454: Support Your Team and You ALL Will Overcome. With EOD Tech. Nick Kush

Nick Kush, EOD, Explosive Ordnance Technician. Job: identify and dispose of enemy explosives and I. E. Ds. Battle of Ramadi. 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 454 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. All day murderous bursts of machine gun fire hammered our position, shattering windows and impacting interior walls, each round with the violence and kinetic energy of a sledgehammer wielded at full force. Some of the incoming rounds were armor piercing and punched through the thick concrete of the low wall surrounding the rooftop. All our element of SEALs, EOD bomb technicians and Iraqi soldiers could do under such accurate enemy fire was hit the deck and try not to get our heads shot off. Rounds snapped inches above us and shards of glass and concrete fragments rained down

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  everywhere. Despite the onslaught, we held our position in the large four-story apartment building. When the fury of the attack subsided, our SEAL snipers returned fire with devastating effect. The onslaught of heavy enemy fire continued frequently throughout the day with periods of intense violence and periods of calm. As the day faded and the sun dipped below the horizon, the attacks diminished. Gunfire and explosions subsided with the darkness, an eerie quiet descended upon Ramadi, broken only by the evening call to prayer that echoed across the dusty rooftops.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  Our SEAL platoon and Iraqi soldiers packed our gear and prepared to depart. Remembering the vulnerability of the single exit door to the street, our two EOD bomb technicians went to work, peering over the second-story balcony through their night vision goggles. They scanned the area around the exit door and the surrounding street littered with trash and potholes, in some places scarred by the craters of previous IED blasts. But something was out of place. Something looked different than when they had scanned the area in the early morning darkness before dawn.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  An otherwise unobtrusive item lay against the building wall, only feet from the exit door, covered with a plastic tarp. Just a tiny sliver of a smooth cylindrical object peeked out from under the edge of the tarp. Something looked suspicious and EOD operator relayed. It was most unwelcome news, as the stairway to the street was our only easy means of departure. Our EOD operators carefully went to work. Through meticulous investigation, they uncovered two 130 millimeter rocket projectiles, whose nose cones were packed with Simtex, a plastic explosive.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  Had they not discovered the device, and had we triggered it, the massive explosion and deadly shrapnel could have wiped out half of our platoon. We couldn't leave this IED here to kill other US soldiers, Marines, or innocent Iraqi civilians. So EOD carefully sent their own explosive charge on it to set it off or blow it in place where it lay.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from the book called Extreme Ownership, which was written by myself and my brother Leif Babin. And that section was actually written by Leif, and you hear the mention of EOD. Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technicians. And these men were an integral part of the platoon and an integral part of tasking a bruiser. And in that particular case, as you heard, the EOD techs identified a grave threat of an IED placed just outside an overwatch position, a tactic that had just been used

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  against some of our brothers from the 38 Marines a few days earlier. So, one of our EOD techs volunteered to go and place a charge on that IED and blow it up. And what that means is that EOD tech...

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  Going external, exposing himself to enemy attackers, who are usually overwatching those IEDs, exposing himself to that IED, exposing himself to secondary and tertiary IEDs that could be there. And maybe that obvious one was just a decoy. So it's a huge risk to go out and blow that thing in place. But the alternative was to leave the IED there. And perhaps let someone else deal with it, or perhaps let someone else get killed by it.

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  So in order to protect Charlie Platoon and in order to protect all the soldiers and Marines who might be wounded or killed by that IED, our EOD tech went out there and disarmed it himself.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  And that is one story of countless similar stories where our EOD technicians saved the lives of the SEALs from Task Unit Bruiser. And also saved the lives of countless soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines from the Ready First Brigade.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  And it's an honor to have that EOD technician, my brother from Task Unit Bruiser, Nick Kush, here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  Nick, thanks for joining us, man.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Jaco. Good to see you, Echo.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I never really wanted that job of EOD. I'm sure we'll get into why you wanted it at some point.

• 6:02Jocko Willink?

  Super sketchy and a ton of risk.

• 6:08Jocko Willink?

  But that's where you ended up. And before we get to where, how you ended up there, let's just talk about growing up. Where'd you come from?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Southern California.

• 6:15Jocko Willink?

  Where in Southern California?

• 6:16Speaker 01

  So grew up, was born in Pomona and then grew up for, I don't know, was it living in Laverne? So just outside, in LA County.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Till I was about, you know, eight, nine years old. Grandpa was getting sick and we ended up moving up, up into the high desert for a few years. Midway of high school, then parents divorced. Middle, midway through high school, ended up moving back down to Orange County where my dad was at. And so. Wrote out the rest of high school.

