 1:55:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:58Jocko Willink?

  That sounds like a powerful thing to witness.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  It was.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  August 13th, 1982. We started a hunger strike for the recognition of our status as political prisoners. The regime had been hiding and denying for decades that they held political prisoners. The last thing they wanted to do is admit that the socialist state was holding political prisoners, especially at such a volatile time in Polish history. Instead, their propaganda was to show us all as criminals who committed common crimes. After a certain point in our hunger strike, once we'd wasted away a bit, the guards started to force-feed us per prison regulations. They would drag us into separate rooms in the medical unit and tell us we had a choice. They could either shove a pipe down our throats and force-feed us, or we could eat and swallow on our own.

• 1:56:47Jocko Willink?

  Either way, we had to eat. Most of us stuck to our guns and said, "No, that isn't what they wanted to hear." The feeding procedure was to bring the prisoner in, strap them to a wooden chair, and shove a corrugated feeding tube down the throat. It looked more like a vacuum tube than a feeding tube. It seemed way too big to be a medical feeding device. They would push the pipe down your throat and deep into your stomach. Using a funnel, they would dip a large jar into a deep vat of yellow sludge that was then poured through the funnel into the tube. Yeah. At first, they tried to do it to us in groups, but when enough people resisted, they started doing it one by one. This was a strategic move on their part.

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  It was easier to talk someone one-on-one and reassure them that no one else will know, lulling them into a false sense of security. Their method was to convince a prisoner to take the cup for sludge and drink it himself, instead of having them have to shove a thick pipe down the prisoner's stomach and having that sludge poured through a funnel. But it was a trap. The moment after someone took the cup and drank from it, they were immediately informed that the taking a sip on their own meant the hunger strike was over, and they were separated from the striking population, eventually removed and sent to another prison.

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Yep, that was the technique, especially in the older people who, you know, there was, this is something so amazing to me still. I was young, so I could put up with a lot of pain and stuff, but those are older people, like, you know, your fathers, your grandfathers. And they sit up there and they say, "No, I'm not going to eat because you are evil regime and this is the only means of resistance I have, not to eat, so I will not eat." So they, and they, many of them stuck by it, but you know, this is like older people. We're talking forty, fifty, sixty, well, I'm sixty, but they, you know, like... You're a tough sixty, you're a different kind of sixty. But so, but so these guys were, uh, were tormented.

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  Some of them were sick with medical, uh, uh, problems, like Edward Kijorski, one of my friends, cellmates from our lots. We, we, we were in the, the, the intermediate prison together. So they, they, they used that, they say, "Look, we just, if you, we don't tell nobody, but if you just go and drink, we don't have to hassle, you know, it's still the same thing." So we just, we said of me, we, for us, put the tube in your neck. You just drink it and just go to your cell. But that was, yeah, that was a trick, because as soon as you take it, you take a few sips, there was a, the cup was flying off your hands, they slap it off and handcuff you back again and, and march you to different cell.

• 1:59:35Speaker 01

  And you either stay separated from that, uh, striking from us, striking population, or you are sent to another prison, because you were not on strike anymore and they, they didn't want you to be on the strike. So that was the technique, but these guys, these older people, you know, and they, they had so much, enough of the socialism, that they were ready to die even, you know, being, or suffocated, but, but they will not give in to, to socialist regime. So it is, for me, it was inspiring to see these old people. For me, I was twenty-one, for me, sixty years old, was like old, old, you know, it was like my grandfather. So these grandfathers, these fathers, with their children outside and families outside,

• 2:00:18Speaker 01

  were risking their lives to free Poland from cultures of socialism, yeah. How, how, uh...

• 2:00:27Jocko Willink?

  How many days did you go before they'd force-feed you?

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  I think a couple of weeks, if I remember. There was just, there was a time that they, that they had to step in. There's a prison regulations. They will, if you refuse to take meal, they will force-feed you. But we found out a better way too, because instead of doing it, and we did it too, instead of just doing it constantly until, you know, you die, you do it just two days a week, or once a week, or once a month. Eventually, and I were describing the book, those more prominent political prisoners, like Binkowski, like Andrew Krasowski, Kijorski, and other people, they came out with the regulations. And I described the fight for to change that prison regulations.

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  So they, they just, they create like our own code of conduct. I would say code of conduct of political prisoner. And most of us, if not all of us, were adhering to it. So if you get beat up, there was four days hunger strike. If you were put in the isolation cell, there was another strike. So whatever they did, we had always tools to respond and to counteract that socialist regime actions. So that was, for me, that was inspiring, seeing these old people not giving up

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  and say, "I'm going to, I want to make sure that Poland will become free."

• 2:02:04Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "My mother came to visit. The first thing she said that she was very proud of me." "Of course you are," replied, "for what?" She then showed me a letter she'd received from the prison warden that said I was disobeying rules and generally being a problematic prisoner for them. Their expectation was that my mom would come and visit and persuade me to change my ways. But my mother grinned as she read the letter. She was fussing over my skinniness a moment later. I wasn't the same young man she'd been only two months before, two months before prior to her hunger strike. I was thin and looked like I'd barely slept because I hadn't. The mental toll of being in prison was nothing compared to the physical toll, and I was feeling both. My mother, despite her pride in me, was afraid for me and our family.

• 2:02:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't know this is, I have this letter here. I have this letter in the States here. I have it. Actually, I found it. I found it by accident. I showed it to my wife. I need to find it because we just say, okay, I need to put in the place where I will remember what it is. And this is where I always lose things. I just put like, I need to remember. So it is there. It is here. And I'm going to publish it on my website. I will send it to you, the copy when I find it. I need to search for it. That was so funny, you know?

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  Problematic. Your son is really problematic prisoner.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  Just overall.

• 2:03:21Speaker 01

  Your son's behavior is highly inappropriate, inappropriate, inappropriate.

• 2:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Inappropriate.

• 2:03:28Speaker 01

  Inappropriate, yeah. So, and he put it, so they, they can coerce her, coerce her. They want him to come and persuade me to behave. So my mom was like, she used it just to see me. So I say, yeah, okay, I will come up there. I will talk to him. She talked to me, say, keep going. Don't stop.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Uh, fast forward a little bit. The communist regime in Poland following, following another visit from Pope John Paul the Second, announced amnesty for prisoners, including political prisoners like myself. In Poland at the time, people were always tried to dress decently, even if they were poor. When I left prison in the spring of 1983, I was smothered in my old winter clothes, which hung off my starved frame like a costume. And for all the production behind my arrest imprisonment, in the end, the guards just basically kicked me out the front gate and said, off you go. That was it. Besides giving me my old clothes back, they also gave me just enough money for a train ticket home, but I had to walk all the way to the train station in my old winter

• 2:04:27Jocko Willink?

  clothes and heavy boots. Some passerby's pointed to me and whistling and whispered, laughing behind my back, calling me a bum. I was freed from prison, but not a free man, not yet. Yep.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  So in Poland, as a custom, people always want to look nice. When I was growing up, so even if you go take a trash out, you know, just kind of like a common trash cans with apartments, you just go and throw it in your trash. You always dress up just to look nice, not to look like a bomb. And, you know, we often look like a bomb bombs, not because we dress up like this, because this is all we had to wear. But that was different. There was just, people knew that you just, when you step outside, you look your best. And so, so me walking now from prison, this big coat, heavy coat, you know, the winter boots, heavy boots, you know, the, the,

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  I look like a hobo, like a bomb. And people were like, eh, look at that guy. You know, so it's kind of odd, but yeah, I'm at home, so that's important.

• 2:05:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, that's definitely important. You, you say by 1983, that people were so tired of hunger, terror, and years of fear, they endured under the socialist state that they were ready to hang communists from their lantern post if they could have gotten their hands on them.

• 2:05:47Speaker 01

  Yes, that was, you know, and this is something where we need to be very careful. Uh, we need to understand this process that happened in Poland. Uh, because, uh, Poland, Poland just could not stand anymore the socialist state and the communist party apparatchiks. So they were ready actually for violence. And, and they were creating these groups, where you mentioned earlier, they were, they were creating, uh, many of these groups were created by the security, uh, secret police, the state security police. And they were just like, you know what, they were, they were the most, seems like those agents and informants, they are the most patriotic poles, seems like. They were just trying, okay, so we need to make the oath to this cause here.

• 2:06:32Speaker 01

  Let's get together and let's make a secret, uh, meeting. Let's make it so we, we, we just, we don't do violence, but we will be prepared for this, prepared for that. And this is they were getting these people to join in. They were taking these different oaths and different things while these agents are writing things down. So if you, and, and this is something that eventually they could use these groups, they wanted to use. They, they, they didn't have a time to do it because the communist file. But they would use these groups to instigate violence. And then, let's say, the, the, the danger was that one of these guys, that, that, the agent or informant will do something to provoke things or something provocative.

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  And then they would have a reason to just arrest entire group. And they were doing that too. Uh, there were priests who were being, trying to be framed. There were priests, they, uh, there were activists that were being framed like this. And they all went to jail because the, the, one of the informants did something that, uh, allows state security police to arrest entire group. So.

• 2:07:37Speaker 02

  Would, would they use that in the propaganda as well?

• 2:07:40Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:07:41Speaker 02

  Be able to kind of scapegoat them that way?

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  Yes, they did. Uh, uh, and, uh, but it, it accumulated in the murder one of the priests. Uh, uh, the father Popilusko, Popiuusko, there's Popoljus, Pope Popiuusko. Father Popiuusko. So state security police tried everything. They tried to say, he's a gun, gun runner. He runs the guns. Or then he's the pedophile. Then he is this. Nothing stuck. This guy was very patriotic. He was very, as preaching freedom, preaching, don't live on your knees. And eventually they got tired of it. They kidnapped him. They murdered him. And, uh, and the, the, the eventually, and think this. So if you, if you are, uh, and this is the, the lesson to, to oppressors.

• 2:08:26Speaker 01

  Eventually, your time will come. Because today, they are prosecuting these people. These people, these cops, when Poland became free, the security police went to prison. These, these agents went to prison. They, uh, they prosecute, actually, they are, actually, uh, uh, they call it extrajudicial murders. When judges were sentencing patriotic poles or fake, uh, uh, uh, evidence, uh, or just, just sentencing them to death, they call it murders, judicial murders. And they, uh... Not extra, they are judicial murderers.

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  No, yeah.

• 2:09:02Speaker 01

  So these judges are being today prosecuted. Matter of fact, I was contacted recently, maybe a couple of months ago, by one of the prosecutor in my city trying to build a case against these oppressors today. Years, decades after it falls. So if you are an oppressor, if you are pervert, if you are the Marxist bandit, your time will come. You will be one day prosecuted in full by the law and you're gonna get yours. Nobody is immune and that's where the best would happen. That's the best example is Poland. I never thought it would happen, but they were prosecuting these murderers,

• 2:09:44Speaker 01

  those judges, those prosecutors and those police, secret police officers for what they did to Poland.

• 2:09:54Jocko Willink?

  Your time will come.

• 2:09:56Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:09:57Jocko Willink?

  Your time will come.

• 2:10:00Jocko Willink?

  After I was, going back to the book, after I was released from prison, I became hyper aware of the communist atrocities being committed and the miserable living conditions in Poland. You also had a priest that would do, that would, that would visit the prison while you were there.

• 2:10:18Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  And that was pretty moving to me.

• 2:10:20Speaker 01

  Yes, Father Pajurek, yes. This is something for me important. At that time, as a young person, you know, you don't really dwell much about your faith, about, you know, the philosophical things. But when, you know, when he starts coming and visiting us in prison and talking about freedom, talking about things that, about faith, it really changed me too. So that was like, for me was a very significant moment, time in my life where he had a big influence on me. Actually, I had the chance to meet him recently when I went to Poland for the reunion of former political prisoners in 2022.

• 2:11:02Jocko Willink?

  And the Pope had a huge influence too.

• 2:11:04Speaker 01

  Pope had a huge influence too, yes.

• 2:11:08Speaker 01

  He refused to come to Poland unless the socialist regime, the communists running socialist regime, release political prisoners. This is how I got out. So, among other political prisoners. Not, they didn't release everybody yet. There were still people kept in secret that nobody knew. There were some people that they deemed extremely dangerous. They didn't release. But they released most of political prisoners before John Paul II came to Poland, second time. What a great person. Now, the globalist and socialist elites try to smear his name and destroy his reputation now, today.

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Of course, that's what they do.

• 2:11:57Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "The communist regime believed that depravity and perversion, when thrown on society, make it easier to divide people and therefore control them."

• 2:12:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  Relative morality was key. For communism to succeed, your morality must be based on the ideology and the political agenda of those in power, not on God's laws. God gave faith and strength to the people, which made them dangerous to the regime.

• 2:12:23Speaker 01

  And in thinking independently and not thinking along necessarily party lines. Yes, that's true. The depravity, perversion, alcoholism, alcohol and vodka pushed on people, make them volatile, make them also, divide them. And then they can step in, they can broker the peace between this group and that group. But also, they use these people, they use these groups, mentally ill people, to wage the war on the nation and for control. So, people who normally you would have compassion for and mentally ill person, you would like to, you know, allow them to live in dignity,

• 2:13:08Speaker 01

  that was taken away from them. They were being used as a scapegoat often or as a bargaining chip, trying to destroy the Polish society and civility in Polish society. So, that was very common. And, you know, as...

• 2:13:25Speaker 01

  People do take sides, they have their own opinions. But if you keep presenting group of people as evil, or you present evil as the good thing, this is what you're supposed to emulate, and you know in your heart that this is just perversion, depravity, and evil. Then you already are rallied against these people. If you present mental illness as something that you have to, this is the normal, this is how it's supposed to be. You, of course, normal people will say, "No, it cannot be like that." And very often, they will lash against these mentally ill people who just did nothing to it.

• 2:14:09Speaker 01

  They are being bound, used by the socialist regime to control society, to divide us further. So that's how it works. This is how the perversion, the depravity of mental illness was used to further their agenda to dismantle family. The attacks on the faith and patriotism was a big thing. You know, if you are a patriot, there is no way you will go and join international club of the Communist Party or something. So they, you know, if they destroy the borders in Poland, if they destroy the family, faith, and the patriotism, the national identity, then you are such an easy target

• 2:14:52Speaker 01

  for to become the pan-national, international subject. And it is making, it works today. Because when I went to Poland, I had the chance to speak to one of the friends, a German, who, I refer to you, so German. Apparently, I offended him. He was not a German. He was the European Union citizen. Calling him German was the right extremist. It was the extremism, and it shouldn't be ever used. He was not a German. He made it very clear in very stern way to me that he was not a German, he was a citizen of European Union. Germany is just extremism now.

• 2:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's the goal. The goal is to break apart the family, remove faith in anything other than the state.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Then the state can control you.

• 2:15:47Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit. And this was interesting to me. Even though I'd been freed from prison, I was still considered an enemy of the state. It never escalated to the point that I faced prison time again, but it was a constant fear and it became impossible to live my life. Trying to live normally when you regularly looking over your shoulder, waiting for some state security police officer to jump out of the shadows or from around a corner, isn't life, it's torture. It lasted for only a few months and the autumn of 1983, I finally decided to visit the US Embassy in Warsaw and request political asylum and ask for help.

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  And it was such impossible thing for me to think that I could ever be allowed to leave Poland and come to live as a free man in America. You know, in America was always for me, this, this country where people are free, that they can live their lives the way they want to. There is government not telling them how you have to live your life. And, and, but it was such a distance, such an impossible to, to, to even imagine that I can ever come to America. And, and so, but when the things happened, the way you, what you just said, I said, what have, what have I, what have I to lose? I, I can go and ask, ask for help.

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  I didn't think they will be even allowed to, you know, to come to such a great country. And especially me being a criminal at the time. Oh, not criminals, not really criminal, but, but with the present time. And no, actually, those opposite happened. I finally, it was finally like a lot of warmth and yeah, we're gonna help you, we need to help you. So, uh, this is what we need you to do. I was guided through entire process and like very quickly I got a promise, the called promesa, promise for the, to have, uh, immigration or visa to the United States. And, uh, I was allowed to come to America, you know, that was. Yeah, there was something.

• 2:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Did you just go down there and knock on the door?

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Like?

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just went to your embassy and say, and this is what happened to me. You know, there were long lines already too, but if you were a political prisoner at the time, I think they look at you differently. So, yeah, I just waited in line, came to my, my time came in, I explained what happened to me, what is my real story and that's, and then here I am, you know, now in America.

• 2:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you said it took like a matter of months, within months.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, three, four months, yeah, three months, I think, I was, had this promise. Usually it took a long time and to get immigration visa, it would be a longer time than that. But because it was emergency, then like they understood the urgency of it. And I was allowed to come to America very quick. It was actually funny because I could talk about it for, for days. Because like, no, I was always called. So I wouldn't dare to ask, I would just want to come to America. But they even asked me where I want to leave. I was like, they must be crazy. So I say like, anywhere where it's hot, you know, I just don't want to be called. It was like, Memphis, Tennessee, I was like, I don't know what it is, is it hot up there?

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, it's hot. Take me in.

• 2:19:06Jocko Willink?

  That's good enough. That's good enough. Um, you say this, when I was, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit again, you, you go through some of that details of that process of getting out of there. Finally, you get on a plane. West Germany was the first stop on my journey to freedom. In Germany, I learned a lot about the American citizens and Polish expatriates living there who worked for the US State Department and who were assisting me with other, me and other Polish political refugees in the transition to our new life in America. They taught me and others fleeing from various oppressive communist terror states, what America is like, the customs, so, social morass, and how to be successful being good American citizens. It was a lot to learn and even then, it barely scratched the surface.

• 2:19:51Jocko Willink?

  This is when I made a promise to myself that I would be the best citizen that America could have. It was my pledge to America, the greatest country in the world, the land of the brave and the free.

• 2:20:04Speaker 01

  Yes, that's, you know, this is something that is still with me today, very, very, uh, very live, you know. It's, uh, I was never asked, whoa, whoa, what can we get out of you? I was only asked to, when you come to America, we ask you to respect our citizens, respect our laws, and respect our flag and our country. And leave, go and leave, leave in peace. That was it. It's like, and there was so like, well, so they just don't want anything from me. No, they, we just want you to come and leave as a human being, and hopefully you learn about America enough.

• 2:20:46Speaker 01

  You can become US citizen even, and you can vote, you can actually be part of this, this setting the direction for the country. I was like, that was just, that was like science fiction to me at the time, and that's what happened.

• 2:21:03Jocko Willink?

  On March 21st, 1984, I landed safely, albeit exhausted in America with the equivalent of 10 cents.

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  10 phoenix, yeah, 10 phoenix, those German, 10 phoenixes, I don't know, like maybe 5 cents actually, but it's like 10 cents.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  I was picked up from the airport by a church family who'd volunteered to host me while an apartment was being set up. That part didn't take long at all. When the days of my arrival, I was brought to my new apartment near the projects in downtown Memphis, I was completely stunned. It wasn't the nicest place, but it was mine. And most importantly, it was America. For me, it was the most beautiful place on earth. The fact that I had suddenly had an air conditioning unit, central heating, and refrigerator was mind blowing to me.

• 2:21:43Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, you know, it's like in Poland, I remember when I was growing up in Poland, sometimes watching American movies, you can see these boxes in the windows, and I was like. Why, it is such a simple idea to put the just box. So when my mom puts the, when my mom puts the milk outside, because this in Poland was cold. So we keep the food on the ledge of the window, like third floor, fourth floor. So sometimes this thing fell off. So, so say, what is such a simple idea? Those awesome boxes, mom, why don't we build the box like, have like America here in our home? Well, I didn't know there were air conditioners. I thought they were just boxes when you keep the milk and meat and the stuff that needs to be cold outside.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  So I learned that. But yeah, there was such a, you know, like, I, I, I still remember that time when I came in like, like, there's nobody telling me what to do. I can ask, they will tell me, but is nobody waiting to put me in prison? I can say whatever I want to say without, of course, not offending other people and, and be free man. You know, there was such a, I really felt free. And this is something that even today is touches me, you know? That I still can come back to those feelings where I was really feel for the first time. There is not the government here to torment me or, or, or, you know, or put me in prison. So I still remember.

• 2:23:13Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take you to feel like that? Was it like instantaneous? Were you just?

• 2:23:18Speaker 01

  The first, when I landed, it was the first time that it's like, they can't get me now. But then when I started living on my own, you know, I was a janitor.

• 2:23:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that was your first job you got as a janitor?

• 2:23:29Speaker 01

  I was a janitor, yeah. So I was cleaning the toilets, mopping the floors and this was down on me. I can pay for my shit. I can pay for my apartment. I can, but you know what? This is, this is not all the story because, you know, I wouldn't make, that was be maybe so easy for me. I had American people coming and helping me basically. This is how you need to do this. This is how you need to do this. Do you need the clothes? My clothes weren't out, you know, I was making barely money as well as I was part time janitor. So just enough to pay my apartment, my food, but like clothes and stuff, which American was bringing me. People I didn't know from Adam, they just feel that, you know what? He is in need, so we're gonna help him.

• 2:24:11Speaker 01

  And this is something that people here don't think about. They don't realize it, even it's so transparent to Americans. A goodness, being good to other people and helping other people. And sometimes I say, why you are helping this person and they, well, that's where we are. You know, this is the way America is. You can help, you help. And what's wrong with that? I said, like, no, nothing. You just, you don't even think what you are doing. You're just doing because this is the way you were brought up as an American. Helping people, helping other people. And if you succeed, you help other people succeed.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  And this is, and this is, well, but this is so, this is normal. This is how we are. Well, that's how we are, but this is normal. But this is not normal anywhere around the world. So this is different.

• 2:25:06Jocko Willink?

  I know a family of refugees from, uh, from Vietnam. And they came to America. Someone paid for them to come to America. They paid for this family to have like a small house. They paid for like food for them to get started.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  Same thing.

• 2:25:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So they paid for all this stuff. And the family ended up, the, the sons ended up doing very well. They're like super wealthy now. They, they still don't know who the people are that sponsored them.

• 2:25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:38Jocko Willink?

  They don't even know. It's just, someone just gave them a, a, a ride to freedom.

• 2:25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:44Jocko Willink?

  And then a, a head start in America. And the people that did that never have stepped up and said, hey, you're welcome. Or, hey, how about some payback? Nothing. They just did it out of the goodness of their hearts.

• 2:25:56Speaker 01

  Something that American people don't see because it's transparent to them. They are brought up like this. This is just, this is the way we are. But for us immigrants, it is different. It's like, holy shit, this is the entire nation is is is so different. It's built on goodness, personal freedom, and it's being cherished. And this is something that that it it touches me. Every time I think about it, is is that the the nature of America and the character of of America, which is like, people don't think about it because this is the way we are, you know, it's like, what what are you talking about, you know? But yeah, there is a lot to talk about.

• 2:26:39Jocko Willink?

  You write in here about the first time you went to a mall. What was that like? You must have been blown away.

• 2:26:45Speaker 01

  Well, before I went to the mall, I went to downtown because in Poland, there was never malls, right? There was just like, if you go, when I go see like nice tape recorders or like I was, I was in electronics center, see like, have a nice tape recorder, have a maybe some nice radio. So in Poland, you want to go see, you go to downtown and there's like, we walk on the street and you see it, uh, because the climate is so mild that uh, there's no reason to go inside, you outside. So I will, I decided myself to go check it out myself. I was encouraged by the people who took care of me first time, the the older couple, to explore America. So I decide go downtown. Well, I see those big buildings in the far away. I couldn't judge the distance that far. I never seen that thing that far. So

• 2:27:30Speaker 01

  I said like, I just walk up there. So I put my flip flops on and flip flop, flip flop, just going to jumping to over the interstates. Because like, I came to the stop, it's like there is no, how do I go? Well, in Poland, you just cross the street. So I didn't know what the interstates were. So I cross the interstate, jump over the fence, climb the bank, you know, keep walking. And to go downtown, took me like a few hours. I came in there, it's like nothing there. So there's like big offices, you can see nice dressed people during the lunchtime, you know, going to eat something, a bunch of restaurants. But like, nothing to look at, just the office buildings. So then I was stretching my way back and again, so every so often,

• 2:28:13Speaker 01

  some Americans stop, do you need help? Do you need a ride? I was like, no, thank you. I I didn't, I couldn't hardly say what they want. I could tell what they want because my, I didn't speak English. But I cannot figure out they won't give me a ride or something. I say, no, no, no. Thank you and keep walking back, but you know, there are blisters all over my feet. I say, I will never do it again, definitely not in the flip flops. And then I was told about my escapade, this older couple, so they took me to the mall and say, this is where you go. Holy shit, I haven't seen my life, things like that. That was like everything there, you know? And these people are nice dress, you know, they're walking around and like nobody's chasing them.

