205: DEAD MAN WALKING. Pt.2 with SOG Warrior, Dick Thompson

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:22 - SOG Warrior Dick Thompson. 2:36:50 - Final Thoughts and take-aways. 2:38:45 - How to Stay on THE PATH. 3:10:12 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 205 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. And with us, once again, is a SOG Warrior, Dick Thompson.

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  And he, we started on Podcast 203, so if you haven't listened to that one yet, go back and listen to 203. And we talked for about three hours. And now we got to a point where we're going to cover an operation that took place. And Dick actually gave me a document based on this operation called, uh, called Rest and Recuperation, R and R.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  So Dick, welcome back to the podcast. Thank you. Glad to be here. And like I said, if you haven't listened to 203 yet, you want to get the background for, for Dick Thompson, SOG Warrior, and we're going to jump into this mission once again. The titleless document that Dick gave me is Rest and Recuperation. And I'll jump right into it. As my eyes opened and I became conscious of the world around me, I could hear the buzzing of a large fly, some muffled Vietnamese voices outside of my hooch and a radio playing "Buy Me a Ticket on an Airplane."

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  This song quickly generated memories of my best friend Bob, who had been killed on a mission a few weeks earlier. He and I had done everything together, basic training, officer candidate school, airborne, Ranger, Special Forces, and volunteered for SOG.

• 1:53Jocko Willink?

  They'd been together, we'd been together for over two years. This song would forever bring back strong memories of the good times we had together. We'd often discussed the low probability of either of us returning to the world. Bob's death had been a significant emotional event in my life and one thing I was still trying to deal with.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  So here you are. How long you been in Vietnam for at this point? You and Bob got to Vietnam together, how long you been there for?

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Six months or so.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  So you've been there for six months after everything that you've been through with Bob? And, and Bob gets killed, how did you find out? Who told you?

• 2:34Speaker 01

  Actually, I, I got a letter from a girl that I had been dating. And Bob was dating her best friend, you know, so we were double dating a lot.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  And she found out from Bob's friend who found out from Bob's parents. And then she wrote me, so I opened this letter up and, you know, there it was. And, you know, she said, I'm sure you've heard by now. And, you know, I hadn't, but.

• 3:07Jocko Willink?

  So this is snail mail. This is, this is.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:11Jocko Willink?

  So the family had been notified, then the girlfriend hadn't been notified. And then the girlfriend writes you, we're talking, you didn't find out for a month.

• 3:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  At least.

• 3:23Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of crazy. I mean, that's crazy that.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, things were slow back then.

• 3:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, not only that, and this is something that Tilt and I talked about was, you guys didn't always get the best turnover of information because everything was so secret. So this is an example of everything so secret that your best friend gets killed. And you don't even find out about it, you find out about it from your girlfriend's friend, which is his girlfriend.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, I mean, he was at, he was down at CCC. So, I mean, we didn't really know what their missions were or what they were doing, so.

• 4:02Speaker 01

  Being on a team, I didn't know what they were doing down there. And, you know, we didn't have, you know, communication back and forth, so I didn't know what he was doing. So it was tough. Plus,

• 4:16Speaker 01

  mail that you got didn't go directly to you. All mail, if you were sending me up, my, my mother sent me a letter. It didn't go to me. It went to me through another mail center in Vietnam.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  That then sent the mail up to CCN because it had to be screened.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 4:40Speaker 01

  Because they didn't want anything about classified operations. Mail going out had to be screened. You know, so any letter I sent would, you know, start at CCN, it would go down to Saigon, it would be screened. And then eventually, you know, it would be mailed to her.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  So now is this just confirming, like, you know, we talked about on the last podcast that you're thinking you're not gonna, you're 22 now. You didn't think you were gonna make it to 22. Is this gotta be confirming that you're not gonna see 23?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it kinda got my attention.

• 5:14Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing is, there's no, I mean, you, there's no ceremony. There's no...

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Well, not, there wasn't where we were.

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 5:24Speaker 01

  I mean, we had ceremonies on a regular basis at CCN for the guys there who were being killed. I mean, you know, every, I mean, people were being killed almost every week. But, you know, and every two or three weeks, we'd have, you know, like a memorial service.

• 5:44Jocko Willink?

  All right, so back to this story.

• 5:48Jocko Willink?

  As I looked up, I could see my Car 15 hanging just above my head. I had on my normal sleeping attire, shirt, fatigue pants, and jungle boots. Our compound was hit with rockets, mortars, and ground attacks on a regular enough basis that you had to be prepared to react quickly. Although it was only a little after nine o'clock in the morning, the temperature inside my room was already in the 90s and I was soaked with sweat. My mind began to travel back through the past two weeks and recall how my team had barely escaped the NVA during the last mission. We had made it back to our compound in Da Nang and spent the last two days undergoing a very intense debriefing session conducted by our intelligence team in an effort to collect all the information they could about our mission.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  The next two days were mine for R and R, rest and recuperation before we began preparing for another mission. My plan was to sleep late each morning, eat real food, take several showers, and rest. We had a saying that Da Nang is alright. And it had a lot of meaning right now. Of course, everything is relative. So there you go. You've finally got a couple days downtime. You're gonna eat some steak and enjoy yourself. This was Sunday morning in the mess hall. Served breakfast until lunch. Soon I was eating and looking forward to the evening meal. Our mess sergeant always managed to have plenty of T-bone steaks every Sunday evening. No one asked where he got them because it was certainly not

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  standard rations for a combat unit. Everyone would grill his steak to his own perfection. This was something we all looked forward to. When you've been on mission for several days or weeks, eating one meal a day, usually rice and fish heads, this was a feast. So you're living large.

• 7:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. This is great.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  After I finished breakfast, experience told me that I better go make myself invisible until it was time to go back to work. If you could be seen, you could be given work to do while you were on R and R. I decided to go off limit to an off limits section of Da Nang where we had a safe house. The safe house was a secret location, CCN, our unit owned and protected. It was heavily guarded by mercenaries and only accessible to by our people. My get out of jail free card, which was a special card that authorized us to travel in civilian clothes, clothes, carry concealed weapons, enter classified and restricted areas, etc., would allow me to travel into this area of Da Nang even during curfew. This would be my best chance of enjoying the next two days. Everything

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  was looking good and I was beginning to relax. So you get the little get out of jail free card, huh?

• 8:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm not sure everyone had them, but I know some of us did. And it basically said, don't mess with this guy. I mean, you couldn't just walk around through the cities and particularly after curfews and things like that, or you would get picked up, you'd be in trouble. But with that card, when I flashed that, they either let me go, or they would call the phone number on there and be told, let him go. Don't ask him what he's doing. Just leave him alone.

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  Legit. Continuing on. The sky had become overcast and it looked like it would probably rain by afternoon. The temperature was steadily climbing and the humidity was approaching 100%. This type of heat and humidity had a debilitating effect on everyone. As I was walking toward the compound's gate, I heard the familiar whoop, whoop, whoop sound of a helicopter. I could see that it was approaching our helipad. There was, there seemed to be a flurry of activity in that area. I was only about 100 meters from it as the chopper landed. The strong smell of JP4 was mixed with the wind and sand that hit my face. The men running around had placed some bags in the cargo compartment of the chopper and were now talking to the crew chief. One of them spotted me and began yelling something at me.

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  The sound of the helicopter prevented me from understanding what he was saying. It was obvious that he was very excited about something. He began to run toward me still shouting.

• 9:49Jocko Willink?

  As he got closer, I heard him yell, "LT, do you know how to hook up a Maguire rig?" A Maguire rig is 120 to 150 foot nylon rope with a large loop made out of heavy padded strap attached to the end of it. A bag of sand is tied to the loop to give it the momentum to penetrate the jungle canopy. The other end of the rope is attached to the floor of the helicopter. The rope is stowed inside a sandbag in a manner that allows it to feed without tangling. It is used when team members have to be extracted from the jungle where the helicopter cannot land. The team member sits inside the strap and fastens his left wrist to the strap through a small loop. This prevents him from falling completely out of the rig if he is shot or when he is drug through treetops during extraction. It would be very uncomfortable and painful to hang by one arm,

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  but at least you would get out.

• 10:37Jocko Willink?

  As we ran to the helicopter, he told me that we had a team in trouble with casualties. One of our CH34 helicopters had gone to the area to attempt an extraction. During the attempt, it had been shot down and apparently exploded and burned on impact. There appeared to be two or three survivors. Another helicopter had left a few minutes ago to try and help. There were no LZs in the area, just a very high and thick jungle canopy. The Maguire rigs would be needed for extraction.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  So this is all spinning up and you're hearing about what's happening.

• 11:13Jocko Willink?

  You were what 10 minutes from walking out the gate and being on R and R for a couple of days?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Or less.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  Or less.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  And I, you know, I thought I know how to do this. I do it all the time. I'm, I'm usually on the other end of that rope, but you know.

• 11:27Jocko Willink?

  Were you thinking you, when you walked over there, were you thinking you were just gonna rig it?

• 11:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. I mean, that's why he was asking. You know how to put them in there and I'm saying, yeah.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  So he's just saying, hey, we gotta get the Maguire rig rigged. Do you know how to do it? Yes, you know how to do it. Cool. Come on over to the helicopter and you're thinking, I'll, yeah, I'll help you guys rig. There's, there's troops on the ground in contact. They need help. Okay, got it. So here we go. I took one look at the gate about 150 meters away as we continued to run. The plans I had for my day were quickly being put on hold as my adrenaline level climbed. In my mind, I could see the smoldering remains of a burned helicopter, dead and wounded crew members, and the bad guys moving in for the final kill. Time was of the essence. I had to quickly rig the helicopter so they, so they could go to the area

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  and get the survivors out. As I approached the helicopter, I leaned my Car 15 and ammunition bandolier against the Connex container. I climbed into the cargo compartment of the helicopter and began working feverishly to attach the Maguire rigs. After a few minutes, the crew chief leaned, leaned over to me and said, "The team is in heavy contact. We have to go." At that point, I realized I had been concentrating so much on what I was doing. I had not noticed the pilot had turned up the engine RPMs and the aircraft was beginning to vibrate. In fact, we were lifting off the ground. I pulled the crew chief over to me and said, "I'm not supposed to be on here." He looked back at me and shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "Sorry about that."

• 12:57Speaker 01

  That was, um, one of those common sayings in Vietnam was, "Sorry about that."

• 13:04Speaker 01

  I mean, it was just, I mean, you saw it all over the place. You heard people saying it. I mean, anytime something was happening like that, it was, sorry about that.

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, anytime something was happening like you're getting, you don't have your weapon. So that's a key point. You had sat down, you know, you're, you're, you're going to rig this thing. And for anyone that doesn't know, you're on your knees when you're rigging something like that. You're on your knees and you're, you know, gotta use both your hands. So you just thought to yourself, oh, cool. Well, I said, my, my mission right now is just to rig this thing. What's going to expedite that the most is, or expedite that the most is for me just to put my weapon down over here. I'll get on there. I'll get it rigged and then I'll get out. That's the fastest way for me to get this done.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  Next thing you know, the helicopter's taken off.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:46Jocko Willink?

  Sorry about that.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:49Jocko Willink?

  As I looked down and saw the compound's gate, as I looked down, I saw the compound's gate passed under me. I sat back against the firewall, fastened a seatbelt around my waist and resigned myself to the fact that my R and R would be delayed a couple of hours. As we flew, and I began to realize that I did not know where I was going. What I, what I was going to do and was naked. I had left my weapon and ammunition leaning against the connects. I was flying into combat without a weapon. The only thing I had was my fatigues and boots and a pounding heart. What a Sunday afternoon of R and R this was turning into. About 15 minutes into the flight, my man, my mind began to play out different scenarios of what might happen when we arrived on the battle site. One began to stick in my mind. What if the aircraft ahead of us is shot down?

• 14:35Jocko Willink?

  What if the only way to save them is for someone to go down there using the Maguire rig? What if I have to climb down one of the ropes? I don't even have a weapon. About this time, the crew chief pulled me toward him and said, the aircraft in front of us has been shot down. The team is still in heavy contact and cannot go to the crash site. We'll be there in about 10 minutes. The pucker factor just increased significantly. My premonition was becoming a reality.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  As I was thinking, I saw this play out. It was like watching a video. I mean, I could see the whole thing just taking place. It's premonition. This is, this is what's gonna happen. And when he told me, hey, that aircraft is down, I told him, because I had said something to him already. I said, it is happening. It's starting now.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is, this is a crazy thought that you say to yourself, what if the aircraft ahead of us gets shot down? And then seconds later, he looks at you and says, the aircraft in front of us is shot down.

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  That's a nightmare.

• 15:50Jocko Willink?

  Going on, the crew chief and the other door gunner test fired their machine guns to make sure they were working properly. This brought about a sudden increase in my excitement level. Test firing the door guns always seemed to insert a sense of morality into what I was about to do.

• 16:07Jocko Willink?

  In a few minutes, the crew chief pulled me over again and said, it's just over this ridge line. I unfastened my seatbelt and crawled over to the edge of the cargo compartment so I could see better. As we came over the ridge line, we were welcomed by bad guys. A stream of automatic weapons fire with some green tracers mixed in passed by. The loud crack of each bullet could easily be heard over the noise of the helicopter. Both door gunners opened up and began sending a hail of bullets through the jungle canopy. The most fearful part of combat for me had always been getting shot at while in a helicopter. There is no protection. The floor and the sides of a helicopter just don't stop bullets. My arousal level was continuing to climb.

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  The pilot made a quick turn and banked the helicopter on its side. I was looking straight down at the jungle canopy and hanging on for my life. Smoke was coming up through a hole in the canopy where the first helicopter had gone down and burned. As we circled around the steep side of the mountain, we saw another hole in the canopy about 200 meters from the first. When we approached this hole and slowed down, the ground fire coming up at us increased. Shell casings from the door guns were piling up on the floor. Some were falling out. As we passed directly over the hole, I could see the second helicopter lying on its side in the steep ravine. The tail section was broken off, and I thought I saw a crew member still in the aircraft. We circled around and came in for a closer look. This time I could see the air crew was

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  trapped inside the aircraft and fuel was spilling out on them. Any spark from inside the craft or a tracer round would ignite the fuel and burn them alive. The door gunners were continuing to place suppressive fire in the position shooting at us. It wasn't really having much effect on them. Bullets were coming up at us from all directions. We also detected some movement that indicated the bad guys were working their way up the mountain to the crash site. Something had to be done and fast.

• 18:02Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying to think of myself if anything could be worse right now, but I actually can't think of anything worse than this right now.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  Well, I knew what was coming. So, I mean, I had already seen it play out. I mean, at this point, there's only one thing you can do. You gotta go down there.

• 18:20Jocko Willink?

  And these helicopter pilots, they're, these guys are badass. I mean, these guys for, just to be thinking with all this enemy fire coming, they're, they're, they're not going anywhere. They're gonna get this done.

• 18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz they've got.

• 18:34Jocko Willink?

  That's their friends.

• 18:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, their friends are down there now. Yeah.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book here. I told the crew chief to tell the pilot to go back to the crash site and I would drop him a McGuire rig down into the canopy, climb down to it, then climb down a tree to the ground. So I'm gonna say that one more time. Your plan was to throw this rope out of the aircraft, climb down into the canopy somewhere. Once you were getting in the trees, then you would just climb down the trees until you got to the ground. That was your plan?

• 19:11Speaker 01

  My stress level was a little high, so I probably wasn't making the best plans that I could, but at the time, that was the only way I could see to get down to them.

• 19:23Jocko Willink?

  When he told him, this is the crew chief talking to the pilot, when the crew chief told the pilot, both the pilot and the co-pilot looked around over their shoulders as if to say to me, "Are you crazy?"

• 19:35Jocko Willink?

  The crew chief leaned over and said, "The pilot says you're crazy."

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  I told him to tell the pilot that I might be crazy, but his buddies were gonna die if I, a horrible death in a few minutes, if we didn't do something. He quickly turned the aircraft around and flew back to the crash site. I pushed out one of the Maguire rigs and the bag of sand quickly took it into the canopy. We were still receiving heavy ground fire. At this point, we were approximately 50 feet above the canopy. I happened to see that the crew chief had an M16 strapped to the wall behind him. I told him to give it to me. He was a little hesitant at first, probably because he thought he would never see it again. He handed it to me along with a bandolier of four magazines. I chambered around and checked the safety and thought, "Great, I'm going into the middle of the battle, myself, by myself, with 100 rounds of ammunition."

• 20:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:31Jocko Willink?

  And it gets worse.

• 20:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this is not a good scenario for, in terms of survivability, at all, at all.

• 20:44Jocko Willink?

  Are you thinking about that, or are you just trying to think, you're just doing the best you can? Doing what I got to work with. We gotta get those guys out.

• 20:54Jocko Willink?

  I step out onto the skid of the helicopter, confident that I had a workable plan. As I grabbed the rope with my bare hands, I realized it was brand-new white nylon rope. New nylon ropes are very slick. I knew I was gonna be, it was gonna be tough to hold on, but I figured I could wrap my feet around it and make it work. The crew chief leaned over and said, "The pilot says we're receiving too much ground fire, we're gonna have to leave." I knew it was now or never. I stepped off the skid and quickly began to discover some flaws in my plan. It's, it's an interesting decision point right there, because you got it out. You've got it out right there of, "Hey, it's too much ground fire, sorry, I couldn't get down there." And instead of you saying, "Hey, sorry, we had to leave, and I'm sorry I couldn't go", you said, "It's now or never." You stepped off the skid and, and descended into hell.

• 21:41Jocko Willink?

  I could not hold the slick rope tight enough. It began to slide through my hands at a faster and faster rate. After about thirty feet, the white rope began to turn red. It had burned the skin off of the inside of my hands and I was bleeding badly and could not slow down. To make matters worse, worse, the rope no longer reached the canopy. The aircraft was beginning to move because of the ground fire and it lifted the end of the rope about ten to fifteen feet above the treetops. My rate of descent was increasing rapidly and the only thing I could, that could prevent my death was to be able to hold on to the Maguire rig at the end of the rope. So now the, the end of the rope is fifteen feet above the canopy. Yeah.

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  Which means if you fall off of it, you're gonna go ten to fifteen feet of airborne and then you're gonna hit the trees.

• 22:34Jocko Willink?

  Unknown to me at this time, our tactical operations center in the compound was monitoring the helicopter's radio frequency. I found out later that about this time, a fourth aircraft had arrived in the area and was observing my descent. He radioed my aircraft and asked, "Who the hell is that?" The reply was, "Some crazy special forces guy." At the time, that probably would have been my reply too. When I hit the Maguire rig, I closed down with every ounce of strength I had left and I stopped. The pain in my hands was unreal, blood was running down my arms. It seemed as if the bad guys had stopped shooting at the helicopter and were shooting at me.

• 23:10Jocko Willink?

  As I looked up, I could see the red streams of tracers coming down from the door gunners and the green tracers going up. The loud cracking sounds of bullets were all around me. I was now, also now swinging on the end of a large pendulum about ten feet above the canopy. I knew the canopy was about a hundred and fifty feet above the jungle floor. My strength was gone, it was decision time. I decided that as I swung over the center of the next treetop, I would let go and try to grab hold of something as I crashed through the canopy.

• 23:43Jocko Willink?