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  Like, what years were you down there for high school?

• 6:42Speaker 01

  So, I mean, I graduated in ninety five, so it was like, you know, ninety two, ninety three timeframe.

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  So it was like your junior, sophomore, junior, senior year or something like that?

• 6:50Speaker 01

  Freshman, sophomore, yeah, yeah. So then that's like, um, discovered surfing. So barely made it through high school because of surfing.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's when you started surfing is when you moved back down?

• 7:00Speaker 01

  Well, when I was a kid and we, you know, go do some beach, you know, stuff, but nobody was teaching me surfing or, you know, it was just, just a wild man in the water, you know, five years old. So, and then when I got back closer to the coast, then yeah, it just consumed me.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  So you're surfing seven days a week?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, well, yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Before first period and then on the weekends.

• 7:20Jocko Willink?

  Were you on the surf team?

• 7:21Speaker 01

  No, no, I was a degenerate.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  Did they have surf team?

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Uh, not at our school, but that like, you know, you're talking like, you know, I was about twenty five minutes away from the beach. You're talking like Newport, Huntington, those guys had surf teams.

• 7:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 7:33Speaker 01

  Not my high school.

• 7:35Jocko Willink?

  When I tell people about surf team in California, then the Scholastic Surf Association.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, it's huge.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. People from the rest of the country are like, are you serious?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  Very serious.

• 7:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was really big. It started, uh, I remember they, it was called the NSA was a big, yeah.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  And when kids are part of the surf team, they go surfing before school and they get to skip first period.

• 7:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:58Jocko Willink?

  And so you.

• 7:58Speaker 01

  Part of first period.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get like a two hour sesh.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, at a pretty good spot.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  Which is freaking awesome.

• 8:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:06Jocko Willink?

  So, so when you were going surfing, you weren't doing it as part of the organized school scenario?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  How did you get down to the beach?

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Well, we would drive, you know, it's like, well, well, once I get turned sixteen, then it was easy. But like other, you know, other guys that were older than me, then it's like, yeah, we're all going surfing. Sweet. Who's driving? And then, you know, then once I got my own car, you know, I barely made it through high school because of it.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you skate too or no?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  No, it was mostly surfing. Yeah, yeah.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  The if you can, it seems like skating is if you don't have the opportunity to surf.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  No offense to skaters, I get it.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, I get it, but if you can surf.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  Surf.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  Surf.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of the, what, what did your, what did your dad do?

• 8:47Speaker 01

  So my dad, I'd say he was in finance, but he, you know, he didn't go to school long, but he's really good with numbers. And he worked as a financial controller for auto car, big like car dealerships in Southern California for years. And that was like, he always worked at, you know, Toyota, Nissan, and he was just a big financial controller. Still, you know, I remember when I was a kid, he would do weird stuff on, on sheets. He would just have numbers, numbers. And I thought it was just, I didn't think anything of it, but looking back on it, it's like, man, that's some weird Goodwill hunting stuff he's doing. I don't know, but he, cause there was no rhyme or reason. There was no plus signs or there was no, you know, it was like, so it was just really strange, but he was really good with numbers.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  He still is, um, you know, he'll be, uh, 79 this year and, uh, yeah, I mean, he's a, he's wicked smart.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  And you had brothers, two brothers?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, an older brother and a younger brother. We're all eight years apart and as you can assume, I'm the middle child.

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  Wait, you're all eight years apart?

• 9:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:43Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:45Jocko Willink?

  So wait, that's 16 years worth of kids, I guess?

• 9:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:48Jocko Willink?

  16?

• 9:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:49Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Were you close to them or is it too like distant?

• 9:52Speaker 01

  We're closer now.

• 9:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:53Speaker 01

  You know, cause I mean, it's like my older brother would babysit me and so I'd be, you know, more of a annoying for him than anything else. You know, it wasn't cool. So, but it was fun. It was neat though, cause when my older brother was, you know, 16, 16, and my younger brother was born, there was actually like, they were actually pretty close when he was a baby, you know, and he had the maturity to kind of, to, to really big brother him, um, in that sense. And then, yeah, we all kind of drifted apart, but then we got, we've, over the past couple of years, we've been, I think, closest we've ever been. So, yeah, it's really cool.

• 10:28Jocko Willink?