• 2:28:56Speaker 01

  They don't try to just run into store and grab something like I was used to. You see something good, you just go and grab it. So I was like, wow, this is so great, you know? So then I was always like, where do you want to go? I said, I want to go to the mall. So I was like, I became like the permanent mall fixture, I think in Memphis for a while, because I just couldn't have enough of it.

• 2:29:19Jocko Willink?

  So you eventually get a job, uh, in a, in a car shop, a car dealership?

• 2:29:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:29:25Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're, you're, uh, pulling parts basically that they need.

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Oakley Kisi Ford, that was.

• 2:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay, there. And, and as you're doing that, your English isn't great, so you're kind of messing up some of your parts at your phone eventually.

• 2:29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So basically, the dealership, the Oakley Kisi Ford, didn't want to fire me because I was working so hard and they knew in my challenges, my English, but they liked me. So they, the opportunity, opportunities show up and another dealership to be a mechanic, either for Porsche, Audi on sub. So they say, you know, like, would you, what do you think about, do you know anything about foreign cars? Do you, uh, do you know the European cars? I was like, yeah, I, I didn't, but you know, I, I didn't even know anybody, none of my friends even owned a car and I never owned a car for sure. And then my father only did, but he was never with us. I never seen that car, so.

• 2:30:23Jocko Willink?

  But you're European, so you must know about European cars.

• 2:30:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I came from Europe, so you know, about European cars, like, yeah. And, uh, and I just wanted to, uh, you know.

• 2:30:35Speaker 01

  Progress, I wanted to another opportunity. And I knew that I was not doing that great here. I was trying very hard, but just my ability was not quite there. But you know, banging with the tools and hammer, I can do that all day long. And so I say, yes, yes. And we went to, so they drove me to the dealership. And those three, two mechanics show up first for Porsche, then for Audi. But they both look at me and it's like, you know what? The guy really don't speak English very well. And I need somebody who actually can get up to speed on these cars. They were very expensive cars to do something. So, uh, no, no, thank you. And so they say, okay, well, let's wait for the last one, the sub mechanic.

• 2:31:17Speaker 01

  And here it is, the rumble of Harley Davidson. And the whole dealership shook. So the guy just pulled in. I wouldn't know, I could hear him, but I wouldn't see him yet because we are in the office. And then the six foot something Sasquatch shows up. Fucking like yeti, a big guy. It's like, he just looked at me, he said, that guy? It's like, yeah. He said to me, do you want to be sub mechanic? I was like, yeah. He's like, okay, I need a slave, so I take him as my slave. Go work for me. And I got hired, I got a job. And this guy, you know, they were afraid of him there often.

• 2:32:02Speaker 01

  They call him motorcycle gangster. He took me under his wings. Everything I knew and know about cars, even today, I learned from him. And he, that he basically allowed me to, to move on the next level in American society. I became mechanic and he made sure that I am damn good mechanic. And he, I remember, for me, it was still very challenging. I had to read manuals. I had to connect the words that I read with the parts that I'm fixing and working on. So I figured out the easiest way will be to let him go and read the text for me.

• 2:32:46Speaker 01

  So we were the friends, said Jim, if you could, I would like you to read this manual for me loud. I will record it so then at home I can repeat and read it over and over. I thought the fastest looking like what the fuck is he asking me for it's like I thought he will kill me but he says like you know what I help you but if you tell someone that was your bitch and reading you books I'm going to fucking kill you I was like I'm never telling about it and I think he doesn't mind now I can tell but but at the time yeah he was the he was the the biggest baddest guy I think I met till till in my life so

• 2:33:27Speaker 01

  he told me everything I know he knows about cars he made me good mechanic and he but when he read he was not good at the reading and I know his resistance now understand why he didn't he didn't want to read but he did he struggled through it as much I think as I do I think I could do I read as much as he could but he did it and then at home later on every night I was listening to the table recorder and was following in the text and then the figures the drawings and it really helped me helped me really become the good mechanic and I owe him so much so Jimbo if you listen to this my respect to you and my gratitude thank you for everything you made me better American thank you brother.

• 2:34:13Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:34:15Speaker 01

  James Moore.

• 2:34:17Jocko Willink?

  James Moore. So you end up with that job you end up getting a job then with Mercedes times going by you went on a date with some girl and she had just been skydiving.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know like I never thought even this possible it never crossed my mind but here I met the girl and she jumps so now I feel like a pussy next to her it's like what the hell so we talk about and say why don't you try and it's like the I think there was one of the times like unlocking moments that yeah nothing is stopping me why wouldn't I try.

• 2:34:50Jocko Willink?

  This is America.

• 2:34:51Speaker 01

  This is America you can do whatever you want to do of course within the limits of the law of being the good citizen but fuck yeah so I called the drop zone I say hey can I jump yeah. I'll be right there. And I just drove myself there. And I was ready, they will put parachute on me, but I say, well, that doesn't work like this. You can do today, you can do the tandem jump. So then if you like it, then you know, you can ask, you can, we can schedule the classes. And usually take couple of weeks. That you know, you go to class, make a jump, another class, make a jump. And within maybe two weeks, you will be skydiving on your own, like as you want. So I made the first tandem jump and said, fuck, I need to do it again. So win bug again.

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  And then I just ran out of money for the weekend. So I said, like, I, I want to start skydiving. And they say, okay, um, when can I start? Uh, we can start on Thursday, so we make a Thursday jump. Then maybe you can buy one on the weekend, then maybe another Wednesday, maybe another weekend, the seven jumps. Because AFF and you're good. Then you can start jumping on your own. Oh, fuck, I started on Thursday, I was Saturday, I was jumping on my own. We just went through all these jumps. I was just nagging, begging them, say, hey, don't leave, don't leave yet. One more jump, one more jump. So the instructors, Tommy Kinder, rest in peace, brother. And, and Wolfman, uh, Robert Collins.

• 2:36:19Speaker 01

  There was one, then Reggie, uh, and Sarah, that were my instructors. Actually Reggie took me first on the, on the first skydiving. This is the guy who hooked me up with skydiving. And they were there all the way through my, uh, progression until I graduated from the AFF course, when I became the, uh, the seven skydives on the Friday. And Saturday I was jumping on my own, actually a barrel parachute. Uh, just rented parachute and I was jumping on my own. And they, and I was always screaming like, Geronimo, because they told me to scream like this. So I was bombing out of the airplane, uh, on my, on my own after I'm eight, nine, ten jump, Geronimo. And also with my name too, uh, my name is Geron.

• 2:37:02Speaker 01

  So it's like there was like two or three Thomases at the drop zone. So I said, enough, I will carry you Geronimo. That'll be easier for us, you know, we don't have to worry about that, your funny name. So I became Geronimo.

• 2:37:15Jocko Willink?

  So you're learning that, you're learning free fall. You also at this time are studying to become an American citizen.

• 2:37:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:37:25Jocko Willink?

  And you memorize all that information, you learn the American history.

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  Yes, because there was exam later, yeah.

• 2:37:34Jocko Willink?

  And as you're doing that, the war kicks off, the first Gulf War kicks off. You become a citizen of America, May of 1991.

• 2:37:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Now the war's going, or it looks like it's gonna go off, and you decide you're gonna

• 2:37:51Speaker 01

  Support my country.

• 2:37:52Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna go fight.

• 2:37:53Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:37:54Jocko Willink?

  You're an able-bodied American.

• 2:37:55Speaker 01

  That was, I'm American. This is my country in war and need, so I will support my country. I will fight war for America. And this is when I decided to join military. I never intended to spend, you know, to do career out of it. I just, I just wanted to fight war on behalf of America because America was at war. So that was, I had to do that. And I didn't know how to go about it. So I went to post office and I found there that thing that says, what do, what do?

• 2:38:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you say in the book, in the post office, I had found a selective service registration card for the draft.

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:36Jocko Willink?

  I proudly filled it out, sent it off, and went home to pack my stuff.

• 2:38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:41Jocko Willink?

  I was expecting to get a call from the military anytime. America was at war and I was ready to serve.

• 2:38:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So they, so the guys came in and said, what are you doing, Drago? That was Geronimo at the time. So what are you doing, Geronimo? I said, like, I'm going to war. So I'm packing this. I don't know what to do with the parachutes, but you can just get the care of it for a while. And I'm, I'm ready. So when are you leaving? I was like, anytime. Because I didn't know it. So, so they, they're like, okay. But then the response came in that I'm too old. That's just the, that's not the, that was just the registration. It is not the.

• 2:39:21Speaker 01

  You know, contract, the military contract.

• 2:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:39:23Speaker 01

  And I was like saddened, but I just figure out, well, there's some way I can support my country. I mean, it doesn't have to be maybe military, but I would like to do it because it's the easiest. I cannot build the jobs. I don't have resources to build more jobs for my fellow Americans. So I will fight for them. And I will, and they kind of guide me later, say, uh, well, this is what you need to do. You need to go to the pol- to the recruiting office and join it. And I had no distinction between army, navy, military. Uh, military was military to me. I was like, army, navy, I, I didn't know any difference. There, there, there is a difference. So I went to army office. I said, it's army. So I knew I'll go there. They sent me there.

• 2:40:07Speaker 01

  They fill the paperwork. They proceed the paperwork with all this background check and everything. Took a while. And, um, and in the meantime, when they already complete pretty much everything, that came in, that Navy SEALs came into Memphis, Tennessee. And they, uh, they, uh, we jumped together because.

• 2:40:26Jocko Willink?

  It's like the jump team, right?

• 2:40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a jump team. They're leap frogs, leap frogs. They were doing some demonstration in Memphis. So of course they stopped by our drums to make extra fun, fun jumps. And this is how I find out. They, they told them what I'm intend to do and they're like, well, why don't you go and ask the Navy, go join the Navy because ask them about Navy SEALs. I say, okay, I really didn't know what the Navy SEALs were at the time. I, I just knew there's some special forces. Stafford, it was not my goal to join special forces. I joined and I just wanted to be in military and fight the war because America was fighting a war. And then, so I went up to them and say, look, uh, I just met here guys at my drop zone.

• 2:41:07Speaker 01

  They told me to come to your office and switch my paperwork from basically not to join army where I'm working with now. Recruiter next door, just come to talk to you first. And who are these guys? I say, they call themselves SEALs.

• 2:41:22Jocko Willink?

  Ooh.

• 2:41:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so what do you want to do in the Navy? I want to be Navy SEAL, just like these guys.

• 2:41:31Speaker 01

  Okay, so then we start working on it. They told me to bring the paperwork. And I was kind of awkward for me to go to these guys I would build a relationship with, that army recruiters. And go there and say like, well, thank you, give me my paperwork, I'm going next door. But I did that, I didn't like it, but I did it. Didn't like it because I didn't feel comfortable, you know, like I feel obligated to these guys. And then, so I brought the paperwork stuff and that was pretty quick from then on. Because they, yeah, that was very quick.

• 2:42:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, you say in the book, the following Thursday, I was sworn into the US Navy Delayed Entry Program. That Saturday, I left for boot camp.

• 2:42:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, because, well, what happened is, they asked me, at least they were honest with me, that, they were nice with me, that provide me with the job. Because you can, at least in the Navy, as I'm designated, and then after boot camp, the Navy send you somewhere. But they knew that I'm way too old and my chance to join Navy SEALs was pretty much zero. So, so they say, well, at least we give him the guy a job. He's so excited to be part of the military. So, so they say, what job do you want to do? And I say, like, well, something with parachute, maybe, because I don't know what the jobs, Navy jobs are.

• 2:42:54Speaker 01

  But, yeah, parachute reger, I say, right on, sign me up. But then he's like, well, but you know what? They call me like next week, I say, you know, this is like, if you want to go to parachute reger, you have to leave now. Because this is the schedule as boot camp and then we need to schedule so from boot camp, you go to A school. If you don't go now, you have to wait another month or two to go to boot camp. And then, so the timeframe comes just right, so after boot camp, you go to A school. So I say, well, I don't want to wait that long, the war is on, so sign me up. So I call my girlfriend, I say, Deline?

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  We're getting married because I'm living for the Navy. It's like, what? It's like, we're going to the Navy. I'm going to the Navy, so we need to get married. And, uh, and, uh, and, uh, she kind of like was a little bit upset, but then she, she, she came in. Because I was in town, say, hi, we need to go and find the judge, get married, sign it up, and I'm leaving this weekend. So we went up there, we, we, we got, we find some judge who was actually leaving home. So say, well, can you, can you marry us? So he was a nice, super nice guy, who he talked to us and stuff, we filled out paperwork. We got married. I went to, uh, I think on Thursday, get sworn for the delay entry, delay entry program.

• 2:44:15Speaker 01

  And I think Saturday I will ship out to, Saturday or Monday, I think Saturday. I don't remember, I will ship out to boot camp. And it was it. So I was, I was in the Navy. I was happy. Damn, dude. And all I asked is just to go to war. I said, like, send me to war and then never intend to make career out of it. I just thought to make, uh, just go for fight the war. When the war is over, come back and resume my life, because it's a good life, you know? I was, I had everything in my life I, I could dream of.

• 2:44:45Speaker 01

  And then you ended up in Navy boot camp. There you go. Yeah. And this was something that, uh, was, for me, there was, the initial thing was pretty scary because they're yelling at me, you know, they shaved my head. Took my clothes away, give me some, you know, the, the military clothes. It was a big shock, but you know, the, for a second I was like, that's pretty scary. But then I said, this is, this is the path for me to fight for America. So I need to do that. And I, I stayed there. And I was good because I graduate as a number one recruit in this whole graduation, uh, cycle. So I will receive the Military Excellence Award, number one recruit.

• 2:45:27Speaker 01

  And was sent off to a school, the next to the parachute rigging school.

• 2:45:31Jocko Willink?

  And what was, you got a kidney stone during boot camp, right?

• 2:45:34Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:45:35Jocko Willink?

  And got laid up, almost got rolled back?

• 2:45:37Speaker 01

  Yes. So I didn't know what the kidney stone was. I never had one, never, you know, I was not that educated. I was laying in the bed and one night it just like the pain just kicked me right so, so badly in my back. That fell off that bunker from the first, second bunk on the floor. And it was like, you know, it was already dark because we were sleeping. And it's like kaboom. It was like, what happened? The lights went on. And by the time they, they say call the medic, because I couldn't speak, it was so painful. And, and, and I'm on my four and with, before the medics even came out, I had a big, that big puddle of sweat from pain. Under my nose. And this guy come in, are you okay? I was like, do I look okay to you? I was like, no. Okay. So they called me up to hospital.

• 2:46:22Speaker 01

  That was okay. You know, I pierced this thing up. When they told me I need to be moved to the class behind in my company, the one six nine, I think it was graduating. I was like, I was begging, it's like, no, please send me back. I'm good. I pierced this, this stone out. I have no problem. I can, I'm good. And they decided, actually they allowed me to come back. The funny thing was like inspiring for me. So when I walk into the group, because they announced to the company, to these recruits that I will be moved to the class behind. I was, I had a medical emergency and I'm not going to be continuing. And then I'm walking in. So they were like a lineup and I was walking there. Everybody was clapping and, you know.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  It was so inspirational to me, you know, these young kids, these young guys. And they, they liked it, you know, that I'm back in the, with the, in their company. So, uh, yeah. But they also almost, they, they rail my SEAL training because I didn't know at the time. But eventually I was going to, I passed the test. So I was going to medical checkup, medical for this, the SEALs. And I went maybe like two, three stations and the, the one that doctor looks at it say, well, I think your SEAL career is. Ends right here. It's like, well, yes, sir. And he say, you had a kidney stone. You have to wait, I think, a year, year or two years. I have this document still at home. So you have to wait a year and then you can reapply for SEAL training again.

• 2:47:50Speaker 01

  So midnight, but you can continue with your A school and just go assign the like the command somewhere. And so I was like.

• 2:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for you that would be.

• 2:48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:02Jocko Willink?

  That would be a game over, kind of.

• 2:48:03Speaker 01

  Game over because age.

• 2:48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:48:05Speaker 01

  I would already need a waiver. Like I was like going thirty two. So like four years over. And the, and then, you know, another year waiting and then more few years that that would never happen.

• 2:48:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, luckily you got hooked up. You you got this part in the book here. You say, while in Millington, this is where your your A school was, where you're learning about parachute rigging. I visited a Navy SEAL motivator on base. I asked him to take the initial SEAL entry test and I passed it. Then I told him my situation with the kidney stone. He thought for a minute and then told me to bring my medical record to his office. Sure, I ran to the clinic on base with the request, with his request for my medical record and was back within an hour. The record of my kidney stone was on the first page. The Navy SEAL motivator, Lester, told me to wait outside his office. I could hear a loud rip and I was called back into the office.

• 2:48:58Jocko Willink?

  He looked at me with concern and said that he was not able to find any record of my kidney stone anywhere. He asked me if I could point it out for him. As we trudged through my medical record, I could not find it either. Then, looking carefully at me, he asked me if I was sure that I ever had a kidney stone.

• 2:49:17Jocko Willink?

  At that point, I was already a hundred percent convinced that I hadn't.

• 2:49:21Speaker 01

  Yep, that's, that's, that's Barrios.

• 2:49:24Jocko Willink?

  So you got hooked up.

• 2:49:25Speaker 01

  Rest in peace, brother. That's, he's no longer with us. But he's the one who actually put me on the right track and put my career on track the way I, so I end up in the SEAL teams. But you know what, I want to make one point here that my biggest motivation was not to be a SEAL, was just to join the military, join US Navy and fight the war on behalf of America when America was at war. So, you know, if a SEAL's capacity, that would be great, but if not. It didn't really was that not that important for me what capacity I would be serving America. And so then, but it happened that Les Barrios, he knew what he was doing. He asked me to bring the paperwork.

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  He fixed it and I went to and I eventually, because I end up also with with the trade school, the A school as a PR, as on the top of my class. So I was doing well in the Navy and I think this is why I got these waivers eventually. So the only thing barring me from training was my age. And that was with Les Barrios recommendation and I was granted the waiver. Yeah.

• 2:50:33Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what the oldest person is to go through BUDs? Do you know?

• 2:50:36Speaker 01

  I think it was maybe four years older than I am, but there's like four or maybe like four older people than I was.

• 2:50:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was gonna, I think I've heard of someone being thirty four.

• 2:50:47Speaker 01

  There is now somebody who was older than that, but he didn't make it through.

• 2:50:54Speaker 01

  He made out of BUDs, but didn't make it to the training. He, he was, he didn't make through SKT.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:51:00Speaker 01

  But, but there was just very few people. I think, yeah, I didn't know at the time that, that I'm one of the oldest ever going to that. But kind of, you know.

• 2:51:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've heard, well, you, you just, it's hard to recover for guys that are older. Now, listen, you're a straight up mutant because you're sitting here right now. You're freaking sixty three years old. You look like you're about thirty eight years old at the most. So, yeah.

• 2:51:28Jocko Willink?

  So, but most guys, they can't recover fast enough when they're thirty three years old, when they're thirty two years old, even when they're thirty years old. And then, so it's really hard for guys that are quote, older to make it through. And it's also hard for guys that are young to make it through. I heard the other day a stat that guys that are underneath twenty. Have less than 5% of making it because when you're young, you don't quite have all your strength yet. And a lot of times the guys just aren't mentally mature enough to be able to gut through stuff. So I think the prime age is probably like 23, 24, or something like that.

• 2:52:04Speaker 01

  That's the most of the guys in my class, 21, 23, 24. Yeah, I was old. I mean, I didn't feel old amongst them because I could beat up many of them. But I was, I was, but you know, they took care of me. They knew I was kind of different. I was different a little bit. And I was like, I became like a mascot in the class, I guess. Even they're just making fun of me instructors too. But you know, they didn't find any buttons on me. So like to push on. So they move on yelling at other students. I got yelled at too, but not more than than average in the class. But when they pick somebody in the class who was like weak on something, who was like sensitive about something.

• 2:52:48Speaker 01

  They just keep pushing this button until, until this guy's quit.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:53Speaker 01

  Or, or, or, or stop being sensitive.

• 2:52:56Jocko Willink?

  Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. They can either become hard or they can quit.

• 2:52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. That never bothered me. I was learning. I went to prison time. I went to this stuff that actually helped me. Maybe mature me mentally enough that that never affected me. I never, never pay attention to that. They could yell at me all day long. I just wanted to do good job. I just wanted to be good.

• 2:53:16Jocko Willink?

  Now you say in the book that your biggest issue was that you weren't the strongest swimmer. And I was thinking about that when I read it. I was like, yeah, it wasn't like you were going down to the country club pool on the weekends in Poland or anything like that. You weren't taking shit trips down to the seashore to go swim. So you didn't have much water time growing up.

• 2:53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, not at all. I mean, there are the things. There was a stream, like a river, a little tiny river by my grandmother's place where once every year, year, once every while I was going there, but you know, I didn't know how to swim very well. So, and I tell you this, how naive I was. I will jump for a second to bars when I show up in bars. You know that get wet and sandy, run again. So. Many of us just run to the to the ocean. I see this guy just getting like a knee deep, like the ankle deep water. They roll in it and just come out rolling the sand. So I say, that's kind of stupid. I just, why not just, it's kind of like painful because it's cold.

• 2:54:13Speaker 01

  I just go and let the wave, big waves, roll over me. So I just dug, the wave rolls over me. And I get wet and then just rolling the sand and come back to instructors, to the class. Good God, I didn't know the powerful, the power of ocean. I thought I would drown. I thought my, my hands, my legs got ripped out of me. Eventually, the, the ocean spit me out and I was like totally exhausted. I say, what the fuck was this? And so I basically crawl out of that thing, rolling the sand and limp back to the. And I never, then I say, ah, those guys were smart. I need to follow them, do what they do. But yeah, I couldn't swim. So, um, I was, uh, and you know, we were trying to practice it like Jason Cabell.

• 2:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Jabel.

• 2:54:57Speaker 01

  Jabel, yes, yes. So we, when we met in the PR school, this is when we tried to help ourselves and prepare. But there's nothing can prepare you. I couldn't swim. Jabel couldn't swim, but less than I did.

• 2:55:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 2:55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, no, no. Oh, dude. I don't know how he, this guy made it to the sheer willpower. He just would not quit. But yeah, we didn't swim.

• 2:55:19Jocko Willink?

  Jabel's a determined dude. He's, he's a hard-headed, determined dude to make stuff happen, for sure.

• 2:55:24Speaker 01

  You know, often, this is when I had a hard times, we kind of became good friends and in, in the A school. So we went to baths very often. I just like rely on his opinion or his, what he, what he thinks, you know, what should I do? And he's the same thing. We're just asking, helping each other out. So Jabel was, uh.

• 2:55:42Jocko Willink?

  So you guys in baths class together?

• 2:55:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were in the baths class together too. So, so yeah, that was something that I think we. We are friends forever, so we are brothers forever. And then, you know, we met in combat too, in Iraq, so there was something. But I remember when I was learning how to, when I was trying to swim, when I first time came in, I'd never swim with the mask on my face. So when they told me to put the mask on and they told I swim the laps, when after the first two laps, I was already drowning because I couldn't breathe. I was breathing so much water in the lungs as air and I was like, we were seeing these black spots, you know, they're about to pass out. So I remember like, if I stand up, they would just kick me out. It's like, I can't swim.