  Once again, this is ridiculous. This is when I watch a stupid action movie. And they show some, some guy jumping out of a helicopter or ju- you know, jumping off of a cliff and landing in the trees and, and I always go, that's, that's, that's BS, you know, that would never work. Apparently I'd need to spend more time hanging out with you to figure out what's gonna work and what's not. So that's your plan. Your plan is that you're 10 feet above the 150 foot tall jungle canopy. When you see a good target to jump into, you're gonna go. Back to this book. I looked down and as I centered a treetop, I let go. The fall brought my stomach up in my throat. The sensation was quickly overcome

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  by the impact with the jungle canopy. I grabbed wildly as I crashed through the limbs, but just couldn't seem to hold on to anything. I was moving too fast and was just bouncing off limbs, leaving blood and skin on each one. Finally, I hit a limb with my stomach and wrapped around it. It knocked the breath out of me, but I'd stopped falling. After a few minutes, I was able to begin my descent. There was, there was only about 50 feet to go, which means you had tumbled through 100 feet of jungle canopy. This is again, you might've been thinking the same thing that I'd like, oh, I can pull this off. Until you're falling through that thing, you go, I was, this isn't working the way I thought it was gonna work.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  I didn't have much, I felt I didn't have much choice. I knew I couldn't hold on to the McGuire rig. I knew he was fixing to fly away. And all of a sudden, I was gonna be much higher. And when I fell off, you know, that would be it. At least now, I was 10 foot, feet above something. And I might have a chance if I let go and dropped into it. But trying to hold on to that thing, I wouldn't have lasted but a couple more minutes and then that would have been it.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  So, nothing heroic about there. It was, I don't have any.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, maybe in your opinion. Uh, I'm giving you about, uh, max hero, uh, credit on each and every decision that's being made. Whether it was volun- hey, when you said, "Hey, I'm going", that's all, that's all I need to hear. When I finally reached the ground, I had to lie behind a tree for a few minutes to rest. At this point, I had very little skin on the palms, my hands or insides of my fingers. Dirt and tree bark were all in my hands. There were numerous other cuts and bruises caused by the fall through the tree. Fortunately, I still had my, I still had the M16 and Bandolier, but I had lost the magazine that was in the rifle during the fall. I was now down to 81 rounds. There was one in the chamber. I could hear the firefight the team was involved in about 200 to 300 meters from me. More gag- bad guys were probably

• 26:24Jocko Willink?

  moving around the jungle. A feeling of loneliness crept over me as I realized that not only would the bad guys be shooting at me, but so would the team because they probably did not know I was on the ground. I moved out rapidly in the direction of the crash site. There was no time to waste. I'd only moved about 50 meters when I heard a twig break to my left. As I looked in that direction, I saw two soldiers with AK-47s about 30 meters away, moving parallel to me. Just as I turned my weapon toward them, they both saw me and began to turn their weapons toward me. In the next fraction of a second, I had to decide if they were really bad guys or two of the team members dressed like bad guys. I had practiced an immediate action drill for just such an occasion hundreds of times on our firing range and used it in previous encounters. My

• 27:08Jocko Willink?

  decision was to take them out. As I dove for the ground, I emptied a 20-round magazine on them. It was a tight shot group and I saw both of them get hit several times. As I quickly changed magazines, I watched and listens, listened for any signs of life from their position. They had gone down in the undergrowth where I could not see them. My attack had been so sudden and violent that they had not been able to return fire. After a few minutes, I decided that those two were not going to cause me any more trouble, so I call- crawled up the hill a ways and then continued to move toward the crash site.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  That's that immediate action drill that you talked about earlier. Take the shots as you're going down.

• 27:48Speaker 01

  You gotta do it quick.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  And you shoot full auto.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, yeah.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  In that situation, you dumped full, you shot full auto at these guys.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  You know, because I'm, you know, I'm moving.

• 28:01Speaker 01

  And if I shoot, if I can spray a relatively tight shot group, I'm gonna, I'm gonna get them. And I know I've got to hit them more than once. I can't just pop off a couple of rounds. Because if I shoot at one, that gives the other one a chance to shoot at me. So I go for both of them at the same time. As I'm going down.

• 28:18Jocko Willink?

  Was the team that you were going to rescue, was that another?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  It was, they were doing an in-country thing.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  So you know that they're on the ground out there too?

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, and you know, I could, I knew. When I, when I saw these two guys with the AK-47s. I could hear the M16s firing. So I knew they, it was not a team that was carrying AK-47s. These had to be bad guys.

• 28:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because going in this, you had no, any, if you had spent 10 minutes getting a brief. On what was happening, you would have found out how big the team was, what kind of weapons they had. All, just some, just some, some little, kind of nice to know information, which you had none of. Your brief was, there's good guys down.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. And sorry about that.

• 29:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and sorry.

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  After moving about 150 meters, a shot was fired at me. I thought it sounded strange as I dove for cover. It wasn't a rifle, it was a pistol, probably a 38 caliber. AK-47s made a different and very distinguishable sound. The helicopter crew was shooting at me. The pilot had managed to crawl out of the wreckage, and this is from the downed helicopter. The pilot had managed to crawl out of the wreckage, seen my movement, and begun firing at me with his 38. I yelled at him and told him I was a good guy. He did not believe me and continued to shoot. My experience had been that helicopter pilots were very cool, calm, and in control. When they were in the air. The jungle was a different matter. He continued to fire at me until he had to reload. At that point, I rushed him.

• 29:46Jocko Willink?

  And got the drop on him. He was battered, wounded, bloody and exhausted and kept asking me where my other men were. He found it hard to believe that I was alone. I eventually convinced him that it was just me and that we had to get his men out of the aircraft as quickly as possible. I moved him to a very dense location in the jungle, a short distance away and continued to go back and retrieve the crew one at a time. Most of the crew had lost a lot of blood and required immediate first aid. They were all injured as a result of the crash. The pilot had broken ribs, a broken arm, cuts and bruises. The copilot had a compound fracture of the femur. The bone was sticking out of his thigh. Cuts and bruises. The crew chief had been shot in the leg and the door gunner in the arm. All four were soaked in JP4. A spark would have made torches of them all. I told the

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  pilot that I was going to get help for him and to keep everyone hidden, quiet and not to shoot anyone unless they physically stepped on them.

• 30:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  I began to move out toward the other crash site. By this time, that firefight had stopped and I was not sure where the team or the enemy were. My movement was very cautious because if the team saw my movement, they would open fire and they would not miss. As I neared the other crash site, I heard some movement up, up front and some muffled voices. I moved very slowly and deliberately. I heard an American voice. At this point, I could only assume that the enemy had captured one of the survivors from the first crash. My plan was to move in as closely as possible and look for an opportunity to attack and free the American. As I crept closer and closer to the group, I eventually got close enough to see an American sergeant that I recognized. He was the team leader of the

• 31:26Jocko Willink?

  team that was on the ground, was still armed and obviously not a prisoner. So this is about the first good situation that's unfolded. You got, you got some brothers now that are gonna be able to work with you in some way.

• 31:41Jocko Willink?

  I got down behind a tree and yelled at him that I was coming in and for him to have his people hold their fire. After he told me it was okay, I stood up slowly with my M16 in the air and walked toward the group. Once inside their perimeter, I discovered that the loud American was, the loud American voice was that of the American lieutenant colonel who had been the pilot of the first aircraft to be shot down. He was not very happy about what was going on and was giving the sergeant a hard time.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of stress, right? Some of the things that you describe in the stress effect is anger and not making good decisions and being loud and being confrontational. So this lieutenant colonel is doing all those things.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  He's being confrontational with the SOG team. You don't want to do that. You did not want to do that.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  I informed the lieutenant colonel that I was the senior ground commander and was now in charge of the operation. The fact that a lieutenant colonel outranks a lieutenant did not matter because he was air force and we were on the ground. He became very upset and began to threaten me about what was going to happen to me when we got to safety. About that time, the mercenaries on the team had heard enough. Several of them turned their weapons toward the lieutenant colonel and made some very cold and serious remarks. The interpreter told the lieutenant colonel that the lieutenant was in charge and that everyone would do what I said. The lieutenant colonel realized they were ready to kill him if he did not submit. That ended the discussion. So that's what happens when you try and get confrontational with a SOG team on the ground.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, SOG teams get very closely bonded. They're very closely bonded to the 1-0, 1-1, to their Americans. You don't mess with them anywhere. I mean, they will defend that team. They'll defend those Americans. I mean, even inside the compound, you don't want to mess with them. I mean, the compound is kind of like the old west. Everybody there is carrying a gun and is locked and loaded. It's not like the regular military units around that can't have a magazine and the gun. We were locked and loaded all the time.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  You had frag grenades, you had all that stuff, and you got these little pods moving around. And they're all Thomas, don't mess with my guy. You know, because they'll lock and load on you in a heartbeat. But now we're out in the jungle.

• 34:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  And they see this guy as a threat.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a threat to their survival, too. A threat to you as the leader, a threat to their team, and a threat to the survival because if this guy's going to start acting like an idiot, this is going to be a real problem. So they put an end to that.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  Our next step was to move back down to the first crash site and recover the bodies. During this time, I discovered that there had been three survivors of the original crash. The lieutenant colonel, which was the pilot, a Vietnamese lieutenant colonel co-pilot, and an American sergeant. The Vietnamese and the sergeant had been badly injured and burned in the crash. The second helicopter to arrive on the site had lowered a jungle penetrator, and lieutenant colonel had strapped them into it. Unfortunately, as they were being hoisted up through the jungle canopy, the second helicopter was also shot down. As it went forward, the jungle penetrator hung up on a large tree, and the steel cable broke. The two men still strapped to the penetrator fell approximately 100 feet and landed headfirst on a large rock, killing them instantly.

• 35:10Jocko Willink?

  We found the bodies and unhooked them from the jungle penetrator. When I got, when I picked up the American and put him over my shoulder, the air rushed out of his lungs. As we worked our way back up the hill, it began to rain.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  So, the second one had actually started to extract the team.

• 35:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:30Jocko Willink?

  And that's when they got shot down.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were extracting, you know, the wounded from, from the first aircraft.

• 35:38Jocko Willink?

  Once inside the main perimeter, we laid the bodies down alongside each other. The heads were a bloody mess, and since we did not wear names on our uniforms, I did not know who I had carried up the hill. At this point, I asked lieutenant colonel who the young sergeant was. The already sickening feeling in my stomach increased tremendously when I heard his name. He was a friend of mine who I had joked with days before. I felt no remorse for the two NVA I had killed an hour ago, but the sight of a dead American, especially a friend, created a range of emotions from deep sadness to extreme anger toward the enemy. One of the first rules you are taught when you arrive in country is not to get close to anyone. But there's no way you can prevent it.

• 36:22Jocko Willink?

  We covered them with ponchos and wandered to where, and wondered where the bad guys were.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  My next problem was the pilots. They were still out there alone. I took the four team members and moved cautiously to their location and established a security force around them to get everyone out. I would have to blow down some trees and bring in some helicopter gunships to suppress enemy fire while everyone was hoisted up into helicopters. I'd been able to contact the rear using the team's radio and had the necessary demolitions on the way.

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you you went in this not only with some other person's gun and four magazines. You also didn't even have a radio.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Nothing. Yeah, I was naked.

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  By the time the helicopter arrived with the demolitions, the weather was closing in. Man, this is just Murphy's Law. The weather was closing in, the raining, the rain was coming down harder and the clouds were moving down the mountain. We would have to work fast just to beat the weather. The enemy had been quiet until the arrival of a helicopter. Now we could hear them all around us shooting up at the helicopter. About the time the demolitions came crashing to the ground, the gunships arrived. We be, we signaled our location and I had the sergeant begin to work, working airstrikes all around us. While the gunships were keeping the enemy busy, I carried 50 pounds of C4, blasting caps, time fuse and det cord to a location near the pilots. I placed enough of them, I placed enough of the demolitions on trees and dropped them.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  This opened up a large enough hole in the canopy to give us a better chance of not having a repeat of the last jungle penetrator incident. So you, you, I mean, this is taking time. This is a, I mean, to sit there and rig 50 pounds of demo on a bunch of trees and then, and then put the blasting caps in. This is like, this is taking what, a half an hour to get this done?

• 38:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. But, you know, I didn't use all 50 pounds. I was just part, just enough to cut the trees. And get them down. But, yeah, they all had to be rigged. You had to take the things onto the trees, put the blasting caps in. And cut them off. Had to make sure they're not going to fall the wrong way. But, you know, that's why they call me dynamite.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I like to, I like to blow things up.

• 38:41Jocko Willink?

  The CH-47 that had dropped the demolitions returned and hovered over the hole. As it began to lower the jungle penetrator, the enemy ground fire increased dramatically and both door gunners opened fire with their 50 caliber machine guns. Not only could we hear the very loud, slow, distinctive sound, but the 50 caliber casings began to rain down on us. After falling 150 feet, they had enough velocity to do a lot of damage. We could see large red tracers penetrating deep into the jungle. The two gunships were now raining bullets down through the trees with their miniguns, up to 4,000 rounds a minute per gun, firing 40 millimeter grenades and 2.75 inch rockets with 17 pound high explosive warheads. The popping and cracking sound of the bullets and explosions

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  of the grenades and rockets were exacerbated by falling tree limbs and shrapnel flying in every direction. The darkening sky made the tracers appear very bright. The hot, wet jungle air was becoming smoky and filled with the smell of burnt cordite and gunpowder.

• 39:41Jocko Willink?

  That's like, that's enough, enough firepower going downrange. Like, you can't simulate that. You watch the craziest Hollywood movie and they don't make it look like what that, what that, what you just described right there.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  By the time the jungle penetrator reached the ground, we had drug the copilot and crew chief over to where it landed. We strapped them on as quickly as possible and signaled to pull them up. There was no way to support the broken leg and we could hear the copilot screams over the battle sounds as he was going up. They say that a compound fracture of the femur is one of the most painful wounds you can have. After seeing the pain he was in, I believe it. The trip up took about two minutes. We sent another, we sent the other two crew members up next, followed by the wounded team members, the lieutenant colonel and the two dead. The CH-47 left to take them to the hospital. So, so now, you just jump into the CH-47 returned about an hour. During that hour,

• 40:44Jocko Willink?

  what's happening? Are you guys, is the enemy pressuring you?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  The gunships are having an impact now.

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  And when they saw the CH-47 leave, you know, that took some of the pressure off. They really wanted to knock it down.

• 40:58Jocko Willink?

  Got it. But the, but the massive air support that you're getting is definitely putting a hurtin' on the enemy. I mean, that is... That's, that's a lot of gunfire coming their way, rockets, the whole nine yards. The CH-47 returned in about an hour with a set of fresh gunships to help begin extracting us. I began putting the team members on as fast as I could while the sergeant continued to work the airstrikes. The jungle floor had become mud and was making the job of hooking people up much more difficult. Eventually, there were just the sergeant and myself left on the ground. Unfortunately, some of the bad guys had moved up close to our position and were beginning to fire at the helicopter. We knew we'd be exposed to their fire as we ascended.

• 41:40Jocko Willink?

  We thought we had two options, go find them and take them out, or chance being hoisted up with them shooting at us. The pilot narrowed our options by saying the clouds were beginning to cover the hole up and it was now or never. We strapped ourselves on and fired behind each other's backs as we slowly moved skyward, spinning slowly and swinging back and forth and watching the tracers coming by. It seemed like it took an hour to make the trip up, although it was probably only about two minutes. Once inside and unstrapped from the jungle penetrator, I rolled over on my back, closed my eyes and said a prayer of thanks.

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  There was an atmosphere of elation as you were flying away from an encounter such as this. The team members were exchanging war stories. Personally, I was too tired to say much. My mind turned to rest and recuperation and how I was going to make sure that I got rest tomorrow. The team leader was also particularly quiet. Upon arrival at the compound, we were greeted by a small crowd who welcomed us back. It was a really good feeling to be back and to pick up my weapon and ammunition that were leaning against the Conex container. We had been taught in Ranger School to never get more than an arm's length from your weapon. I would not make that mistake again.

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  Lesson learned to every, every trooper out there, don't ever do it, not even for a second.

• 43:06Jocko Willink?

  I moved directly to the dispensary to have my injuries treated. They treated my hands and other cuts and bruises and told me to return the next day. As I left the dispensary, I was told that the Colonel wanted to see me in the mess hall. Maybe he was going to give me an extra day of R and R to make up for this one. So you're pretty much smoked at this point and

• 43:28Speaker 01

  And I actually had two broken ribs.

• 43:32Speaker 01

  That we discovered.

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, when you drop 150 feet through the jungle canopy.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel was sitting at his table with another full corner Colonel, non-special forces, and seemed to be having a heated conversation. When they looked up at me, they saw a wet, muddy, and bloody person standing in front of them. The expression on their faces indicated that they had lost their appetites. He congratulated me on doing a good job, and then he told me what he and the other Colonel had been arguing about. We had left a crew member from the first crash on the ground. Apparently, there had been a crew chief in the aircraft who had been killed and burned in the wreckage. The Lieutenant Colonel had told us that he was missing a person.

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel told me to get my team together and be prepared to launch at first light to go in and recover the crew chief's body and destroy the second helicopter. There was a concern that the helicopter had its communication equipment and codes intact. These needed to be destroyed before the enemy could make use of them.

• 44:35Jocko Willink?

  The news that I had to go back out there the next morning was not what I wanted to hear. I was tired, injured, and not sure if I could find enough of my team to do the job. At any rate, it would be a long night. On the way to the shower, I found one of my guys and told him to assemble as many team members as he could while I showered. The shower was great, even though I found three fat leeches that had crawled under my shirt and attached myself to, attached themselves to my body. They were having a feast on my, at my expense. A squirt of insect repellent made them turn loose. So your team, was your team all on R and R at this point?

• 45:11Speaker 01

  Fortunately, the majority of them are still, they were in the compound.

• 45:17Jocko Willink?

  Fortunately, I guess. Maybe not fortunately for them. Fortunately for the team.

• 45:25Jocko Willink?

  Later that night, we moved the team members who were going on to the mission into the isolation area and made our plan for first light launch. When I awoke, it was raining cats and dogs outside and the wind was blowing hard. The weather continued like this for the next two days. The delay gave me time to rest and heal before we inserted. The drawback to the delay was that it gave the enemy more time to discover the body. They knew we would make an effort to recover it. They typically booby-trapped the body, placed others in the area, and liked to plan an ambush to get us on the way out. I had been on several body recovery missions in the past and knew what to expect. The morning of the third day, the weather had lifted and it was time for the insertion.

• 46:07Jocko Willink?

  We loaded up our helicopters and departed for the launch site while it was still dark. At the launch site, we attended the mission briefing with the gunship pilots, forward air controller, our pilots, and the launch site personnel. It was a very detailed briefing with everything from angles of attack, suspected enemy ground forces and fire locations, code words, and the team's route to the helicopter objective discussed in detail. Shortly after that, we were given the word to load up.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  At this point in the operation, the adrenaline begins to flow. You've just made three trips to the latrine, and now you have all your equipment on. You need to go once again. You can hear the slow, high-pitched whine of the helicopter engine starting to get up and get faster and faster. You smell the camouflage paint and insect repellent on your face and JP-4 in the air, and you know it's time.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  I gave the team the signal to lock and load, put the safety on, and climb into the helicopters. Their engines were now turning at full RPM, as were our hearts, and they were ready to lift off. As we began to lift up and move forward, we received the thumbs up from the launch team personnel on the ground. I was sitting in the door with my feet hanging outside so I could get a clear view of the landing zone on the way in and be the first to hit the ground when we arrived.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  Adrenaline flowing at this point, huh?