  Did you, when you, so you're going to high school, you're basically just trying to surf as much as you possibly can? Did you have any kind of like plan for life?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  No, no. I mean, I started like, I, I would join the golf team. You know, I was like, well, this is what everybody's doing. Why not? You know, so they could surf and then play golf for free. Yeah, so it was funny because it was, I grew up in Orange County and Tiger Woods also grew up in Orange County and I think he played for Whittier Cypress, so one of the high schools that played our high school. So I was on the JV team. We're all like burnouts, you know, we suck. But then there's the varsity team and then Tiger comes and he had just won some, you know, amateur event and he's on the driving range and our school's playing his school and us JV guys are like, whatever, this guy, you know, and he smashed us, you know, so, you know, it was pretty funny.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  So as you're getting into your senior year, you don't, do you know what you're gonna do when you graduate high school?

• 11:18Speaker 01

  No, like I, you know, my brother was going, he was going to school at UCSD, you know, down here in San Diego. And I was kind of optimistic that I would come down here and that, you know, and, and sort of just work and, you know, live with him and, and, but that didn't end up working out because he was then getting ready to transfer to the East Coast. And then, so yeah, I tried the junior college route for a little bit, a couple of months, but surfing got in the way of that. And then started waiting tables and working at, I was working at Angel Stadium. I was actually selling souvenirs at, you know, the original California Angels Stadium. Yeah.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  And how long did you do that before you noticed that there might be a military path?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  When they called me in April of 1996 and it was like, hey, we understand that you recently graduated high school, you know, because I had talked to a marine recruiter, you know, with a buddy, because you go out with buddies, you're like, yeah, let's do this. And then he went and I didn't. But, uh, yeah. And then in April, it was, yeah, Navy recruiter called and I thought, fuck.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  So he had like a freaking contact list or something?

• 12:19Speaker 01

  I guess, yeah. Like it visited a high school, you know, I mean, I was coming up on a year that I'd already graduated and I was just working at, you know, a restaurant, I was working at Islands Restaurant in Brea, California, waiting tables. And, uh, yeah, he called and that's what I thought, well, I mean, I need a job and the Navy's around water, so I could keep surfing. So this, this works, you know, I'll have some conversations and then, then before I knew it, I was in Meps down here in San Diego about a month later. You know.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  What kind of job did he offer you?

• 12:49Speaker 01

  So the way it goes, the way it went back then, and I'm not sure if it still goes that way now. You know, you you take a, I took a practice ASFAB in the, in the recruiting office and then went down and took the ASFAB and then like the next day you come back and they had a list of like five or six schools. And I had like a couple that I had identified, just based on some limited research, but those weren't offered. It was like, um, oh, there was like, there was like five or six different schools and I don't, and all of them were the A school, the trade school was located in Great Lakes, Illinois, except one. It was at Virginia Beach and all I saw was beach. That one, I'm not going to go to Great Lakes even for two months. And I was like, I'm going to go to the beach. And so that's how I picked Operation Specialist A School in Virginia Beach.

• 13:33Jocko Willink?

  I, I was heavily influenced because I surfed as a kid growing up in Maine and I also skated because there wasn't always waves.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  But when I was trying to figure out what branch of special operations I wanted to go into as a young surfing kid, I saw the SEAL teams were either stationed in Virginia Beach, Virginia, or San Diego, California. Done and done.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  That was it.

• 13:58Jocko Willink?

  And of course, the water side appealed to me and I wanted to be like a waterborne commando because I surfed. But yeah, that, that played a huge role and it's true too.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  Like it's either that, I guess the Coast Guard, you're kind of guaranteed to get stationed on the ocean. I bet, I bet the Coast Guard has the most ocean, am I wrong?

• 14:14Speaker 01

  They probably do, but the Coast Guard, uh, later on in my career, I worked with some Coast Guard guys that were actually stationed in Southern Costa Rica and were surfing, like they had the best kept secret surfing in Golfito, you know, it was right on the, on the border between Panama and Costa Rica.

• 14:29Jocko Willink?

  You're putting this word out.

• 14:30Speaker 01

  Oh, this is like, this is, they told me this 22 years ago, you know, so yeah, secrets out, man. But yeah, that, that, so, so yeah, that was never, I never even considered that. And I didn't know much about special operations. I mean, I had, you know, two uncles, uh, that were in the army. My grandfather was in the army, uh, he flew, um, he flew during the war. He had a significant plane crash in 1943. I'm just getting a little bit more schooled up on that as I get older. So that was kind of like my military influence and my influence, you know, as a kid growing up were these uncles, you know, kind of looking out after me and, you know, beating the shit out of me and, you know, and so it was a really, it was a cool, that portion of the childhood was great and that was really cool. So.