• 2:56:26Speaker 01

  But if I don't, well, I would not drown, they would pull me out of water, resuscitate me. So I just swim, I said, I will swim until I pass out. And I did, and you know, I was getting easier and better and better. And eventually, in the end of it, when we finished with this phase, the next phase came in, I was chosen to demonstrate side stroke swim with these new guys. So I did well.

• 2:56:49Jocko Willink?

  So you figured it out? And I mean, you're used to, you've already been in freaking a communist prison camp. So once you got through the swimming, people are yelling and screaming at you, no big deal. And then the running, the O course, all that stuff, pretty much no factor for you?

• 2:57:06Speaker 01

  I was pretty good at it. I was not the top of the class, but I was never, I was never good until the third phase, when I start pissing blood. But otherwise, you know, I was always somewhere in the middle of the pack.

• 2:57:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:20Speaker 01

  And yeah, but it was taxing for me, you know, like guys were, after finishing, I was with amusement watching like these guys, hey, let's go drinking. I was like, fuck, I can't do that. I'm about to, I can hardly move, I cannot leave my hand. So, but I did manage to go drink with the guys, just not so often.

• 2:57:41Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever get rolled back?

• 2:57:42Speaker 01

  I got rolled back just in the beginning of it, right before the hell week, I got this MERSA. Infection, so my leg swore, I couldn't put my pants on. And I was, I was not smart about it. Instead of, I figure out, I don't go to the medical now. But what I will do, I just wait till Friday, so they will cut that shit out. And then I will have three days to heal, I'm good to go.

• 2:58:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:06Speaker 01

  Well, so I went to Balboa in, on Friday after we finished with our exercise, with our day. And they, they cleaned it up, they cut the shit out, and they sent me home. And I was like, okay, I'm good. By Monday morning, my leg is so swollen that for, to put my pants on, I had to actually cut my pants open. And I went to medical and they like, they were pissed. They, what happened is in Balboa, they did not irrigate that wound. So they just cut it out and just sent me home. And so, they, they fixed it. And my swelling went like within an hour down. So I said, can you put me back in the class? I say, no, because we are going into muds. And you have open wound, it will get reinfected, you can't.

• 2:58:52Speaker 01

  I was just like, no, please do it, I'm strong, I can do it.

• 2:58:55Jocko Willink?

  I'm strong.

• 2:58:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they say, okay, if you can run here, the, I think they told me to run a mile. Back and forth, and you come back on time, we will reconsider it. And I did, I did run. I was, it was painful, but they already cleaned it up, the swelling went down. So I did, I finished it up and say, can I go back? No, it's still open. So it was one, class one eight four, and it was before the Halloween. And so I started one eight five, and I finished one eight five.

• 2:59:27Jocko Willink?

  How was Halloween?

• 2:59:29Speaker 01

  Was it?

• 2:59:29Jocko Willink?

  How was Halloween?

• 2:59:30Speaker 01

  Uh, Halloween, you know, I, I don't remember as a bad thing. For me, it was like, we get in, I got kicking the balls, and we left, and I, and I was done. The, the more important, the more difficult for me was third phase. That was a real Halloween. That was Halloween for me, I was kicking my ass. This was when I started pissing blood. And that was like.

• 2:59:51Jocko Willink?

  What about, what about second phase? What about, how about pool comp? Since you didn't swim much growing up, you, how was, how was pool comp?

• 2:59:58Speaker 01

  By this time, I was swimming good. So, but, so you know, that's, that's nice about the Navy, and but, even, even if you try, and, and the instructors will help you, they make sure that you, you know the material, you know how to swim. And but it was kind of, I failed the first one, first pool comp, and the second one. I was so stressed out, when I felt I had to take the test next day, they were so stressed out that when I was driving home, I beat up two guys up there, fucking by my apartment. But that was, that was another story. But I passed it next time.

• 3:00:37Jocko Willink?

  You say something really interesting in the book, which I actually think a lot of guys would agree with, but I don't think I've ever heard anybody say it this way. You say Bud's training proved I was capable of a lot of things, but it also revealed a lot of ways in which I wasn't as strong as I thought. And I was thinking like, yeah, you get pushed to your limits where you can't do anything else. Like you get, you're gonna do exercises and do things to where you know, oh, there's a point where you can't just do anymore. Like there's a point where you can't climb a rope anymore. Like it doesn't

• 3:01:17Jocko Willink?

  matter how bad you want it. I always liked the example of climbing a rope because you can climb a rope to failure and you can't climb a rope anymore. Like you could get another grip and you slide down. There's, that would happen to some guys, they had on the O course. Like you know, they wanted to pass the O course, but they couldn't climb that rope to grab the rope transfer or the ring transfer. So there are things you, we as human beings, like everyone talks about how in Bud's you learn to push through anything, but you also learn there's some stuff you're not going to be able to push through and that's why you're going to need teammates.

• 3:01:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. Oh, exactly. It teaches you, and it taught me too, some of the stuff that I need to be aware of, that there are things that I need to rely on other people. And especially on the teamwork here, that teaches you that by yourself, by anything, yeah, you can be powerhouse, but you still need a teammate. You can't do it on your own. And it's not only through Bud's, but like the entire SEAL career, you learn to rely and you know that Bud's is teaching you where you need that push, that extra teammate to get you through the hump.

• 3:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Why was, why was third phase, which is land warfare, why did that kick your ass so bad?

• 3:02:33Speaker 01

  Well, first, because I think by this time, my body was a little bit exhausted too. I allow myself before going to San Clemente Island to be dehydrated. And I remember we came back from the rucksack march and I was pissing blood. Because I was so dehydrated and I was so tired, I guess. Besides, my kidneys, I guess, were not very strong because the beatings I got from the... That's how the guards were beating us in kidneys, where you basically have no marks. Not many marks. So that paid the cut at all, and I think from then on, I remember I was always... I was weaker. I was weaker than I normally would be.

• 3:03:13Speaker 01

  And so when we went to San Clemente Island, as you know, that you just... There's like a hell week, but on steroids. You don't sleep. You hardly sleep. You're always cold and wet. And everything is very physical, but on the top of it, you need to think. You are shooting live ammunition next to your teammate, next to your next student. You move, you do things that could potentially kill you. So you have to... You are tired, exhausted, but you still have to think. And you have to think quickly. And on the top of it, if you want to eat, you have to make those perfect 11 pull-ups in full gear. So like I say, I was weakening already.

• 3:03:56Speaker 01

  So sometimes I was able to make those pull-ups, but if you didn't, then you make those races. You go race back to the surf. And if you don't come back on time, assigned to you by instructor, you run again, you run again, you run again. And eventually, you end up eating outside. So that was December of the time. It was freaking cold. And most of the time, I ate outside. So that was kind of... Yeah. It was hard. It was hell week on steroids. That's what I call it.

• 3:04:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You also say this, "From the outside, this training seems absurd, and it is brutal, but everything that happens during SEAL training is taken from a carefully curated and calculated training guide that is updated and improved upon year after year." There are no random exercises and if it's not in the manual, it's not part of training. Unlike the popular belief that some exercises are just arbitrarily made up and crazy. In SEAL training, there is no randomness or haphazard foolishness. Everything goes by the book and manuals. The training is dangerous as it is, there's no need, there's, there's no place for craziness. There are many safety measures implemented to protect students. Most of it is invisible to trainees. They don't know about it and this was one of the ways to introduce stress on the students so they can be graded on how they perform during, during.

• 3:05:11Speaker 01

  Yes, that's what, there's a big mixed conception and I hear it all the time from people, from civilians. The SEAL training is just crazy. These instructors are coming up with some crazy shit and they will just drown you, they will assassinate you, there's like, you know what, but this is so stupid. People need to realize the training, the SEAL training is dangerous as it is, even the initial part, that selection course is very dangerous. So there is no time, there is no place for some craziness and, and, and wild things. Everything goes by manual, everything goes by the, the instructions. You cannot delete from it because if you do, you risk students' life, you, you risk these kids' lives.

• 3:05:55Speaker 01

  So I didn't know it when I was going through the training, I thought that's freaking crazy, this guy, that instructor, that thing, that is crazy, but it is not. Everything goes by the book, everything is already assigned and, and it's being approved, improved upon every class. So, so it's getting better and better.

• 3:06:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you get through that and you end up getting assigned to Team Two?

• 3:06:23Speaker 01

  SEAL Team Two.

• 3:06:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:06:25Speaker 01

  And so that was kind of got me too, because you know, when, when you check in, you, you, you're always under the pressure, stress to perform, to be the good, good student, good sailor. So when you check in the teams, that's what they tell us too, you remember, like get your best uniform you have, you present yourself in professional sailor's way and that's what I did, I just pressed my, spent all this weekend pressing my uniform, you know, make sure it's perfect, that's everything is shiny and, and cool. I show up on the quarter deck and. It's like, okay, they introduced me to a CO, a master chief.

• 3:07:08Speaker 01

  I went to the initial thing and then I say, you go to the back, to the back door up there and get your, go to, get your gear issue and all that stuff. So, well, I did that, but I didn't make it to the, the issue thing because the old seals caught me. And so, you know, I already knew there's going to be some harassment, so I was kind of prepared for it, but not for that.

• 3:07:30Jocko Willink?

  You say, as soon as I was out of sight of the CMC and walking through the compound, I was stopped by other seals told to jump on the pull-up bars and keep doing pull-ups until told to dismount from the pull-up bars. From there, things got fast and painful. After pull-ups, I was yelled at to lay down, do sit-ups and push-ups, and I was ushered out of the SEAL team through the back gate, march to the starting point of a three-mile run, testing route and told to complete the run in the required time. Mind you, I was still wearing my dress blues uniform and perfectly polished shoes. By the time the older seals finished with me, uh, my awesome uniform looked like sweats for playing basketball.

• 3:08:02Speaker 01

  Well, you can imagine now too, so, uh, so here it is on base, right? There's normal traffic that people go, but the hour where we ran those three miles round was along the road when people drive all the time, when they move. So can you imagine the dude with the white hat, you know, with the, with his wide, long pants and, and the shiny boots and stuff and, and, and the, the, the, the, the.

• 3:08:26Jocko Willink?

  The neckerchief.

• 3:08:27Speaker 01

  The neckerchief, the, the flap on the back flapping around and you run like crazy. So there's like, what happened to this guy? Did he just lose his mind or something? So, yeah, yeah, that was, that was my welcome to the teams. But I, I, I kind of expected there to be funny things.

• 3:08:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:44Speaker 01

  Happening to new guys.

• 3:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Here's another good one. One Friday, the older guys invited us FNGs to join them for a kegger. As a new guy, I was impressed. I thought that I thought there was genuine genuine interest in team building. We were all looking forward to the end of the day. Honestly, I remember thinking, oh, wow. These older experienced seals are inviting us to join them for beers. How awesome.

• 3:09:04Speaker 01

  Whoa, yeah. Team buildings, you know.

• 3:09:07Jocko Willink?

  We felt like the popular kids. It just invited us to sit with them at lunch. I quickly learned, however, that we weren't there to build camaraderie or hang out with the popular kids. We were there for the amusement of the veteran seals. This was them giving us an old school Navy welcome. The cool old guys jumped us and bound our feet with riggers tape. They hung us from the high base ceiling with cranes and chain lifts. Of course, there were more than a few punches thrown throughout to minimize our resistance to their welcome. We soon found ourselves hanging from the ceiling like big grumpy bats. Every once in a while, we were lowered down from the ceiling for a swig of beer or another beating, or to be laughed at when our faces changed another shade of red. We weren't back on our feet until the kegger was over.

• 3:09:47Jocko Willink?

  While this ritual might be considered hazing by outsiders, it was meant to be a kind of testing ground for the new guys. We had to prove we were tough enough to be trusted in any situation. Today, there are no longer kegger Fridays in the SEAL teams and no alcohol is allowed in the compound. Very strict policies regarding alcohol are now in place. The old welcome to the teams has been softened and put under control, so the new welcome procedures are not mistaken for hazing. There are very strict policies in place regarding any welcome events. But at that time, it was all good to go.

• 3:10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and I, I, I think there was, there was nothing wrong with that.

• 3:10:24Speaker 01

  They say that some people got hurt, but I think that mostly their feelings got hurt. But you know, if you have to have a thick skin in teams. So for me, kind of like, you know, I just roll with the punch. I say, this guy's not gonna kill me. At least I hope not, and it's going to be fine. So I put up with it and eventually, you know, they move on to somebody else. I mean, you do deployment, then you are dishing out this kind of hazing stuff. So there were funny things too, like when I was already, I wasn't the new guy in the morning. I was the. Season C O. So we had a new guys coming to C O team two and we did the spy rope exercises. You know, you just the the hero comes in, drop the rope, you hook yourself to the rope and then takes off with that.

• 3:11:07Speaker 01

  Five, six guys hanging, hanging on the rope. And so we just talked to the pilot, say, well, no one is just like, when you fly over this pound up there, why don't you just dip these guys in it? And so it's like mine is like December in Virginia Beach, it's damn cold and it was not for things, you know, it was not frozen yet. So, yeah, we just flew the hero, the hero came, there's new guys in it. Put out and then flew them around for a while, you know, freezing. So, so, you know, things like that happen, but again, it makes you harder. It's like nobody got hurt. Maybe a lot of feelings got hurt and I know these people who whose feelings got hurt. They no longer, they they didn't spend a lot of time in the C O teams.

• 3:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, uh, I always felt like the guys that didn't, as a matter of fact, when, when, when I was in platoons, like if, if you didn't like a guy, or if you really wanted to kick him out of the teams, then they wouldn't get hazed. They would just get like ostracized. So hazing was kind of like, or whatever you want to call it, I guess you can't call it hazing, but whatever this is called, hazing.

• 3:12:09Speaker 01

  Welcome to the teams.

• 3:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this, this, this, this stuff was kind of just for fun. I do know that there were sometimes, there was, there were some times where it got out of control.

• 3:12:17Speaker 01

  Excessive, yes.

• 3:12:18Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, yeah, that's over the line. And so the problem is, I think, instead of saying like, okay, here's, and look, it's, you can't be like, hey, here's the rules.

• 3:12:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is how you haze the guy.

• 3:12:29Jocko Willink?

  You can't do that, but you know, they could have put some kind of parameters on it. It was also good because, man, it was, it's humbling, right? Like you're new now, you're showing up. You, if you're a wise ass or you think you're, you think you're the greatest thing in the world. You, you don't think that when you get to the team and you see what's going on. Yeah, not for very long, for about seven minutes before you're getting, you're getting squared away. Uh, yeah, so I think it was a, a cultural thing.

• 3:12:58Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I mean, I know you've got in here that it there's official regulations again. It's that I don't know necessarily that it's that there's not clandestine welcomes going on.

• 3:13:11Jocko Willink?

  But, but yeah, you know, I think like anything, if it's taken to an extreme, then it gets dumb. But there was something really positive to it, too.

• 3:13:23Jocko Willink?

  You know, there was a thing, I watched this documentary about hockey and there's a, there's a player in hockey called the enforcer. And the enforcer literally just beats people up and he beats people up that do things that aren't okay in hockey. They're not illegal in hockey, but they're not okay. For instance, there's like a star player and someone would blindside hit the star player. The star player's out there. He's, he's a skilled guy. He's focused on scoring goals. And all of a sudden someone would blindside hit the star player, although the enforcer would come out and freaking beat the shit out of that guy. And so what happened was

• 3:14:06Jocko Willink?

  there's actually balance and people go, yeah, I don't want to do that because then I'll get the shit beat out of me by the enforcer. So there's what there is is respect. And so I think, you know, in the SEAL teams, there was respect because you want to get the shit beat out of you. And guess what first you do? First you listen, first you pay attention. So, you know, again, if it gets out of hand, obviously it can get stupid, but it was a good way of me when I was 19 years old, checking into a SEAL team, thinking I was a badass. A good way to be like, oh, I'm not a badass. I'm just a dude and I need to get on board with the program. Cool. Got it. Got it. So, you know, it's, it's humbling and it's good.

• 3:14:48Speaker 01

  Oh, this is the way I look at it too. It never, it never hurt me physically or mentally. It was just make me kind of like. I thought it was funny.

• 3:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:59Speaker 01

  Fun. But it was painful. I didn't laugh all the time, but, but, but, but it was kind of like accepted. It's no, that this is the way it is.

• 3:15:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:09Speaker 01

  And, and it doesn't make me weaker, doesn't make me, it makes me just better, tougher guy.

• 3:15:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm fine.

• 3:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a little camaraderie. You know, it's a little classic.

• 3:15:17Speaker 01

  Because after, after the beating, we still drink together.

• 3:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, let's go. Uh, so you end up, you go to SEAL tactical training, STT. This is back when we did it at the team.

• 3:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15:29Jocko Willink?

  Um, this was funny. You didn't have your freaking clearance yet.

• 3:15:32Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah. That, that was kind of like, I, I knew that you need this. It's something like a clearance, but apparently never, but nobody ever asked me about it. So I thought maybe this is something I misread, didn't understand well. So we went to entire STT course and the, and the phase when you do the radio communication and cryptography, when you learn how to encrypt messages, decrypt them and work with this secret equipment. So we went through entire course, me and another guy, Scott Linton. Scotty, if you hear it.

• 3:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Scotty.

• 3:16:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so me and Scotty then we're sitting in the, in the, in the bench like day before the FTX, the final exercise, then we need to like get exam from the crypto and that stuff. So we are all ready. We, we can take the test. Then instructor comes in, so like, hey, uh,

• 3:16:22Speaker 01

  he comes to me, he's like, do you have a clearance? I'm like, what clearance? Like secret clearance? It's like, I don't know. Never heard of it. I mean, I never heard, nobody asked me that before. Okay. Do you have a clearance to Scott Linton? Do you have a clearance? It's like, I don't think so. I'm not a US citizen.

• 3:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Scotty Linton was somehow, he's born in England or something.

• 3:16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:16:50Jocko Willink?

  And so, and then he moved here when he was like 10 or something like that. But he still had a little bit of an accent.

• 3:16:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:16:55Jocko Willink?

  He spoke with an accent.

• 3:16:56Speaker 01

  He's a great guy.

• 3:16:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure. But it's the fact that no one picked up on it and said like, hey, bro, where are you from? Cause he was clearly not from America, the way he talks. Uh, yeah.

• 3:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I love Scotty. So he just pulled us out and said, come on with me. Uh, uh, he was already shaken. And then instructor, I don't remember his name, but he was like, okay, this was going to happen. Never ever say to anybody that you even seen this course. You have not been here. Understood? He has instituted sense, so okay. You're gonna get your clearance, you're gonna pass this test again. It's easy for you guys because you already went through this course anyway. Just don't, don't say to anybody.

• 3:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:38Speaker 01

  And, and we came back and eventually for me, because my background, the, the clearance took longer time, but it came in. I went, I took the test in the Radio Shack upstairs and passed it. Scatting and actually, we all went to his citizenship ceremony. He had to become a citizen first before he could. So he became citizen, he got his clearance and we deployed to, uh, to Bosnia. Coming to, uh, Italy at the time.

• 3:18:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I mean, you had, first you had to go, um, go through like, you used to have a probationary period.

• 3:18:11Speaker 01

  In the teams, yeah.

• 3:18:12Jocko Willink?

  And you say this, after probationary period passing, the SEAL board made up of chiefs and officers. We awarded the, the SEAL trident. In the morning muster, in front of the entire entirety of SEAL Team Two, we were called up front and center and were presented with the coveted tridents in the presence of Admiral Joseph McGuire. He's an admiral today. Back then he was a commander.

• 3:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:18:34Jocko Willink?

  It was a great milestone in my life. It was a great moment, but it also made me reflect on many things. It was crystallizing in my mind that this could only happen in America, such an exceptional country. Only in America is it possible to come without even knowing the language and carrying only a bag of clothes and still succeed through hard work and determination. As much as I was proud of my SEAL trident, there was an even greater honor that was bestowed on me before. It was American citizenship. The citizenship and American flag encompassed the trident. I was a trident wearer because I was an American.

• 3:19:10Speaker 01

  You see, this is why, like, I don't wear a trident. Once I'm out of uniform now, when I am already civilian. People do and they can, they deserve, they earn this thing. But I wear an American flag because this encompasses everything. It does encompasses the trident. So me wearing the trident is like a distraction to my American flag that I wear. So this is, this is what is important. This is what, what, what drives me. And yes, there's, people say congratulate me on being a SEAL, making the SEAL training and being a, you know, good operator. But that's not my biggest accomplishment. That's my biggest accomplishment.

• 3:19:54Speaker 01

  My biggest thing that I ever did is become American. And not only through, just through the ceremony, but also thinking like American and being my heart American. So this is something that I'm very proud of. That's the proudest things.

• 3:20:11Jocko Willink?

  Uh, like you just mentioned, two months after I received my trident and officially became a SEAL, we deployed to Italy. And, um,

• 3:20:21Jocko Willink?

  this was cool. Soon after we landed in Italy, we were sent on a mission to find and if possible, rescue a downed pilot from behind enemy lines. An American pilot had been forced to eject from his plane, then to survive a week in his own hostile, on his own in hostile territory before he was rescued. SEALs were among those sent to look for him at this point. The full realization, it was real, now hit me. I was no longer in training. There are so many safety nets in training precisely to make sure that students don't get injured during the training. However, these safeguards are no longer there during missions and you must rely on your training and your teammates to reduce the chance of injury and to ensure mission success. From the moment I first checked into SEAL Team Two, it dawned on me that every day we were doing something that could kill us. Training, obstacle courses, parachuting, diving, swimming in the open ocean. I remember during one of the flights over the Adriatic

• 3:21:06Jocko Willink?

  looking for the downed pilot, one of my teammates, Scott, was sitting on the edge of the helicopter's ramp, legs dangling with his head leaning out of the helo. He had a safety belt on him to keep from falling out, but at one point it slipped off by some freak accident. He was sitting on the edge of the ramp with his safety belt unbuckled, laying behind him. Bill walked back to Scott.

• 3:21:27Speaker 01

  Bill White, yeah.

• 3:21:28Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Grabbed him and pulled him away from the ramp inside the Hilo. We were afraid that if we yelled to Scott, he would move and fall off the ramp. That would be tragic. It was narrow escapes like that that reminded us we weren't training anymore.

• 3:21:42Speaker 01

  And it happened. It actually did happen in SEAL Team Two later on in Bosnia. We lost a guy like this, fell out the helicopter. With Scott, yeah, there was Scotty Linton, actually.

• 3:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's Scotty.

• 3:21:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was Scotty. So he was sitting twinkling with his sniper rifle. And you know, these belts that we have, they had, there's like a buckle that you can just sometimes touch it, it catches it and just comes off. This whole belt comes off. So when we look at this, he's sitting on the ramp, he's on 53. His legs are dangling. He's just like leaning here and there, just twinkling with his gun. If we call him, he would just turn, if he turned around, he would lose his balance. It was like he would just fall off it. And so Bill White, actually, he just, we look at it like in horror. So Bill, instead of saying anything, he just come, just grabbed him by his, by the neck, by his shoulders and just drag him inside.

• 3:22:42Speaker 01

  He was like, what the fuck? But it's like, dude, you almost died. And we show him the belt. Yeah, he had no problems being manhandled. But, but yeah, there was, things like that happen, you know, and, and this is why that down on me that those safety nets that we had always have in the training, in the initial training, they're no longer there. The balls to the wall.

• 3:23:07Jocko Willink?

  You tell other stories in here. Get the book to get the rest of these stories. You come back from that deployment and, you know, when you come back from your deployments in the SEAL Teams, that's your opportunity to, about six months, you can go to different schools and whatnot. So people put in for sniper school and breacher school and JTAC school. Just put in for a bunch of different schools to get more skills. You say here, I was assigned to English 101 School on base in Little Creek. Guys would pass me in Navy buses on the street on their way to their respective schools. They would shout, hey, Drago, where are you going? I'd hold up my heavy textbook. I'm going to English class.