• 47:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 47:35Jocko Willink?

  And you're considering this is pretty much guaranteed to be a hot insert?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  That they might not hit us on the LZ, but they definitely would, once we got down to where the wreckage was.

• 47:46Jocko Willink?

  Was your plan to insert right on the crash sites, or were you going to insert somewhere offset?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  We went in on top of the ridge and then worked our way down.

• 47:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so it was an offset. How long was the distance?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  Two or 300 meters.

• 47:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay, but it's still close.

• 48:01Speaker 01

  It wasn't far, but yeah.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. In my day, we would, an offset insert would be a couple kilometers away. 200 meters, we consider that on, on the X. I mean, pretty damn close. 200 meters. I'll go in the jungle, it couldn't take you some time to get 200 or 300 meters? How long would it take? How long would you plan for it to take you to get 200, 300 meters?

• 48:22Speaker 01

  Well, we're, I mean, right from the beginning, we're expecting an ambush any, any second. So, you know, you're back down to the 100 yards an hour kind of thing. So you're going very slowly down through there, you know, plus it's, it's very wet, it's muddy, it's slippery. You're going downhill to get down to it, and you're just expecting them to be anywhere.

• 48:47Jocko Willink?

  And the first light, would you guys be taking off the helicopters in the dark? And first light is when the extraction goes, or when the insertion goes? Or are you not taking off until there's a little bit of light out?

• 48:58Speaker 01

  There's a little bit of light on this particular mission.

• 49:06Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. After about 20 minutes of flight, two Cobra gunships came by us, one on each side. They were going to the LZ ahead of us and make a low, slow pass to try and draw fire from the enemy if they were there on the LZ. There were two other Cobras trailing just behind us, ready to open fire on enemy positions if we made a mistake, if we made the mistake of firing on the first two. We had not anticipated the LZ to be hot, so we were going to, so we're not going to prep it, meaning that the gunships would shoot them up. We wanted to get in as unobtrusively as possible, to the degree you can with two helicopters, four gunships, and a forward air controller flying around over the LZ. So the enemy's going to know that you're there.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  They know we're coming back.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  Soon the crew chief gave me a thumbs up indicating the LZ was cold and we were going in. We began to lose altitude very quickly as we made our way toward the small clearing on the ridge line. As we descended, the air became warmer and humid. We only turned on to the final approach and began our descent. I could feel the helicopter begin to vibrate and my heart rate increase. We all scanned the tree line vigorously for signs of the enemy. All of a sudden, we were only two or three feet off the ground and the crew chief was motioning for us to get off. I jumped into the waist-high grass and went down to a prone position. The team members quickly followed and the helicopters all flew off to a rendezvous point. The sound of them disappearing in the distance created a very lonely feeling.

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  We moved quickly into the tree line and set up a small security perimeter to let our eyes, ears, and nose adjust to the environment. This is an extremely important part of survival in the jungle. The sounds, or lack of sounds, of bugs, birds, and animals, as well as the smells, tell you what's going on. You must read these signs correctly if you are to survive. After about fifteen minutes, we radioed Team OK, moving east. This meant we had not detected any signs of the enemy and it was OK to release the helicopters and gunships to return to base. We were really on our own now. Standard policy in our unit was that teams would always have at least two Americans with them when they were on the ground.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  This was a team I had been training to operate on special missions without any Americans. They were still in training and I was the only American on the team. This added to the isolation effect.

• 51:33Jocko Willink?

  Did they have any English speakers that were good enough to call for fire? The interpreter. The interpreter? Yeah. The others couldn't. Did you ever, did you guys cross-train with those guys so they knew how to call for fire with the interpreter? Some, but not enough.

• 51:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think when you say this is a lonely, isolating thing, I think that's the understatement of the century.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  But sometimes, sometimes my, my thoughts were, if it's just me,

• 52:08Speaker 01

  I'm, I'm the one I have to worry about. If you're with me, now I gotta, I have to make sure that I protect you, I have to make sure that I get you out if you're hit. I mean, I, I pick up these additional responsibilities, you know, when I have other Americans with me. But if it's just me and the team, and I go down, you know, I go down. So, you know, even, even the one, you know, the previous one where I went in alone, I, it was, it was a unique feeling to know, you know, I was, I was the bright light team, a one-person bright light team.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  There were other times where I suggested that I might either go in alone on a mission, or go in with one or two other people, because I, I don't have a problem being alone out there. So, I didn't do that, but...

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  The burden of responsibility of the other person is so heavy.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  And it's hard to get them out, I mean, it would, that's why you have so many missing in action from the SOG teams. You can't get them. They get hit and you're being overrun, you can't get back to get them. And they might still be alive, and, you know, everybody says, no man left behind, but you gotta decide. You come to that decision point where, do I leave Jaco and save the team? Or do I get us all killed trying to get your body out? And, you know, my position was, I'm not gonna get everybody killed. If I can get you out reasonably, I will, but if I can't...

• 54:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what would I want you to do?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:03Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Because I don't want you, I don't want you to get anybody killed trying to get my body out.

• 54:06Jocko Willink?

  I know, that's the same thing.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  You know, I'm gone, leave me.

• 54:08Jocko Willink?

  Yep, leave me, I'll, whatever, doesn't matter anymore.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  Take care of the rest of the team.

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  Back to this document. From here, our plan called for us to work our way down the side of the mountains, find the crash site, recover the body, destroy the second helicopter, and move to an alternate landing zone for extraction. Altogether, it should be a very simple mission that should take about five to six hours. Then I could get started on my R and R. We moved very cautiously down the steep, wet mountainside with every step you expected to hit a booby trap or have an ambush open up on you. When on the ground, no one talked. Hand and arm signals were all the team communications we used. Silence was critical. Every foot placement was deliberate so as to avoid any noise. A broken twig would signal the enemy of your approach.

• 55:01Jocko Willink?

  After about an hour, we stopped for a break. We formed a small perimeter in some very thick brush and put out claymore mines aimed in four directions. I laid back on my rucksack and tried to relax while constantly looking for any movement and listening out for out-of-place sounds. All of a sudden, I heard what seemed to be a very loud pop and

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  everyone hugged the ground. Everyone except Huang. Am I saying that right? Everyone except Huang. He had brought a coke with him. Against my very strict orders. If looks could kill, he would have been dead. He may have just compromised the safety of the entire team and mission. I took the coke, buried it, and then we moved out.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  About thirty minutes later, we knew we were close to the crash site. The smell of a decaying body was very strong. You could see the change in the expressions on everyone's faces. If the bad guys were going to get us, it would be around the crash site. We began to move more slowly and cautiously. Finally, I could see the sunlight coming up through the hole in the jungle canopy. We stopped just short of it and sent out a two-man recon team. They returned without seeing any signs of the enemy. I knew they were out there. I just didn't know where. I set up security around the crash site and stepped into the opening. There was no doubt in my mind that there would be mines and/or booby traps in the wreckage. Not only would I have to watch for these, but I would be standing in the open as I recovered

• 56:26Jocko Willink?

  the body, a perfect target for a sniper. I could see large concentrations of flies toward the center of the wreckage. Upon careful observ- observation, I saw what looked to be a bone sticking up. I cautiously made my way to the location of the bone while trying to maintain a low profile. Another part of our mission was to photograph everything. I did this quickly and began slowly on- to slowly uncover the remains of the body. Did you have someone assigned for look- to look for booby traps, or was it just every man was constantly on guard and on lookout?

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Everybody was looking for it as we moved along, but you know, as I went out there, it was me. Watch where you put your feet, watch for wires, watch for anything that, you know, looked abnormal. You know, cause the- one thing that helped is it had- it had rained hard, so all the the powder and materials like that from- from the fire, you know, had kinda washed away, so you had mostly pieces of metal, you know, bigger pieces of metal and things that you could see, you know, easier than you could when it was all covered with the, you know, the powder and stuff.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  The crew chief had died face down in the middle of the wreckage, and the intense heat of the burning aircraft had burned him into a small charred piece of meat. His legs were completely gone from the knees down.

• 57:48Jocko Willink?

  His arms were gone from the elbows out, and something aluminum had melted and burned through his head. When I touched what was left of his skull, it disintegrated into white powder. As I was trying to retrieve his torso from the wreckage, it broke in half at the lower back. When it did, some of the liquid decay flew into my face, some of it on my lips. I almost lost it at this point. It was im- almost impossible to breathe and just as hard not to throw up. After a few minutes, I was able to get it on a poncho and move back into the woodland- wood mine. I'd seen burnt- people burned to death before, but never to this extent.

• 58:23Jocko Willink?

  Now that the body had been recovered, we had to find the jungle penetrator and photograph it. The aviation unit did not believe the cable had broken where I'd set it head. They wanted photographic evidence. Before we could do this, however, someone had to be assigned to carry the body. No one wanted to, in fact, they wanted to leave it behind. I became somewhat forceful and directed Huang to carry it. This was part of his punishment for the coke. It took only a few minutes to find and photograph the jungle penetrator. Now it was time to move to the other helicopter. Blowing this one up was going to be the highlight of the mission for me. I always enjoyed missions where I got to use demolitions. My only concern was where were the bad guys?

• 59:05Jocko Willink?

  We recovered the demolitions left over from three days ago and carried them to the other crash site. I was really beginning to get the sixth sense feeling that you have just before everything breaks loose. Everything was too quiet. The helicopter was down in a small ravine, a very undefendable place. Just as I communicated the decision to move the five team members to the top of the ravine, bursts of AK-47 fire from about three to four NVA began to hit all around us. The team returned fire as quickly, quickly as they moved to the top of the ravine. Since there were only a few of them, I decided to stay with the helicopter and plant the demolition charges.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  The bad guys shooting at us turned out to be the point team for a much larger group. As I worked feverishly to pack forty pounds of C4 into the appropriate places of the helicopter, the intensity of fire increased. My hands were beginning to bleed and blood was dripping out of the ends of my fingers and my gloves. Bullets were now ripping through the floor and the side of the aircraft. Some were even hitting the C4 as I packed it against the instrument panel. Fortunately, C4 requires a detonation device like a blasting cap to set it off. I felt like Houdini inside a chest, except instead of swords coming through the sides, I had bullets. As the battle intensified, I radioed for help. The fight was turning into a war and we needed gunships now.

• 1:00:35Jocko Willink?

  So there you are, standing in the middle of this crashed helicopter, trying to pack C4 and to get that thing completely destroyed.

• 1:00:45Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever think when, like, something like that, "Hey, I got a good idea, why don't you guys just drop a bomb on this thing?"

• 1:00:52Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, and also when somebody tells me, "Hey, go search around for this jungle penetrator with a cut cable and take a picture of it," I would have had some issues with that.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  I had a lot of issues with the whole thing. They should have told me the guy was there to start with. You know, the pilot of that aircraft should have said, "One of my guys is missing." You know, he should have never been left there to start with. He never said there was another person. He said he had everybody. He didn't.

• 1:01:18Speaker 01

  That guy was, was out there. We could have got him out at the same time we got everybody else out. So, you know, the, the controversy is, is brewing around a lot of things between us and the aviation commander over what's going on. But now I'm packing, you know, 40 pounds of C4 in there and I've got a few hundred feet of deck cord too, that was left over. So I've got that big roll of deck cord in there with, with the C4.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  They're shooting, hitting it. You know, the thing that bothers me about that is, you know, that means it's coming close to me.

• 1:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  I don't like that.

• 1:02:01Jocko Willink?

  That would bother me too.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and, you know, I've got the blasting caps. I'm thinking, "Once I stick the blasting caps in the C4, if a bullet hits one of those, it's over." But at some point, you gotta do that. So, had to make the decision, stick them in, ignite the fuses, and try to get out.

• 1:02:23Jocko Willink?

  How long were the fuses?

• 1:02:25Speaker 01

  About three or four minutes, not long at all.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  Were the other guys up on the ridge line still?

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Jocko Willink?

  And so you're just on another

• 1:02:33Speaker 01

  I'm down in there.

• 1:02:34Jocko Willink?

  Damn dynamite solo mission.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, I needed them up there because

• 1:02:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:40Speaker 01

  Because they had a better angle of fire down on the bad guys to keep them back.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  And, you know, my, my plan was to go out there with them. And that having it in the gully and having us back up on the, uh, the high ground like that provided some shield, shielding for us from the blast that was gonna happen. I mean, forty pounds of C4 and a couple hundred feet of deck cord. It, it makes a pretty good display when it goes off.

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  They're not gonna be anything left to the helicopter.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  No. No. Once you pull that time fuse, by the way, there better not be anything that delays, delays your exit from the scene.

• 1:03:24Speaker 01

  No, I had to get out. Decision was made. Once you pop those fuse igniters, the decision's made, you gotta get out.

• 1:03:32Jocko Willink?

  You cover that here back to this document. After a few minutes, another decision point had arrived. It was time to insert the blasting caps and light the time fuse. The questions going through my mind were, would a bullet hit one of the caps and detonate the C4 before I could get out and move to a safe dis- distance? Could I get out without being hit? I would be completely exposed while climbing out. If I got out, could I fully run exposed, could I run fully exposed to the bank, climb it fifteen feet and get to the team? That's another horrible thing, cuz if you put, once you pull these time fuse, if you get wounded anywhere in that vicinity, you're done.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  It became obvious that they knew I was in the helicopter and were moving in on me. It was now or never. I inserted two blasting caps into the C4, ignited the two time fuse, fuses, climbed out of the side of the helicopter, rolled to the ground, low crawled to the base of the bank and began to climb like a madman. I'm sure it looked like a contest between me and the enemy's bullets to see which could dig into the ground the most. It only took a matter of seconds, but it seemed like an eternity. My time, my team had really increased their volume of fire to help cover me. As I rolled up on top of the bank, I looked back to see three to five NVA. Run up behind the helicopter. If I had waited a few more seconds, they would have had me. Several of the team members looked quickly at me with the same expression of disbelief that I had.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  Could they really be hiding behind a helicopter that had forty pounds of C4 and two hundred feet of deck cord in it with time fuse burning? Were they going to try and pull the fuses out and save the helicopter? It quickly came apparent that they did not realize I had been setting charges. I could see the smoke from the time fuses coming out of the helicopter, but the enemy were so engrossed in the heat of battle that they did not realize that they were about to become history. I signaled to the team that it was about time for the explosion. What happened next was beyond words. There was a tremendous explosion, producing a giant black fireball, followed by a shockwave. You could actually see the compressed air moving out in a circular pattern that literally dazed all of us.

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  There was a momentary lull in the fire as it began to rain metal, pieces of metal, rock, dirt, and tree limbs, and the remains of the NVA who'd been hiding behind the helicopter. The jungle was filled with black smoke. I'd wanted a good explosion, and it was a good one. But I had intended for it to be much further away when it had happened. But I had intended to be much further away when it happened. The enemy picked up quickly with a new twist. Sorry, the enemy fire picked up quickly with a new twist. So yeah, that's pretty much, you can't, you can't plan that one any better. The enemy, you, you leave that helicopter with forty pounds of deck, or forty pounds of C4 and a bunch of deck cord,

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  which for those of you that don't know, deck cord is just explosives in, in a string. And so when it blows up, it blows up, and it's actually pretty powerful. It's actually very powerful, deck cord is. So, these guys were blown away by this, by this explosion. And all they had to do was see what was going on, walk over and cut the time fuse. And they would have been alright.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  I, I don't know if they still had time to get inside. They'd had to crawl, somebody had had to crawl inside to, to pull it out.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  They could have pulled it out and tossed it aside.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  But you know, when you're, when you're watching time fuse burn, it's not like it all burns up to wherever it's burning, everything falls. It's going down through the middle.

• 1:07:06Jocko Willink?

  Through the tube, yeah.

• 1:07:07Speaker 01

  And you don't know exactly where it is. So, yeah, they might grab it just as it, you know, hits the cap.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  But we didn't have to worry about that.

• 1:07:20Jocko Willink?

  Worked out.

• 1:07:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:22Jocko Willink?

  The enemy fire picked up quickly and with a new twist. They had moved a machine gun position on the other side of us that we are now in a crossfire. We were pinned down and couldn't move. We had to get rid of the machine gun or we were all dead. There was a small group of rocks about 20 meters from our position. If I could get to those rocks, I would be able to call back directions to our M79 gunner and we might knock out the machine gun. The problem was getting across the 20 meters of open terrain with fire coming from both sides without getting hit. They had also brought an RPG and it fired a couple of those at us. Time was running out.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  I told the team to cover me as I went across the ground like a mole, watching the mud being dug up all around me. The only way I could explain not being hit was that God had put a force field around me. The enemy had begun to shift their fire off of me as I neared the rocks. This seemed strange, but I was glad that it, glad that I made it. I didn't think much about it. The rocks did not provide as much cover as I had anticipated they would. The machine gun had to be dealt with quickly. I pulled myself over to the edge of the bank and looked over and discovered why the enemy shifted most of their fire off of me. Less than three feet from me was an NVA crawling up the bank to get me. I didn't know which one of us had the biggest look of shock on their face, probably me.

• 1:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Time began to move in slow motion and in what was reality was two to three seconds seemed like minutes. In the next fraction of a second, he squeezed the trigger on his AK-47. The first round just missed my head by what must have been an inch or two. Powder coming out of the barrel was hitting me in the face as the bullets streamed out. AK-47s have a tendency to rise up when they are on automatic so that the other bullets... Were going over my head. I squeezed off a burst of six to eight rounds from a distance of less than three feet. They all hit him in the face and the top of his head, causing it to explode, sending debris all over me. As his body tumbled down the bank, I could taste the blood that had hit me in the mouth.

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  The fire immediately shifted back on me, and I was hugging the ground so close that I must have looked like an empty pair of fatigues lying on the ground. Nevertheless, I felt an occasional bullet hit my rucksack. Fortunately, the radio was not damaged. A green tracer ricocheted off a rock and landed right in front of my face. I watched it lie there and burn. As I continued to fire at the enemy, the handguard on my A- on my Car-15 became so hot, I could no longer hold it. I was having to shoot one-handed. I shouted back directions to the M79 gunner. His first shot was high and off to the left. I continued to direct his fire until he had hit a tree beside the machine gun, sending Shrapnel into

• 1:10:10Jocko Willink?

  the position. The two NVA were wounded and momentarily stunned. This gave me a chance to put ten to twelve round burst on them and silence the machine gun for good.

• 1:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Ah, man.

• 1:10:27Speaker 01

  It was an exciting afternoon.

• 1:10:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's completely crazy. I, I can't, I can't imagine sitting there as all this machine gun fire is happening and the tracer settles itself in front of your face and you sit there and watch it burn.

• 1:10:46Jocko Willink?

  About this time, two helicopter gunships arrived. I marked our position initially with a flare gun and then with purple smoke grenade. After they had identified our location, I directed their minigun forty millimeter grenade and rocket fire into the enemy. The gunships were literally ripping the trees, ground, and enemy apart. Even though we had already killed a lot of enemy, there were still twenty more shooting at us. The gunship spotted the enemy further, more enemy further down the ridge, moving toward us and fired rockets on them to slow their progress. I worked the airstrikes in as close as I could to our position and eventually was able to suppress the enemy fire enough to crawl back to the team. So far, only one team member had any serious wounds. Shrapnel from one of the B40 rockets had hit him in the back. It was not life threatening at the moment, but he was in a lot of pain and bleeding.