• 15:09Jocko Willink?

  So you end up, what'd you say, OS?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:12Jocko Willink?

  A school?

• 15:12Speaker 01

  OS, A school, operations specialist. And I looked at it, I was like, if you flip it, it's special operations. Like, it'll, it'll morph into something, you know?

• 15:20Jocko Willink?

  So did you surf when you were in Virginia Beach?

• 15:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, try me. I was there in the winter of ninety, I went to boot camp in late ninety six. I was in Virginia Beach, the winter of like ninety six, ninety seven.

• 15:31Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with A school, where do you go?

• 15:34Speaker 01

  So they selected me out of A school based on my academic performance and which is odd because I was not an academic, a high performer in high school, but because my academic performance, they selected me to go up to the Bureau of Naval Personnel when it used to be in DC. So I went to BUPR's to work under the OS detailers as basically like a, an admin dude, an admin kid. So I went up there and I was, I ended up there for nine months. I was selected to go to a pre-commissioned destroyer based out of San Diego, out of Thirty Second Street. But while I was there, right down the hall was PERS four oh one Delta, which is where diver, SWIC, EOD, SEAL detailers are. And so they had some scruffs there, some guys that were out of A school,

• 16:18Speaker 01

  got stationed there before they went to their respective school. We're all the same age, we're all, you know, trying to find our way. So I end up making friends with them and then I put a SWIC package in. And then the detailers that I worked for were a little pissed because they wanted me to be an OS, you know, in the fleet. But I put a SWIC package in and then went to SWIC school. Yeah.

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  Do you know when SWIC school started?

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Well, so the class I was in, we classed up, I went to Seers School in January of ninety eight. And then right after that, I went to like PU, it used to be PTRNR because they would pull this together. And then I, I think my class started in February of ninety eight and it was SWIC class two four. So the original history, that would be the history, what the, the good portion of like significant history for the brown water black berets was in Vietnam. But it even goes back further to World War Two is like where they kind of, you know, carry their homage and they, you know, they pay homage to those guys that kind of were driving the boats and inserting, you know, elements and things like that. So. You could do kind of the rewind for what year they started and the center started SWCC

• 17:23Speaker 01

  class, but we were, you know, SWCC class 24. And I think we just last year, we had our SWCC class 124 graduate. I think that's what it was. Um, so.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  So special warfare combatant crewmen. So when I, when I got in the teams, those, it wasn't a, it wasn't a rating. And guys would basically go, you, you could be a normal dude in the fleet and then you just get basically get stationed at a special boat team for two years or four years. And some guys, of course, would like figure out a way to stay there for longer. But it wasn't an official kind of thing.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a, it wasn't a Navy enlisted code, an NC code.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  Right, right. It was just like a, you just get stationed there. And so we kind of had, would have random dudes. When we'd go on deployment, there'd be, again, they'd be, they'd do the workup and stuff, but they didn't have, it wasn't their life. It wasn't their job.

• 18:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  And so it wasn't until the Navy figured out, which is a really smart thing to figure out, you want to have people that know how to drive your boats, driving your boats.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and then the, the person, the camaraderie that they would have to form with their respective like SEAL platoons and, you know, assets that they were working with to be able to kind of basically be a little bit closer to speaking commando than just not.

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you could get lucky and you could get unlucky. Uh, I went on a, we went to do a VBSS one time over in the Gulf. And we, we literally, we didn't have any special boat unit with us. And so we were going to use the ship's ribs and we did, we used the ship's ribs. But we literally asked the guys, hey, does anyone here know how to drive a boat like good? And there was a freaking 19 year old kid from Florida. That grew up and he, you know, he's like, hey, I grew up in the key or what I, it wasn't the keys, but it was like, you know, whenever I grew up in such and such. I, I've been driving a boat every day of my life and I'm called on the ribs. And the kid was freaking awesome. Like he pulled alongside, you know, it's hard to drive that boat.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  And he just did it freaking awesome. And I hope he went to, I, I told him 10 times, bro, what you need to be doing. Cause he was just a normal fleet dude, you know? A year and a half in and he was pumped. Uh, but that's a, that's a job that you need to learn how to do. And going back to the early nineties, you'd have some boat drivers that just, they just weren't that good. They hadn't been doing it for very long. And so they kind of suck. So it was good that they eventually professionalized it and made it into a job that you can stay in your whole career and be a damn boat driver.