• 3:23:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you know, they they seen something in me, something promising that instead of shit gunning me from the teams, uh, because my English was not that good. Uh, I mean, it was was good enough to mask, to cover it, but I still have to listen to you translate in Polish, then translate in English and tell and answer to you. I was quick with it, so nobody caught it. But it took me a long time. So that English class, whoever uh made the decision to send me there, actually helped me a lot and make me uh allow me to continue with my career. So, yeah, that I was like, there's my my, I was not even upset about it. I was like saying, there's anything to make me a better SEAL. If my English is lacking, I will fix it. And

• 3:24:27Speaker 01

  I did.

• 3:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Were you an A W in your first platoon? Machine gunner? What'd you do?

• 3:24:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was A W. They had the machine gunner. I was stuck for three platoons, I think, with machine gunner. So I I loved it, you know, it was like it was heavy, but you carried a heavy stick. So when you unload it, when you open up, everybody knows that you are in line. Yeah, I love that.

• 3:24:46Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah. Uh, second deployment, you go Germany and Bosnia. Um,

• 3:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24:53Jocko Willink?

  And what's cool about this, you you mentioned this, uh, the biggest influence on me in my SEAL career, the guy I always wanted to emulate was, and that's his first name, was a great leader.

• 3:25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Not only was one of the toughest, he was also dedicated to making us the best SEAL operators there were. I swear the guy never slept. He was always trying to think of ways to make the platoon harder, better, and stronger. His knowledge and expertise were legendary, especially in winter and Arctic warfare. He taught us how to ice climb, ski, navigate Arctic environments, everything. Nobody else in SEAL Team Two know as much, knew as much who in his late 30s was also older than most SEALs about that stuff. Legendary guy.

• 3:25:35Speaker 01

  A legendary guy. I can't say his name, I think, now. I hope he doesn't mind me that, but uh, you know, if he does, we can always cut it out, right?

• 3:25:43Jocko Willink?

  Let's just not say it, because I don't want to. I I know he still does different, you know, he still does various things.

• 3:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think he knows who he is. And he is the guy.

• 3:25:51Jocko Willink?

  He definitely knows who he is.

• 3:25:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, he knows who the we're talking about.

• 3:25:54Jocko Willink?

  And everyone in the team knows who you're talking about.

• 3:25:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So he, this is the guy I was trying to emulate always. And to the point that even like with Robo Neil, I say, how, dude, that thing's so easy. When you do this stuff, it looks so easy. How did you get to this? I say, I'm just, I'm just trying to be like my chief. And tried to emulate him, he was the, but you know what, there was not only the toughness of him, of his, I mean, the guy was, some of the guys in the SEAL Team too, the training cadre, he thought he's unhinged. They even came to us and say, you know what, we can catch you, regardless of what your chief wants, we can put you back in the barracks, because they did not allow us to sleep in the barracks. We go to barracks only for the weekend. We

• 3:26:40Speaker 01

  sleep in the winter time, in the winter time, sleep on the range. Sleeping bags, BB bags and everything, we're on the range, Minnesota, we slept on the range. So, he was, he was, he was that guy. But not only that, you can tell this guy hard, he always knew, he always asked if he, how you are doing, how can he help you? And in the platoons, last time we stopped, you know, we have this breaks a little bit, we set the perimeter, he was always there, how are you doing? Is everything okay? There's anything you need? Are you okay? Everything's fine? Yeah. So he was, he always makes sure that each one of us is fully ready

• 3:27:24Speaker 01

  for the next thing and stuff. It was such a pronouns that I told myself from this platoon, I want to be like him. I want to be like him. And that's, that's what I tried. I failed many times. There's the caliber of people that you can't sometimes emulate.

• 3:27:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and just universal respect for everybody knows who he is.

• 3:27:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:27:47Jocko Willink?

  And he just freaking loved the teams. He cared about the teams. And when you get a guy like that, like, it's just awesome. And I never actually worked with him. I only would, like, I, I'd be at some conference, or we'd be at something, and so I'd get to talk to him. But, uh, yeah, just, just an awesome reputation and it's cool that, that is what carries, you know.

• 3:28:11Speaker 01

  An officer, the officer in our platoon too, Bill, again, this is thing, I wanted to call him, I just connect, reconnected with him. I just didn't have a chance to ask him about it, to bring his, so I will not use his name, but he knows who he is. He was the OIC of that platoon, Bill. He's, uh, he's very successful now in civilian life. But, so, these are these officers that I was so lucky to, to work for them. You know, like, I never had bad officer. You know, it's like, all of you guys I worked with, it was just like fantastic. I, I was extremely lucky because, you know, sometimes you have officers

• 3:28:52Speaker 01

  you may not, may like less, or you don't like, but I never had officer that I, I would not, uh, I would think less of him. Because they were just, uh, every, always above the cut. Every, the officers I worked with. So, I was very lucky.

• 3:29:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is lucky. That's awesome.

• 3:29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29:13Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Um, so you get done with that platoon, and then you go into your third deployment, which is Bahrain, and this is when he and me were together. And what platoon was, what, what, were we Foxtrot or we Echo? What platoon were we? Do you remember?

• 3:29:28Speaker 01

  Uh, Echo.

• 3:29:29Jocko Willink?

  Echo. So that's where we were. SEAL Team Two Echo Platoon.

• 3:29:32Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, that was the, uh, I'm sorry, that was, I think it was.

• 3:29:37Jocko Willink?

  It might have been Foxtrot.

• 3:29:39Speaker 01

  Maybe. You see, like, I, I was not putting this in the books because I tried to avoid this, uh, you know, not to give away too much, like, what the SEAL teams, what, how many combat missions, so nobody can figure out, you know, up tempo or stuff like this. So, I tried to keep it away from the books. This is not needed.

• 3:29:58Jocko Willink?

  Is that bad operational security? I just broke by, by not knowing my own platoon.

• 3:30:04Speaker 01

  You didn't break security to them.

• 3:30:05Jocko Willink?

  I guess no one learned anything because I don't even know it. I'm kind of like stoner. I can't give you the information because I don't know it.

• 3:30:12Speaker 01

  You know, there is so many platoons you do that it blends.

• 3:30:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:17Jocko Willink?

  So, we do, we get in a platoon together, which was freaking, um, really fun.

• 3:30:22Speaker 01

  That was when, you know, this is when I met you first time too. And God, I remember, I said, well, that is the first time when I see you, actually, we end up, they're doing the, the swim, the, the qual swim, qualification dive.

• 3:30:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:30:36Speaker 01

  So, I'm just like, I look at you, because I was, we are paired up. So, it was three man pair.

• 3:30:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, God.

• 3:30:43Speaker 01

  And I look at you and it's like, well, that guy is big, so he ain't going to swim that fast. I think I'm good, because I was never fast swimmer, I can swim long, but not fast. And so, he just give me the buoy, and I say, I'll swim with the buoy. And, uh, so then, it's like, for a while, I'm doing okay, but then I feel my dragon is getting hot. But then, hey, it's like, fuck, I can't, I can't keep up like this. I, I, I'm, so I'm, I'm kicking my ass, if I look at this guy next who's three man pair swim, he is already in total toe, he just toeing two guys. And suddenly, I was the same thing. And so, we swim there and back, and I was like, fuck, that's, that's a big guy, but that guy's animal.

• 3:31:23Speaker 01

  So, so, yeah, so that, that, that was right there, the, the respect, it's like, fuck, I thought I'm good, but not that good.

• 3:31:30Jocko Willink?

  We, we had a, a awesome platoon, we had a, we had like a condensed workup, if I remember. Like, we didn't have, we just, as soon as we formed up, we were in workup.

• 3:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was, yeah, there was the first strike platoon too, so they were like in the rush, I think, to put us out.

• 3:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep. So, we did, we, we didn't have any like, what they call pro dev phase, where you're kind of going to schools. The thing I just talked about, where you're going to schools, no one went to schools. Everyone just like, boom, we were in a platoon, and we were automatically in a workup. And that was, um, fun. I know, I was trying to get people to train jiu jitsu.

• 3:32:01Speaker 01

  That's, that's, that's, that's the thing, that, that, the welcome to the platoon, that's like, the guys. And like, I was like jiu jitsu, I didn't know much about jiu jitsu, I didn't even know, I thought it was like a judo or something. And your, your first thing was, you just came back, you look at the platoon, say, I'm going to check out the entire platoon in 10 minutes. So, we were just laughing, it was like, huh, yeah, right, like, we didn't know who you were, so. So, but then first two, three guys stepping out or pass out, and you know, that, that, that's the thing, I remember, like, most of the guys, you just, they lay on the back, and we were shaking their legs, and bring them back to consciousness, you know, so. So, that was okay, and then, then I can see like a couple guys like, well. I need to do something. I'll be right back. I just don't run the errands like they never came back.

• 3:32:43Speaker 01

  But yeah, this entire platoon, including myself, were choked out. And that's another thing, you know, it's like then I was fascinated. Fuck, I want to learn that. I, I, I want to be that good. So this is how we actually we start doing the jiu jitsu in there.

• 3:32:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you have a little note, a little story in here. You, you were, uh, we were doing some jiu jitsu in the platoon. I was kinda, kinda coaching and watching you guys.

• 3:33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:33:03Jocko Willink?

  And, um, here, I'm like yelling, uh, Drago, man, you gotta let him go. Let go, man. He tapped out. While, while choking him even harder, I started arguing that he was not tapping out.

• 3:33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:33:16Jocko Willink?

  I did not feel or nor hear any tapping. They had to pry him out of my grip. I released my sparring partner confused. He didn't tap out. I told them. Yeah, he did. Jocko said while laughing. Did you hear that? Sound? I said, what was that? My sparring partner eventually caught his breath. Dude, you had me so pinned down that I couldn't even move a finger. I was trying to say tap, tap, tap, but I didn't have enough air. And the only thing that came out was before passing out. I immediately apologized. I felt awful. Well, maybe a little.

• 3:33:49Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, actually I reconnect with Scott. So I was, uh, after that.

• 3:33:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, that was Scott.

• 3:33:54Speaker 01

  Recently, yeah.

• 3:33:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:33:55Speaker 01

  No, not Scotty Linton was Scott.

• 3:33:56Jocko Willink?

  I know the other Scott. Yeah, I talked to him the other day too. I traded some texts with him. That was who it was. He would get, he would get so mad doing jiu jitsu. He would get, he would get, uh, what's the word? He would get personally mad at me.

• 3:34:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:34:10Jocko Willink?

  He, I would be rolling with him and like, he would, he would, I would just be across side or something on him and he would just tap out and he'd be like, just get off me, man.

• 3:34:22Jocko Willink?

  That's not cool. The fuck is this stuff? He would be mad at me, like literally mad at me. And then like five minutes later, he'd be like, dude, I suck or whatever. But in the moment of, of claustrophobia, he would get freaking mad.

• 3:34:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you know, this is a typical team guy, staff, you know, aggressive guy and he was just losing, you know, to pass out. So fuck, just get mad. You know, get scared, get mad. So he was and the jujitsu was not working for him well, but I like Scott. He was a great guy.

• 3:34:54Jocko Willink?

  And he's so funny. He would say the funniest stuff. He would, um, he had this voice that he'd use. Like he'd say, ice cream Sammy. He'd be like, let's go get a ice cream.

• 3:35:11Jocko Willink?

  He'd say, that's because I am an athlete. He would say like that. He would say, I'm an athlete. That's what he'd say to me. He's like, I don't need to get on the ground with you. I don't need to do this. Cause I'm an athlete.

• 3:35:24Speaker 01

  He was good, you know, he was like very.

• 3:35:26Jocko Willink?

  He was, he was a very, I think he played some kind of like college. I don't even know what sport, but he was definitely a really good athlete.

• 3:35:33Speaker 01

  My respect to Scott, yeah.

• 3:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, but funny as hell. He had this story where they were in sniper school. And they were going through the drill. Kim's keep in mind, right? So you gotta look out at the field and you gotta find stuff.

• 3:35:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:35:49Jocko Willink?

  And so there was a guy that was going through sniper school with him that they didn't really like this guy. I guess he was kind of arrogant. He's kind of an asshole. And he was pretty good, pretty doing pretty good in the school. So they're all on the line. And they have to look out into the field and find, you know, they'll have like a canteen and they'll have a notebook and they'll have this, that and a bullet casing. And so you gotta find as many things as you can. So all the guys are on the line and they cheat and they kind of tell each other like, yo, there's a, you know, canteen at a hundred and twenty yards and then like it's bill. So they all cheat. And they, but they didn't tell the other guy. And so they all write down and you had to find like 10 items. And so they all turned in their pieces of paper. They all have 10 items and instructors are like, yeah.

• 3:36:32Jocko Willink?

  And they, and they're like, hey, yep, everyone did pretty good. One guy failed. Um, and they could tell it was him, the guy that they didn't like. They could tell it was him because he was like, his face turned red. He's all mad. And Scotty goes, Scotty goes, they're walking back to the, to the freaking buses or to the trucks or whatever. And as they're walking back, Scott, Scotty's talking to that guy and he goes, I'll tell you what, you gotta be a real piece of shit to fail that.

• 3:37:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, just

• 3:37:05Jocko Willink?

  You had the way he said, I'll tell you what, you gotta be a real piece of shit to fail.

• 3:37:12Speaker 01

  I can see it.

• 3:37:13Jocko Willink?

  Just freaking savage, just a total savage.

• 3:37:16Speaker 01

  But you know, we had an awesome platoon. These guys were like comedians.

• 3:37:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:37:20Speaker 01

  There was always Steve Druin.

• 3:37:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:22Speaker 01

  Guy had a so quick wit it, but the nickname didn't work out with me because this is where I got my Drago nickname. And he was like, why don't I get a cool nickname like that? And then you came out with a nickname for Steve. But he was just such a quick wit, such a funny guy. And Rob O'Neill.

• 3:37:39Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 3:37:40Speaker 01

  God, Rob O'Neill. I mean, that was just like comedy show.

• 3:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:37:45Speaker 01

  I have never laughed so hard, maybe in prison a little bit, but even not in prison. As I was laughing in this platoon, that was the funniest group of people I ever been with.

• 3:37:56Jocko Willink?

  It was fun. Um, I had, we were out at some bar and something happened with Rob where he left, right? And some girl comes up to me. I don't know where this came from. This girl comes up to me and she goes, hey, do you know that guy Sloan? And I'm like, I go, I go, uh, and I have no idea. I don't know anybody. She goes, you know, that guy named Sloan? And I go, yeah, I go, I think so. What does he look like? She was like, oh, you know, he's kind of like a little taller and he's got red hair. And I'm like, it's gotta be O'Neill because he's the only like red hair dude I know. And I'm like, yeah, no. And she goes, where'd he go? And I, I'm like, he went back to our, our house, right?

• 3:38:37Jocko Willink?

  Barracks. I'm like, I'll take you. So we like, I get the, and I, I bang on, on O'Neill's door. He's passed out and I'm like, hey, bro, I got you something. And I'm like, I go, hey Sloan. And he's like, oh, he's all confused. Like, hey, this is, uh, I forget it, you know, whatever her name was. Yeah. She was looking for you. And he's like, oh, thanks. He's, and he was passed out. So he was just like looking at me all confused and crazy. So then I started calling him Sloan. From then on, I started calling him Sloan.

• 3:39:05Speaker 01

  All kinds of big this Rob, yeah, he always grab something.

• 3:39:08Jocko Willink?

  That's where you, that's the platoon. You got the nickname Drago?

• 3:39:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:39:11Jocko Willink?

  And that's from Tony?

• 3:39:12Speaker 01

  Tony G.

• 3:39:13Jocko Willink?

  That's from Tony G gave you?

• 3:39:14Speaker 01

  From Tony. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was when I beat up on the, uh, uh, uh, Chad. You know, the, the new guy. He was a new guy.

• 3:39:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:39:22Speaker 01

  That's a, that was so.

• 3:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Called you Drago?

• 3:39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because he was just saying, then Caby came into me and say, hey, uh, why, why did you do that? Why did you just did it to him? I said, I he was, he was a new, yeah, he, he was new guy who was mouthing of great guy. He is the funniest, you know, there's the whole entire platoon. It was like a comedian's show. You remember the time in Fallon, when we went to patrol? And so, so we trained the, the, the reaction to ambush, right? So the op force came to brief us, this is how you go, you go this way, this way. Who will ambush you somewhere? They want to see your response, how you acted. So, so we are getting, the, the guys left. So now we are, you know, lining up for patrol and, and it's like, where is Shad?

• 3:40:11Speaker 01

  I don't know. Shad, Shad. As it come radio, hey, are you guys missing the, the, the op force, that, that, that guy supposed to attack us? Are you are missing the guy? Yeah, we are missing Shad. There, there is a motherfucker walking behind us and patrolling, passing us the signals and all that shit and the he's, he's like, acting like real security. There's that guy? So yeah, it's got to be that guy. So basically he went with the op force and this guy was just lollygagging, just walking or talking, planning the ambush on us. And this guy was patrolling behind and passing them the signals like, yeah, it's good, you know, it's, it's going with the

• 3:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Tony G, uh, what was pissed me off about him is he was like this little guy, kind of like a little bit stout, a little round.

• 3:41:01Speaker 01

  By the powerhouse.

• 3:41:02Jocko Willink?

  But he was stronger than me and faster than me. He would freaking out bench me and could run faster than me. It was freaking annoying. Tony G, I know you're out there, bro. Had always pissed me off. I never let it show, of course, but I'd always be like, god damn dude, he's fast and strong. Yeah. And just unassuming looking and super squared away across the board.

• 3:41:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:41:20Jocko Willink?

  He was, I was, he was in my Bloods class too. He's an awesome guy.

• 3:41:23Speaker 01

  Yes, I miss him.

• 3:41:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Uh, so.

• 3:41:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we also on that, on that deployment, we, we did a cool, we did like what at the time seemed like a pretty cool mission, taking down uh that one big oil vessel.

• 3:41:39Speaker 01

  Volga Neft.

• 3:41:39Jocko Willink?

  The Volga Neft one forty seven.

• 3:41:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was actually funny story too, you know, he's like for, for at that time, you know, that we were not at war. So there was the first time, like first real life mission that we actually went and hijacked the, the, the foreign ship. So we just, we, we uh, uh, and I remember we're, we remember they move us from the carrier on the uh, on, on the destroyer. Uh, and then from Hilo, we, we just launched the, our assault.

• 3:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:42:10Speaker 01

  On the, on the, on the tanker and Rob O'Neil, I see there was there too. And so Rob said, hey, Drago, let's go, we need to go. So we were all prepared. So we just dress up, get kit up and, and, and go. So we took down the, remember we had a very limited time to do it because uh, they, they were, they knew that we are watching them. So they were skidding the territorial waters of other countries. So we had like three minutes to take it down because otherwise we had to jump off the ship, not to cause international incident like the US armed forces are getting somebody's own territory. So we, we need to be quick. And we fast up on the ship, we took it down very quick and we had like three Russian speakers.

• 3:42:51Speaker 01

  I was speaking, Mr. F, I don't know if I can say his name, but he speak and Rob spoke Russian.

• 3:42:59Jocko Willink?

  It was crazy because like SEALs don't, we're, we suck at languages and like the special forces, they go to language school. That's part of their pipeline in the SEAL teams. Like generally speaking, guys don't really, guys don't really know a lot of languages and all that. And for whatever reason.

• 3:43:15Speaker 01

  We kill people, we don't speak to them a lot.

• 3:43:18Jocko Willink?

  So for whatever reason, in this platoon, we happen to have our platoon commander who had studied Russian in college and then gone and done a semester in Moscow or something crazy. We had a Berkeley hippie that studied Russian in freaking college. And so he spoke Russian and then you were forced to speak Russian by these communist bastards.

• 3:43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:43:39Jocko Willink?

  So we had out of sixteen guys, we had three freaking really good Russian speakers and we went down to take, take down this Russian ship. That was awesome.

• 3:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I remember too. I could hear and so Mr. F could hear too that the captain, yeah, yeah, don't obey him, don't obey Americans, resist what you can, don't do anything. Mr. I said, Drago, just take this guy out, explain to him. So I grabbed him by the scarf, walk him up, there was a chimney and it was like opening, the size maybe of the briefcase, like a bigger briefcase or suitcase. So I told him, you know, you, you open your mouth one more time, I'm going to squash you in it, I will fit you in it and you spend the rest of the travel in this chimney right there. So let's look at this chimney, look at this.

• 3:44:21Jocko Willink?

  And you said that in Russian to him?

• 3:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then he says like, okay, I won't say anything. And then we just locked him up in that thing. But you remember the funny things with it when we searched the ship, right? Because we were the initial team, the, the group that took it down. So after we hijacked it, it was already on our control, we moved out and other squad came in, the, the other seals, our seals came in. And then we changed them again, we're like rotating. So when they're coming back, you remember they came out with a big bag for clunking shit. And it's like, dudes, you just failed. You just left all these weapons, all that stuff. And it's like, damn, that's not good. How do you leave all these weapons? What it is, let them see. And so he opened

• 3:45:06Speaker 01

  the bag, there's a fucking butter knives and forks and spoons in it. That's like, dude, they're fucking shitting me. And then you-

• 3:45:14Jocko Willink?

  So they were trying to make us like we had missed these weapons that could be used. And he's like, hey, you guys, you guys missed some weapons over there. I'm like, oh shit.

• 3:45:23Speaker 01

  And then you lose the bind, bind of course?

• 3:45:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:45:26Speaker 01

  So, and you, you just didn't mind those axes hanging up there on the door? You just stole their butter knives and forks and these axes are still hanging there?

• 3:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they had like damage control fire axes that these guys, he's like, hey, what about those freaking straight up axes that they got sitting over there? That wasn't a threat. They were like, damn.

• 3:45:47Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, for God. But you know, the funny thing is that then when we exchanged again, we came back, these Russians, they knew I speak Russian. So they came to me and say like, please help us. We, we need our forks and knives and spoons back. I said like, why would you need the back, you know? Can you eat with your hands? It's like, no, we can't. We don't have teeth. And they opened their mouth and I tell you, so all these women and, and, and young guys. Everyone is missing so many teeth that there wouldn't be even one set of, one full set of teeth among all of them.

• 3:46:22Jocko Willink?

  They were just over there gumming out on some chicken.

• 3:46:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you remember I came to you and say like, this is what they ask and they can't eat, they, they don't have teeth. So we say, okay, so you, you tell, you tell these guys to bring the, the, their forks and butter knives.

• 3:46:38Jocko Willink?

  Butter knives back, we'll, we'll mitigate the threat.

• 3:46:41Speaker 01

  But they were so grateful that they didn't cause any problems after that, you know, they were just happy. They were greeting us, thank you for the knives and forks, you know, they, every time they eat there, like we were, when I was passing by, it's like they, they were shaking their forks and knives like, thank you, spasiba, spasiba.

• 3:46:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, and that platoon, I just remembered you talking about the first squad going on there. And we were trying to get as big as humanly possible. And so we wanted the average platoon weight to be over 200 pounds. And we had some smaller guys too that were in there.

• 3:47:15Speaker 01

  We made up for them.

• 3:47:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we made up for them. I got to, I got to 250. So when we left for deployment, I was like 247. And we, the first place we went on deployment was Spain and they had an all you, we stayed at some all you can eat buffet hotel. And I was like, oh, I got this. And so for like three, four days, I just dead lifted and ate. And I got to 250 and I was like, cool, I'm going on a four mile time run and I was like, all right, I need to lose some damn weight, boy. But yeah.

• 3:47:47Speaker 01

  We all did.

• 3:47:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we were all freaking jacked.