• 1:11:32Jocko Willink?

  We were beginning to run low on ammunition. And the enemy force was increasing. The time had come to break contact with the enemy or die in place. Yeah, you were going, in order for your car 15 to get that hot that you could, you were shooting a lot.

• 1:11:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  How many rounds did you go in with?

• 1:11:51Speaker 01

  On a normal, on a SOG mission, I usually carry around 50 magazines.

• 1:11:56Jocko Willink?

  Did you say 50?

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Five zero.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Five zero magazines.

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  Of course, we had the little ones.

• 1:12:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those are 20 rounds.

• 1:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. But, yeah. Because I, even though I was the leader, I still tended to engage the bad guys.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're in there, and what about for this one where you know you're got a high potential for contact?

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  I don't think we had that many. I don't remember exactly how many I had, you know, maybe 30 or so, but, you know, a little less than I wanted to.

• 1:12:24Jocko Willink?

  How did you even load out 30 magazines or 50 magazines? I mean, you can only fit so many on your web gear.

• 1:12:32Speaker 01

  You, with a canteen pouch, you can put five 20-round magazines in it. You know, so I would, I would carry two of those at least on the belt. And then, you know, I'd put the others in the rucksack. So, like on the left side, I'd have, you know, 10 magazines. You know, because you're gonna put the magazine in with your left hand. The right side, I'd have one or two bags of grenades, because I could put usually five of those in a canteen pouch. And you're gonna throw right-handed. You didn't want to have to be rolling and turning. I tried not to put anything, you know, besides, you know,

• 1:13:14Speaker 01

  the med kit, which was pretty flat, the gauze pads and things like that, my compass on the front, so I could get closer to the ground. And then, in the rucksack, I'd load it up.

• 1:13:30Speaker 01

  I just wondered, everything was so heavy. And then, you know, you had to have a couple of quarts of water on the belt. And sometimes more in the rucksack. You had the claymore mines in the rucksack.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  How many claymores would you usually carry?

• 1:13:45Speaker 01

  I usually carried two. And depending on the size of the team, we might, everybody else might have two. But, you know, claymores are heavy.

• 1:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Would you, would those be rigged? The ones rigged with like five second or 10 second time?

• 1:13:58Speaker 01

  We had, we had defuses, depending on what we wanted to do with them.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  And then you also had a rig for perimeter security that you could clack off?

• 1:14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  We carried a lot of stuff.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you, you, it's, uh... To be in these kind of firefights, to shoot your weapon enough that it's hot, and to be sitting there under that, under that fire directly, I mean, this is just... This is, these are crazy things. You can barely even capture how, how, well, what your chances of survival in a situation like this were. The chances are not good, let me put it that way.

• 1:14:39Speaker 01

  With the, with the original M16, the handguard would, would get hot, but, you know, the regular troops rarely, you know, fired them that much. They would get warm. But with the Car 15, um, it had a different type of handguard up front. And with the amount of firing that, that we were doing, and, you know, the thing was 110 degrees to start with. And then you start, you know, putting those, you know, rounds through there as fast as you can, very quickly, it would get hot. Most Americans wore gloves. You know, and I particularly had them on this time because I didn't have any skin on the inside of my hands. A lot of the muscle and meat was gone.

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  So, and would, and we cut the fingertips out, you know, so we had some dexterity to do things. And I would put a piece of canvas around the handguard, and that would just give me a little extra protection until it got hot. And then, you know, just the one-handed thing, having, um, the rope, small rope.

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  Go through the little site bracket up there and hooked into the snap link on your shoulder. You could put pressure down on that. It made it easier to shoot one handed and be able to hold it down, you know, because it's going to try to come up on auto. But you could do that. It was a little uncomfortable on that mission because of my hands. But the good thing about your hands is all of that skin will grow right back. It didn't take it long. It'll come back. Other places on the body, it just didn't come back that fast.

• 1:16:19Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you guys are running low on ammo and here we go back to this document. I signaled the team to get ready to move out and radio to the gunship, gunships, what we were going to do. As they made their next run, firing mini guns, 40 millimeter grenades and rockets, myself and two team members exposed ourselves long enough to throw white phosphorus grenades as far toward the enemy as we could. When they exploded, each produced a very dense 30 meter radius of white smoke and streams of burning phosphorus. The smoke didn't stop the bullets, but it did prevent them from seeing our direction of escape. We quickly drug the body and the wounded team member into the thick jungle and began

• 1:16:59Jocko Willink?

  slipping and sliding up the mountain. I radioed the gunships that we were clear to make their next pass directly over our old position marked with a red smoke grenade estimating that the bad guys would be there by then. It was a good move resulting in the gunships killing several of them where we had been. The gunships continued to pound the area for another 20 minutes, sending thousands of bullets, hundreds of 40 millimeter grenades, and dozens of rockets through the jungle canopy onto them. Once again, the weather moved in on us very quickly and the rain began to come down hard. Before we were halfway up the mountain, the clouds were already covered, the clouds had already covered the ridge line. We would not be distracted that day.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Tired and somewhat demoralized, we continued to climb toward the top of the mountain. We had at least temporarily broken contact with the enemy. Eventually, we found a very dense, rocky and steep peak. We thought we could defend. The rain continued the rest of the day and throughout the night. That's a morale crusher.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:03Jocko Willink?

  You're low on ammunition. You think you're making your, your final, you know, uh, movement and then you're going to get extracted and then the weather comes in and you're shut down.

• 1:18:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it didn't go over well with the team. I mean, it had, it, it had a significant impact on the morale. Because they really thought, I really thought that once we got up here, uh, we would get extracted.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  But not once the weather rolled in, then I knew, man, we're going to be here at least until tomorrow. And, you know, things just don't work out.

• 1:18:40Jocko Willink?

  As a leader in that position, what, what is it important for you to do as a leader as that morale starts to slip?

• 1:18:49Speaker 01

  Part of, part of what I was doing with them was congratulating them because this was, um, one of our first heavy firefights as a team. Um, so pumping them up, how well they did, how, how we destroyed all those guys. We've got the body that we went down after. Um, you know, so just trying to tell them, you really do a good job. So, Wayne, don't ever think about bringing a soft drink, you know, on a mission again.

• 1:19:24Jocko Willink?

  That, uh, that, that still, okay, so you give them like a pep talk, hey, you did great, but they gotta be looking at you. Hey, hey, thanks a lot, boss. And now we're here and the enemy that we just killed a bunch of enemy, what are they going to do? They're going to come after us.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  We've got to keep the guard up, pay attention. You can't dwell on what, what's happened. You know, the weather will clear when it clears. In the meantime, uh, we got to stay sharp. And, and, you know, we're in a good position. If they try to come up, we'll take them out.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  This is like the ultimate form of, of, of. When people get in competition of some kind and they think they win and then it turns out they don't.

• 1:20:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  You know, I got a buddy named Tim Kennedy, who's actually a special forces guy, great guy, and he was actually a UFC fighter, a mixed martial arts fighter, incredible fighter, but he had a, he had a match against a guy and the guy he was going against was an Olympic champion guy, a really tough guy, and Tim was beating him. And I think it was between the second and third round, the opponent didn't answer the bell, so he didn't come out to fight. And then the corner man, there were some shenanigans going on, and all of a sudden, with an extra 30 seconds of rest or whatever, the guy stood up and ready to fight. And now Tim Kennedy, who had just thought he had won because the guy didn't answer the bell, they go, no, no, no, no, it's not over, you gotta fight.

• 1:20:49Jocko Willink?

  And hearing him tell that story to me, you know, he said it was this, this situation, right? All of a sudden, he thought he would, had won, thought the day was done, raised his hands in victory, and then all of a sudden, no, you gotta fight again. And he, he didn't, you know, he, he told me, he's like, I didn't get back in the game. And he ended up losing that fight. And that, unfortunately, that fight would have put him in the slot to be the, the UFC champion, which he absolutely should have been. But it's, it reminds me of this, and you as a leader have to take these people in that moment where they could let down their guard, they could get demoralized, they could give up, and instead say, nope, guess what? Okay, hey, good job, we gotta make it through tonight, we're not done yet.

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that happens all the time. I mean, Cunningham, the first, first guy to, to be an ace pilot in Vietnam, when, when they shot down their, the fifth aircraft. And then, so then the mission was over, they shot down that, that air, that MiG, and they turn and go home, and he and, you know, the co-pilot, they're patting each other on the back, man, we're aces now, we've done this, that was great, and then just going back and forth. They didn't hear the missile alarm go off. Fortunately, they were almost back to the coast when the missile hit them.

• 1:22:10Speaker 01

  They had to punch out. They landed in the water and, you know, got picked up out there. But they were celebrating so hard. Yeah, they let their guard down. They thought it was over.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  It ain't over till it's over.

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  And in this particular case, it ain't over yet. Here we go. Back to this document. Even though the mission was supposed to have been a five-hour mission, I had made just everyone, just, I'd made everyone bring two meals just in case. The team members had grumbled about the extra weight, but no one was grumbling now. Nor did they during the next day, as the rain continued. We spent almost forty-eight hours on that little peak, constantly watching, listening, and feeling for the enemy before the weather cleared and we were extracted. Needless to say, everyone was very excited to climb onboard the helicopter and head for home, even though the smell was terrible.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  I really look forward to seeing, I really, I was really looking forward to some time off to let my body and mind heal. When we arrived at the compound, however, I discovered my team was scheduled to begin preparing for a new mission the next day. R and R would have to wait. Three months later, I was awarded the air medal with the V-Device, second award for heroism during aerial combat for my actions on May 4th, 1969. The first trip, I was also awarded the Bronze Star Medal with V-Device for heroism in ground combat for my actions on May 7, 1969, the second trip.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  And it was worse.

• 1:23:53Speaker 01

  When I got back.

• 1:23:54Jocko Willink?

  What, what, what, please tell me what was worse than that? Because.

• 1:23:58Speaker 01

  When I.

• 1:23:59Jocko Willink?

  And whoever wrote up you for a Bronze Star for that, no disrespect, but I'd like to slap that person right in the face. Because that is ridiculous. That entire thing is ridiculous.

• 1:24:13Speaker 01

  So, when I got back, we had the aviation guy there with the, our Colonel, again. And he's saying, "You blew up my helicopter."

• 1:24:27Speaker 01

  I'm saying that's what you told me to do. Destroy the helicopter. He said, I didn't tell you that.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  You were not supposed to destroy it. You know, just put a thermite or something on, on the radios, but not destroy the helicopter. I don't know what he thought he was gonna do with it.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:48Speaker 01

  But I said, well, that joker's in a million pieces out there. But it's gone.

• 1:24:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, next time, do it yourself.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  I didn't, I didn't quite go that far. I might've been thinking that, but. I was not happy when I heard that. I wanted to hear, hey, man, you, you did a great job.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:06Speaker 01

  Why'd you blow my helicopter up?

• 1:25:09Jocko Willink?

  Wow. That's a disconnected, that's a very disconnected person, a very disconnected leader.

• 1:25:18Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's just completely crazy. And you, did you get wounded during that mission?

• 1:25:26Speaker 01

  No, just banged up a little bit.

• 1:25:29Jocko Willink?

  Just banged up a little bit?

• 1:25:30Speaker 01

  I mean, it, you know, I, it wasn't uncommon to get hit with shrapnel or, or something. But, you know, I, I got the broken ribs and burned hands and all of that, you know, with the first part of it. But, you know, the second part, I just got skin up and, and stuff.

• 1:25:50Jocko Willink?

  So then.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  So now what's the next, uh, let's see, that was in, that was in, um. Two to seven May. And then the next thing we got is a, a King B down. So one of the King B helicopters goes down.

• 1:26:06Speaker 01

  That wasn't a good day.

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  So I'm, you know, I take RT, Virginia. And we go on a mission. And I, I think that's the one where it was the, um, NVA. Division or regiment. Heading for hamburger hill.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  We were supposed to go find them and then bring airstrikes and things on, try to stop them because Hamburger Hill was a very political battle that happened. The 101st was trying to fight their way up to the top of this mountain, taking all kinds of casualties and everybody was questioning at the time, why do they need to go up there? Why does it gotta take the high ground? It'll be a political victory that, as well as military, if we take it. They were taking all kinds of casualties.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  The North Vietnamese had this large unit that was coming, that was gonna crush that battalion. And, you know, so our mission was to go out, find it, stop it, don't let them get there. They had moved a lot further along than we thought, so we do our little circling around thing and as we're coming in on short file, they opened fire, hit the aircraft, we lost power and, you know, I'm sitting in the door and I'm watching the ground come up and thinking, you know, this is not good. Man, we're gonna really smack in and we did.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  So, hit the ground, everything went black and, you know, then I, my eyes come open and I'm laying there thinking, hmm, am I alive or dead? And then I hear the bullets cracking by and I'm thinking, I must be alive, somebody's trying to shoot me. So, I look around, see what's going on, I get my guys who were scattered out on the ground too, I drag them over into a bomb crater that's there, so we had some protection. They eventually got the helicopter flying again.

• 1:28:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 1:28:35Speaker 01

  Even though it had taken a lot of hits, but he got it back in the air somehow.

• 1:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Was your, the King B pilots, these were South Vietnamese pilots?

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Um, South Vietnamese, but yeah, they flew for us. They were, they were our guys.

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:47Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:28:50Speaker 01

  You know, we're in the crater fighting. They can't get back in. The ground fire is way too heavy. We're working the airstrikes. We're working the A1Es. We're hitting the whole ridge line. We're hitting the top of the hill, getting secondary explosions up there, you know, because they'd already moved a lot of ammunition and stuff up on the hill. So, we're smoking it pretty hard, but, I mean, they can shoot right across the top, the bomb crater, so it was kinda hard to stick your head out. Everybody's busted up. I'm experiencing, you know, a tremendous amount of pain, and I'm not quite sure where's this

• 1:29:33Speaker 01

  coming from. I mean, I'm hurting. It's hard to breathe, all that kinda stuff. But, you know, we're getting a lot of kills. They're trying to crawl out there to us. And then eventually, we suppressed the fire enough that one helicopter's able to come in and took everybody on the team except for myself and one guy. So, two of us stayed there in the bomb crater.

• 1:30:02Jocko Willink?

  Now, is that because of the crowd, of the too many people? Is that because, is there a tactical reason to do that?

• 1:30:09Speaker 01

  In this case, I wanted somebody else with me. And we were loading the aircraft down. We're really putting too much weight on it.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  So, you, the fear was if you, if you, if everyone got on that, the King B wouldn't be able to take off?

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  Right. It would go down.

• 1:30:24Jocko Willink?

  So, two of you are gonna stay?

• 1:30:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, you know, it's a question kinda like we talked about before. Sometimes you have to weigh the good of the many against the one. And, you know, for us, the best solution was for us not to get on the helicopter. We would stay there if we got out. We got out. We didn't. We didn't. But the rest of the team, you know, would survive. So, they went away. We're still, you know, doing a lot of shooting, working gunships and stuff. And then I just got a little irritated and I thought, I need to go get one of them. I think what I'm gonna do is just crawl out there, cause I know they're crawling around out there in the grass. I'm gonna crawl out there and get one of these jokers.

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  Meaning, meaning you're gonna go and capture a live enemy?

• 1:31:16Speaker 01

  So, you know, I told Cuddy.

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  Cause, cause you're right now, you got two people, two of you, you're injured somehow, you don't really know what it is, you're in a bomb crater, you're surrounded by an NVA division, and you think now's a good time to go and capture someone.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  If I'm gonna get somebody, I mean, this may be my last chance, so, I wanna snatch one of those jokers up, because if we can take him back, I mean, he can give a lot of intel about where they are, what they're doing, and everything. So, I start crawling out there in the grass, and the grass is about that high, about two and a half, three feet high, and I'm crawling around out there, and I can hear them, you know, cause they're shooting, still shooting down at the bomb crater, they don't realize that I've crawled out there with them. And I can hear there's one up in front of me, and I'm crawling up there, and I said, you know, if, if I can get the, the timing right, so that he doesn't see me, you know,

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  immediately, then, you know, I can probably wound him, drag him back in, and, you know, he'll be ours. It just didn't go well when we had the encounter, so I more than wounded him, and, you know, so I, I didn't have a prisoner.

• 1:32:34Jocko Willink?

  Did you shoot at him, or did you stab him?

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  No, I shot him. Yeah, I mean, there are times to use a knife, but sometimes you, you need to do it quick. And, you know, if he's got buddies, you know, you can only reach so far with a knife, but with that Car 15, you reach way out there and tap somebody. So, I, I decided to go back in, because I just, I didn't have any strength, and I wasn't sure what, what was going on, so I got back in, eventually we suppressed the fire enough, uh, that they were able to come back in and get the two of us, and went, went back to the launch site, and they said, you know, that was good. But there's still a ton of them out there and I need you to go back in tomorrow morning.

• 1:33:21Speaker 01

  So take the team back, you know, so I replaced some team members and. And why'd you have to replace team members? Because some of them were injured, you know, when the helicopter crashed in, so. And what about you, your back and whatever injuries? I got with the medics and they drug me up and they said, you know, with an impact that hard, you know, you're bound to have some, you know, some bruises and whatever. And I said, man, this is not a bruise. I mean, it's hard to breathe when I move, but anyway, they said, we really need you back out there tomorrow morning. I mean, this is critical. Okay, we'll go do it. So we go back in.

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  Same, same insertion point? No, we, we moved over to a different location, you know, a few clicks away from that first one.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  And went in and right as we got on the ground and we started in, into the jungle, we made contact. So all of a sudden we were in heavy contact there and trying to suppress that fire, working the gunships and things that, that we had with us. Got it suppressed enough that we were able to get, again, all but me and one of the guys out on strings and lifted them out. So the two of us, we were still there, still working the airstrikes and we were in a better position at this point to really hit the main body of the force. And, you know, we had that big stick with us and we were hammering those guys. I mean, literally thousands

• 1:35:01Speaker 01

  of them were killed, you know, that morning. I mean, we, we pretty much decimated, you know, that force. They did not go. What was your, were you in an elevated position? Yeah, yeah. So we were up pretty close to the top of, of a mountain and we could see them in the valley. We could see them on the ridge line coming up to where we were. We could see them on the ridge line where we had. Did they know where you were? Uh, yeah. I mean, from the fire that was going on, they knew we were up there, but they couldn't get up there to us, except for the ones that were already there. Because, you know, now we had a big enough air support team with us out there to just smoke them. We had the spads, you know, the A1Es, we had the F4s and gunships and just

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  rotating those things in. I mean, they were stacked out here waiting on their turn to come in and go after them. Where we were, you know, I could see them. And we had, you know, pretty significant contact right there and where we were directly on us. And for some reason, it just seemed like a good idea to take one of them back with us.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you got the notion again that you're gonna try and capture someone?

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  So I thought, you know, it's a different terrain. I need to get one of them. So I crawled out there, you know, with covering fire from my little guy. Encountered a guy and, you know, I didn't have the strength to manhandle. I wounded him, but I was hurting so bad, I just didn't have the strength. I mean, under normal conditions, I could have brought him back, but I was in too much pain. So, you know, I had to, you know, let him go to happy hunting ground wherever, you know, and crawl back. And later on that day,

• 1:36:57Speaker 01

  myself and the other guy were able to come out on strings and then they really hammered the place there.