• 19:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's what you end up doing. How was the SWIC school? How long was it?

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Um, I think at the time it was, uh, I think it was only 10 weeks. I'm not sure how long it was now, but I think it was 10 or I don't know. It was 12 weeks, 12 weeks long. And, uh, we had, oh man, I think we had about like 36 guys in our class, someone around in the mid thirties. And you know, surprisingly enough, like we lost guys. It was a lot of the stuff was water stuff was being in the water, you know, cause like we still did, you know, a lot of stuff in the, in the combat training tank and, um, and yeah.

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If you're going to be driving around little boats all the time, all over the ocean, it's probably pretty smart to be good in the ocean, good in the water.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:20Jocko Willink?

  Did you get, do you get a job? Like, hey, you're going to be a driver. You're going to be a gunner. You're going to be a comms guy. Do they do that?

• 20:26Speaker 01

  They do typically not when you graduate, you know, they, it was, you know, at the time it was like, you're either going west coast, east coast, or you're going to, um, uh, Mississippi. You know, it's either coastal, coastal or reverine. Um, and so, uh, they will, you know, just like the military does, they'll send you where they need you. And so, uh, I ended up on staying on the west coast, which is great. And it was, you either had, you know, two, they had two or three different types of boats that you're going to be assigned to. But typically a new guy is going to be, um, a like navigator. You're going to learn the radar systems, but at the same time, you also have to do all the, all the, all the grunt work on the boat. And help the engineer and understand the engines and because it's all, it's doing all that stuff because we didn't have a mechanic team. We were the mechanics.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  You know, uh, which is like, was really cool, you know, 21, 20 years old to be learning, you know, how to change an oil on a turbo diesel, you know, you know, uh, jet boat. You know, it's like, okay, this is, I mean, this is what we're doing. And so to learn, you know, when you go to basically put the boat in, do whatever training or the op or whatever, and then pull the boat out. You're there for another two hours doing post ops on the boats, even putting them away, you know, rinsing, cleaning, doing all the post op checklist and everything like that. So.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  So you like basically learn to be a navigator, kind of progress to become, you know, an engineer and then eventually a coxswain, you know, boat driver. And then like, um, it was like.

• 21:45Speaker 01

  LPO and then, you know, our, our OIC was at the time, we didn't have officers. It was SEAL officers that would come over as far as command level, but we would have fleet officers that would be like OIC of a boat detachment.

• 21:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  But then our platoon, our debt chief or detachment chief would usually has been around for a minute. And we used to have guys, you know, when SBU 26, when Panama was open, we had a lot of riverine guys come from there.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 22:08Speaker 01

  Came up. And so that's where we had some of the mentorship there.

• 22:10Jocko Willink?

  So you, I imagine you're pretty freaking stoked, like, because you were sitting in an office in DC.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  And now you're just out in San Diego freaking gunning it on a rib. Were you on a rib, basically?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It was about the 11 meter. Started off on a 30 footer and then went to the 11 meter. Yeah.

• 22:24Jocko Willink?

  So you're stoked.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was great. And then, you know, you got on the first detachment and cycled through to PACOM or Guam. Uh, first deployment with SEAL Team Five, you know, so that was, um, April to October of 99.

• 22:39Jocko Willink?

  Is that where you met? Cause you knew Tony when you showed up, right?

• 22:41Speaker 01

  That was where I first met Tony. Yeah. So that, when that story comes around, it's, it's hilarious. Yeah.

• 22:47Jocko Willink?

  So what was your first deployment?

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was it.

• 22:49Jocko Willink?

  Doing exercises?

• 22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it was, I mean, it was, it was the, um, you know, it was the, the pre-war, not much had been going on, you know? It was like, uh, you know, so you get over to Guam, you know, if you've ever been to Guam, you know, especially in the nineties, when there was nothing really going on, but it was just sort of, you were that contingent force for the region. And so, yeah, a lot of training, you know, we'd go out, we'd go up north, uh, north of Saipan and do shooting up at the island called FDM. So that was where we would do shoots and, yeah, train OTBs over the beach stuff, inserts and just, you know, get proficient and, you know, marry up with the platoon and build rapport and just do training stuff. And then we, you know, we did some stuff in Singapore. We did an exercise in Singapore. There was a big exercise, you know, with Korea and Japan and, you know, in the PACOM region during that time. And, yeah.

• 23:34Jocko Willink?

  Do you surf?

• 23:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:36Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, because when you said, you know, it's basically the nineties and what we did was surf.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:41Jocko Willink?