• 3:47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, but you know, that was so awesome because you opened the, we, we went to Rota, right? And I think it was in Spain, whatever we were up there. Uh, the, the place that we stayed, we just opened the door, that the resort, you step on the beach. And there's maybe like, maybe 20 yards is the ocean. So the, the, the Atlantic. So that was such a great trip. There were so many good things. You remember we went also to see the, uh, uh.

• 3:48:18Speaker 01

  The Indiana Jones.

• 3:48:24Speaker 01

  Oh, the, the, then the winds in the pyramids too. Yeah, but I was not fascinated by the pyramids because like I remember they uh, those people were just coming and just like, mister, mister, here is your, here is your, we give you the, the Arab garb, you know, that, that, that, that, what do you call this?

• 3:48:43Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 3:48:44Speaker 01

  Scarf, what do you put on your head, right?

• 3:48:45Jocko Willink?

  Turban?

• 3:48:46Speaker 01

  Turban, yeah, like, like a turban and stuff. And, and they just give it to you, but then they start, give me the money, give me the money, you know, you need to pay for it. So that's like, well, like, where are you from? I was like, I'm from Bangladesh. So they're like, oh, Bangladesh, okay. From Kenya, so like, leave me alone. So they, they went hassling somebody else. They, they worked for me.

• 3:49:05Jocko Willink?

  Do you remember the, when we got to Rhoda, the other platoon? I don't know what team they were from. I think it might have been from team two.

• 3:49:12Speaker 01

  Those team two.

• 3:49:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And freaking Tiny was there.

• 3:49:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we were rushing the medicine for him because he was like out of medicine and was in such a pain. Then we just need to do some, the first thing we did, I remember, just break away from the platoon, run to Tiny, he's tiny, here it is, here, take, take some shots. So.

• 3:49:31Jocko Willink?

  God, he had, he had a horn. He had like, like an animal horn.

• 3:49:37Speaker 01

  That was from, uh, I don't know, but Brad actually acquired it.

• 3:49:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so Brad had a horn.

• 3:49:43Speaker 01

  Horn of Satan.

• 3:49:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was the horn of Satan.

• 3:49:45Speaker 01

  If you drink from it, you're getting trouble.

• 3:49:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was like guaranteed getting in trouble.

• 3:49:49Speaker 01

  Travel, yeah.

• 3:49:49Jocko Willink?

  And I remember Tiny was just like, drinking prolifically from the horn of Satan.

• 3:49:55Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. And then.

• 3:49:57Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, Brad, he didn't need any extra help finding Satan.

• 3:50:02Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 3:50:05Speaker 01

  No, but the funny thing is, so we, we barely made it, like, two days later, the entire platoon is being called out, say, anybody see this and this guy whipping out the genitals on the table in front of two Luton and females? It's like, no, we didn't. Like, okay, so that, that's like full investigation. It's like, who did that? There was, there was not us. There was not us. But, but, uh, but yeah, that was like first thing, the whole platoon had the gun. Uh, and, and, and, and.

• 3:50:32Jocko Willink?

  They were suspect.

• 3:50:34Speaker 01

  They were, yeah. Yeah, they knew who it was. I, I know who it was. We know who it was, but you know, there was like a, it was like.

• 3:50:45Speaker 01

  Those are so funny. So we're just laughing our asses off the way it happened that, um, yeah.

• 3:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's what you get when you, when you hang out with people from other military branches. Sometimes these things happen. Um, all right. Next here you go. We get down with that deployment. Good times. Uh, like pretty, like it was, it was pretty cool. We got to do, so we got to do other like little vessels inside the Persian Gulf. We tracked those things down and bored those things. So we were actually doing work, which was kind of nice because it was the nineties and there wasn't much work to be done.

• 3:51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, you get home from that deployment and you immediately and a bunch of guys immediately get reassigned to SEAL Team Four.

• 3:51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, actually we're assigned even while on deployment on the way back, we, we came back as a SEAL Team Four. So, so that's, uh, so me, Rob, a couple other guys, a few other guys, but it wasn't like not a big deal. My family was already falling apart and that's all I need to do is just grab my kit.

• 3:51:48Speaker 01

  Kit bags and move from one building to another. So there was entire move, you know, PCS move.

• 3:51:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, you say, you say in the book here, what was waiting for me when I got back home though, wasn't great. My marriage had fallen apart while I was overseas. It's no secret that life as a Navy SEAL puts serious strain on your personal life, family and marriage. My life was no different than my SEAL teammates. Most of our time is divided up with six months or more of platoon workup, then six month deployments overseas. There's never really any time at home. Once the divorce was final, I lost my home along with my family. I was financially broken too. Without the structure and distraction of being deployed, I was getting myself into a lot of trouble back in Virginia Beach. Eventually I ended up in a new platoon, doing another pre-deployment workup. Our deployment was scheduled to Puerto Rico. That was our launch pad. I, I returned to the only place I knew I could trust the people I was with,

• 3:52:36Jocko Willink?

  my fellow SEALs who were like my family to me and whom I knew better than my real brother.

• 3:52:42Speaker 01

  That's true. Yeah. That's, that's how it is in the teams. You know, you know, these guys, you know, the guys next to you better than you know your family. And people say that this is, well, this is not good, but I, you know what, at that time. That's all I had. That was all the only family I had. And that was great, you know, that's kind of compensate for my, you know, I had my, my son, my, uh, I hardly got to know him, uh, during all these things. So we, we, we are missing a lot and I didn't understand that how much I lost. Uh, how much I didn't see my son growing up until eventually after the Navy.

• 3:53:24Speaker 01

  I had my children where I could actually observe and observe them every day, be with them every day. This is when I realized how much time I lost with my son, with my first son. And it still bothers me, uh, uh, often. Uh, but yeah, that's the way there's life. It is when the SEAL teams.

• 3:53:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, when, uh, when you and I, when I left for Iraq, when you and I were in Iraq.

• 3:53:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:53:48Jocko Willink?

  When I left for Iraq on my first deployment, my son couldn't crawl when I left. When I got home, he was walking.

• 3:53:53Speaker 01

  And then you go again on the trip, then he's, everything you come back is the guy, the little baby already does more and more and more.

• 3:54:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:00Speaker 01

  So like for me, my son was always baby, even he was big, he was still baby because this is how I remember him. And it is not good. It's not good for a family, but sometimes you just cannot change things. You cannot be there when you need to be there and, uh.

• 3:54:15Jocko Willink?

  And I also tell, I tell, I've told many guys this over the years, like, men have been leaving for the entire existence of humanity. Men used to go and hunt and they go on hunting trips. And then we were going on sailing ships around the world. Then we were going to fight wars. Like this is nothing new that we are doing and it's not, you can get through it. You can, you can get through it, but it's gonna be freaking hard and it's gonna take a toll, you know?

• 3:54:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54:43Jocko Willink?

  Um, but this is nor, it's kind of normal, right? That if you were around in the freaking seventeen hundreds or eighteen hundreds, your dad might be going on a ship and might not be coming back for a year and a half, two years. You know that these things happen.

• 3:55:01Speaker 01

  Roman Empire.

• 3:55:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 3:55:03Speaker 01

  That same, the year long campaigns.

• 3:55:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're going on deployments for three years, you know, like that's the way it goes. Um, but I can tell you like, I was talking to Leif the other day, my, my buddy Leif, who, well, you know Leif. And, you know, he, he. He has kids now, young kids, and he he was just like, I don't know how you did this. Because he's not in the mode of being in a platoon, going on deployment, being in a platoon, going on deployment. That's so normal to us. It was so normal to me. I I didn't understand what it would be like to do something else.

• 3:55:37Speaker 01

  I didn't see any difference. I didn't see like how different could that be? They're just, that's the way their life is.

• 3:55:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is the way life is. This is the way me and all my friends, this is all we do. We go in platoons, we go on deployment, we go on platoons, go on deployment. That's what we do. So everyone has kids, they're going on deployment. They're like, goodbye, kids, we're going on deployment.

• 3:55:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:55:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and and like, like what you're saying, Leif now looks, and he's like, man, I don't know how you just were able to just go on freaking six month deployments, another six month deployment, another six month deployment. And freaking to the wives, like, they're they're they're having a hole down the fort.

• 3:56:11Speaker 01

  Freaking big age.

• 3:56:13Jocko Willink?

  It's a rough tour. Yeah, for my wife was, you know, at home with three kids and just holding it down, right? And just not ever asking me a damn thing, you know? She even barely knew, you know, what I look like anymore after a while. She was just like, yo, where's my paycheck?

• 3:56:33Jocko Willink?

  But it's hard, you know, and it's it's it can be very hard.

• 3:56:39Speaker 01

  And it pays, you you the the family, usually the one that was that that pays the biggest toll, because then it does, the the divorce ratio is just incredible.

• 3:56:49Jocko Willink?

  Ninety percent.

• 3:56:49Speaker 01

  Because there is no way to hold the marriage and and family when you constantly go and you can come back just for a little and gone and gone and gone.

• 3:56:58Jocko Willink?

  Yep, it's it's definitely very brutal uh for family life. And

• 3:57:05Jocko Willink?

  the the guys in the teams, myself included, like, if you have to choose between The teams and the family, you choose the family. I'm sorry, you choose the teams. You're like, you're like, oh, we got, you know, your daughter's got a recital tonight. Yeah, cool, but I've got to go do this training mission.

• 3:57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:57:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, your, your son's got his first freaking wrestling match. Yeah, I've got a night hit down and then whatever. And see, that's just the way it goes.

• 3:57:28Speaker 01

  It's not like you can go and say, well, you know, I will skip this training or I'm not going to go with you guys because I have, my kid, my kid has something to do. That's, that's something that uh, we know we accepted it.

• 3:57:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:57:40Speaker 01

  And uh, I hope maybe people understand and give us a little bit of leeway that we are less than perfect fathers and husbands when it happens. I mean, I mean by not being there where we need to be there. But you know, this is the way uh, the, because the civil teams and there's the, some, that sacrifice is needed. Because we need to protect America and our citizens to live safe. And this is why, you know, Jack, sometimes what I like to do now is I go sometimes on the street or to the park. I sit down and I watch these people.

• 3:58:14Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 3:58:14Speaker 01

  I just look at them and they have like careless, they think nothing about the war. Nothing about what's going on. They just in love, you know, there's a couple going on and kissing and then, and talking. There is older people, couple walking and, and talking. And it makes me feel so good because it tells me that we do a good job to protect these people. That they don't have to look over their shoulders. They don't have to look into for, for, for being unsafe. Uh, being the, our country being over, destroyed by somebody. So, so it, it, it makes me feel really good, you know, I just like, yes, that's, that's, I was part of it.

• 3:58:57Speaker 01

  So part of the protective segment of society that these people can live and don't have to worry about the war, about anything else. And this is how it's supposed to be.

• 3:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:59:07Speaker 01

  This is how society is supposed to live, that with, without fear for the war.

• 3:59:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and even right now with no war going on, what we just talked about, there's. People in the military right now that are missing everything with their family because they're on deployment somewhere. There's no war going on, but they're still putting stress on their family. They're still missing their kids' birthdays. They're still missing the graduations. That's what that's what they're doing right now. And then there's no war going on right now, but that's what's happening.

• 3:59:35Speaker 01

  But but there's no war going on because these people are there guarding us, including myself now in my family since I'm no longer with military. But we yeah, we sympathize with these families and with these guys.

• 3:59:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is. It is definitely to to think about that bubble of protection when you're at the park watching these people and they don't even think about it.

• 3:59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it makes me feel that, you know.

• 3:59:57Jocko Willink?

  Be mad about it. Be like, you're cool.

• 4:00:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I mean, I really enjoyed that. Now going to the stores, go to the mall where people like really enjoy their lives. I say, this is what we provide that safety that they so so they can do that. Our citizens can because there's violent people standing on and guarding their lifestyle, our lifestyle and and the way that America is. So it really makes me feel good.

• 4:00:27Jocko Willink?

  It's a good thing. So when when you were scheduled to go to Puerto Rico, when did September 11th happen? Where were you?

• 4:00:33Speaker 01

  I was in the quarterback of SEAL Team Two. And this is when I actually I was working out. I was in the gym. That was SEAL Team Two, SEAL Team Two, SEAL Team Four. I was no, there was I was still SEAL Team Two, quarterback, and I still to gym. I was we were working out. And somebody is coming out to the gym and say, hey, this airplane run into the into the building in New York. So the comments like, yeah, so what the fucking idiot some just just just small. Everybody thought a small plane.

• 4:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:07Speaker 01

  And then say that somebody else came in and say, dude, this is a commercial airplane that just crashed in the building. So that was like, oh, that's not good. So then we all go to quarterback and just watch what's happening happening this first time it's building. And then we see another that's as it happens, we see another plane flying to it. So there was like right away, that's not the accident. We are the news that will be deploying. We knew we'll be we'll be kicking us.

• 4:01:31Jocko Willink?

  How and so then you go to you go to Puerto Rico on deployment and.

• 4:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, on the East Coast, nobody was deploying it to the war. There was West Coast platoons deployed. And I remember.

• 4:01:48Speaker 01

  So we are, you know, like team guys, we're aggressive. We want to go to war. Everybody like, damn, you know, we're, I wish we're on the west coast. I wish we were there now. I wish we could go. And all of us, but then like in the three months into deployment, you know, I've been called by chief. And say, hey, um. You have orders to go to Baghdad. You'll go to Iraq and you'll help, you know, the platoons, the SEAL platoons that are there. You start working with them and coordinating the, the, our missions with Polish special forces Grom. And I didn't know what the Grom was at the time. And so I packed my shit and flew to Baghdad.

• 4:02:29Speaker 01

  So there was like in the, I think in the half of deployment, then the, then I was sent there. And I have to say here too, um, as this is a chief baguette, I can say his name. I asked him about it, if I can. So I owe this guy a lot too. I mean, that was what I was all in kinds of troubles by the time, you know, oh, he tried to kill this guy, tried to do this, tried to do that. So, um, he was the chief actually who stepped in and say, look, I'm going to help you. And this was going to happen. And this, and he actually took me under his wings. And he threatened my life and, and then he sent me off to war. So. So yeah, I mean, it was great. I mean, I always will be grateful for him and he'll be in my, he always, he'll be in my heart.

• 4:03:12Speaker 01

  Especially that, you know, under his, uh, uh, I was under his leadership that he sent me to war. So yeah, I was, I was, I was, I was happy.

• 4:03:21Jocko Willink?

  You fly over there, civilian plane, you say, from there I was taken to SEAL compound Camp Posey, where I quickly acclimated to, got to work. For the, for those first three months in Iraq, I didn't hear from my commanders in Little Creek once. I figured they were busy, so chose not to bother them.

• 4:03:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I was like, you know, you busy, you do this, that, so why would you bother yourself calling somewhere that. Then by the chance they might say enough is enough, because I supposed to be there for three months only. So basically it would be six months deployment and then come back. But three months passed, like nobody calls. I say, right on, you know, like I'm not saying anything. I call Rob O'Neill sometimes, say, hey, Rob, I'm still here. First I was saying, just tell my command, I'm still here. But after three months, like, hey, I'm still here. Just, just don't tell anybody.

• 4:04:07Jocko Willink?

  You say my job was to help coordinate missions and facilitate communication between SEAL teams and Polish special forces using my Polish and English language skills to do so. My commanders were wary about sending me on direct action missions incorporated in the Grom assault element structure. They were worried about my safety. I refused to say back and asked to be allowed to join the Grom assault during direct action missions.

• 4:04:28Speaker 01

  Yes, that's, that was normal, you know, that's like, we don't know these guys, like, I didn't know much about Grom and then our commanders didn't know much either. So now put me under the command of foreign force and, and risk, you know, we could die, we could be killed during these missions, right? So they, they were like, they were very protective of me. They didn't want me to participate in assaults with the element they did not understand very well, didn't know. But, you know, when they go my way, I just like, look, I couldn't respect myself. I cannot just sit and watch it and not to be with them. So if I need to work with them, I need to be part of them. And eventually they did a couple of missions that, yeah, okay, that's like, go ahead and

• 4:05:13Speaker 01

  see and report what's back. These guys are good. I mean, these guys are-

• 4:05:18Jocko Willink?

  They're the pros.

• 4:05:19Speaker 01

  Pros, yeah. Yeah, so like after that, there was like no issue whatsoever. And, you know, we blend so much that, that sometimes it was hard to tell who is who. And there's quite often I had those calls, the front, I go, is there, is our guy or this is a, is a Grom guy? I say, I don't even know myself, they look the same. And then I just like came close, yeah, that's a Grom guy, you know, so, or this, this is our guy. So, yeah, they were good, they were fast.

• 4:05:42Jocko Willink?

  It's funny, if you think fast forward a couple of years and SEALs were out operating with random freaking Iraqi soldiers that had rusty AK-47s and didn't speak English or didn't, didn't freak know their left from right, you know what I mean? Like, and here we were worried about sending you with them, like a tier freaking one element of awesome operators from Poland.

• 4:06:05Speaker 01

  But at that time, we didn't know-

• 4:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:06:08Speaker 01

  -much about them. So that's, that's where I came in. Finally, we started learning about them and actually we, we learned a lot of stuff from them and I brought a lot of things to the teams. That I learned from these guys too, so uh that's that's what's like those for me it was impressive. Uh yeah, some of these missions, I think one of our missions that when we remember we we snatched those Syrian uh uh terrorists from the hotel. Oh yeah. In Fallujah when the Fallujah was evacuated, like nobody was going to Fallujah. Just they were just sending us to just clean that spot or that spot. Yeah. And it was the hotel. Yeah. So that was like, I remember, so so we were bridging like every door, it's the hotel, so we bridge every door.

• 4:06:48Speaker 01

  And the end of it, we gathered then, you know, and the in the in the in the uh the hallway up there on the, I think it was a third floor. And uh and then, so everybody grabs one of these terrorists and says, I grab mine. And that motherfucker didn't want to go. I mean, that was like, he was falling down every single time. And every step we did, he was trying to fall down. So, you know, I'm a strong guy, but sometimes I fell with him. Too, and and and we were just like dirty in this dirty dust. Blood all over the floor. Yeah, blood all over the floor. So we come back to the home, we are, I'm coming back and one of our guys said, Drago, what's happening? What's, are you okay?

• 4:07:27Speaker 01

  I say, yeah, but this motherfucker just doesn't want to go. He's resisting all he can, man. He's just laying on the floor. I had basically carried him out. She's like, dude, Drago, no, this guy just doesn't have a leg. I was like, what? This guy doesn't have a leg. So I pick his skirt, you know, his skirt, I was like, fuck, he doesn't have a leg. So this is why he was falling down, he didn't want to go. I didn't understand Arabic, we were saying something, so uh that the guy just like. Couldn't go, I just didn't know it. So I would drag him down the stairs, falling down myself sometimes. If I knew it, you know, I would just grab him on the other side and let him hop around, but I didn't know it, so we kept falling down together and I was mad.

• 4:08:09Speaker 01

  So I was, I was just using the Drago language sometimes to get him back on the feet and and, you know, using the Drago persuasion tools. And the uh uh uh uh and the Drago translator to make him go. And that that worked, but we got tired. And yeah, he just didn't have a leg. Unfortunately.

• 4:08:27Jocko Willink?

  That was a, that was kind of a crazy operation.

• 4:08:32Speaker 01

  But you know, this is the time also that I developed the Drago's accelerated English course for terrorists. So it was very effective, you know, you just, you give me like five, 10 minutes with the terrorist. And sometimes even I'll envy the guy, the way, how well he learned English from me. He spoke with better accent sometimes than me, the terrorist.

• 4:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:08:55Speaker 01

  So that's, that was, uh, I'm going to patent it.

• 4:08:59Jocko Willink?

  You say in the book, this is where I met Taj for the first time, is another SEAL. Uh, he was attached to SEAL Team Five and had already been in Iraq for some time. We immediately became good friends and we still are today. We were big and heavy and because of our size, we were often designated as prisoner handlers to haul terrorists from targets. This is where I devised a kind of crash course in English for terrorists, otherwise known as Drago's accelerated English course for terrorists. Working together, Taj and I applied this technique very effectively. My motto was, give me 10 minutes with a terrorist who doesn't speak English and by the end, he'll come out speaking better English than I do.

• 4:09:33Speaker 01

  That's what, that's what happened, yeah. And well, we, we, that, that, that worked. I remember I just, we had the, you know, we worked with different officers. So one, one of the ladies officers of the, the three letter agency, she was, uh,

• 4:09:51Speaker 01

  this guy just no English, no English, no English. So I was like, well, ma'am, just like me and Taj, just give us like 10 minutes and we kind of, we'll teach him English. She didn't know what we were talking about, but she left and she 10 minutes, can I come in? I say, yeah, he's pretty proficient in English. So when she started talking to him and asking the questions, this guy was like, me and Taj were amusing. Fuck, this guy speaks better English than I do now even. So yeah, yeah, it was very effective, it worked.

• 4:10:24Jocko Willink?

  Here's another one. During another mission, this one to capture an Iraqi air force general with proven involvement in various terrorist attacks, our intelligence indicated he was hiding in a building with solid doors that would be very difficult to breach. A standard compound, a standard mission. As we approached the house in the dark, I noticed the doors were strong, but not quite as thick as I anticipated. I had initially calibrated charges for a stronger door. I knew if I breached the door per the original intel, the explosives would do more damage than expected and potentially kill anyone inside. Familiar with the uncertainty of urban warfare, I was prepared for the situation and immediately replaced the original breaching charge with a smaller one that would get the job done. I was unaware that while I was while I was breaching the door, the target was standing on the other side of the door with his hand on the doorknob and his ear against the door, trying to

• 4:11:09Jocko Willink?

  listen to what was happening outside. He obviously couldn't hear me because after I detonated that smaller charge, we found the general standing in the doorway, holding the doorknob. He didn't look severely injured at first, but he was obviously dazed and confused by the blast. It got him on the ground. I got him on the ground and cuffed him with zip ties, but as I clenched the plastic around his wrists, I had a hard time understanding why the general had three hands. On closer inspection, I realized the hand had been holding on to the doorknob and had been split clean up the middle. In the dark, it had the effect of making it feel like the guy had 15 fingers and three hands. Luckily, the zip ties worked well as a tourniquet.

• 4:11:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I thought that maybe I just killed somebody there for a second. It was like there's three hands. So what is the what is the other guy? Whose hand is that? And it was just this guy. Yeah, definitely. He was listening because he was listening on the other side. So I gave him an earful. How do you say in English?

• 4:12:05Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you gave him an earful.

• 4:12:07Speaker 01

  Earful. So, yeah, he was okay. We hauled him out of the target. But yeah, that was actually one of the funny things.

• 4:12:15Jocko Willink?

  You've got all kinds of interesting mission, post-mission debriefs in here. You say during this time in Iraq circa 2003, I devised new breaching charge. I devised a new breaching charge that allowed us to explicitly breach obstacles with minimal fragmentation. This prevented injuries to noncombatants, innocent civilians who often found them in the crossfire. The charge was safer to use for us as well as it allowed for a smaller standoff from the explosion and less fragmentation. This charge was based on a principle that was different than the standard breaching charge principles we learned in breaching school. This newly devised breaching charge became widely used in the SEAL teams. Um, in breaching operations throughout Iraq. I also started using different tactics from those taught in breaching school.

• 4:12:56Jocko Willink?

  I was one of the proponents of those tactics modifications that were eventually accepted into the breaching curriculum. Additionally, I created a database containing all the pertinent information for each breach operation. I consider these safer breaching charges and tactics my biggest contribution to the SEAL teams. After I returned from this deployment, I was ordered to meet with tier one SEAL team breachers and brief them on all this new information. It was a great honor.

• 4:13:21Speaker 01

  Yes, that was the time that we, uh, we did injure people to the breach on target very often or even more. And something has to be done because the breaching, uh, the explosion, the, the entry method with explosives was very much safer for us. Because they stunned people inside and we were able actually to, to dominate the room, dominate the, the target. Before they kind of came to their senses. So that was great, but again, the, the, the, the old type of charges that we're using. We find out in Iraq, I cannot go into details here, but were ineffective. They either bounce off the, you know, the, the Iraqi don't have a, Iraqis don't have a standard doors.