• 1:37:03Jocko Willink?

  How long were you on the ground for on that one?

• 1:37:05Speaker 01

  Most of the day. It was a long time. And, you know, when we got back, they said, you know, "Yeah, I think there's something wrong with you." I said, "Yeah, I think so."

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  By the way, the NVA, that element of NVA, of thousands and thousands of NVA, did they ever make it to Hamburger Hill? So that's why?

• 1:37:28Speaker 01

  That's why, you know, the 101st was not wiped out. They did finally make it to the top.

• 1:37:35Speaker 01

  And once they got up there and said, you know, we're the king of the hill, they were told, okay, come on back down.

• 1:37:42Jocko Willink?

  When that kind of stuff was going on, what did you guys, was that, you know, we, we look back armchair quarterback and say, oh, you know, what, what were they thinking? What were you guys thinking? When you guys hear that, hear, would hear about that, would you think, what the hell is the leadership doing?

• 1:37:58Speaker 01

  What are we doing? I mean, why would you do that? Why would you sacrifice that many lives? And I, I forgot now the exact number, but it was a lot of Americans killed trying to get to the top of that hill just to turn around and walk back down.

• 1:38:13Speaker 01

  And I know it wasn't just that, it was a big political move and everything, but it's just my opinion that I don't think it was worth losing people like that. If you're going to turn around and go back down.

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  Right. Now, did you guys think about that? Did you talk about that? Did you guys look at each other and say, what the hell are we doing? Why would we make this choice?

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  Sometimes, sometimes when we would get back, you know, the team members sitting not, you know, the American members sitting around, sometimes we would say, man, did you see what, hear what happened? And questioning, you know, some of the political things that were going on.

• 1:38:51Jocko Willink?

  Cause now it's 1969, so the, this is like the height of the American anti-war movement right now. This is like Woodstock's coming and all that stuff.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:03Jocko Willink?

  Are you guys hearing any of that?

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  We were hearing some about the protests, but, you know, we didn't get to see, I mean, we didn't have TVs and have stuff like that. We didn't, we didn't see what was going on. If you got a hold of an Army Times, you might see something in there, but a lot of stuff was held back because they, you know, didn't want us being exposed to it. But you knew, and you had heard from people who were coming in more recently, things that they had seen. You knew that you were likely to be spit on in the airport or on the street if you were in uniform. And it was...

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  What are you thinking about that? I mean, if, are you just, can you even fathom that?

• 1:39:52Speaker 01

  Well, I wasn't happy about it. And...

• 1:39:59Speaker 01

  Well, there were a lot of hijackings of planes going on at that time, too. So, not by protesters, but by different people hijacking them to fly to different countries. And, you know, one of my thoughts was, this Browning high-power nine-millimeter that I took off of a NVA, I'm carrying that with me on the plane. My plane is not going to be hijacked. It would be the hijacker's worst nightmare to try to stop my plane. So, I carried it with me. And I had it, when I went through the airport, I did get spit at, I got called baby killer,

• 1:40:43Speaker 01

  you know, all kinds of things like that, you know, from various groups in the airport. It was not the welcome-home kind of thing that you see today. Although, we don't, I don't think we do a very good job today. We do a lot better than we did. So, um, yeah, I wasn't happy about what was going on.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  So, you were about to say, before I cut you off, you were about to say that you get back and now you're saying, hey, there's something actually, I think there's actually something wrong with me.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. They decided that I, they decided at the time that I had severely bruised my back and maybe some vertebrae, and I think I broke another couple of ribs, I don't remember right now, but I think there was a couple of ribs broken, too, and, you know, beat up, cut up. But then it was determined later that I had fractured my spine and a couple of vertebrae. And they just couldn't believe that I actually went on a mission like that and was able to do, you know, what we did.

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  So, what, they give you a couple of days downtime and some motoring?

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Oh, they promised, they promised that, and then they, nah, yeah, I got a few days downtime after that. But, yeah, I ate motoring like it was candy.

• 1:42:04Jocko Willink?

  And then it was, okay, you got...

• 1:42:07Speaker 01

  Eventually, you know, by the time the next mission came around, you know, ready to go.

• 1:42:13Jocko Willink?

  And was, you have a note in here about the POW mission.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Is that, is that after you got home? No, this is still, I'm still over there. Okay. So, we got intel, excuse me, we got intel all of a sudden that said there was a small group, ten to fifteen American POWs that were being moved north. And the intel said, "We know where they are." So, they said, "We need to get them." So, that became the mission, but it was gonna be, um, a intense combat kinda mission. So, what we did was we created a spike team. So, buddy of mine, Bruce Lombard, and I would do that sometimes.

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  We would put our two teams together, so we'd have about twenty or so people to take out there. Uh, we took a medic with us this time. We were, we were loaded for bear. Two machine guns, all this, you know, extra ammo and everything. And our mission was to go out and find them and get them back. So, uh, we went to the launch site where we were supposed to launch. And, uh, the next day, there was a hatchet force that was there too, that, um, had a mission to go, I don't know what their mission was, but they were going somewhere.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  And we had a, a team, Dennis Neal and, um, Michael Brown's team was on the ground. They had finished their mission, they moved back, uh, to an extraction LZ. They had called for extraction. And then all of a sudden, they called a prayer fire emergency that they were being overrun. And then we lost contact with a...

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  With a radio contact with the team. One of the aircraft, excuse me, one of the aircraft out in the area. Heard a transmission on the little U R T. Radio that just operated on the guard frequency. They picked up what they thought was an American voice saying, you know, somebody help me, help me for God's sake. Somebody help me. They heard that voice and that was all we heard. And so everything, the launch site stopped. Because now it's a prairie fire and we've got to go get Dennis's team.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, and that was a situation where I didn't have a two day R and R coming up, but I'm looking at the aircraft that's about to go out to try to bring them back. And I'm thinking, I probably should get on that aircraft. You know, I think I should go with them. And then I think, geez, I've got to lead a, lead my own mission to get P O Ws, you know, in a couple of hours, I've got to go do that. I can't jump on, you know, this aircraft and fly out there. I mean, that's not going to work. So I didn't go. They went out into the area.

• 1:45:37Speaker 01

  They saw some movement, they saw, you know, what they thought were good guys. They dropped the McGuire rigs down. And as they were lifting off, three of them pulled tight. And then one of them shot loose and they came on up. They had two indigenous personnel on the McGuire rigs. And, you know, the, the crew chief said he thought he saw an American on that third one that popped loose, that he thought an American had gotten in there and fell out as they were, you know, pulling the tension up. But they were receiving so much fire, you know, they couldn't go back in there.

• 1:46:17Speaker 01

  So they brought the two survivors from the team back to the launch site, did a quick debriefing from them. They said everybody else is dead. They launched the hatchet force to go in as a bright light team. They changed their mission to bright light and decided to put them out there because there were, you know, so many bad guys in the area. But they inserted them a couple thousand meters away from, from, you know, where the extraction site was. They were pinned down on the LZ, never, they never moved anywhere. They just got into the tree line and that was as far as they could go.

• 1:46:58Speaker 01

  So, once that started happening and they saw they couldn't go anywhere, then they came to me and said, you know, your mission's changed. You are now the bright light team. Yeah, so, got all my guys together and said, okay, we're going bright light. The other mission, we'll do later. So then, you know, they, we planned a mission right quick and they inserted us, you know, the whole spike team. So, I mean, that's five aircraft going in. They said, you know, it's a really hot area, so we're gonna, we'll prep the LZ, but we have to be careful because we don't know where the other team members are that might be out there. So we can't just hammer the whole area.

• 1:47:43Speaker 01

  We can only prep it right around the LZ. So they went out, you know, the gunships ahead of us, they prepped the LZ. And, you know, I'm listening on the headset and it's not sounding good. And, you know, I knew we were gonna get hammered because they were gonna open up on us as soon as we got close. And I was in the lead ship and as we started in, you know, bullets had come in everywhere, the aircraft's taking hits, the ones behind me are taking hits. But, we went on in, got on the ground, got my, that first load into the tree line, brought in the, the rest of the guys, one ship at a time, working airstrikes, you know, right

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  around us, to suppress the fire as much as we could. So, we spent, until the next afternoon.

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  Mostly fighting, looking for Dennis's team, trying to find any survivors that we could. So it was a long night and they were firing mortars over at the hatchet for us. We could hear them from back up behind us. I mean, I would call them and say, you know, rounds on the way because I'd hear them drop it in the tube and douche, you know, and I'd just tell them, you know, you got incoming. Get everybody down. But we couldn't get to where the mortars were because we had, you know, too many people around us.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  And when it got daylight, we're still looking for more, looking for Dennis more. We discovered we were in the middle of a bunker complex. Bunkers were all around us and that's why, one reason that the LZ prep didn't have much of effect, they were in their bunkers. And so anyway, we brought in a lot of air support, eventually got out. Dennis's team was never found. And the, um, the two survivors, there's no doubt in my mind that they gave us the wrong location of where, where the team was when it was overrun.

• 1:49:55Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't think they did it intentionally. I think it was the stress. I think it was being chased, trying to survive. I think they lost track with how far they moved to get to where they were picked up from.

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  Because otherwise you would have found something.

• 1:50:11Speaker 01

  We would have found something. Now, you can go out there and you can find people who've written all kinds of things about Dennis's mission and that nothing, you know, no evidence was found and things like that. I was there. I was the guy on the ground. You know, I searched that area. I know what was there.

• 1:50:33Speaker 01

  And, you know, Dennis was my roommate. So we were, you know, we were already very close and, you know, so I had that personal stake in finding his team. And, you know, we just didn't make it. So we came back. So our mission for the PW was postponed.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  And we went back down and started replanning that mission again, you know, because according to intel, they had moved more. So we had to pick a new site to go into and kind of think through it a little differently. And it turned out to be one, probably one of the most interesting missions that I had. Maybe one of the most unique in SOG because of a couple of things that happened.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Well, like what?

• 1:51:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's, it's, it's really interesting that if anyone, um, listened to this podcast, we've, we, we, I had on a, one of the, one of the guys I've had on the podcast was a guy named, uh, Colonel William Reader, and he was a helicopter pilot that was shot down two times. And the second time he was shot down, he was captured. And he was one of those folks that was being moved from South Vietnam to the north, which was actually the worst possible thing to have happening. And guys died on those tracks. And, you know, this was, this was them, the, the stereotypical image that you get of, of the Vietnam prisoner of war. In the jungle, that's what these guys were going through. So the guys in the Hanoi Hilton

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  that were, at least they were identified, people knew that they were there, et cetera. These guys in the jungle, they were just getting, you know, every horrible thing that could possibly happen, happened to those guys. So when you talk about the fact that you knew, you know, you had intel, this is the type of person that I'm thinking that you're going to save, you know, someone like Colonel, uh, William Reader, who, you know, the stories that he, he told about being captured and, you know, at one point, he was in a two foot tall bamboo cage. His legs are shackled. He's in the middle of the jungle. He hasn't eaten and he's trying to get some sleep, but he can't sleep because the rats are gnawing at the wounds in his legs.

• 1:53:05Jocko Willink?

  So that's the, when you say, hey, you got an opportunity to go capture these, these, these guys, that's what I'm thinking about.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  And you're doing all this just on top of, you know, losing your friend, your brother, Dennis Neal, who completely, you know, disappears.

• 1:53:27Jocko Willink?

  So what changed about, what changed about the mission? When, what, what did it start, what, what made it so unique?

• 1:53:32Speaker 01

  Well, having, we were going into a different location, different route. But other than that, the beginning was basically the way it was supposed to go. When it, when we got canceled before. We go, we go in relatively uneventful. And we get on LZ and, you know, it's the big team. So Bruce and I have our teams together and it's a big one. And we start moving up the ridge line. It was kind of a late insertion, not last light, but kind of late. We start up the ridge line.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  We get a few hundred meters up there and then we stop, you know, for the night. You know, because you've got a big group now. It takes longer to get everybody in position, get set up, get all the claymores out, get everything the way, you know, way you need it. So, and so now we have a larger perimeter. I'm in the center of it. Bruce is, you know, close to me, but I know where he is. And what was interesting was, you know, it got dark and the weather is starting to get bad. But it's dark and you can't see your hand in front of your face.

• 1:54:55Speaker 01

  And I'm leaning against a tree, my rucksack behind me. I got my Car 15 across my lap like I normally do. And I'm just about asleep and I, I hear a twig break. And my eyes open and I'm thinking, wow, did I just hear a twig break? And then I hear another one and I'm saying to myself, that's directly in front of me.

• 1:55:29Speaker 01

  There's somebody in front of me that's moving in this direction. And so now I'm listening and I'm saying, yep, somebody is coming directly at me. And I'm thinking, how did he get through the perimeter? I mean, we're not spaced very far apart at all. How in the world could this guy have walked through our perimeter? And be, he's on the inside now and he's coming, you know, straight at me. And so I'm playing all those thoughts in my mind and he's getting closer. And now I've got my adrenaline going, I've got my super senses working. And even though it's so dark, I can't see anything.

• 1:56:12Speaker 01

  I can visualize him in front of me. I can literally see a black silhouette in my mind. Cause I'm tracking the, the sound, I can hear him breathing and he's coming right at me. And I'm thinking, th- this is not gonna be good. This guy is gonna walk right into me. And so I've, I've gotta make a decision. You know, if I just shoot him right now, it's gonna light me up, you know, like a neon sign. And all of his buddies are gonna open up. I've gotta do something, he's about to step on me. So I've got the selector switch on full auto.

• 1:56:54Speaker 01

  I got my weapon in the hand and I'm, I'm tracking mentally this silhouette. And when it gets in my mind where he's within reach. My plan was, I'm gonna reach out and grab a hold of him. I'm gonna cram the barrel of the car fifteen into his head and I'm gonna pull him. He'll be off balance, I'll pull him and bring him down to the ground. If he fires his weapon, if he yells, if he makes any kind of sound. I'm just gonna put a three or four round burst into his head. And of course, that'll light me up and everybody'll, you know, start shooting at me. You know, but I, I can't let him be in there.

• 1:57:39Speaker 01

  So when he got within end range, I reached up, I grabbed him. At this, this same instant, the gun hit him in the side of the head, cut a big gash in his head. I pulled him down, he hasn't said a word. I jerked him right down to the ground and the gun is there. And I'm saying, now what am I gonna do? I mean, I've got him. But what am I gonna do with him? And all of a sudden, I hear him whisper, uh, Trung Wee, Trung Wee. He's saying, Lieutenant, Lieutenant, lights, lights.

• 1:58:18Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, what? Lights, lights. And I realize, we had a Vietnamese captain with us, Vietnamese army captain.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  And he had seen something and he was coming to tell me. You know, because he, you know, he wasn't used to going out with us. And he was coming to tell me, and I've got him down on the ground now with a gun stuck halfway through his head. And he's saying, lights and lights. And, and I look up and I'm looking up the ridge, up toward the top of the mountain. And all the way from the top of the mountain, about halfway down the ridge are just lights. And I thought, you know, there might be flashlights, but I think there was some kind of a lantern. And there was just a, a stream of people coming down the mountains. You know, so I led him up.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  I looked back down the ridge and there's a stream of lights, as far as I can see, down the ridge, coming up.

• 1:59:20Speaker 01

  The, uh, the guy that's monitoring the radio right then says, Sir, you need to hear this. And he hands me the handset and I respond and what I hear is, you are now a prairie fire emergency. This is coming from Saigon, being a relay to tell us that we are a prairie fire emergency. And I'm thinking, I didn't know that. But I mean, you know, I'm looking now and seeing all these lights and I'm thinking, yeah, I, I think we're, we probably are.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  And we're carrying a KY-38.

• 2:00:04Speaker 01

  All right. We have the most secure tactical radio that there is. The kind that you have to set that gun with about 20 manual settings on it to punch in the crypto code. You have to have all the frequencies, you have to have all the settings. And then the guy monitoring the radio says,

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  "Sir, you need to hear this." I'm thinking, "No, what? These guys are coming from everywhere and he's got something else he wants me to listen to." And I pick up the handset. And I'm thinking, "What do I hear? It's music. I'm hearing music coming over the handset."

• 2:00:49Speaker 01

  And then I hear this female,

• 2:00:53Speaker 01

  NVA, whatever, start talking. And it dawns on me all of a sudden,

• 2:01:01Speaker 01

  this is funeral music. This is the obituary music. This is what I used to hear when I was little on my grandmother's radio. Every day, you know, at lunch, they'd do the news, but then they would do the obituaries for the people, you know, in that county or whatever that had died. And they'd read off your name and all this stuff and they'd have this music in the background. And this female is reading off our obituary that we were killed in action that day. And she reads my name off as Dick Thompson.

• 2:01:45Speaker 01

  And I'm thinking, there's only one person on this side of the world who knows me as Dick, that has any clue that that's my name. And that was Bargewell. And I knew, you know, Bargewell was someplace, nobody had him. And she reads my name off as Dick Thompson, reads off the name of every member that we had on the team. All of us is being killed in action that day on the secure encrypted radio.

• 2:02:22Speaker 01

  Saigon's listening to this and thinking, "What is going on?" And I'm thinking, "What is going on?" This is making me, you know, a little nervous. "How did you know my name? How did they get on this frequency?" And, you know, and then that goes away. So it's kind of got my attention now. The bad guys are coming. So you start, you know, talking back and forth, you know, with, they've got a covey out in the area now. So we start talking about, you know, what are options for getting us out of here? Because the weather's not that good. There are tons of North Vietnamese all around us.

• 2:03:04Speaker 01

  I've got this one woman who has just told us all that we were killed today. I read our obituary. How did she get our names? Everyone is in shock and confused about, you know, what's, what's going on? How did they know exactly where we were and they're coming at us? The weather's starting to roll in and, you know, the clouds are slowly starting to come down on the mountains. So now I'm thinking, I mean, we're not going to be able to get air support. They can't get aircraft in to extract us. And I'm having this conversation now with Covey about, "I need some options."

• 2:03:48Speaker 01

  Because these, these guys are going to be here pretty soon. And, you know, it's not going to be pleasant. I mean, we're loaded for bear, but not for that many people, not to be trapped in between them. So finally they said, you know, "One option might be combat sky spots." So that's, F4s coming out with 500-pound bombs. And, you know, you give them a coordinate, 2,000 or 3,000 meters away from you. They're flying by radar and being vectored by radar toward those coordinates. And then when the radar says you're at the right place to release the bomb, you release, you know, a bomb and you see where it hits.

• 2:04:33Jocko Willink?

  So this is because it's a nighttime scenario?

• 2:04:36Speaker 01

  It's night, well, it's night plus now the clouds are down on the mountain. So he can't even, he can't even see the mountain that we're on or the ridge line.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, he's told- What was that technique called?

• 2:04:48Speaker 01

  Combat sky spot.

• 2:04:51Jocko Willink?

  Combat sky spot.