  Cause you're in Guam.

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  And there's freaking great waves.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I actually met a Coast Guard guy there surfing. I'm still friends with him today. I mean, it's 25 years ago. You know, we out there in the water surfing. See, he was stationed out there, Coast Guard. Servers.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's, that's, that's a legitimate thing. So you get, so you go on that deployment, you meet Tony, how well did you, did you like hang out with him at all?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  I mean, there were some, I mean, you could rewind the clocks, but there were some legends on that platoon. They were all younger guys, but yeah, so I mean, it was like met Tony and then yeah, it was like did some stuff and then that was about it. And then came back and then, you know, kind of wash, rinse, repeat, and then got into another detachment and then deployed.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  What was the next one?

• 24:18Speaker 01

  That was, uh, June of twenty, uh, two thousand and that was to Bahrain. So we were basically not, we were, uh, going over there with team three. Um, and we were doing, the, the mission set was a response to go up to Kuwait and then do, uh, VBSS on tankers leaving Iraq.

• 24:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was talking about how, before we hit record, about how you and I missed each other on a bunch of timeframes. But so for instance, I left the West Coast in nineteen ninety-eight to go to the East Coast.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  In two thousand, I was in Bahrain, I was on the JFK, but I was at the platoon, but we were there for the millennium. So like from whatever, the, the fall of ninety-nine until the spring of two thousand. So you relieved me there, probably with the team three guys that showed up after.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  So again, just missed each other. So were you guys doing VBSS?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, a lot. We had like, like a lot of live ones. Yeah, a lot of real ones. Yeah. I mean, those are a haul, man, because we would fly the ribs up. And then, um, if you remember PCs.

• 25:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, patrol craft.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Patrol coastal, yeah.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  Hurricane, yeah, they all had storm names, hurricane, cyclone.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, come on.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  It's awesome.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  And, uh, so yeah, then we.

• 25:30Jocko Willink?

  Were you doing them off the PCs?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  No, so we would, uh, they.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  Remember the PCs, they made these, so they made these boats Echo Charles and they're like, this is going to be what SEALs can operate on.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, they held like eight, they were a ship, they were like a small, tiny ship, but, but a ship. You see what I'm saying? The difference between like a boat and a ship, you know, the Navy ship looks like, well, these were like tiny, tiny. They look like tiny ships.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  I think it was staffed with like thirty-five or forty guys. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't that big.

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  And there was room for eight SEALs on them, like they had like the racks or whatever for eight SEALs.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  But dude, dude stopped it because they kept getting sick.

• 26:04Jocko Willink?

  Freaking gnarly.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  So you guys were doing some, uh, at this point, were you a driver yet?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  On the sea? Yeah, I was. Yeah. So I was. Yeah. And so we were, I was driving and yeah, so we were doing ship takedowns. And I mean, over real ship takedowns, you know, like they, the, the ships would be laden down to where you wouldn't need a ladder. It was very rare that there was ever a hook and ladder. It was usually like the little Jacob's ladder. Just you just step across because those things were all the way down.

• 26:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. We did a bunch of those too, on that same deployment that I was just talking about. And we made a little, uh, like a, almost like a water ski ladder. We welded it up and it was just like hook on the side. It was four rungs or something like that.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. It kind of looks, it looks like, it, it looks like a Jacob's ladder off of a helo. And it's, yeah, you just, like a pool ladder. Yeah.

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  So that's a pretty good time.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, um, so in October of 2000, uh, we were in Kuwait when the USS Cole was hit.

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  And so that was like, you know, the, uh, the amphibious readiness group, uh, Alpha. So we would have, you know, there would be a SEAL platoon and then a boat detachment that was assigned, uh, to a ship. You know, basically readiness group. And so those guys had initially responded to it in Yemen. And when those guys, when they got the coal out, the coal was finally moving, um, they sent us down with our respective guys that, um, with our platoon. And we, we were in UAE for about six weeks and we were doing ship security. Cause no other, none of the ships of any of the readiness groups were pulling in to refuel or resupply. So they would come into Jabal Ali and so we were just doing ship security for six weeks, living in Dubai.

• 27:42Jocko Willink?

  Do you get to lock and load your weapon?

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I was, I was actually, uh, we were, we were escorting a ship out and there was another boat coming. I actually, I was like, first time I almost unloaded a 50 cal on a boat. I mean, I don't like, I actually I never have, but I was like, we're about to shoot this guy. But you've ever seen 50 cal rounds, when they hit the water, they go everywhere. So it was in the beaches like that way. And it's like, oh man, like this guy better stop because this is going to be bad. But it ended up being fine. It ended up stopping, but it was like, that's what we were doing was ship security because of what happened. How successful that, that the execution of hit the USS Cole was.