• 4:14:00Speaker 01

  So you can find the steel doors in the same building, that same type of building, and you can find also we, well, plywood doors. And the doors can open both ways too. So there's like, there's no standard like here in the United States. So it seems like all the charges were geared up to our standard, to the US standard, and that didn't work well. They either bounce off the walls. Bounce, bounce, bounce off the door or just did so much damage that injured people inside. And remember, we were actually dealing with, um, we're dealing with, with the terrorists, with the bandits that were, had no scruples to put kids and children in the front rooms. So when, most of the time, when we were breaching the doors, coming the doors, we were, we were actually stepping the room full of children, women, and, and these terrorists, bad guys behind them.

• 4:14:44Speaker 01

  So that was, uh, that was my concern, and we had to do something. So these charges were, I cannot go into details, or the different principle, it allowed us basically breach from the feet from the door, and it was so much more expensive, it didn't care, it didn't matter if there was, there were metal door, wooden door, or whatever door there were, we were able to, um, to, to, to enter the target fairly safely. So the, the, the first mission that I described, the, the first pages that I described, these charges, if I use our standard charges, I would kill myself with it, most likely. So, uh, so this thing, knowing these charges, knowing that, that, that, the targets, that

• 4:15:23Speaker 01

  being so familiar with Iraq and their, their building, uh, uh, and their constructions of their buildings, doors, it helped me to just create this charge that would become, like, when you guys came in, I remember I came to Bahrain, I briefed you on these new charges, a new way of, uh, of, of, of, of doing this, because the way we were doing till this time was very dangerous. I mean, we had, we had the guys without, we still have guys without hands or fingers because of the, this type of methods that I discarded and, and we abandoned that. We started using the different things.

• 4:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Big improvement, um, for sure. Um, you also say this, "It was while working in Iraq as an NSW lead breacher that I began to really notice the impact of close proximity explosions from the breaching charges. I started to notice some memory issues, problems with my vision and balance issues. This didn't scare me as much as it made me very aware of what I was doing. I made it a point to be extremely focused during missions so I wouldn't forget or mistake anything after." So you're- Just eating freaking breaching charges.

• 4:16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:16:33Jocko Willink?

  On a regular basis.

• 4:16:34Speaker 01

  And some of our breaches, they knew about our guys, like and the Polish guys, they knew that some problems that I have. But I forbid them say anything because that would mean me being pulled out of the theater and I didn't want to go back. I mean, by this time, I've become so accustomedized, I've been so, for being so long time in combat there and doing that stuff. I just felt at home and that was like getting me out of the home somewhere else and throwing me into unknown place. You know, this is something that I think you had the same thing, there had to be the feeling that eventually I'm so immersed into that situation there in the combat that

• 4:17:17Speaker 01

  what happens in the home, the safe America, the great, you know, malls, stores, people walking around, kissing each other and holding hands, it became like a fairy tale. It becomes so unreal, like now we can think about some science fiction things, right? So you can think about it, but just like it's there.

• 4:17:37Jocko Willink?

  It's like in, it's like in Vietnam movies when they say, oh, you're going back to the world. As if it's another place.

• 4:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Like it's some other thing. We're not in the world where this is something else.

• 4:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, that world up there was a fairy tale. It became this way, that the home became there. And I felt needed up there. I felt useful. I felt I was doing something for America. So that's for me was very important and you almost forget that this is not normal. The normal life is there in America, but became like a fairy, like a dream, you know, like a fairy tale. Sometimes when I was going to sleep, I was thinking about it and I was thinking like this is, while falling asleep, like this is such a nice place up there, you know, such a, such a things, like again, fairy tale.

• 4:18:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, the way you put it in the book, you say, "Life in America seemed distant and almost unreal. The real was here in Baghdad in combat and I loved it."

• 4:18:38Speaker 01

  Yes, that was, that was, that was me. This is why, uh, you know, we, we all, there is no, no, none of us, there is no one, there's no SEAL that haven't been injured this or the other way in Baghdad, including yourself, and you know it, sometimes we don't tell it, and I didn't want to admit it for a long time, but yes, that's, eventually, that didn't happen right away, I was already having these problems in Baghdad, that I couldn't read, because I read the paragraph and I forgot what I read, I, I didn't remember the beginning of the paragraph, so it didn't make any sense for me, I couldn't make sense out of what I read, and that's kind of was already a little bit alarming to me, but I figured out that this is because the lightning,

• 4:19:22Speaker 01

  because you know, the tents were leaving the tents, the lights were like scars, it was not really good, it was like always dim, so you get used to it, and I, I thought it was just because of that.

• 4:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I mean, it's so obvious now that we understand all the TBI.

• 4:19:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, we didn't know at the time.

• 4:19:38Jocko Willink?

  And, um.

• 4:19:42Speaker 01

  You know, when I, when I, when I eventually came out of Iraq, uh, when I became, uh, so I got orders to be a breaching instructor, and by this time, I already knew that something is wrong with me, I couldn't, any explosion, uh, any, any even shot fired next to my head, it was causing me now, being nauseated and, and, and losing balance, so, um, I, I call, uh, Chief, I can, he's passed away, Chief Berenger, and so he was, he was in Iraq with me, with us, and then, uh, so he was the, he was the detailer, I say.

• 4:20:19Jocko Willink?

  Freaking great guy, freaking outstanding guy.

• 4:20:20Speaker 01

  Yes, rest in peace, and I, I asked him, please help me, because I, I, these orders to be breaching instructors will kill me, I just need to, send me somewhere, I don't need to be around explosions and shots, so he, it was hard to do it, you know, just change the orders on the fly, but, uh, in a short time, he changed my orders to go to BUDS, to, uh, be SEAL instructor, and that, that kind of saved me, and, but this is when I started learning about TBI, because when I came up there, like every two o'clock, every time, two o'clock in the morning, I was waking, or wide awake, I could sleep the best, dreaming the best, best stuff, and just wake up two o'clock, say, fuck. Why do I wake up? No, I had to go back to sleep and then I couldn't fall asleep.

• 4:21:02Speaker 01

  So, you know, talking to, to, you know, what, what do you do? Just go to the other guys, right? The team guys, hey, this is what's happening to me like two o'clock, I'm fucking awake. So we think, we've tried to figure out what the fuck is going on. And the consensus was that fucking apartment is haunted. There must be a ghost up there. And that's, I didn't know I was scared of ghosts. I was like, fuck, that scared the shit out of me. I say, I'm moving out. So I was looking for another apartment, apartment I couldn't find. Because was the, uh, I couldn't find it because, you know, it was very expensive. That was a good apartment. But I was scared of that ghost. So, um, so I was dreading for a long time, just going back at night

• 4:21:46Speaker 01

  by myself to this apartment and facing the ghost. But it was not a ghost. It was just brain damage that, and TBI, which we didn't know at the time. But you know, with, with, the, the problem with team guys is to, there's like, fuck, my wife or somebody's, my neighbors telling me I am fucked up. So what do you do? You talk to the guy, hey, you know, my wife tells me I'm fucked up. I'm, I'm this, you know, my neighbor fucking yells and meets and gets fucked up. Am I fucked up? No, you're just like me. No, we're not fucked up. You're not bad. You're good. You're good. Well, he's fucked up like I am because he went to the same shit, you know, he has the same issues, same problems.

• 4:22:25Speaker 01

  So for him, I look normal. He looked normal for me. So I asked for assurance about myself with the guy. So we both are fucked up, but we're like, no, we're good. So this goes. And this is the problem until today. I think sometimes with the guys, like, am I, do I have a problem? Do you think to you? Do I have a problem? Do you think? No, just like me. But they both have a problem because they have, both went through the same thing. So that was like very educational for me. Eventually we learned that this is TBI. This is not the, uh, uh, not, not the ghost.

• 4:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Not a ghost. Yeah, it's your, your first, your first deployment over there was almost a year long.

• 4:23:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:23:06Jocko Willink?

  And, um,

• 4:23:08Jocko Willink?

  You freaking come home and you get to the airport, there's no one to pick you up. And you know, you you call and you're like, hey, I'm Drago. I just came back from Iraq. I need a ride. And the guy says, dude, we don't have anyone in Iraq because you because that team wasn't deployed.

• 4:23:24Speaker 01

  Well, there was no west coast, no east coast deployed at that time.

• 4:23:27Jocko Willink?

  We we don't have anyone buddy in Iraq. What action is that anyway? Stop calling or I'll call the police.

• 4:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was because they didn't know. Well, this is how I came back from Iraq. I would stay there longer, but you know, when I call for my night vision, that was like the guy was like, because my night vision broke out and and like you guys didn't have enough. I mean, this like Drago, we can help you, but we cannot do that all the time. So I called up there and that's like, where are you at? I'm like, I'm in Iraq, in Baghdad. But the the first the first response was the new guy, I think in the armory. So he thought basically that the guy calling from Baghdad from Iraq, who wants to send the he wants night vision to send to Baghdad to Iraq, and the guy don't speak English.

• 4:24:16Speaker 01

  So so so so like what if so so like he was like cracking jokes. I said, do you want a suicidal bomb fest with it too, maybe? And just because, you know, there was the suicidal attacks at the time. Quite common. And so I just told him like, you motherfucker, I'm going to kill you when I get up there and get Master Chief online. So Master Chief comes out, oh, yeah, Drago, good to see you, dude, to hear from you. You know, how's everything going? I say, great. Where are you at right now? And in Baghdad? Oh. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. How long have you been there? Like a year almost here on the on deployment? Oh, OK. How I say, let me get the XO online. I think you need to come back. So so I couldn't win it on my more time anymore.

• 4:25:00Speaker 01

  And they, yeah, they I was I was sent back. I went home and.

• 4:25:05Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy, you're, you're, so you get home.

• 4:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they, therefore, they, they didn't pick me up at the airport too, so my, actually, my, my first night after a year-long deployment, uh, almost year-long deployment, I spent in the IHOP, I, I hope. And I don't mind because I love IHOP. I always love the pancakes. They reminds me like my mom used to make them. And the cheese blends, it's like my favorite, cheese blends, I love it. So when I show up up there, this guy in the airport say like, hey, you know what, can you, uh, doing some help? There's like a few of guys came, but these guys were picked up by either their wives or the, the command vehicles. So I say, no, just carry, carry to the curb. The truck is picking me up and, uh, and it's got, it was, it was November, so it was very cold. And, uh, so I went up there, it's just like, it's afternoon, so I just wait, the truck will show up any time.

• 4:25:51Speaker 01

  And as I wait, I fell asleep because it was like fucking, I was tired. I didn't realize how tired I was. So I fell asleep and then I hear, you know, this, this, this fucking light buzzing above my head, it's getting dark, this lights came up, there are a lot up there next to the airport. It is Saturday, so I think everything is shut down. There's no more flights, so they shut the airport down. And I'm like fucking going hypothermic. I have bombs, grenades and bomb, uh, and, and everything with me on the curb, sleeping like there's nobody there to pick me up. So I was, what do I do with the bombs? So, uh, with, with the guns and all that stuff. So I tried to knock on the door and then didn't, nobody shows up, so I say, fuck, they left.

• 4:26:34Speaker 01

  So I'm going to go, I had to get inside to get a phone. My phone is dead. It expired anyway, it was a year away, that, that they shut my account. So I pick this, that concrete encasement for the, where you throw the, the, the can inside.

• 4:26:50Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:26:50Speaker 01

  It's actually heavy, so that it's gonna sway in the wind. So I pick it up, I have it into the glass because I, you know, I, I just need to save my life now, save myself because I'm freezing. And, and I'm like, really freezing. And this guy says, I'm like, no, no, no. Uh, so he opened the door, say, what, what's going on? I say, I need the, I'm like shaking, I, I need my, I need the phone, I need the car. I cannot even say it right. So eventually I, I didn't even know that number. My mind was so much stuff, I didn't remember the phone number. We had to find me the number to group two. The, the CL team was already somewhere else. Uh, and so I called the group two and this was what you say like this guy said like, we don't have anybody there. Fuck off, just go.

• 4:27:32Speaker 01

  Basically, but they didn't say fuck off, but they say like, no, just leave us alone. But then I said, like, call the OD, I started using the lingo that, you know, they's like, got their attention, say, OD, they got this, this. Okay, hold on a second, and I can hear the shuffle of the papers. And whoever was OD at the time say, Drago, I am so sorry. We, I remember seeing the message somewhere, but we totally overlook it, overlooked it. We are sending truck right now, just hang on there. We are sorry. And, and you know, I don't have a, I, I understand that. There was the time when we changed how we do the business. I don't want to go into details here, but, but so the, the, the, the team was gone. They were doing something else. There was a few guys left here and there. And, uh, there was nobody in the CL team at the time.

• 4:28:17Speaker 01

  And, and, and, and so, you know, there's like, they have so much shit going on, but especially going to war, that, you know, things like that will, will happen, who fall through the cracks. And, uh, so it was no big deal. I think now I think it's funny, but that time I was really pissed. So, so they came and picked me up and, yeah.

• 4:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then, and then they don't let you stay at the team.

• 4:28:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, because I have no place to go, right? Because I didn't have a family at the time. The girlfriend that I left supposedly for three months only, uh, was already mad after six months. But after a year, she finally say quit, she just, she fired me. So, uh, so I, I didn't have a place to go. She just told me like, when you come back, just let me know, I will put the truck, your Jeep and your cruise box. That's all I had. And your cruise box on the parking lot, you can, and key inside, you can pick it up. I say, okay. But my, I couldn't call, my phone was dead. My, uh, I didn't even remember her number because my my my brain was so messed up. And yeah, so they they drove me to the teams, they took my guns, everything.

• 4:29:21Speaker 01

  And now, just by thinking, I just snagged the key from the quarter deck. We didn't have people on quarter deck by this time. So there was, so I snagged the key, put my pocket and and because then I said, well, later on I will go eat something or but so we were guys, she's the guy, the tech, it was not the she, I have a lot of respect for him. He's a good guy, I really like him. So he shuts the door and I say, hey, what's the code? I need to get it back in. He said, dude, no, we cannot give you the, I don't give you the code. It's weekend and you seals must not sleep, cannot sleep anymore in the cages. Because there's a bunch of us usually sleeping in the cages. There's so many seals without families, having no home. So they they just like they they stay in the cage, they go sleep in the cage, the cage is big.

• 4:30:05Speaker 01

  And then we have a like, the the way like, we have a free TV, free cable TV, free the Free toilet paper. Yeah, free toilet paper, everything. So some people didn't mind it and I didn't mind it either. So I wanted to stay, but he shut the door and to go. I'm like, fuck. So I used that key, I went to like three or four trucks, parked in front of the team four. I find one that it worked. So I drove myself, I say, I need to go and get something to eat, I'm hungry. So I went to the bank, it's like twenty five or thirty dollars left. I pulled whatever I could, twenty dollars. What can you eat for twenty dollars? Really not that much, but there's my favorite IHOP. So I say, okay, I said, no, so I'm going to IHOP.

• 4:30:46Speaker 01

  So I went to IHOP up there and and got the coffee, got the cheese beans, I ate and just like down on me, how I'm home, I'm safe. So I was like, the thing I remember, I'm fall, I fall asleep and it's like, hey, you okay? It was the the security guard, like the Rent a Cop type guy. I said, I'm okay. He says, I told him that can I stay here a bit longer because like I'm I'll buy some more food just to so I can relax and rest a little bit. And I was still like days, he just woke me up. I was like, he looks at me, yeah, the bitch kick you out, did she? I was like, what is he fuck?

• 4:31:30Speaker 01

  What the fuck he's talking about? But then I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, she did. He said, okay, you can stay here, but just don't don't cause any problems. Just stay here as you need and you know, it's okay. So I fell asleep. So my first night was in I hope.

• 4:31:47Jocko Willink?

  Welcome back to America, damn.

• 4:31:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, things like that will happen from time to time. There was nothing intentional.

• 4:31:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Fast forward a little bit in the book. I couldn't find myself in Virginia Beach. I didn't have family there anymore. When the opportunity came to go back to Iraq, I was excited and jumped on the opportunity. Yeah, I was missing Iraq. I was missing combat. I missed the work I had been doing there. I was told I could join them for a couple of weeks once again, and once again, as act as liaison with the Grom. I'd be helping them out since the new team hadn't had any previous experience working with Polish special forces. Two weeks went by and I was expecting the call from the command to return to Virginia. It never came. Two weeks became four weeks, four weeks became four months. My first extras long stint in Iraq say the saying went no news from Drago is good news. So you just basically did it again.

• 4:32:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so that well, and and again, the call came not from me, but from my team say Drago need to come back. We need to join the platoon. We are deploying like very short time. And it's our turn. So you need to come back. And I went back and came back again to Iraq with my SEAL platoon.

• 4:32:57Jocko Willink?

  And that's your sixth deployment to Baghdad or to Iraq, or I guess your sixth deployment, six deployment total. And you say by my last deployment in 2005, things had changed considerably since I'd first come to Iraq in 2003. In the wake of nine 11, the bureaucracy had intensified, and the war was now being fought largely by the army and Marines. Even our pre raid briefs, when we received last minute intel reviewed and reviewed dossiers, maps and recon photos had become longer and longer. This wasn't the old days of maps on the walls and physical files either. Everything was digital now. We called it death by PowerPoint. It seemed like we were briefing for the sake of the brief in order to brief more. Yeah, if that sounds confusing, trust me, it was. I still believe to this day that was

• 4:33:40Jocko Willink?

  an army requirement that we were being forced to adopt. Then the missions became scarcer and we were no longer assaulting targets every night.

• 4:33:48Speaker 01

  Actually, this is what happened because the briefing, the mission preparation took so long and it was by the army standard. By the time we completed the preparations, the target was gone. So we basically were hitting empty houses or didn't do anything.

• 4:34:03Jocko Willink?

  I remember I had, oh, sorry.

• 4:34:06Speaker 01

  No, no, no. So that was just that.

• 4:34:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I mean, just to go the other end of the spectrum, my commanding officer at SEAL Team Seven, like after we'd been there for a little while, he, he came down to the camp and talked to me and he goes, hey, when I'm briefing up the chain of command, how much time do you need to prepare for a mission? Like, how much time do you need?

• 4:34:30Speaker 01

  We were quick.

• 4:34:30Jocko Willink?

  And I said, I said, well, sir, 15 minutes. And he actually, he thought I was kidding. And I was like, he goes, he goes, no, but I mean, like, seriously, I go, no, 15 minutes. We, we've launched in 15 minutes. I said, I need the, the location of the target and I need the frequency of the conventional forces that are, that own that battle space and give me the sat com link.

• 4:34:53Speaker 01

  Because we were so proficient. We did so many times that it is not, there is like really no brainer. Most of the time, those missions were not as complicated as, as some people want to believe.

• 4:35:06Jocko Willink?

  And we did launch in 15 minutes on, on a bunch of operations. 15 minutes, load up the trucks.

• 4:35:11Speaker 01

  There were times that we, you remember, we came back from the mission, say, hey, we have another target here. So we are like about to drop our kit off and like, oh shit, let's get up, let's go back.

• 4:35:21Jocko Willink?

  We, we did one, as a matter of fact, I remember when we came back, I said, okay, hey, from now on, when we roll out, put your actual, put your military uniform on. Cause I said, hey, we're launching in seven minutes. And guys were like, I was looking up at turret gunners. They were wearing like random clothes with their body armor off. And I was like, all right, that's not cool, bro. We can't do that again. Take an extra two minutes to put your. Actual military uniform on.

• 4:35:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, shirts and kinds of like coral shirts still with the corals. That was funny, but yeah, that happened because, but they were so fast, we were so efficient. And we did so many times that we really could pull it off. But then we were kept slowing down. This not by the book. This is how we need to spend time on this. And then I found myself, I was watching and the Grom was watching with very amusement. They never did that. They were like watching, what the fuck is going on Drago up there? So we, we, we first, we, we brief, we, we, then we rehearse. Then we rehearse again uh to the same thing. And then we brief just so people can listen to the brief and improve the brief, make the better brief.

• 4:36:29Speaker 01

  And then we go with the brief, once there was a brief to brief and then was listen to the brief and the brief again. Then was going to the, to the army guys to, to, to approve, to army command. So that took us a long time. And there was so bad that I remember uh you, you, you seen part of this debacle that there was a two, another unit, Grom unit showed up, working with Green Berets. Great guys, I have a lot of respect for them, but their, their, their cycle was so slow. That these guys got finally pissed off and say like, they came and say, hey, we need to get us out from, I want to work with SEALs. We want to, I want my unit to work with SEALs because we don't do any missions there. And it takes so long time to plan.

• 4:37:12Speaker 01

  And that caused kind of a little bit friction between us and Green Berets. I had to explain to Grom that that's not like, it's not up to us. We can't make these decisions. And they were upset, they were genuinely upset. We want to go and kill these bad guys and we can't. Because that, that briefing, all this, this, this process goes so long and, and so precise. I'm not saying that this is wrong. I'm just saying that it just took so long time that a lot of these targets got away.

• 4:37:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:37:39Speaker 01

  And this is what bothers me till today. This is something that people, somebody asked me if I have any regrets from Iraq. I, I, I do have one that bothers me that, that, that it, it's, very often I reflect on it. Is we didn't kill enough of these bastards. There's too many of these bastards just got away. And the, the reason it bothers me is because if, if we did get maybe then one son of the bitch.

• 4:38:09Speaker 01

  Well, some of our brothers would come back later on. They wouldn't be killed later on by this son of the bitch. So that that weighs on me. And even now, sometimes I I I sit down and like almost every night I have these things that I think every every son of the bitch that got away that I wish I could kill. So I I I think we all have this almost like a guilt that we we we maybe we could do more. So some of our brothers would come home.

• 4:38:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, no doubt about it. You you don't know.

• 4:38:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's the only regret I have.

• 4:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:38:42Speaker 01

  But you know, I think about this like when I was, yeah, uh, so I came back and I asked later to to go to Bud's because every every shot like from the gun around my head or close my close proximity caused me to be nauseated and and sometimes I will lose the balance. I was like for wobbly for a while. So, yeah, I mean, that's nothing unusual because quite few of our guys suffer from that.

• 4:39:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so that's that's what, um, you know, you you you go into this, what you what you were talking about earlier, where um, you came back, they gave you orders, which was smart. They're thinking, hey, let's let this guy go be a breaching instructor because he's done hundreds and hundreds of real world breaches. He developed this breaching protocol. He developed breaching charges like, but then they didn't know about the medical things you were facing. You called.

• 4:39:33Speaker 01

  I was hiding it for a while, but yeah, then eventually I confessed to him to to you, Ben.

• 4:39:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:39:38Speaker 01

  I'm something is wrong with me.

• 4:39:39Jocko Willink?

  And luckily, Berger is a freaking awesome guy who was figured things out, how to take care of the guys and how to take care of you. And um, so you end up going to Bud's. What what job did you have at Bud's? Were you a second phase instructor?

• 4:39:52Speaker 01

  I was second phase instructor. So, yeah, that was pretty cool. I mean, she was funny. I think that the most difficult part for me was to answer like the question, how how would you describe your work in SEAL teams? What are SEAL teams? You know, and I have I I I kind of struggle to because you can talk about these jobs about SEAL teams forever. So making sure that I say like, you know, think about like government customer service, you know, government, that that that. But my customers were always wrong and I got to kill them. So this is something that

• 4:40:28Jocko Willink?

  Customers always wrong.

• 4:40:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, our customers were always wrong.

• 4:40:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they were.

• 4:40:34Speaker 01

  So I think there was that like they never bothered me after like they laugh at it, but I didn't have to make these long answers.

• 4:40:43Jocko Willink?

  When you're at BUDs, what did you learn? What did you see as a BUDs instructor that was like new knowledge to you? Obviously, you learned that everything is structured and organized, which you didn't know when you were going through BUDs.