• 2:04:53Speaker 01

  So it's, um, you know, it's a technique that's not used very often because it's not very accurate.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:05:00Speaker 01

  And, you know, only because this was an emergency situation did they even approve it. And, you know, they said, you, you need to give us a set of coordinates that's, you know, two or three thousand meters away to start with. Let him put one bomb out there and let's see where it hits. And then we'll start to adjust. So I said, you know, if that's all we got, let's do it. So it didn't take long till there's an L four out in the area. And, um, and I, I actually, you know, using my emergency radio, I was able to talk, you know, directly to, to the L four, which, you know, you can't normally do.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  And, you know, he told me, you know, that bombs away, it's gonna be impact in about 20 seconds. You guys get your head down, I'm not sure what you're gonna hit. I'm thinking, that's nice to know. So it goes off and, you know, it's a lot closer than, you know, 3,000 meters. So I'm thinking, I'm really glad I pushed it on out there ways. And it wasn't, it really wasn't on the, wasn't online with the ridge anyway. It kinda went over the ridge and down into the valley. But at least I knew where, approximately where it hit, so I could start to adjust him some now. So we started messing with that. Well, that irritated the North Vietnamese.

• 2:06:26Speaker 01

  They were not happy that somebody was out there trying to drop a bomb on them. So we, we overheard a radio transmission saying, shoot them in the legs.

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  Take all the Americans prisoner. And we got a message coming out from Saigon. They were intercepting North Vietnamese transmissions and saying, uh, they plan to capture you. And they're gonna try to wound you and, and take you. Okay, then we gotta get these, um, sky spots working for us here. Uh, get them in closer. And the bad guys are getting closer and closer. Uh, and so I start working them down. And, you know, I'm kinda behind a tree and one of the bombs goes off.

• 2:07:17Speaker 01

  And a piece of shrapnel, you know, two and a half inches in diameter, comes out across the top of my head, goes into the tree right in front of me and just cuts, you know, a line across the top of my head as it's going into the tree. And I'm thinking, that was close. I mean, that was pretty close. So, you know, I was behind the tree for a little while. Once it cooled down a little bit, I popped it out and I put it in my pocket. I still have it at home somewhere. I wanted to bring it just to show it to you. But, um, you know, so that creased the top of my head. Got my attention now. You know, they're, they're serious about doing something.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  Um, eventually, you know, we, we do some gun battles and stuff and that's going on. Is it light yet? No, but it's, it's getting close. When it, when it finally did get light, there was a, um, marine squadron that, that came, a helicopter squadron that came out and with gunships. And I guess the, the leader came over close to where the ridge line was and received so much, uh, ground fire and stuff from it. He told the rest of these guys, back off, we're not going in there. There's too much ground fire.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Um, and then all of a sudden I'm, I get a call from one of the gunship pilots. And he says, hey, I'm coming. And I said, no, don't come in here. If you try to fly up that ridge, you're gonna have to go so low, you're gonna fly right on the treetops and barely moving, you're gonna have to almost be hovering, they're gonna knock you down. Don't come in here. We'll, I mean, we'll find a way. Don't come up here. Um, he said, I'm coming.

• 2:09:08Speaker 01

  So. This was a Hilo? Yeah. Helicopter gunship, Marine Corps helicopter gunship? So it wasn't but a few minutes, I could hear him coming and it wasn't but a few minutes and then I heard him. I, you know, I forgot his name now, Eagle Claw, something. Uh, Mayday, Mayday, Mayday, we're hit. And, you know, we're going down. And, you know, so I talked to him a little more and then he said, he sent out another Mayday. And said, you know, we're on fire, going down. Uh, I'm going to try to make it to the river. So I think, ah, this is not good. So, and he actually, he made it to the river. Uh, and it was kind of a, a deep swift flowing river.

• 2:09:53Speaker 01

  Went in sideways. The pilot got out, the door gunner on that side got out. And the, um, the two of them got out. Uh, the crew chief on the, on the side that went, went in first and the copilot, um, didn't get out. And then one of the, I mean, the guy, the door gunner got out, was a good swimmer and stuff. So he jumped in the water and swam over there and went down, you know, to try to get him. Um, the other gunner got out, but the pilot couldn't get out and never saw the door gunner again. He never came back up.

• 2:10:34Speaker 01

  So they lost those, those two guys, too many bad guys in, in that area. They couldn't go in to try to, you know, extract the, the two guys that didn't come up. But they did get the, the pilot and, and his, uh, door gunner out. And so that wasn't a good scene. How far away was that from you, from your location? They, their impact with the river was probably three thousand meters. Okay, so this is all in the vicinity of you? Yeah, it's all right around me. So they go in. And then, you know, we have a, we have a battle and it's, it's not looking good. There's just too many of them and we have no place to go.

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  So, um, it eventually gets to the point where I'm talking back to Cavi, talking to the L fours. And I asked him, do you have any clustered bomb units? Got any CBU on board? And he said they did. I said, put it on my position.

• 2:11:41Speaker 01

  And you know, I don't know if you've seen Clutchler bomb units, but it's a big container and it's full of small bomblets that are about the size of a grapefruit or a little bigger. So it drops out about, the canister comes open and you know, it just rains about 200 of those things down on you. So I just tell him.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  So, so how close to the enemy was all around you at this point?

• 2:12:05Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm already at the point.

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  I mean, for you to be calling

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  I'm looking around.

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Onto your position, that means you're about to be overrun.

• 2:12:13Speaker 01

  I'm looking around saying, oh man, is this the last thing I'm gonna see?

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  What time of day is it now?

• 2:12:17Speaker 01

  Oh, it's mid morning.

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  So it's mid morning. So you guys had been in heavy contact the entire morning?

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:24Jocko Willink?

  The enemy's closing in on your position. They're making progress, obviously, because now you're getting to a point where you-

• 2:12:32Speaker 01

  Because we can't go up or down. I mean, and the sides, the sides of the ridge are very steep. So we can't go down the ridge on the sides. And they're coming in and I'm thinking,

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  how long will I be able to keep pulling the trigger? I mean, once I start getting hit-

• 2:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys already blow your claymores? Your perimeter claymores?

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  Claymores are gone. I mean, they're coming and I'm thinking-

• 2:12:56Jocko Willink?

  And you had 20 guys in this element, about?

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the perimeter we're in, it's, I mean, it's bigger than this, a little bigger than this room.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  So we're talking like 15 by 15 feet?

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's, it's a fairly small perimeter.

• 2:13:13Jocko Willink?

  And you guys are surrounded by-

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  You know, in the thousands.

• 2:13:19Jocko Willink?

  In the thousands of hardened NVA

• 2:13:22Speaker 01

  So-

• 2:13:22Jocko Willink?

  Regulars.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they're coming. And you know, I tell, I tell the pilot, make your first run, put it on us. If you don't hear me come back on the radio, then make your next pass and just level everything on this ridge. Cause that means we're not here.

• 2:13:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, so he, he told us, heads down, he's coming in. And it rains all these things down. And we had seven of them. Land either inside the perimeter or right on the edge of the perimeter. None of them went off. None of them exploded. But they were exploding all around us. You know, and you could hear the screams and all this stuff, because some of them were going off into trees. Shrapnel was going everywhere. Um, and it broke, broke their attack. Yeah, so I told him, hey, don't put another one on us. Yeah, that, that's working, you can back off a little bit now.

• 2:14:21Jocko Willink?

  So that's just divine intervention?

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:24Jocko Willink?

  For there to be seven of those cluster bombs that land inside your perimeter and none of them go off?

• 2:14:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that just doesn't happen.

• 2:14:31Jocko Willink?

  That's the only way.

• 2:14:32Speaker 01

  You might have one or two of them not go off somewhere, but not all the ones that are right there.

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  And all the other ones do go off?

• 2:14:38Speaker 01

  The others do, do go off. I mean, I don't know that there were some out there that didn't, but it appears that they all went off. Um, so they backed off. Things calmed down a little bit. So I had Bruce, um, send some of his people, uh, to look for a way down the ridge. Could we, could we go down somehow? So a team went out. Uh, and I got a call back saying, "We just found the remains of another SOG team." Down on the side of the ridge here. And there's, you know, there's one, one body here. An indigenous body. "What do you want me to do?"

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  And I said, "Well, we need to identify who the person is." So, without going into detail, I just told him, "Take the appropriate action so he could be identified." And, uh, bring, you know, that back with him to the, to the team. So, and then we finally...

• 2:15:43Speaker 01

  Get some gunships working now because the weather's starting to lift up. We've got, I mean, we've been bombing, you know, quite a bit during the night. So we start working down toward the LZ that we can't come in on. So we're gonna try to get an extraction there. Ran into a small ambush, but, you know, that didn't last long. So we were able to keep going. Got down to the LZ and we're looking around, you know, looking for bad guys. But what I see is a tail fin sticking up out of the ground, a couple of feet. It's a 500-pound bomb, sticking in the LZ, unexploded.

• 2:16:23Speaker 01

  So now we're thinking, are we gonna bring a helicopter in here with that bomb sitting there, unexploded? So, excuse me. So we, you know, I told Covey, this is what's going on. We'd really like to get out of here because they're coming back. And so we have some dialogue and they decided, okay, we're gonna do the extraction. Because it's gonna take five aircraft to get us out. So we started rotating them in. And when my team was gonna be the last, you know, team out. So we got the machine guns placing fire, you know, out, trying to suppress the fire. The gunships are suppressing fire, rotating those ships in.

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  And we had so many gunships and A1Es, you know, on standby out there and just waiting on their turn to come in. It was unreal. But eventually, I think it was around 1700, you know, we got out. So started at 2100 the day before. And, you know, 1700, we finally got extracted and headed back. But we didn't, you know, get to go after the prisoners. So then the questions start.

• 2:17:39Speaker 01

  How could they know who was on the team? How could they have the frequencies? They had to have a KY-38. Where did they get that?

• 2:17:48Speaker 01

  So it was, I mean, to my knowledge, those questions were never answered. If they were answered, you know, we never found out how they managed to do that.

• 2:18:00Speaker 01

  You know, there was about, about a two-week delay between the time that we did the bright light mission for Dennis's team.

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:18:10Speaker 01

  And us coming back.

• 2:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:18:12Speaker 01

  So, I mean, the mission had already been planned and that had taken a couple of weeks. And then we get delayed a couple of weeks. So there was a leak somewhere, had to be a leak in our compound.

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  So the information got out. And I think when you were talking to Tilt, he was saying, you know, in late 69 and going into 70, whole teams are just disappearing. I mean, information was getting out somehow. I mean, they were getting smarter, but information was getting out and we were losing teams.

• 2:18:50Speaker 01

  So that was a little unique because you didn't normally get your obituary. I mean, and

• 2:18:56Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:18:56Speaker 01

  And there was one

• 2:18:57Jocko Willink?

  No, you don't normally get that.

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  One point there, we found out, after we got back, we found that there was a point during the, during the mission there where they had actually listed us as MIA. Because all the radio traffic they were picking up from the North Vietnamese, that they had us, that we really wasn't there now. And all this bombing and stuff that was going on, we wasn't there.

• 2:19:23Jocko Willink?

  And did any, no, did anyone get wounded during that?

• 2:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, shrapnel and stuff. No one, no one was killed. But, you know, we shrapnel, I got the top of my head cut.

• 2:19:36Jocko Willink?

  And you got that qualification of calling a cluster bomb in on your position, which is a pretty rare one to walk away from.

• 2:19:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, you know, so I guess today, you know, in, in this day, when I hear people saying, let's ban cluster bombs, we don't want to use cluster bombs, I'm thinking, man, I'm glad that thing was around at least one time.

• 2:20:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's sort of the, you know, that's like the I don't know, we say the ultimate horrible situation. It doesn't get any worse than when you are calling for airstrikes on your position. That's, that's the absolute, that's the, that's the last thing you do, right?

• 2:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:16Jocko Willink?

  That's when you say, we're gonna be overrun, we're probably gonna die. This is our last ditch effort, this is the ultimate of all hail marys, this is it. Call for fire on our position.

• 2:20:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:28Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you did, and by the grace of God, those browns that hit inside your perimeter.

• 2:20:33Speaker 01

  That's the only way you can explain it, I'm telling you. Oh, and I'll give you one other. So I'm trying to get the last helicopter loaded and get my guys on it. And this one's gonna sound strange too, but I'm standing right next to the helicopter. I'm putting people on, and I hear a voice that says, "Drop." A loud voice that says, "Drop." Without hesitation, I just collapsed to my knees. And as I did, about a 10 round burst of machine gun rounds hit the side of the chopper right where my head was.

• 2:21:12Speaker 01

  I mean, a fraction of a second later, you know, I would have been decapitated. I mean, there were things like that happening, you know, throughout. And you think, where did this come from? Why, how's all this happening?

• 2:21:27Jocko Willink?

  It's beyond coincidence.

• 2:21:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. And, you know, it was a definitely an interesting mission.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  I just, you know, very upset that, you know, we didn't get to go after the POW's, but.

• 2:21:43Speaker 02

  What's a prairie fire? What is it called, prairie fire?

• 2:21:47Jocko Willink?

  Prairie fire, so the, the area of operations is, they would call it prairie. And, and then the prairie fire emergency was when there was a bad situation to where these guys needed to get extracted.

• 2:21:59Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 2:22:00Jocko Willink?

  That's the, that's the prairie fire emergency.

• 2:22:03Speaker 01

  They couldn't afford for us to be captured or discovered. So whatever it took to make sure that we were not, um...

• 2:22:15Speaker 01

  And if you read the SOG material, you'll read about, hear about that, you know, sometimes a team, it's rumored at least, that sometimes a B-52 strike was put on teams that disappeared to make sure there were no survivors. I've been, I've done bomb assessment damages after B-52 strikes. Never had one put on me. And, you know, this would have been a good time for them to put one out there if they were going to do that. But I, I don't know that that's true. But you know that you had volunteered to go on a mission where you can't, under any circumstances, be taken alive. So.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  You have, you have another mission highlighted where it just says, prisoner snatch, 22 caliber pistol with a silencer. Did you ever get your prisoner?

• 2:23:09Speaker 01

  I never got one alive.

• 2:23:12Jocko Willink?

  At what point did your nickname or your code name turn to Terminator? Cause I'm thinking it might've had something to do with this.

• 2:23:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was actually after SOG on some other things I was doing. But it was, you know, I had commanders, you know, starting with Dick Meadows that started this thing about, you know, you're the most relentless person I've ever seen. You're the last person in the world I want to have coming after me because you just won't stop. And, you know, I had other commanders, you know, after that saying the same thing. And after, you know, Terminator movie came out.

• 2:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, they, they named that movie after you?

• 2:23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:59Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:24:00Speaker 01

  But then, you know, the name all of a sudden was prominent and, you know, so, you know, they said, your, your name's really, you know, Terminator. So I've, I've kind of hung on to that one. I use it as a race name when I do Iron Man competitions and stuff.

• 2:24:18Jocko Willink?

  And I had a good conversation when I was talking to Tilt and he went through a lot of the scenarios that he described was he was talking about the dogs that would be coming after him.

• 2:24:28Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:24:29Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I asked Tilt, I said, "Do you like dogs?" He says, "I hate dogs." And he said it without a moment of hesitation, I said, "What do you think of dogs now?" He said, "I hate dogs." And of course, he also said his wife likes dogs and therefore they have dogs. But are you scarred from dogs as well?

• 2:24:44Speaker 01

  No. Even though I do have a robotic dog, I've had a lot of dogs, you know, across the years, but you can deal with dogs. I mean, they tend to give your position away sometimes, but, you know, the 22 pistol or the silencer is still gonna make some noise. But if the dog gets far enough away from the group, you know, you can take him out, you know, with one of those. You can put out CS powder, you know, on the trail and that really screws their smell up when they sniff that.

• 2:25:27Speaker 01

  So there are ways to deal with dogs, but yeah, it scares you a little bit when you realize they're coming after you with dogs. I prefer trackers because I know how to get them. I don't miss trackers. They will step on one of my minds. So the hardest trackers to get rid of are when they put three of them out there at different locations with a couple of pieces of bamboo and they'll clack the bamboo over here and you'll hear that and you say, "Whoa, we're not going that way." So we start to turn this way and if you go too far, you'll hear a clacking over on this side.

• 2:26:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so they're actually channeling you.

• 2:26:07Speaker 01

  They're channeling you right into an ambush. You know that's gonna happen. So it's hard to put out tow poppers or something for those guys because they're so far away from you and you don't know where they're gonna walk. You can't get to them, so, you know, that makes it, you know, more interesting how you're gonna get away because you know they're herding you right toward that ambush.

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  What was the deal with the note you have in here about the 22, the hush puppy 22 with the silencer and the prisoner snatch? Was that just another failed prisoner snatch?

• 2:26:37Speaker 01

  Well, it was another technique. Yeah. I had trouble keeping him alive. But with the 22, I used a similar scenario as the ambush we were talking about where I had a, I shot the 22, I would shoot the guy in the thigh. And it would sting enough, it would cause them to drop their hands from their weapon. And then thumper, you know, would take him down. I'd hit the morphine in him and, you know, that was the plan. You know, I hit the femoral artery one time with a 22, of all the, I mean, a whole leg there, and I hit the stament artery, you know, so the guy bled to death.

• 2:27:22Speaker 01

  I mean, just little accidents like that, that got in the way. But, and I didn't have, but one of the other teams, they had one, and he was alive, they were coming out on strings, and one of the little guys was holding the guy, and even though he'd been drugged up a little, he was just holding him. And they were at about 3,000 feet, and this guy started coming to and decided he was not going to be a prisoner. So he started kicking and squirming and biting the guy in the face. And the little guy said, "Okay."

• 2:27:58Jocko Willink?

  I guess you wanted that option. Option two. 3,000 feet.

• 2:28:01Speaker 01

  And he just turned him loose and watched him disappear into the canopy. So that was somebody else's bad luck, that wasn't mine. But, yeah.

• 2:28:11Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, you've got to be close to your one-year run over there. And are you starting to feel any of the, any of the short-time mentality? Are you starting to think, "Oh, this is the last mission, when's the last one?" Are you starting to feel that at all?

• 2:28:28Speaker 01

  I started to feel, not so much the last mission, but I started to feel like, I mean, they hit this compound from time to time. So I'd been over there, you know, a year. So I go to the supply room, and I say, I'd like to sign out a flak jacket and a steel pot. And they're saying, why?

• 2:28:51Speaker 01

  I said, I, you know, next time the siren goes off and we head for the bunkers, I'm gonna have on a flak jacket and steel pot.

• 2:28:57Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:28:58Speaker 01

  So, I, I don't have long left. And I don't want to, you know, somebody's lucky shot to take me out.

• 2:29:04Jocko Willink?

  How many, what was that, like, last month you were there?

• 2:29:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, the last few weeks.

• 2:29:08Jocko Willink?

  You're thinking, I've made it this far, I'm not gonna get hit by a piece of frag in the compound.

• 2:29:13Speaker 01

  Cause you, we'd see people, I had a, um, another friend of mine that I'd been with for a long time before SOG.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  He, he only had a couple of weeks left before he was going home. And they had a mission come up, and he volunteered to go on it.

• 2:29:30Speaker 01

  And I said, Pete, what are you doing? You got two weeks, man. He said, they need a platoon leader to go out with this company. So I'm gonna do it, and then I'm outta here.

• 2:29:43Speaker 01

  That was his last mission. You know, so you see people like that. So, I tried not to think of anything as, this is my last one.

• 2:29:53Speaker 01

  This is what I'm gonna do, uh, this week or whatever. It's not my last one. But I, I did think about, yeah, when I'm running to that bunker, maybe a steel pot and a flak jacket would be okay. You know, it's night, it's relatively cool, so I'll be all right.