• 28:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, they still use that kind of as the story, I think, up in Navy boot camp.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  They should, yeah.

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  Example, and they run that whole. When I went through boot camp, we didn't have anything like this big simulator that is like a fake ship being flooded and all that stuff. That's what they do now. But I think a lot of it's based on the coal.

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that was really unexpected. And like, I mean, the lives that got lost, the guys were just on the other side of the bulkhead and no idea what happened.

• 28:40Jocko Willink?

  Freaking sketch. So then we come home from that deployment.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  I was in the training cell for a couple of months and then there was an opportunity to go down to the boat detachment that was basically like permanently assigned to Naval Special Warfare Unit Four in Puerto Rico when when Roosevelt Roads was still open. And so I was like, that seems like a pretty cool opportunity. And so went down to Puerto Rico, was down there for just shy of, I don't know, just shy of three years. So March of 2001. And then I'm sitting on the quarter deck on September 11, 2001. And then we see it in the news, there's, you know, news feed on the on the quarter deck.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  Were you like, were you standing watch or something?

• 29:19Speaker 01

  No, no, like we were prepping because we were supposed to go to South America for for an internal defense block with some guys down in South America. Because that's kind of what we were doing. We would have the East Coast teams, they would deploy down basically as part of a central and South America response. And so same kind of thing as Guam, you know, no, not no war going on. This is pre nine 11. And that's what we were doing.

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  Just for Puerto Rico?

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that place dialed. Yeah. And then so we were getting ready to go to South America for a FID mission and on the 12th. And then that happened. And so, yeah, we can't, they socks out the cancel the trip.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  So everything gets locked down?

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, everything changed.

• 29:59Jocko Willink?

  And then at what point do you transition over to EOD? And how'd you hear about EOD?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  So I had first heard about EOD when I was in boot camp. And and then when I was at, you know, in DC, the Detailer, the Master Chief Detailer, EOD Detailer, was just, you can't go a little bit, little bit more. I mean, like the SEAL Detailer, kind of funny, I remember these names. The SEAL Detailer was Master Chief Phil Pot. The EOD Detailer was Master Chief Torres. And then the Boat Guy Detailer was Master Chief, Senior Chief Sam Brown. And and it was just, there was, those are, those are the guys that you, as an E1, this is my first look, you know, at at this world. And so I had thrown around leaving the boat community, man, because it's like I was young and I was already getting my ass kicked because you, I mean, you've been on those boats,

• 30:47Speaker 01

  man, these sea states, and then if you don't time it right, I mean, it's brutal, man. Even if you're not a boat driver, you're not jumping up and down to be on these boats for a long period of time. They're brutal, especially you're doing 100, 200 nautical mile transits. So I'm watching the war kick off in March of 2003 into Iraq and we had, the base had just gotten bracked. And so they were closing Rosamont roads. And so it's like, do you go to the east coast as a boat guy or do I go back to the west coast as a boat guy? And I was like, I'm gonna miss this whole thing, you know? And I was, you know, I mean, boat guys were definitely had their pivotal part in Iraq later on, but then I

• 31:28Speaker 01

  just called the SWCC detaller. At the time, his name was Mike Warholman. And I told him, I said, look, this is what I'm looking at doing. And he was, he was awesome about it. He said, look, you've done your minimax activity tour? He's like, absolutely. If you want to go EOD at 100%, like, I'll totally support it and endorse it. If it doesn't work out, you're more than welcome to come back. He's like, we'll set that up. So it's like, I wasn't looking for an insurance thing, but that was nice because I mean, EOD schools are good 12 months and then they, they'd stop, they didn't want any more E6s and I was an E6 at the time. So then, yeah, so we shut down the unit four, that's that fall of 2003 and then I transferred out to dive school in January of 04.

• 32:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you know any EOD guys prior to?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  So on the base there at, or on our compound at unit four, there was a shore detachment, an EOD shore detachment. And so EOD's got shore detachments that are, will do like base response, ordinance response, go Vieques was a live shooting range. And so they would respond to unexploded ordinance or anything like that. So that they were like basically permanently stationed there for a three year ride. And so I was assigned to them as basically as a prospective student in training, you know, like a scruff for about three months. And so that was, those were the first introduction I got really to EOD guys there.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  Did you like? Bro, when I was a kid and I like saw machine guns, I was like, hell yeah, that's kind of what I want. That's kind of what I want to be doing. Um, did you look at like a guy in a bomb suit? And a pair of pliers walking up to a freaking bomb and be like, hell yeah?