• 4:40:54Speaker 01

  Right. That's all the one of these are this explained, all this structure, the safety mechanism that are transparent to the student. But what I learned the most, I think what struck me the most is the How's extremely humbling experience to me to go up there and see it. And for me, when I was going through BUDs as a student, it was just kicking the balls, kicking the ass. And just spit you out, ready for real seal training, right? So when you go up there as an instructor and you have to dish out these punishments, you have to do all this stuff.

• 4:41:33Speaker 01

  And it's almost like I couldn't believe that it is possible to make through it. Almost thinking like these people have balls. I mean, to go to the shit and how can this kid, this 20 years, 19 years old, 25 years old kid not quit? From after this, you know, most of them quit, but there was those guys who didn't. Holy shit, this is like new Found of respect for these kids, these guys, you just can't make them quit. You just cannot.

• 4:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you work any Hell Weeks?

• 4:42:08Speaker 01

  I did, yeah, sometimes because I was second phase, but I was assigned to Sometimes to support the Hell Week because the Hell Week goes 24/7. There is no break. There's always evolutions going on. The students don't sleep. So yeah, I was supplementing sometimes these guys.

• 4:42:23Jocko Willink?

  I kind of wish I got to watch some Hell Weeks or work some Hell Weeks because I never did. And the only Hell Week I saw was mine.

• 4:42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:42:31Jocko Willink?

  Which I, you know, was just like, you're like, what the hell is going on?

• 4:42:34Speaker 01

  It is incredible, you know, and then you can see that the, the, the, the, at the end of it, these people like they don't even sometimes. Know what's going on around them. They know what's going on around them, but they are unable to quit, even if they wanted to, because their brain is already set. I'm going to make it. I'm going to go through it. So some of them have to be actually pulled out of training. They are serious injuries and there are such sometimes. So this is why those inspections are going on. This is why we don't allow uh uh uh people to to injure themselves. You know, there are some who hide it, who lie, and those are those people who get usually injured. If you are dishonest, you do not follow the instructions to report yourself

• 4:43:17Speaker 01

  injuries. If you don't, if you hide from the doctor's staff, you get injured. And this is why we have to be, this is why the inspections are the way they are. Every night, you are inspected and make sure that you are still good to go. But Halloween is uh is just what it is. It's not the most difficult part of BUDS. I think the the second phase is very technical, where most of the people actually fell out. Uh and the third phase is like real Halloween steroids. That's the way I experienced that.

• 4:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this point, you are finally kind of settling down a little bit. Um you start to think about maybe you got to find the other part of the American dream here, you know, like

• 4:43:57Speaker 01

  Build a family, yeah.

• 4:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Um you you say with the help of some of my SEAL brothers, I turned to online dating services to try and find the woman of my dreams.

• 4:44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I was trying to find somebody in San Diego. And actually, I can say that Joel, brother, peace, respect. Uh so he was trying to hook me up and and help me out find some some girl. But every time it came out to was like, not good, you know, it's like the guy don't speak English, looks scary, and it looks the the so that that did not work.

• 4:44:30Jocko Willink?

  Not exactly the Romeo they were looking for.

• 4:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the clothes, you know, like, I never felt the need after Iraq, I spent so much time there wearing just the camis. I didn't feel the need to wear nice clothes. Nice clothes for me was jeans. And black T-shirt, but when I wanted to be fancy, I wore black jeans and white T-shirt or something like that, and that was it. So finally Joel said, dude, you can, you, you, you're not finding anybody like this. You cannot go like this and, and people and expect the girls will fall for you. We're going shopping. So he took me to the store, we start buying stuff and, and he's like, the things that I pick up, he's like, dude, this is like nineteen seventies. Don't wear that.

• 4:45:16Speaker 01

  So he picked the clothes for me and everything. And when we came back from this trip, I, I'm still grateful for him. I thought there is no girl able to resist me from then on. But you know what? I think I already burned myself out in San Diego. So I decided to go and find some, I was advised to go online and find somebody online. That was disaster too for a long time and I can talk about, I, I wrote about in the book. But eventually I made, made up to Rachel.

• 4:45:44Jocko Willink?

  Eventually you say, uh, you, you find a girl. We emailed back and forth a couple of days. I was totally charmed. Her name was Rachel. She was everything I was looking for and a woman and a partner, beautiful, witty, smart, successful in her own right. She was much younger than me, which made me a little nervous. What if she thought I was too old for her? On the advice of my teammates, I had taken a few years off my real age for the dating site.

• 4:46:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Then I still barely fit her preferred age range.

• 4:46:08Speaker 01

  I found out later because like, I didn't know it, but I was like month away from being cut off, even after I lie about my age.

• 4:46:15Jocko Willink?

  How many years did you take off?

• 4:46:17Speaker 01

  I think like five, five or six maybe. I don't remember four, five, six, a lot.

• 4:46:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's pretty significant.

• 4:46:24Speaker 01

  But you know, she was like way, way younger and I was like, there is no way she will, she will, you know, want to date me or see me. And I'll put supposedly, I looked scary at the time, so.

• 4:46:37Jocko Willink?

  And then you say, I didn't want to risk losing her, so I asked some of my SEAL teammates to help me write love letters to her.

• 4:46:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, because you know, I still, my English is not perfect. As you can hear it. Until this day, I'm more proficient speaking with bullets than speaking with words. So, yeah, who could help me? My closest family, that was fellow seals. So whoever I could drag to it, say, can you help me? Can you correct my grammar? Can you fix this? It's like Drago, if you, if you, if you write this, you're gonna get, she will, she will not want to talk to you. You don't speak like this to ladies. You know, so basically they were writing the love letters for me and I was just, you know, typing it and just sending to her. She liked it. But, you know, there was only two, I could only pull that shade off for so long.

• 4:47:26Jocko Willink?

  So eventually you say, I met Rachel in person about two months later. It felt like an eternity. She came to visit me in San Diego. I asked a fellow seal to come with me and assistant bailing me out if Rachel turned out to be a catfish.

• 4:47:36Speaker 01

  From the previous dating experiences. So, yeah, I had my swing buddy with me and.

• 4:47:42Jocko Willink?

  I had her picture and a flower. The flower I kept hidden in my Jeep just in case I had to make a last minute escape. I had no reason to worry though. My teammate and I both recognized her. She came down an escalator at the San Diego airport. Holy shit, Drago, my buddy exclaimed. She's too young. Did you rob the cradle or something? How did you pull that off? I laughed and replied, you guys wrote the love letters. I lied about my age. It worked.

• 4:48:06Jocko Willink?

  My buddy threw up his hands and laughing turned around to leave. Whatever dude, she's hot. I'm out. Now really nervous, I approached the escalator to wait for her near the bottom. When she walked up to me, I was scared out of my wits. I extended my hand to her stiff as a board from head to toe and muttered, hi, I'm Thomas. Rachel looked at me with a twinkle in her eye and she replied breezily, Thomas, it's nice to meet you, but I didn't fly all the way across the United States. Shake your hand. Give me a hug. Holy shit. I melted and leaned in to give her a real Drago hug. Oh damn.

• 4:48:36Speaker 01

  I was in love.

• 4:48:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, at this time, you say Rachel was living in Ohio. Um, for a while, you freaking were helping her out, like, you know, giving her, you sending money out to her.

• 4:48:49Speaker 01

  She wasn't changing the job at the same, at the time when they transitioned time. So I figured out like, I, I, I just can be, I can be helpful, you know, and, and, and kind of like, so she likes me more. I was, I, I, I would do anything for her to love me. So, so I was like, you know, I, like, I was doing like, I, I was doing everything just to so.

• 4:49:13Jocko Willink?

  So that included giving up your apartment, moving into the cages like a freaking new guy at a SEAL team. And then eventually you just got sick of the cages. So you, you kicked a couple of BUD students out of their room and you moved into one of the BUD students rooms.

• 4:49:26Speaker 01

  Jared Ogden, he's one of those students and we, we, we connect, we're connected back now and.

• 4:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Wait, who was it?

• 4:49:32Speaker 01

  Jared Ogden, Jared, Jared Ogden. Great officer, great officer, great guy. So much respect for him, but even more respect because, you know, like he was living next door. So in the morning I get up, I brush my teeth, spit in the sink and stuff. And then I was running back again, inspecting his room and his in the bathroom.

• 4:49:52Jocko Willink?

  And getting him in trouble that for the path.

• 4:49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I, I admire his restraint. He didn't, he didn't, you know, die me out or anything. He just like took as a man. And, and yeah, we are friends. We are friends till today. And a lot of respect for this guy as an officer, but also as a student.

• 4:50:12Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit. You say, even as my personal life began to fall into place, I struggled to wrap my head around the fact that I would soon be leaving the Navy SEALs forever. Yeah. I began looking for jobs, trying to think of whatever career could possibly satisfy me after years in the teams. The problem with the SEAL life is it's harder to get out of than it is to get in. I know that sounds impossible, given everything you've read, but you must understand how much of your life the teams occupy and for how long. For years, your SEAL teammates are everything to you, your family, your friends, your coworkers. You eat, sleep, breathe and fight with them day in and day out. No one in the world knows you better than the, those guys do. Not only that, but they also understand what you've been through better than anyone ever will.

• 4:50:55Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 4:50:56Jocko Willink?

  Totally true. Rachel helped me a lot with this process when I was put on terminal leave, meaning you were getting ready to retire.

• 4:51:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51:02Jocko Willink?

  She helped me do everything from typing up my resume to teaching me how to negotiate job officers, job offers. Never accept the first offer they give you, she said. Rachel helped me post my resume online for my job search and three days later I received a call from a software development firm. They asked me some basic screening questions and then invited me to come in for an interview. On my way out, Rachel reiterated, do not accept the first offer they give you. She emphasized for me to come home, we would talk about it and then I would negotiate for terms I wanted. Naturally, I said yes to the first offer they gave me.

• 4:51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:51:34Jocko Willink?

  But I promised our listener real closely for them. I forgot to mention this whole time and I was gonna mention when you were talking about the database that you built for the breaching charges. You're a computer guy. You're a computer nerd. You know freaking, I remember this as a team too. You like knew computer languages and stuff like this.

• 4:51:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Says this, how I got that job. But you know what? With this, yes, so what I did, I was taking picture of every breaching charge and the door, the target before and after it, and also notes what was, what charge did I use? The, I don't want to go into details, there's new charges. So, when, so I was told that I need to go and meet with these tier one guys and, and I went up there and talked to them. I gave them all the information that I had. So, they were very, you know, they said, thank you. I hope it helped them a lot. And, and yeah, they were appreciative of that stuff.

• 4:52:30Speaker 01

  I was, every charge, the size, the standoff, the everything that need to be there, I was, I was.

• 4:52:37Jocko Willink?

  And you had enough computer savvy to know how to make the pictures and all this stuff. So that's like something we always talk, I mean, I always talk about you, you know, punching people in the head and blowing shit up, but there's a whole nother side to you that like, is a computer programmer and how's, knows how to do all kinds of stuff like that. So, you end up getting this software job. Um, you say this, the military provides structure, camaraderie and stability to a lot of people who have never experienced any of those things before and it can be extremely difficult to leave behind. In combat, I did not see anything the Navy didn't prepare me to see. I did not do anything the Navy didn't prepare me to do.

• 4:53:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't have any regrets for my actions in the war. There's nothing that ever bothered me about the war. On the other hand, traumatic brain injury is a different story. As a lead breacher, I was exposed to countless close proximity explosions. Some of them caused bleeding from my nose or ears. It definitely had some effect on my health and I did have trouble sleeping as I transitioned to civilian life.

• 4:53:39Jocko Willink?

  I'd wake up in the middle of the night at 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. In the past, when talking about with my fellow Navy SEALs, the consensus was it was ghosts. But the more information that began to come through about these problems, the more I began to realize the damage done during my time in the military was still with me. Every breach, explosion, shockwave, and concrete powder inhalation had left us with varying degrees of physical trauma. This had affected things like my memory, balance, and speech. I carried a lot of bad habits from my time in the SEALs for quite a while. Probably some of the bad habits from my earlier life, too, now that I think about it. Rachel, who has always been significantly more proper than me, had to tell me on multiple occasions not to just spit out the first thought that

• 4:54:21Jocko Willink?

  came to my head when somebody said something stupid, or not to beat up some random guy in the street just because I thought he looked at me funny. Sometimes I felt like I was taking etiquette classes.

• 4:54:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm fully domesticated now.

• 4:54:33Jocko Willink?

  I know. You use that term in here. You keep saying she domesticated you.

• 4:54:37Speaker 01

  Well, you know me. You knew me from before. And I was like, yeah, that guy. But now, you know, I'm proper. I'm a, I'm, I'm, I know the, I'm a good person, you know, and I'm a good husband. I'm a good father. And I wasn't neither one before.

• 4:54:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, from my perspective, you were an awesome person before. Because I know that no matter what was going on, I knew I could count on you.

• 4:55:09Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:55:09Jocko Willink?

  And that was what our jobs were. And it was a different, I mean, it takes a different type of person. So do you have to maybe shed some of that, shed some of that a little bit when you go and be married and all this other stuff?

• 4:55:23Speaker 01

  Well, Rachel beat it out from me. So she, she, she, she, basically what she did, she, she, she fired Drago.

• 4:55:32Jocko Willink?

  She fired Drago?

• 4:55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Thomas back. Drago is in the cage now, so.

• 4:55:37Jocko Willink?

  He's in the lion cage, the tiger cage, whatever it is. I just had to read this one section. It says, "My bud students shared how much they valued my perspective and what they learned from me. At the end of each phase, students were required to write a review of the phase and provide evaluations for all the instructors. One of my students commented, 'Instructor Drago was so motivating. I can't imagine how much more motivated I would have been if I understood half of what he said.'"

• 4:56:03Speaker 01

  That's actually his real critique. That's the part that I still have it. I have those critiques at home, some of them.

• 4:56:10Jocko Willink?

  You decided you're gonna ask Rachel to marry you. You freaking take her to our desert training facility.

• 4:56:19Speaker 01

  Because, you know, like, the divorce, that being away, that ruined you also financially. And I was trying to, my best to kind of impress her, to, you know, I was in love with her. We were in love with each other. So finally I said, "I need to pop the question, but how do I do it? I start reading books about it, go to vacations, you know, go to Cancun, go to here, Hawaii." It's like, I don't have the money. I don't even know how to do that. So I figured I'll just do what I know the best. I just, I invited her to the range, make her shoot, and I asked her to marry me. So me and my fellow team guys, my team brothers, SEALs, device, the thing that, we're gonna go and line up the gun, every type of gun

• 4:57:04Speaker 01

  in our inventory on the range where we train SEALs, and we invite her. So he starts shooting from gun to gun to gun to gun, and the last gun will have those Mark 48, will have the, when you leave the tray to load it, because I tell her she needs to load every gun. So we put actually two Mark 48s. So Mark 48 with the tray, so she can kind of get used to it, so she doesn't smash it.

• 4:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:57:28Speaker 01

  Forgot my ring, the one that I, the ring that I secure up there. So the first 48 was just painful. 48, she load the gun, she had the tray, she was a good shooter. Make me feel like, yeah. So, uh, so the second gun, the last gun on the line. So she went, she was like, she knew how to do it because she did in the first one. She confidently opened the tray and here's there's a hanging on the ring, there's the on the thread is a ring. And on the bolt, it says marry me. Instead of the ball, I put a piece of paper or marry me. So she looked, she had the tears in her eyes, me too. And she said, yes. And I, and there's actually, I have a video of it.

• 4:58:11Speaker 01

  I'll post on the website, of that, actually, the video when I asked her to marry me with the guns and I have a pictures that I'll post online to. She said, yes.

• 4:58:21Jocko Willink?

  Pretty epic. Um, fast forward a little bit. Rach and I were married on August 18th, 2007. That also happens to be the day of the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C. And we were married in a small town that was named after the Spartan king Leonides.

• 4:58:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:58:36Jocko Willink?

  I had been fascinated by the ancient Greek and Roman history for years and these coincidences felt like a confirmation of our beautiful life ahead. We have five children together, including three from our previous marriages. Our older boys are in their twenties. Adam is happily married and has a young daughter. Blake is starting college after serving honorably as a U.S. Marine with deployments to Afghanistan. And Connor is loving life while serving in the U.S. Coast Guard. Our two little teenagers from our marriage are Grace, the little lady of the house, and Dorian, our future warrior.

• 4:59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, Grace, she rules the house. That's my, my little lady. And, uh, yes, she's, she, she is the lady. Yes.

• 4:59:13Jocko Willink?

  I officially retired from the U.S. Navy SEALs at the rank of Petty Officer First Class on June 31st, 2011. I am proud of the contributions I made to the teams and thankful for the great men I was able to serve with and learn from. And you go on to say this. I love Poland.

• 4:59:36Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes I still get asked if I would ever move back. And every time I say no, I'm an American now. I'm an American by choice. I'm fiercely proud of my roots. But America is where my heart belongs, where I live. And America is where I will die. Yes, that's, that's me. And you know, I, this, this book is freaking great. You, you put so much stuff into perspective. And, and here's another thing. It just, I have seen what happens when a totalitarian government takes control. And it's why I'm so grateful to be a proud American citizen. America is my country and I consider myself blessed to live here.

• 5:00:19Jocko Willink?

  This is where I found the SEALs, who gave me a new life and a new sense of purpose. Where else but America can you show up with only a bag of clothes, barely able to speak English and rise to the ranks of the world's greatest fighters, fighting force? America is where I found love, a renewed sense of faith. And I was able to build a family and a life for them without ever having to look over my shoulder.

• 5:00:42Speaker 01

  Only in America, there is no other country in the world where you can come and be whoever you are able to be and, and live safe, great life. And that's the life I have in America. I'm proud of my American. There is no hyphen in front of this American here.

• 5:01:04Jocko Willink?

  Just American. Now, on a, look, again, get the book. I just want to close it out with this one, one little, uh, part. You say, ultimately, I believe the American dream is about more than material prosperity. It's about being able to live a safe, simple, fulfilling life and having the freedom and opportunity to pursue our individual dreams regardless of what you think or how you vote. Patriotism to me means respecting one's neighbor and loving one's family and being willing to defend both. I fought against a totalitarian government when I was younger. Doing so taught me to be strong and to never lose sight of what it is I'm defending.

• 5:01:45Jocko Willink?

  Whether it's a person, a flag, or a place, every American can love something about this country and fight to make it a better home for everyone. For me, at the end of the day, I owe everything to this country and the people in it. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

• 5:02:06Speaker 01

  That's what I would like to use this opportunity here to say thank you to every American. Thank you to America for my freedom. I can only live free because of America and American people. So I would like to say thank you. And you know, very often people say, "Thank you for your service. Thank you for what you have done for America." But people don't understand, you cannot repay freedom. How can you? So there is so much more. There's always more you can do or you should do. So for me, I'll say like, you don't say, "Thank you." There's me who should say, "Thank you." And who is saying, "Thank you for my freedom." So I would like to say, "Thank you so much.

• 5:02:51Speaker 01

  Thank you for everything. Thank you for allowing me to be American, be part of this great country."

• 5:02:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's freaking outstanding. And there's so much more in the book, like we didn't even touch on. You've got, you've got journals from people that you knew when you were a political prisoner. You've got their journals in this book. You've got, you mentioned this earlier. There's documents from the show trials that, that some of your friends went up against. And, and they stood up to the, to the tyrannical, tyrannical governments.

• 5:03:24Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's just a freaking outstanding. It's outstanding document. It's a historical document. It really is a historical document that people are going to be able to look back on. So tell us what, what you're up to now. You got ConnectZinc, right?

• 5:03:40Speaker 01

  Yes, so I was heavily censored by Facebook, LinkedIn. And matter of fact, LinkedIn, I had to, I opened, this is my like third account. Every time I open something, they shut me down and I lose all the followers. So, and Twitter, they, they kick me out of it. So I decided to open my own social media. And it is connectzinc.com and it is in the book. So this is something that... I think there is, we don't have socialist fact checkers. You know, there were no fact checkers until the truth started coming out. And that's, that's what's triggered that censorship. So there is no censorship here. We let people decide what they want to read, who they want to connect with,

• 5:04:24Speaker 01

  and what they want to believe in, and what they want to post. That's their forum. There is no censorship. So that's, that's, I think, is my other contribution to free speech and free America. I think it's, yeah.

• 5:04:39Jocko Willink?

  So it's connectzing, z i n g dot com is where you can find that. You also have the Navy Seals Fund dot org.

• 5:04:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:04:48Jocko Willink?

  And what that is, it's a five, it's a charity, it's a 501(c)(3) charity. It's relief, support, and education. That's what you, that's what you all provide.

• 5:04:59Jocko Willink?

  The quote that you have is quiet, flexible, and responsive. And what it is, it's just a no red tape action arm that can make stuff happen when, when people need it.

• 5:05:08Speaker 01

  Yes, and especially nowadays, when the wars are winding down. There's a lot of people from our community coming injured. And they are usually, sometimes they are branded as troublemakers. And when they ask for help, there is no help for them. Many charities turn them away because say, well, you are troublemaker. We don't want you here. We don't, we can't help you. For Navy Seals Fund, there is no such distinctions. You are 5326 or officer in SEAL teams, we will help you, will not, will not allow you to foul. And, and this is, another thing is, there is no paid position. The charity is run by Navy Seals only. And we don't get paid.

• 5:05:52Speaker 01

  This is something that was very important to me, that we do it because it is the right thing to do, not because we get paid. And there's a group of great SEALs on our board of directors. And we are very quick, we can respond within an hour sometimes. And this is necessary because very often we get a call with the SEALs is they don't ask for help. Usually they try to deal with it themselves. We, we don't want to see being seen as vulnerable or in trouble. So, so they don't ask for help, but we get a call like, hey. So I ran out of option, they're gonna take, they're gonna repossess, or I will default on my mortgage. And tomorrow, I will be done with it.

• 5:06:36Speaker 01

  I need help, can we do something? And there's quite a few times, we had to step in within an hour for a closure or something, and pay that bill, and put the guy back on his feet. Because sometimes, it is, I don't know if you were, but many guys I know where in hours the situation that I'm almost there. I'm almost got myself out on the, in the clear, but this last thing is going to sink me. I just need a little bit push to get me over the hump, and I'm good. And I have a job lineup, I have this and this. And we are there, we gave that push, so the guy can get on his feet. And another thing, too, what is important for Navy SEALs Fund,

• 5:07:20Speaker 01

  is get people out of this vicious cycle of contracting. There's many guys, they like it, and I understand it, and I think I would like it too myself. But there's many guys that are tired already, they are tired of war, they are combat deployments. But when they retire, or they leave the Navy, they don't have sometimes much options. Their skills, as you know, Navy SEALs, their skills, our skills are not easily translated into civilian world. I mean, you could be great Walmart, Kmart guard, or something like this too, unless you have other skills that you acquire while in the teams, and a lot of team guys are, but there are some that don't. So we don't want to send them, so what they do, say, okay, what I'm going to do is,

• 5:08:04Speaker 01

  I didn't find the job this time, so I will go contracting for six months, I make tons of money, and then I come back, I will have a cushion that I can find the job. Or there's no longer these tons of money available, because the wars are winding down. The guy go on such contract, comes back with the money, six months later,

• 5:08:26Speaker 01

  There are no money left and there's still no job. So what do you do, what the guy is doing? Well, I just try one more time. So just then he tells his family, his wife, his kids. I'm going again, I go one more time. My next time will be better. And he goes again on the, on this contract, comes back. It is not better. So, so we, we are looking for the way to break them out of the cycles. Those guys who want to get out. Navy SEALs Fund is standing by and, and they're trying to help to get out of it. Besides, some of these guys are already injured and they don't need to go on this, on these type of trips anymore.

• 5:09:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. All this information can be found at Drago Ziran dot com. That's where it is. Your last name is spelled D Z I E R A N. The first name is spelled Drago.