• 2:30:13Jocko Willink?

  So how did it, how did the deployment end?

• 2:30:16Speaker 01

  So, I finished up and, um, left there, went back down to Nitrang.

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  You know, to process out, they told me, no, you're gonna be stuck here for a couple of weeks or so before we can get you on a plane home. So I went over to the SF headquarters and I said, I need help. So there was an NCO there said, what can I do for you? I said, I need to get on a plane tonight. And he said, let me see what I can do. You know, so I go out and party with some other guys that I know and, you know, about two o'clock in the morning, somebody's knocking on my door and this guy's there saying, I need you to, to get over, uh, I forgot what they call the place you had to go through, but you, you need to get over there right away. So they can process you through and get you on the plane.

• 2:31:09Speaker 01

  So are you a captain now at this point? No, no, First Lieutenant. You're still a First Lieutenant. At this point, are you thinking you're staying in the Army? I'm thinking I may stick around for a while. I mean, could you, you know, I had thought it was gonna be three years, but when you get into an organization that has the latest, greatest gadgets and, and missions and esprit de corps, I mean, you can't just walk away from there. I mean, that's hard to do. Where are you gonna walk to? Yeah. It's all, it's all downhill from there. There's nothing else. It's like the guys that come back from walking on the moon. Now what are you gonna do? Yeah. So, I mean, we had everything from the little tiny grenades,

• 2:31:53Speaker 01

  much bigger than a jawbreaker that they gave us to test. I had a, a rocket pistol. Rocket pistol. This was a little tin. Expand. It was like, it was like a little tin gun, uh, that you probably played with when you were a kid that you stick a cork in the end of it and you squeeze the little trigger and it pops the cork out on a little string. Mm-hmm. So if this thing popped out a 50 caliber round with a rocket in the back of it, then,

• 2:32:22Speaker 01

  I mean, and they gave us this and, you know, I, I thought, well, this is cool. It doesn't make much noise. It sounds like shooting a bottle rocket. Just a whoosh. And this, I mean, this thing's as big as your thumb, uh, and it's solid steel, I mean, on the outside steel casing. What was it, what did they build it for? What was the purpose of it? To be something really quiet that had a tremendous penetrating power. So like you could take a vehicle out with it or something? Not a vehicle, but, you know, it'd go right through a vest. I mean, Got it. Unless I was right here. If I shot you with it right here, it'd bounce off of you. Cause it wouldn't have. It takes about 10, 10, 15 feet to build up the speed. But beyond that, I mean, I

• 2:33:03Speaker 01

  shot it through two, two by fours. I mean, you, you just couldn't stop it. But. You know, again, I tried to use it. And I think I'll take this guy out because it's gonna be really quiet. And so I get it up and, you know, it's night. And I go click. And you can hear the click. No rocket. You know, so one of the other guys had to take him out. Because this thing didn't work. So they got rid of those because they had, you know, such a malfunction rate with them. I mean, go Google it.

• 2:33:40Jocko Willink?

  Rocket pistol.

• 2:33:41Speaker 01

  Rocket pistol. I mean, there are videos out there of people shooting them and, you know, trying to make them work. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  So you're around your three, is this around your three year mark? You must be around the three, or had you already reenlisted or was reenlistment coming up?

• 2:33:56Speaker 01

  Well, because, because I went to OCS, then I incurred, you know, extra time.

• 2:34:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:34:03Speaker 01

  So, so I had to stick around. And if I was going to accept captain, you know, I had to go indefinite, so.

• 2:34:12Jocko Willink?

  So, so the weird thing is you're, you're in Vietnam, you're in SOG, you're conducting these crazy operations. You barely lived through this. And then you, you, all of a sudden, two o'clock in the morning, you're still drunk, probably. You, and somebody knocks at your door and says, hey, you're going home.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, same. So then I get on, I, I go down to get on the plane. And you know, you're, you're going through a little security thing. And the guy says, what's that in, in your pants?

• 2:34:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:44Speaker 01

  And I said, you mean this? And he said, yes. And I said, it's a war trophy. And he says, okay. I put it back down in my pants and I got on that civilian aircraft and off I go. I'm thinking, nobody's gonna hijack this thing.

• 2:34:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's for sure.

• 2:34:59Speaker 01

  That ain't gonna happen. Um, you know, got off the plane with it in San Francisco or I think it was San Francisco. But, or LA, one of the two. And, you know, went right on through there. Of course, you, you didn't have the security checks and things like you have now.

• 2:35:15Jocko Willink?

  So, so now you're in either San Francisco, you're somewhere in California. You're whatever, you're forty-eight hours or seventy-two hours or something, less than a couple of days, few days, out of the bush.

• 2:35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:28Jocko Willink?

  How's that transition?

• 2:35:31Speaker 01

  It's tough. I mean, it's a, it's a different world back here. Aside from, aside from the protest and all that, it's just a totally different environment, different world. You know, I've, I've come from the Wild West. I've come from a world where I didn't have all these rules of engagement that you have now. The rule of engagement was if I see you, I kill you. You know, if I run across somebody out in the area of operations, I terminate them. That's it. You're, you're a bad guy. You don't have to have a weapon. You don't have to be doing anything, you know, aggressive toward me.

• 2:36:13Speaker 01

  I just have to see you because you're not supposed to see me. So if I let you see me, then, you know, I basically signed your death warrant. And now I'm in a world where you can't, there are rules, there are laws, there are all kinds of things. You can't do that.

• 2:36:31Jocko Willink?

  And what did the Army, this, I guess this is a loaded, what did the Army do to help you reintroduce, reintegrate to being back in America?

• 2:36:41Speaker 01

  At that point, the reintegration was, here's your next assignment. You're going to be a Ranger instructor in the Ranger Department.

• 2:36:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:36:50Speaker 01

  And I'm saying, okay, I can do that. You know, I mean, I, I wanted to be a Ranger instructor, so I got that, that particular job. And I thought, you know, I've got maybe eight months at the most before I'm going to be back. So what better place to put me than as a Ranger instructor, going out and evaluating Ranger students on, you know, small patrols, tactics, all that kind of stuff, and having a journal saying, here's how I can prove this technique that I used in SOG. Here's how I can practice slipping

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  up on people more. I can improve all the techniques that I've been using there. I can go and prove them. I can spend more time, you know, at a range, excuse me, at a range shooting, improve my marksmanship skills, my listening skills, my night movement skills. I can go out and, and work on this stuff for eight months, journal it, and when I get back to SOG, I'm going to be a better SOG guy than I was when I was there before.

• 2:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'll tell you what, we've been going for another two hours and 40 minutes. We're going to pick up with your Ranger instructor period of your life on the next podcast. Okay, good. Thanks for coming on. Thank you for having me. Yeah, I think that's not just thanks for coming on, it's thanks for everything. We'll talk to you on the next podcast. Thank you, thank you, Echo. Well, once again,

• 2:38:29Jocko Willink?

  Colonel Henry Dick Thompson has left the building

• 2:38:34Jocko Willink?

  and has once again left me in a complete sense of awe.

• 2:38:40Jocko Willink?

  Because we're talking about just absolute insanity. The fact that the men of SOG did what the men of SOG did and the fact that the fact that we get to sit here and talk to some of them is just unbelievable.

• 2:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Because who survives what he did? Who survives what Tilt did? Who survives what the Frenchman did?

• 2:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Not many.

• 2:39:15Jocko Willink?

  And that's something that we need to remember, as awesome as it is to sit here and hear these stories,

• 2:39:22Jocko Willink?

  remember that they're not just stories.

• 2:39:27Jocko Willink?

  That these were people's lives and these were people's deaths. And so many of these men did not return.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  And they gave their lives

• 2:39:42Jocko Willink?

  so that we can live ours.

• 2:39:46Jocko Willink?

  And here we are,

• 2:39:49Jocko Willink?

  forever indebted to them, to their sacrifice.

• 2:39:57Jocko Willink?

  And while I know that that we cannot ever repay them. We can't. It's just, it's impossible.

• 2:40:12Jocko Willink?

  But what we do know is that the best we can do

• 2:40:18Jocko Willink?

  to attempt to repay them is to live our lives every day in a way that venerates their sacrifices.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  So, don't just live.

• 2:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Don't just be.

• 2:40:45Jocko Willink?

  Instead, be everything that you are capable of being.

• 2:40:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what we need to do.

• 2:41:02Jocko Willink?

  So, Echo, I, I guess that being everything we are capable of being starts out with us just being capable.

• 2:41:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:41:18Jocko Willink?

  You like that word capable.

• 2:41:19Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Well, you went through a whole, like, you went through a whole

• 2:41:24Speaker 02

  Capable.

• 2:41:24Jocko Willink?

  A whole, yeah, a whole kinda

• 2:41:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:28Jocko Willink?

  Thing, yeah.

• 2:41:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's one of those things that you cut, kinda like

• 2:41:33Jocko Willink?

  You latched on to something that I said.

• 2:41:35Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:41:35Jocko Willink?

  But then you kind of, you kind of adjusted it so it made sense to you.

• 2:41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:41:41Jocko Willink?

  In a, in a clear way.

• 2:41:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I would say even more accurately put, like, where I latched on to it exactly. Good way of putting it. I latched on to it and then just sorta like, you know how you go down that wormhole more and more and more and more? So you're just, it's always on you.

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  Ran with it.

• 2:41:55Speaker 02

  And that, and playing the long game versus the short game. That's another, and those are the two.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  For sure, because that's really what it kinda is. It's like, it's almost like every decision you make. Most decisions that you make are gonna land on like one of those things like okay and a lot of times both of them so you're like okay Am I gonna play the long game here or the short game? And that's everything pretty much and then the other one do I want to be capable or comfortable right that's the other two like okay and if you can kinda Keep that in your mind Your decision making will be a lot better for yourself you know

• 2:42:27Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting though this little This little play on words a little bit that's a little bit of a play on words I just said right if you want to be everything you're capable of being Well it starts with just being capable in the first place

• 2:42:40Speaker 02

  Yes

• 2:42:42Jocko Willink?

  Where do we need to be capable? And how can we improve our capabilities?

• 2:42:47Speaker 02

  Physically mentally And emotionally

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  Spiritually?

• 2:42:51Speaker 02

  And spiritually I think yes Cause some people will tell you no not spiritually

• 2:42:56Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:42:57Speaker 02

  Well then again what is depends on what you mean

• 2:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Let me tell you jujitsu will definitely help you in all aspects What what let's think about this pragmatically confidence If you know jujitsu you will be more confident this is now you'll take a little You'll start off by taking a little bit step back in confidence Cause when you very first start training you're gonna be overwhelmed by the fact that You're gonna be scared of everyone looking at him going wait this guy might know jujitsu and then they can beat me But then after a little while you go okay no cool even if this person knows jujitsu I at least know what to do a little bit

• 2:43:28Speaker 02

  Yes exactly

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  So So confidence is definitely gonna help you Stress relief we talked about that last time it's definitely gonna help you Capability is definitely gonna help you Yeah so it's gonna help you across the board Social aspects gonna help you okay go ahead sorry

• 2:43:45Speaker 02

  Back to Dr. Thompson and and you know all the sog guys were well actually a lot of guys that we've talked to or whatever I kinda trip out like when I go home In this in a lot of ways but in this particular way where you know how like in the movies Right where you got the guy and he's almost about to get killed right? But in the back of your mind you're like unless this movie is gonna kill this character which they're not if it's the main character

• 2:44:11Jocko Willink?

  Right

• 2:44:12Speaker 02

  Unless it's way at the end and that's a different story but you know it's in the middle of the movie or whatever and he's about to get found out by the bad guys can he get found and killed or whatever You're like okay this is good the way they presented and everything and I'm it's suspenseful but The back of my mind like they're not gonna kill this guy you know So you kind of get that feeling when they're telling this story, but it's like a real story.

• 2:44:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's why, that's why, you know, when I was thinking about this, like, it's cool, it's so awesome to sit here and talk to these guys that lived.

• 2:44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  But you have to remember that there's countless guys that the exact scenario that that these guys went through.

• 2:44:51Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Where, oh, the bullet went two inches to the left instead of two inches to the right, and that guy is dead. The helicopter got hit with this, the helicopter crashed, like, it, it's, it's just, it's, that's why it's such a miracle that these guys are sitting here talking to us.

• 2:45:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's what I mean, then that's why I'm actually tripping out, because sure, we know the guy lived because he's sitting right here. We know that part of it, but when he takes you back to the moment, bro, we really don't know if this guy's gonna live or not.

• 2:45:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:18Speaker 02

  I mean, as far as himself, you know, and then I trip out even more, I kind of go down a little wormhole. Like, man, this is just how impossible this is, not impossible, maybe that's not the right word, but it kind of feels like the right word. But just how weird this is, where, let's say you went back in time and visited, you know, Tilt or whoever and said, hey, this is what you're gonna do, and these very specific things are gonna happen, and you're gonna live. Even him, him, himself would be like, I don't know if that's possible, you know?

• 2:45:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:45:52Speaker 02

  Meanwhile, it's factually happened.

• 2:45:54Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:45:55Speaker 02

  Man, it, yeah, it kind of puts a lot of things into perspective.

• 2:45:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's crazy, duh, those guys are just unbelievable. And that story from, from Dick Thompson that I read today, just going in to rescue with no plan, with no, somebody else's weapon, it's just like, completely, just dropping fifteen feet into a hundred and fifty foot of jungle canopy, falling through the trees until you luckily hit a branch, so you don't, by the way, if you hit the ground without hitting anything, you just die.

• 2:46:35Speaker 02

  Straight up, just die.

• 2:46:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and, and so, yeah, these guys are just, they're just awesome. They're just awesome human beings.

• 2:46:44Speaker 02

  Yep. Yeah. And then you kind of, you sort of see him sitting across from you and you're like, and just there he is.

• 2:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:50Speaker 02

  This is the guy who did that for real stuff, you know?

• 2:46:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what about those old pictures of Tilt? When Tilt's like 20, 22 years old? You just look at those and go, that's like the coolest guy ever. And you see pictures of all these guys, the Frenchman with his, with his legs all taped up. And you see Dick Thompson. Dick Thompson was, what was he, a first lieutenant? I thought it was cool on the first podcast when I was asking him about how, like, when you volunteered, was there any resistance? He's like, no. He's volunteering to be an officer in Vietnam. The life expectancy was a couple of weeks. They're like, oh, you want to be an officer? Cool. Step right over here into this line. Oh, you want to be, go to Ranger School? Cool. Step into this line.

• 2:47:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you want to be special forces? Cool. Step into this line. Oh, you want to go to SOG? Cool. No problem. Step over here. There was zero resistance, zero resistance for him to go and do what he wanted to do because the life expectancy of every one of those. It's just like volunteer to volunteer to volunteer to, to be dead.

• 2:47:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:54Jocko Willink?

  And there's no resistance.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:47:59Speaker 02

  Minutes, yeah. It's crazy, man. Well, very capable people we're talking about here.

• 2:48:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:48:06Speaker 02

  Mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, 100%. The last, back to jujitsu, yes, covers all those things and we should be doing this, in my opinion. So, we need gis when we do jujitsu because it, that's part of the uniform. We get an origin gi. Don't even have to ask that question.

• 2:48:25Jocko Willink?

  No longer a question.

• 2:48:26Speaker 02

  No, no longer a question. Origin gi, go to originmaine.com, boom, pick whatever gi you want, easy money. Also. They also have rash guards on there. Other clothing items.

• 2:48:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cuz you wanna represent. Sure. You know, being in an American made clothing.

• 2:48:46Jocko Willink?

  But you can't wear your gi to the store. Unfortunately. I mean, you could technically. You could technically, but usually the cutoff for that is around 11 years old.

• 2:48:57Speaker 02

  Yes, that's what I was gonna say.

• 2:48:59Jocko Willink?

  Like, my daughter, my little 10 year old daughter, she's walking around in a gi, no factor.

• 2:49:02Speaker 02

  No factor, no one's gonna say nothing.

• 2:49:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no one says anything to her. She's not like, she's not like walking around trying to be prove that she's a jujitsu player.

• 2:49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:10Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's kind of evident that she's a jujitsu player cuz she is wearing a gi. But, you know, it's no factor. She'll go to dinner with a gi on. You know what I mean?

• 2:49:18Speaker 02

  Uh, well, you know, okay, alright. I guess it depends circumstantially.

• 2:49:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, she's 10 years old. I think her cutoff is 11.

• 2:49:24Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:49:25Jocko Willink?

  When she turns 11, she'll probably be like, oh, I'm gonna take off my gi right now.

• 2:49:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, if you come straight from jujitsu and you're like, hey, let's pick up some dinner and you're hanging out.

• 2:49:33Jocko Willink?

  She's not going, hey, we're going out for dinner from the house, let me put my gi on. No, she's not doing that. I wouldn't be bothered if she did. You know what I mean? Well, my son wore a dang, a dang Superman uniform for like two straight years when he was, you know, five years old, five and six. Just wearing a dang, uh, Captain America outfit. Just walking around, he'd just go to school with that. It had the muscles in it, you know what I mean?

• 2:49:57Speaker 02

  Oh, damn, the actual costume.

• 2:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, like a straight costume. He's just walking around, you know, whatever.

• 2:50:02Speaker 02

  Cool, man. I dig it.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  And my other daughter wore a dang tutu. You know what that is? It's like a ballerina outfit, ballerina uniform. When she was, she wore that thing all the time.

• 2:50:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:50:12Jocko Willink?

  Whatever.

• 2:50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:13Jocko Willink?

  She's just no factor. So, what I'm saying is

• 2:50:16Speaker 02

  A little bit different, but yeah.

• 2:50:16Jocko Willink?

  When you get past age 10, maybe 11, you don't wanna wear your gi to the store, to the restaurant. But you still, in your heart, you wanna represent.

• 2:50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:50:27Jocko Willink?

  You're good cuz we got origin genes. You got the origin genes. You can get the regular weight genes.

• 2:50:36Jocko Willink?

  Or you can get the Delta sixty-eight jeans, which are, I guess they're the Jaco signature model.

• 2:50:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe, but if they're thinner, right?

• 2:50:45Jocko Willink?

  They're thinner, yeah.

• 2:50:46Speaker 02

  Technically, isn't that a fashion thing? I'm not saying this particular thing is the fashion thing. I'm saying being thinner, fashion jeans tend to be thinner.

• 2:50:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, I don't know about that. What I do know is this, I live in California. It's warmer here. We don't always need to wear thicker jeans. So we get jean setter lightweight, just like when you're in the military, which you weren't. So you wouldn't know anything about, about field camis, about how they used to have woodland camis. They had a lightweight and they had a heavyweight. You don't know about that. So I do. So guess what we have? Lightweight jeans. And I'll say the other ones are medium, the normal, the other jeans are just normal jeans.

• 2:51:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:51:27Jocko Willink?

  The, the Delta sixty-eight, named after my forefathers in the SEAL teams that wore jeans in the Mekong Delta.

• 2:51:37Speaker 02

  Sixty-eight for the year?

• 2:51:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:51:39Speaker 02

  That's, that's a good name.

• 2:51:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, Delta sixty-eight. Yeah, so get the Delta sixty-eight jeans if you need something that's a little bit lighter weight. Not for fashion. I guess if you're Echo Charles, you can do it for fashion. But if you're a normal human.