• 5:09:20Jocko Willink?

  You are back somehow on social media. You're, you're on Instagram, you're on Twitter at, at Drago Ziran.

• 5:09:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:09:28Jocko Willink?

  So you're on both those places. And this is what you got going on. The book freaking just came out. It's just, it's, it's outstanding. Does that get us up to present day? Do we cover? Oh, I know we didn't cover. Your friend from, from Bone Frog.

• 5:09:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 5:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Bone Frog Coffee Company.

• 5:09:45Speaker 01

  Yes, Bone Frog Coffee, Bone, Bone, Bone Frog Wines. He is, I, I would like to bring it up because it's great coffee. This guy is, he's, this is SEAL business. Great business and the coffee, you will like it, you will love it. This is something that, that's all I drink. I would like to bring it up and I would like to encourage people to support this Navy SEAL business. It's, it's great. Again, great coffee, great. And these guys are supporting our charities. They, Bone Frog Coffee, Bone Frog Wines are supporting Navy SEALs Fund. They are always very active within Navy SEAL community.

• 5:10:30Speaker 01

  They support again NavySEALSFund.org. And I would like to encourage people to look into their website. It is, it is posted at NavySEALSFund.org as a, as one of our supporters and, and, and active, actively helping our community.

• 5:10:50Jocko Willink?

  So this guy that made this company, Tim, he's, he. Is a teen guy?

• 5:10:55Speaker 01

  He's in the Navy SEAL.

• 5:10:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so he retired, I think he did what 25 years?

• 5:10:59Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 5:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Something like that, so, and then he, you know, he's one of these freaking coffee junkies, people that are super into coffee like, and so it's bonefrogcoffee.com. And I don't know if you want me to say this or not, but you were saying that he donated so much money to you and your charity that you had to be like, hey dude, you, you don't need to give us any more money right now, like, we'll get money from other people, that's, that's where, that's where his mindset is at.

• 5:11:28Speaker 01

  Our concern, yes, because, so, it is on our website.

• 5:11:35Speaker 01

  We want him to take care of himself right now and his family because his beloved wife, I think I can say about it because this is officially on our website, the, the support for his wife has cancer and he's fighting with everything he has to provide to his family and save his, his wife. So, please go to thenevysealsfund.org, to our support page, and read about my teammate who is fighting for his wife's life right now with, and still trying to provide for, for his kids, for his children.

• 5:12:15Speaker 01

  So, again, I have to be very careful how I say it for the legal reasons, I think, but

• 5:12:23Speaker 01

  this is the man that we support. We actually had to ask him to do not, to, to, to, instead of donating to Navy SEALs Fund, just provide for his family, for his, for his wife, and we are standing by his side, so that the Navy SEALs Fund is on his side, we try to help him. But this business is, i- i- the coffee is great, this is something that I drink every day, and I was not the coffee drinker until I ran into this coffee. So, if you can maybe show it to...

• 5:12:56Jocko Willink?

  So, one's called Bone Frog Blend, the other one's called Frog Man?

• 5:13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. My Frog Man is my favorite one.

• 5:13:04Jocko Willink?

  That's your favorite, believe it or not.

• 5:13:08Jocko Willink?

  So let's support Tim, let's support Bone Frog, Bone Frog, bonefrogcoffee.com. There you go.

• 5:13:15Speaker 01

  Also go to NavySealsFund.org where you can read a little bit more about what we are fighting for right now for his family.

• 5:13:22Jocko Willink?

  There you go. So, so check those things out. And um, does that get us up? Does that, does that get us to present day?

• 5:13:28Speaker 01

  I think we're in present day, yeah.

• 5:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Kerry, you got any questions? I saw you over there taking notes. Were you just taking a, a freaking admin notes? You got some shit to put out.

• 5:13:39Speaker 02

  Actually, I did have one question for you, Drago, just because I'm curious and, and I definitely plan on reading the book. But in, in socialist state Poland, about what percentage of the, the Polish people would you say were bought into what was happening? With the socialist government? Because it seems like with, you know, uh, people having rooms taken away from them in an apartment building to put somebody else there and food scarcity, it, it seems like you, the, the people would look around and say something here isn't right. This doesn't seem like it's working.

• 5:14:20Speaker 02

  But I, I'm not sure how, how, how many the, what percentage of the people are bought into this and, and are believers? And, and what percentage are kind of felt like you and, and your kind of comrades?

• 5:14:32Speaker 01

  Very, very small percentage. Although if you listen to official socialist propaganda, the press, the, the media, the fake news media, that you would think that everybody is for socialism. There's only few, this, this, uh, uh, uh, they, they call it insurrectionists who oppose it. But you know, people in Poland knew about these murders after the Second World War, when they were executing people opposing socialism. The, the, the apartments and stuff, this has not the, not the biggest deal. That was just inconvenience. But we're talking about the imprisonments, the persecution of opposition, the, the prisons.

• 5:15:14Speaker 01

  After Second World War, people were being sent out to Soviet Union, to Siberia from Poland. So that was, that was so pretty much common knowledge that even strict censorship falsified history and destroyed monuments, burned, destroyed books, the history books.

• 5:15:36Speaker 01

  Did not help to suppress the discontent and the hate for socialism and communism, the totalitarian oppressive systems. And actually, the Polish constitution, I think Article thirteen, I believe, says that it forbids any party, any type of organization, which whose ideology is based on totalitarian system like socialism, like fascist national socialism or communism. It is illegal to promote this type of ideologies in Poland now. Although now there's, they try to change that, there's a lot of forces now financed

• 5:16:18Speaker 01

  by Soros and bankers who are trying to dismantle Poland right now. They try to bring a lot of refugees in Poland. They try to build a hate of Poles one towards another. They try to build this fringe group or group with questionable morality. They try to push a man into girls bathrooms. So this is, this is something who is coming from overseas, from outside of Poland, which is Poland, it is now under attack. So they try to, they try to defend themselves. But you know, think what happened here, you know, I think the best, the real life teaches you a lot.

• 5:16:58Speaker 01

  The girl, the girl who was jailed in, in Rosia prison, she refused to stand up to, to our flag, our anthem. And look how she changed after she experienced, how patriotic she became after she returned from prison after two years, become, stand up for anthem now. She, she, I believe she's patriotic. But imagine how patriotic I am after 20 years in this type of prison.

• 5:17:29Speaker 02

  And, and this, this is one of the things, the other thing I wanted to say is just how grateful I am for the perspective that, that you give us in this book. I think I, a lot of times, lack that perspective and just to be reminded of it is really powerful. So I'm super fortunate to, you know, I'm, thank God, America got Drago and thank God the SEAL teams got Drago.

• 5:17:55Speaker 01

  Well, so, thank you. I want to say thank you because you actually made my point. This is the reason I wrote this book. I want people to read it and not amuse how bad it is. Everybody knows how bad socialism and communism is. I want people to read and think how great America is. I want this book to be a prism, a lens, where you see the good things about America, which we tend not to sometimes notice. I see people here, or maybe some of the younger generation, not being aware about the great America and how unique country in the world it is. So, that's why I wrote this book.

• 5:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that way people don't have to go to a Russian prison in order to realize that they should be very grateful for the freedom that we have here in this country. And they can just go, "Oh, yeah, we're blessed to be here."

• 5:18:45Speaker 01

  Yes, that's where I would like to see people to see my book.

• 5:18:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's what it delivers. Any Drago, any closing thoughts? You got anything else for this time around?

• 5:18:56Speaker 01

  I think the same thing. For me, it is important. We lost many guys in this war. Many teammates, but also other military personnel. And they live. They're still alive in our minds, in our hearts. So, this is how we need to keep them alive. And we must not allow them to die again by fading from our memories. So, we need to call their names. We need to be, we need to remember them. And we need to pray for them and their families. We are the, these families lost their protectors. We need to step in. We must be their protectors now.

• 5:19:39Speaker 01

  So, just that thought.

• 5:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed. Well, you know, as I read the book, I know that from the book years ago...

• 5:19:53Jocko Willink?

  Before you even made it to America, while you were waiting in in West Germany to get your to get your final flight over here to America, you made a pledge, you made a promise, you made a pledge to be the best American citizen that you possibly could be. And I want to tell you without a doubt, you achieved that goal. And I think you've gone above and beyond that pledge, you know, from working as a janitor to a parts picker, to a mechanic, to a parachute expert. And then when our country went to war, what did you do? You went and volunteered to fight.

• 5:20:33Jocko Willink?

  And you served with a distinction as a SEAL on multiple combat deployments.

• 5:20:46Jocko Willink?

  And it was an honor to serve alongside you then. And it's an honor to always be able to call you brother.

• 5:20:53Speaker 01

  And likewise, likewise, it is great honor to be called American. And I, this is something that I cherish the most. And it was an honor to serve with you and other my fellow SEALs. And I would say thank you for, for allowing me to come to this country and live as a free man. And that thank you is for every American, every, every person here in America, I would say thank you. I will never forget that.

• 5:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, thanks for your perspective, and thanks for being an American. Thanks, brother.

• 5:21:28Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Thomas Drago Zaron has left the building.

• 5:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Not much, I mean, damn, what a freaking story, huh?

• 5:21:42Speaker 02

  Talking about getting better, man. That guy, socialist communist Poland.

• 5:21:50Jocko Willink?

  Prison.

• 5:21:51Speaker 02

  Prison.

• 5:21:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:21:53Speaker 02

  Walks up to the embassy. What's up?

• 5:21:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep. You know what I failed to talk to him about? First of all, I kinda went into like, he's kind of a mutant. Obviously, like, he's sixty-three years old, right? How does he look?

• 5:22:09Speaker 02

  Uh, I mean, I would, I would guess like, early fifties. I, I'd probably say around late, like, I'd probably say early fifties.

• 5:22:17Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 5:22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:22:17Jocko Willink?

  I think he looks like he's thirty-three.

• 5:22:20Speaker 02

  He looks, yeah, he looks young. And he's freaking jacked.

• 5:22:23Jocko Willink?

  He's jacked?

• 5:22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:22:24Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, and he's, he was a really, I hinted to it, like, he was a, when you'd see him, like, fighting, you'd be like, yep, he's, he's a good athlete. Explosive. He has explosiveness. Like, I trained with him, you know, so you could feel like, oh, yeah, he's really explosive. And he would learn really quickly. Uh, but he's just a, just a stud. But what was I gonna say about this? Oh, just a beast.

• 5:22:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:22:45Jocko Willink?

  A beast. Oh, what I didn't, what I didn't talk to him too much about, like, how did he prepare for BUDs? I think he just, I think his life was preparation for BUDs, and his genetics are preparation for BUDs. Cause, uh...

• 5:22:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. He, he was putting that, he was putting those MMA pieces together early on, too, when he was talking about the, the boxing fundamentals, then the karate, then the taekwondo stuff, is getting that little mix and then taking it to the streets.

• 5:23:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, taking it to the streets. Uh, but what a, what a, what a great dude. And, you know, a big freaking heart. You know, like, just a big heart, wants to help people out, so... Awesome. Oh, so I was lucky to be able to work with him. And I worked with him a lot, man. Like, you know, we did a lot of ops, you know, it's freaking legit. So, uh, like I said, man, what a freaking awesome dude. So, there you go. Um, I think we need to take advantage of our freedom here. And we do that by getting after it, by getting better. So, we're getting better with Jocko Fuel, Jocko Fuel.

• 5:23:50Jocko Willink?

  Jacofuel.com, go get yourself some, go get your, I'm right now fueled up on Jocko Go, by the way. It's like ten o'clock at night right now. We just recorded for, how, I don't even know how long it was, five, four, four and a half, five hours, something like that, something like that. But guess what? Here I am. Do I sound amped?

• 5:24:06Speaker 02

  You sound amped.

• 5:24:06Jocko Willink?

  I'm still fired up. I'm kinda fired up because of Drago. I'm also fired up because I got my go up in me. So get yourself an actual clean energy drink. Get yourself some, some milk. Get yourself some of that 30 grams of protein hitter. You know what my combo is now? Milk cookie, 14 grams of protein and a milk 30 grams. Right there. You're good. 44 Gs of the protein machine coming at you. That's a, that's a, that is a gratifying thing to do in your life. Like you know what it's like, let's say you're, you know, your timeline, whatever you need, you need protein.

• 5:24:47Jocko Willink?

  You already jack sealed. Maybe you did squats, maybe you did snatches. I don't know what you did, but you know, you need some protein. Boom. You get that milk cookie and then you get that milk RTD hitter.

• 5:24:59Speaker 02

  And, and you do it in 37 seconds. You get them both down.

• 5:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think the actual time is 44 grams of protein and 44 seconds. One gram per second. Uh, jockofuel.com. Get yourself joint warfare. Get yourself the, get yourself that freaking time war too. Get in there. Get in there on that. Um, jockofuel.com. You can get it all. Vitamin shop. You can get it. GNC. I just had someone text me, just got it at GNC. Yo, we're in there. We're at Wawa right now. People were hassling Wawa the other day because on Twitter, some people were like, yo, I just went to, I just went to Wawa. They had a one can bottom right corner. I'm like, yep. I said, hey, let, let Wawa know. You want your go and people were getting fired up, but who knows?

• 5:25:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, we're up against some, some billion dollar, literal billion dollar, uh, conglomerates there.

• 5:25:53Speaker 02

  We got the people though.

• 5:25:54Jocko Willink?

  We got the people, right? You know, we've got rebellion. We got solidarity. We got solidarity at Jocko Fuel.

• 5:26:02Jocko Willink?

  Vitamin shop, GNC, Afees. Just found out people been asking, just found out we're going to be going into the Navy Exchanges. The NEX, boy. And look, I know all you young troopers out there. I know all you young Marines, all you young sailors are out there. I know you go to the NEX. I know you don't go to the damn commissary. Cause you're like, yo, I'm not doing that. So we got in there. We got into the NEX. Well, I don't know what'll be the next, next few months will be in there. Uh, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wakefern, Shoprite, HEB. HEB killing it. Everyone in Texas, thank you. Thank you for supporting America. Thank you for supporting yourself. That's what you're doing. You're supporting this podcast, by the way. This podcast

• 5:26:42Jocko Willink?

  is fueled by Jocko Fuel. Meyer in the Midwest, Harris Teeter in the game, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, and we got small gyms, jiu-jitsu gyms, CrossFit gyms, we got you covered. Email [email protected] if you want to get it in your, in your facility. That's what we got going on. So jacofuel.com, check it out. Origin USA just came out with the RTX line, roll, train, execute, clothing to wear while you're getting after it. That's what it is. The quick dry, the, the anti-smell. What's the anti-smell called?

• 5:27:18Speaker 02

  Anti-microbial.

• 5:27:19Jocko Willink?

  Anti-microbial. We got it going on. And you know what? It's American-made. It's made by freedom. It's made by freedom. You heard, you heard Drago talking about it. Communism, socialism, government-controlled. Well, guess what China is? Guess where your shirts from? Your, guess where your shorts are from? They're from freaking China. You are keeping someone imprisoned when you buy their shit. So don't do it. Buy American. Buy freedom. Support national security. OriginUSA.com, go get it. Hunt gear, jiu-jitsu gear, jiu-jitsu

• 5:27:59Jocko Willink?

  gis, rash guards, boots. Just go get it. OriginUSA.com. That's what we got going on.

• 5:28:06Speaker 02

  We also got JacoStore.com.

• 5:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Look at you, look at you coming in on cue like Echo Charles. Look at you over there. Just filling that seat, bro.

• 5:28:13Speaker 02

  I said it right this time.

• 5:28:14Jocko Willink?

  We don't even need Echo Charles around these parts anymore, huh? Is that what's going on?

• 5:28:18Speaker 02

  JacoStore.com. We got rash guards, t-shirts, your discipline equals freedom represent on the path.

• 5:28:24Jocko Willink?

  Look at you, bro. Like, where, EC's not needed, is he? He's just filling it in. Hey, everyone, EC's in Hawaii, before you freak out. He's on vacation, you know, because he needs a break. He been under a lot of stress. He been working hard, EC. Just being, you know, he been going around the clock over here cruising. So that's why K-Dog's here, but apparently he's stepping up to the plate. He was ready, dude. He's freaking getting in there. Getting in there.

• 5:28:51Speaker 02

  We got trucker hats, hoodies, beanies. We've got Warrior Kids soap from Irish Oaks Ranch. We got the Jocko soap on there. The throwback steak leaves.

• 5:29:02Jocko Willink?

  The throwback what?

• 5:29:03Speaker 02

  Stay clean, son.

• 5:29:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, stay clean, boy. Stay clean. Shirt locker as well. Don't forget about the shirt locker. That's where, that's where the, what is Echo call? The creative design?

• 5:29:14Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 5:29:15Jocko Willink?

  So, check that out. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to, subscribe to Jocko Underground, Jocko Underground dot com. It's where, look, you can get, we could, we don't control the platform unless you're listening to us on Jocko Underground dot com, which you might be. We don't control the platform. They could shut us down tomorrow. The communist could take over. That could happen. But if it does happen, you'd be right there on the underground. We're there. We'll be, we'll be still. We'll be like radio free America on the underground. That's where we're gonna be. Eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. If you want to join the revolution, the resistance, come and get it. If you can't afford eight dollars and eighteen cents, well, don't worry. We got you. Email assistance at underground, at Jocko Underground dot com and we got you. We got a YouTube channel. Subscribe to that. Subscribe to

• 5:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Origin USA YouTube channel. Subscribe to Jocko Fuel YouTube channel. Subscribe to Echelon Front YouTube. We got a bunch of YouTube channels. Psychological Warfare. Go buy that if you need to hear me talk more.

• 5:30:13Speaker 02

  Or revisit that. If you haven't listened to Psychological Warfare in a minute, go back.

• 5:30:17Jocko Willink?

  It's a good one to get into.

• 5:30:18Speaker 02

  Go back. Do that.

• 5:30:19Jocko Willink?

  Just go back. Flipside Canvas, Dakota Meyer, bunch of books. Number one book, The Pledge to America by Thomas Drago. Drago Ziron.

• 5:30:31Jocko Willink?

  Check that one out. Freaking great book. And then I read a bunch of books too. Final Spin, Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. You guys know the deal. Look, get your kids a book. Get your kids Warrior One, Two, Three, Four, and Five. Get your kids Mikey and the Dragons. Get your kids About Face by Colonel David Hackworth. Cause they need it. They need it, boy. All right. Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy, Leadership. It's all in there. Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. We got the Dallas. muster October 18th through 20th. We got the next battlefield is August 8th through 10th. I think there's a couple of seats left, couple slots left. It's that little bighorn.

• 5:31:15Jocko Willink?

  You want to see where it went down? You want to walk the battlefield? You want to study the terrain and the leadership and the personalities? Come and get it. We'll be up there. Also, we have the Assembly, which is the for, it's a women's event run by Jamie Cochran, the COO at Echelon Front, September 14th through 16th in Phoenix, Arizona. Go check that out. We also have online training. Cause we can't get to the whole world, but we're trying and the way we're trying is through online training, extremeownership.com. Learn the Jiu-Jitsu of leadership. Learn the magic of leadership. Learn the maneuvers, the skills, the tenets. Learn how to lead. It's not natural.

• 5:31:59Jocko Willink?

  It's not a natural gift. It's something you have to learn. Extremeownership.com. We will teach you. You can also come on there and just ask me questions. You can come on there and take some courses, whatever you want to do. Just get in there.

• 5:32:13Speaker 02

  New, uh, new course out on the academy right now.

• 5:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Which one is it?

• 5:32:16Speaker 02

  Relationships with yourself and Dave Burt.

• 5:32:19Jocko Willink?

  Good deal, Dave?

• 5:32:20Speaker 02

  Good deal, Dave.

• 5:32:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Relationships are everything. Relationships are everything. It's some of the things that you do to build relationships are counterintuitive. You might not be doing what you think you're doing. So get in there. Take that, take that relationships course. Believe me, you build good relationships with other people. If you build good relationships with the people you work with, if you build good relationships with the people in your family, if you build good relationships with the people that you interact with in the world, the car mechanic, the plumber, the teacher, the college professor, the doctor, the boss, the subordinate, the peer.

• 5:33:05Jocko Willink?

  If you form good relationships with these people, your entire life is going to be better. And their entire life is going to be better. So don't, but you don't necessarily know how to do this. Check it out, extremeownership.com. Learn how to build relationships, learn how to lead. If you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their Gold Star families, you want to help.

• 5:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Just service members in general, you want to help people that need it. Go to Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she's got a charity organization. It's a great organization.

• 5:33:46Jocko Willink?

  It's at Americas Mighty Warriors.org and if you want to donate, if you want to get involved, you can go and look at what she does to provide. One of the huge parts of what she does is provide medical treatment for people that need it, that's outside the realm of what the VA provides. It's outstanding. I've seen it completely 180 turn around my friends' lives. So, check that one out. Also, HeroesAndHorses.org. Micah Fink, he takes veterans up into the wilderness so they can find themselves again. And it's extremely powerful.

• 5:34:31Jocko Willink?

  And when he's not doing that, he's like, single-handedly hunting down mountain lions with slingshots that he made out of rawhide. He's just getting it. There you go. If you want to connect with us on the interwebs, connect to Drago. Drago's at, he's got a website, DragoZaron.com. He's on social media.

• 5:34:59Jocko Willink?

  He's on his social media, which is ConnectZing. He's also on Instagram and Twitter at DragoZaron. Kerry is at Kerry Hilton. Kerry underscore Hilton. He didn't get that Kerry Hilton. He went quick enough. It's all good. I'm at Jocko Willing. Just watch out on any of those. Watch out for the algorithm. Don't forget about Bone Frog Coffee, BoneFrogCoffee.com. Go and give that a check out. We got a, we got a team guy. We got a seal that is making awesome coffee for you and he's helping out veterans and he's trying to take care of his family right now in a big way. Trying to take care of his wife. So, go and check that out if you can.

• 5:35:42Jocko Willink?

  And thanks to all the military personnel around the world.

• 5:35:48Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for our freedom

• 5:35:51Jocko Willink?

  that you've given us for centuries. Thank you for standing up and holding the line.

• 5:35:59Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to our allies throughout the course of history that have supported us in the fight for freedom.

• 5:36:09Jocko Willink?

  Special recognition for the Polish Armed Forces, including the Grom, who had my back over and over again, over in Iraq, who took care of Drago.

• 5:36:23Jocko Willink?

  We thank you for standing with us in the fight to preserve freedom. And also thanks to our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all of you first responders. Thank you for your sacrifice to keep us safe here at home. And everyone else out there.

• 5:36:48Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it crazy to think about what people have to suffer through?

• 5:36:56Jocko Willink?

  And how easy it is to take things for granted, things like running water, things like being able to travel freely, things like a bed, things like food,

• 5:37:10Jocko Willink?

  things like music and art and speech and thought being free?

• 5:37:19Jocko Willink?

  Being able to do what we want, that's freedom. How often do we take it for granted? Too often. How often do we forget the price that's been paid? Too often. How often do we ignore the opportunities that freedom presents?

• 5:37:37Jocko Willink?

  Too often.

• 5:37:41Jocko Willink?

  So remember.

• 5:37:44Jocko Willink?

  Remember from Drago's story, and he's one of the lucky ones, by the way. He's one of the ones that only went to prison.

• 5:37:54Jocko Willink?

  He wasn't murdered, he wasn't buried in an unmarked grave. How many thousands and tens of thousands were. He's one of the lucky ones that was able to escape. But we have to remember that our freedom is not free and that it is fragile and that we have to cherish it and protect it. And we have to take advantage of the opportunities we get from freedom. And it's a travesty if we don't do that.

• 5:38:22Jocko Willink?

  So, go use your freedom. Go live, go breathe, go build and create and speak and think and relish.

• 5:38:37Jocko Willink?

  Relish this freedom.

• 5:38:42Jocko Willink?

  And that's all we've got.

• 5:38:45Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Kerry and Jocko. Out.