• 2:51:54Speaker 02

  Fashion too. Potentially, we'll just say, look, you know Pete sprinkled some fashion in there. You know that already.

• 2:52:01Jocko Willink?

  You gotta watch him like a hawk. No, but there's no, there's no fashion on the Delta sixty-eight jeans.

• 2:52:07Speaker 02

  Are you sure about that?

• 2:52:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm positive.

• 2:52:09Speaker 02

  All right, well, I'm gonna, when I get my Delta sixty-eight jeans, if that ever happens, I'm gonna make an evaluation and I'll report back. But my hypothesis is that if Pete has anything to do with it, which incidentally he does, he sprinkled some fashion on there.

• 2:52:24Jocko Willink?

  I gotta, I gotta watch that guy like a sniper. Cause he will constantly try and throw some.

• 2:52:30Speaker 02

  Here's the benefits.

• 2:52:31Jocko Willink?

  You know.

• 2:52:32Speaker 02

  Here's the benefit of it.

• 2:52:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm surprised they're not bell bottoms.

• 2:52:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:52:38Speaker 02

  Sure, bringing them back. Yeah, I dig it. And you're, you're correct, you're not wrong, you're right. But you're like, you, you know, you eat steak, right? What do you put on your steak?

• 2:52:47Jocko Willink?

  Steak.

• 2:52:48Speaker 02

  Like what do you put on there? You put salt and pepper on there or what? Okay, okay, so pretty basic, salt and pepper, right? So you know, people, they'll put like a special seasoning. They got their special rub, right? Are you with that? Or are you just like, whatever? Or are you just like, hey, don't do that?

• 2:53:00Jocko Willink?

  I'm not anti, I'm not hating them, but I'm not. It seems unnecessary to me.

• 2:53:04Speaker 02

  Okay, so here's the comparison that what Pete does with fashion, what people could do with steak.

• 2:53:12Speaker 02

  Okay, let's say you're the kind of person who's like, salt and pepper, that's my jam. Uh, don't touch my steak otherwise. Medium or medium, whatever, however you like to cook, salt and pepper, that's all. You put your stupid rub, seasoning on it, you're messing up my whole steak. See what I'm saying? You know, people are like that. And I dig it, man, that's, you know, that's your thing.

• 2:53:31Speaker 02

  Pete is the kind guy who'll be like, hey, no problem, I got you, salt and pepper, that's it. But he knows confidently that if he puts some of that special rub on there, you'll like it. Not, yeah, as far as you're concerned, you're like, nope, don't touch it. And then he'll be like, okay, I got you.

• 2:53:44Jocko Willink?

  He does, you're a hundred percent accurate.

• 2:53:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:47Jocko Willink?

  He'll do that.

• 2:53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:48Jocko Willink?

  And there's, there's been times where I've been like, bro.

• 2:53:50Speaker 02

  He put too much.

• 2:53:51Jocko Willink?

  You put too much seasoning on there. Stop, stop what you're doing.

• 2:53:54Speaker 02

  But I think. I think he spring, he sneaks it in there.

• 2:53:58Jocko Willink?

  He does a good job.

• 2:53:59Speaker 02

  And then when you taste the steak, you're like, dang, Pete makes a great steak. Not even realize he snuck in the rub. Yeah. That's what he does with the fashion, with you.

• 2:54:08Jocko Willink?

  Do you, I hope he doesn't hear this, which I know he will. Because now he's gonna get excited about it and think he can sneak in more. You can't, Pete, I'm watching you like a sniper.

• 2:54:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:16Jocko Willink?

  I got eyes on, bro. So, the jeans.

• 2:54:20Speaker 02

  I say, Pete, do what you do, bro, do it. Just don't take it too far. Yeah, the jeans are good. Um, I like, and this is how I know about the jeans too, cuz when I put them on, it's like. Okay, my wife is kind of critical. She's from the Pacific Northwest, my wife. So she knows about just functional jeans for work and like all that stuff. She's just, but she's, you know, she's not.

• 2:54:41Jocko Willink?

  Lumberjack blood.

• 2:54:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, she's, and she gets it, I'm speaking for her, by the way. But she didn't like it. She didn't like the look. It reminds her, you know, those are dad jeans and you know, my dad's a worker or whatever. She doesn't like the look is what I'm saying. So I put on the Origin jeans. If she didn't like them, she would tell me a hundred percent. She probably wouldn't even let me be seen with her. Which I can respect on a certain level. And she even said, those jeans look good.

• 2:55:08Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:55:09Speaker 02

  So Matt approved. In my household, approved.

• 2:55:12Jocko Willink?

  Looks like a Pete, the line of spice, right? For Echo's jeans.

• 2:55:16Speaker 02

  Yep, perfect. Also, what else does Origin have? They have supplements, obviously. Keep us on track in the game, even when you get older. If you're old school and you ask, am I too old to join jujitsu? Nope.

• 2:55:31Jocko Willink?

  I was working with a tech company yesterday. And they were talking about age. And everyone there was young and they were like saying like, no, no, there's some older people here, like late 40s. And I'm like, hey, how's it going? It was pretty funny. But yes, uh, here's the thing. One thing that can help you is these supplements, joint warfare, curloil. Discipline, discipline, go. They're definitely beneficial. If you think you might

• 2:56:01Jocko Willink?

  forget. First of all, take more discipline. But second of all, subscribe. You can do the subscription thing on originmaine.com and then you just get, it just shows up. Just, just make it a standard operating procedure. Done. Then you don't fall off. You know how long I've gone without joint warfare for?

• 2:56:20Jocko Willink?

  Never. I take it every day. Yes. Same with curloil.

• 2:56:24Speaker 02

  You mentioned forgetting. So you know how like you, when I forget to take it, like you kind of look at me crazy like, bro, like how do you forget? You just sort of, yeah, it's not hard to forget.

• 2:56:34Jocko Willink?

  By the toothpaste.

• 2:56:35Speaker 02

  Or one might argue, oh, it's not important to you, right? But it's not really true because if you're in a certain routine, and this goes to your point where if you don't roll that into your routine, you will forget, even if it's important because there's certain times of the day or certain times, moments in life, whatever that you do. Like, bro, you know, when you're driving, right? When you're driving home? Bro, you'll forget the whole experience of driving home. Cause you're thinking all the stuff like routinely or whatever and you're like, oh shoot, I don't remember one single moment of driving home, really? You just did it automatically.

• 2:57:05Jocko Willink?

  You lived.

• 2:57:06Speaker 02

  You lived, yes. What, living's not important? Well, no, driving home's not important. Yeah, it's very important, but it's just so routine. See what I'm saying? So, like I said, if taking the krill oil joint, joint warfare is not rolled into your routine, you can potentially forget it. So, roll it into your routine.

• 2:57:22Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, subscribe and, and you, you actually save money if you subscribe too. So do that. Don't forget about the ready to drink cans. You don't need to drink these hyped up energy drinks anymore that are, that are literally not good for you. You can now drink something that is good for you.

• 2:57:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:42Jocko Willink?

  Taste delicious, gives you a little

• 2:57:46Jocko Willink?

  you need that little hitter.

• 2:57:49Speaker 02

  It's a milder taste too than the energy drink scenario.

• 2:57:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:57:52Speaker 02

  So what it kind of allows you, I mean, I'm assuming this is why. It allows you to drink like more of them. Be, be careful with it, I'm saying, but you know, the kind where you drink two of the, we'll say for lack of a better term, traditional energy drinks. You drink two of those, you don't feel good afterwards.

• 2:58:08Jocko Willink?

  No, you feel like crap.

• 2:58:10Speaker 02

  Even if you're into energy drinks typically. Yeah, you kind of feel junk. Those are just like, man, you can kind of have one going.

• 2:58:15Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:58:16Speaker 02

  Like kind of.

• 2:58:16Jocko Willink?

  Gosh, so good. Uh, yeah. So you can, and don't forget about milk. All different kinds of protein desserts. It's just straight desserts for you, for your warrior kid milk for your kids. Get some of that. And then we got the white tea. Gonna get you through the winter months with the warm white tea. And get the canned white tea. And of course, the benefit is eight thousand pound deadlift, but we already know that.

• 2:58:38Speaker 02

  Yep. Also, speaking of benefits, kind of Jaco's store, it's called Jaco's store. That's where you can get shirts.

• 2:58:48Jocko Willink?

  Why is that beneficial? Cause speaking of benefits.

• 2:58:51Speaker 02

  Representing.

• 2:58:51Jocko Willink?

  I thought what you were gonna say is there's a guy that said, his wife said to him, what do you want for your birthday? And he said, there's a store. It's called Jaco's store. And she was like, check. At least I, in my mind, she said, check. She probably didn't. She probably said, okay, what's that?

• 2:59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, let me go and look into it, Google it or whatever. Yeah, good. And this is where, yeah, you can get shirts. It is beneficial. Cause especially nowadays, like you can get, bro, you can, I think nowadays. I don't wanna say the word fashion necessarily, but I'm saying, but what you wear has

• 2:59:31Speaker 02

  you know, what you wear.

• 2:59:34Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna shut down the store.

• 2:59:35Speaker 02

  The what you wear, it's not, it's not a fashion store.

• 2:59:43Speaker 02

  But what you wear is like, you have many options, right? Like in life, I'm saying, you can wear just a blank shirt if you want, you know? So you kinda look for a little bit more than just the, well, I guess you kinda look for a lot of things. Anyway, one of the things that this, as far as this stuff that you can get, it kinda is representative of a certain, how should I say? Not message, but a certain discourse.

• 3:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:00:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:13Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, what you can get is T-shirts, rash guards, hats, sweatshirts, hoodies.

• 3:00:17Speaker 02

  But not, not just any T-shirt though, is what I'm saying.

• 3:00:22Jocko Willink?

  Good quality ones.

• 3:00:23Speaker 02

  Good quality, oh for sure, a hundred percent, yes, given, but you know, there's a little added layer to what you're wearing.

• 3:00:31Jocko Willink?

  Is there, is there a placebo effect when you wear a shirt that says discipline equals freedom?

• 3:00:37Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Does it affect your, your mentality?

• 3:00:40Speaker 02

  Technically, yes, it is called, it is, I guess technically a placebo effect, but that's how, right?

• 3:00:45Jocko Willink?

  Or is it just a real effect?

• 3:00:47Speaker 02

  It's a real effect. Well, placebo effect is a real effect, you see what I'm saying? It's kinda like, um, like, like hypnosis or something like this.

• 3:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  Right? That's a real effect too, most of the time, sometimes it's just a show, but the effect, the result is real, is what I'm saying.

• 3:01:02Jocko Willink?

  That's where we get the nineteen percent increased

• 3:01:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:01:06Jocko Willink?

  strength and performance and mental acuity.

• 3:01:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:01:09Jocko Willink?

  With the rash guard, with the T-shirts.

• 3:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, actually, we're up to twenty-two percent now.

• 3:01:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:01:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, that happened last year, uh, late last year, and yeah, up twenty-two percent, improved everything, mental, physical and spiritual and social, by the way.

• 3:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:01:25Speaker 02

  With all these items. Anyway, chocolatestore.com, shirts, T-shirts, rash guards, uh, hoodies, hats, beanies.

• 3:01:34Jocko Willink?

  I said all this stuff, bro.

• 3:01:38Speaker 02

  Well, there's your reminder. Boom, jocko4.com. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. If you want. There you go. Stitcher, iTunes, whatnot.

• 3:01:50Jocko Willink?

  Also, if there's not enough of this podcast to listen to, which really means you have a long commute, you can also check out the Grounded Podcast, which is a different podcast that we do. It's called Grounded.

• 3:02:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:02:03Jocko Willink?

  We talk about jujitsu, life, experience, humor, and other things.

• 3:02:12Speaker 02

  And other things. And here's a good element.

• 3:02:15Jocko Willink?

  I'd like you to back me up on other things.

• 3:02:18Speaker 02

  It's true. It's true, because there are some elements of that that I did notice that, you know how there's like issues, not necessarily controversial.

• 3:02:26Jocko Willink?

  You're super hyped on the Grounded Podcast.

• 3:02:28Speaker 02

  Yes, because.

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  I think it's because you kind of like feel like you're a little bit of the star of the Grounded Podcast.

• 3:02:33Speaker 02

  No, I don't feel like I'm the star at all. Actually, I feel like that you will allow me, maybe not anymore, but you will allow me to introduce elements to it that kind of have two sides to it, you know? And then I can, you can kind of see, okay, where does people, where do people fall on this issue? Not important issues, by the way. But, so yes, I am, what'd you say, hyped?

• 3:02:56Jocko Willink?

  You're hyped. Yeah.

• 3:02:57Speaker 02

  I guess.

• 3:02:58Jocko Willink?

  You sit around and listen to the Grounded Podcast and like rewind and replay your parts again?

• 3:03:05Speaker 02

  No, bruh. No. Anyway, how about this? Let's just say, I highly recommend that one.

• 3:03:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Good. Don't forget about the Warrior Kid Podcast. We got some new episodes coming your way, we'll say, in the near future. And don't forget to get some Warrior Kid soap. You can support an actual Warrior Kid out there, running a business, Young Aiden, making soap, so that you can stay clean. IrishOshRanch.com.

• 3:03:32Speaker 02

  Also YouTube, if you're interested in the video version of this podcast.

• 3:03:38Jocko Willink?

  If you want to see what Dick Thompson looks like.

• 3:03:40Speaker 02

  Well, yeah. Yes, or anyone, you know, anyone on the, on the podcast that we interview, or each other, if you don't know what Jocko looks like.

• 3:03:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then we have Psychological Warfare, which is.

• 3:03:56Jocko Willink?

  A little mental support, psychological support. If you find yourself in a moment of weakness, you can just press play on your, on your phone and you'll get to listen up. A little guidance from me. That's available on Google Play, iTunes, MP3 platforms of all kinds. If you need a visual reminder to stay on the path, check out flipsidecanvas.com from my brother Dakota Meyer. Podcast 115, by the way. He makes these things here in America. You go to flipsidecanvas.com to get one. Books, got some books. First of all, Stress Effect. Again, we haven't hit it yet,

• 3:04:37Jocko Willink?

  but the next podcast with Colonel Dick Thompson, we will be covering The Stress Effect.

• 3:04:46Jocko Willink?

  So you can get that book. It's on the website. It's also on Amazon, but you can click through

• 3:04:53Jocko Willink?

  our website, jockopodcast.com and then you can get the book, The Stress Effect. And then

• 3:05:00Jocko Willink?

  there's Leadership Strategy and Tactics. This is my new book I have coming out, which is

• 3:05:06Jocko Willink?

  actually very granular. Here's a little section from it, part two. This is just from the contents, part two. Leadership Tactics, one, becoming a leader. How to succeed as a new leader. How to be chosen to lead. When you're not chosen. Impostor Syndrome. Insecurity as a leader. Transitioning from follower or peer to leader. Overcoming a grudge. New sheriff in town. Don't go overboard. Rambo. So there's some topics that are in the new Leadership Strategy and Tactics book. If you want to get a copy of it, try and get a first edition. You need to order it right now. Because otherwise, when it comes out, January 14th, Amazon's going to send you a note that says,

• 3:05:49Jocko Willink?

  you go, oh, cool, Jaco's book came out today. I'm going to order it. You'll go on there. It'll say, it's shipping in three to eight weeks. And you're going to go, what is wrong with the logistics train? Jaco's horrible. And I'll say, yeah, I know. I didn't do a good job of convincing you when you needed to order the book. So I failed. So let me not fail by getting on there and helping me to help you. And then of course, we've got the Warrior Kid books, one, two, and three.

• 3:06:22Jocko Willink?

  These are books with that I wish I had when I was a kid. And if I promise you, when you read it, you're saying, I wish I would have had this book. You might even be in a full on adult and say, I wish I learned these lessons.

• 3:06:35Jocko Willink?

  Way of the Warrior Kid 1, Way of the Warrior Kid 2, Mark's Mission, and Way of the Warrior Kid 3, Where There's a Will. So check those out. If you've got a little kid in your life somewhere, a little bit younger, maybe six years old, five years old, seven years old, three years old, get a Mikey and the Dragons. They're actually going to learn a pragmatic technique to overcome fear. Which if you remember being a little kid, life is filled with fear. So how do you overcome that? You get Mikey and the Dragons. That's what you do. Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. There's the Christmas present. There's the Christmas present you want to get for someone that maybe drifted off the path. Maybe they're having a hard time. Maybe life isn't going good. Maybe they could do better.

• 3:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you know that discipline would help them in their life. Get them the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Simple as that. And then for leadership, we got Extreme Ownership and we got Dichotomy of Leadership. I wrote those with my brother Leif Babbitt. It's about what we learned on the battlefield and how you can apply it to your life to win, to your business to win, to your company to win. I also have a leadership consultancy. It's called Echelon Front. And what we do is we solve problems through leadership. That is what we do. So go to echelonfront.com for details. If you want to have someone from the team come and speak at your company, don't go to a speakers bureau. No, you go to echelonfront.com.

• 3:08:04Jocko Willink?

  You cut out the middleman and you go right to the company. That's what we do. You don't need to Google Jaco Speaker because you're going to get some, you'll see Echelon Front. You won't know what it is maybe and you go click on someone else. And then they charge you a big chunk of money on top of what I'm going to charge you. Don't do that. Go to echelonfront.com. We also have online training because leadership training is not an inoculation. You don't get one shot and now you're good to go. No, it takes time. It takes reps. Get the reps in. See it again, seeing it from a different angle. efonline.com. And then we got muster dates coming for 2020. Go to extremeownership.com. This is our.

• 3:08:49Jocko Willink?

  Leadership Seminar, our Leadership Conference. Come and check that out. And of course EF Overwatch and EF Legion. These are

• 3:08:59Jocko Willink?

  our placement platforms where we are taking military personnel and putting them into civilian organizations. So that they can help those organizations lead at every level and win. Go to EFOverwatch.com or EFLegion.com. That is what you need is leadership. And if you need more of us or you have questions for us or you have answers for us, you can find all of us on the interwebs. Dick Thompson is on Twitter at HPS underscore CEO. And at HPSYS.com. High Performance Systems, that's his company. And of course, we are also on Twitter, Instagram.

• 3:09:45Jocko Willink?

  And Deep Frazzen Box. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And once again, sincere thanks and appreciation to Dick Thompson for coming on this program. And sharing his lessons with us and of course, we thank him for his incredible service and sacrifice to our great nation. And that goes to all the rest of our servicemen and women who stand the watch against evil and against tyranny. So that we can be here, living in freedom.

• 3:10:24Jocko Willink?

  And to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers. And Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the first responders.

• 3:10:36Jocko Willink?

  All you that are out there risking your lives for us.

• 3:10:42Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for standing the watch over us here at home so we can sleep safely at night.

• 3:10:52Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, ask yourself that question. What are you capable of being?

• 3:11:01Jocko Willink?

  What are you capable of being and are you doing everything in your power to be the most capable human being you can be?

• 3:11:13Jocko Willink?

  I know when I ask myself that question, I know the answer. I know I can do more.

• 3:11:20Jocko Willink?

  I know I can. We can all do more.

• 3:11:25Jocko Willink?

  And that starts each and every day.

• 3:11:30Jocko Willink?

  By getting up, going on the attack, and getting after it.

• 3:11:38Jocko Willink?

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