• 32:58Speaker 01

  No, it was funny because like there was, uh, there was this, oh, an east coast, uh, I think he was a team eight, uh, senior chief that had come down with his platoon. And when I was throwing around, basically leaving SWIC, I had asked him, I'd kind of, you know, I go to these older guys and, and look for some mentorship. So there was no bias and I, I said, you know, I was throwing around the idea of either going to EOD score or going to BUDS. And I'm just, you know, I was just looking for some snapshot you've been around, you know?

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  How old were you at this point?

• 33:23Speaker 01

  So that would have been, uh, 2003. So I guess what, uh, 24 or 25, yeah. So.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  You made E6 pretty freaking quick, dude.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Five and a half years, I got capped to E6.

• 33:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you got capped to check.

• 33:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I was serving a role as an LPO.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  By the way, I got capped to E5. Yeah. So it's, it's all good.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  What is CAP?

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  Command advancement program. You didn't actually, basically you're doing a really good job. And if you're doing a really good job, then, but you haven't been promoted, then the, the commanding officer can just promote you. It happens to one person. So it's like, he, he was obviously kicking ass because to get capped is, they take a one person from the whole command. So it's, it's a very, I don't know, let's say like it's an honor, but it's definitely recognition that you've been doing really good. Because everyone else has to like take tests and get promoted, but you're just getting, you know, especially if you're kind of junior like that.

• 34:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. But I was, I was filling the role and I don't, you know, it wasn't like, um, it wasn't like I was going to meetings and I needed to be in E6 or anything like that. But I was filling the role and then it took a lot of, I mean, it takes a lot of recommendations and a lot of, you know, oh, five signatures to buy, to go off on a command advancement. So.

• 34:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. No, that's definitely a clear sign of, of doing.

• 34:38Jocko Willink?

  What's that term we used to say? Sustained superior performance in the field of excellence, like for sure.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  So it's kind of like skipping a grade in elementary school, something like this? A little bit.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  It's a little bit more significant, but yeah. Wonder where, yeah, that works.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  Okay, so it sounds different, or it is different than what it sounds like capped. Sounds like, oh, like you're limited. Oh, no, no, no.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  It's command advancement program, command advancement program.

• 35:03Speaker 01

  And it's, we add the, the extra capped. It's act, the, the, it's your, you're selected for cap.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it becomes a verb.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  Right, right, like, like D O R, D O R, right? He D O R'd.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  So he got capped.

• 35:17Speaker 02

  Capped, hell, yeah.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  I got capped.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  I got capped to E5. I didn't get capped to E6, but the big joke was I got capped to Ensign because I hadn't been to college. And I did the Seaman and Animal Program and Seaman Animal Program. You just, the one that I went through, you just became an officer.

• 35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you went to OCS, but with no college, it's kind of going to, it's pretty cool. So, you know, my friends be like, dude, you got capped to Ensign, which would kind of realistic. Got capped to E5.

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Quick question, just to click, when you say E5, E6, E is for enlisted, right?

• 35:50Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  Okay, and O is for officer.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  That's what I thought, but then you're saying Ensign and all this, I'm like, I don't know.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Dude, you're gonna do good on the test later.

• 35:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:58Jocko Willink?

  He's in the game.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  So, so what did the SEAL tell you? The senior chief from teammate or team.

• 36:07Speaker 01

  He was, I mean, he was, it was cool because he was, you know, he was really supportive. He said, he goes, look, you know, he's like, with where we're at, you know, this day and age, it's like, um, he said, the attrition rate is obviously really high, you know, on both. He's like, you're looking at academically or physically. He said, the way I look at it, he goes, obviously I'm glad with the decision that I made and the path that, you know, that, that, uh, that he took, um, or whatever year, you know, whatever class, BUDS class he was in. And he said, it's just one of those things where when, when you go and you do the long haul and you go and retire. He goes, the way EOD is going now, um, the history, uh, the, the lineage of it has, is obviously morphed into what's going on with the war. But there's so much marrying up with the EOD guys in the SEAL platoons. You're going to do everything that we are doing. Because at the end of your career, you're just not going to have a trident on your label.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  And he goes, if that's not like what's driving you, he goes, I would recommend that. He goes, because what I'm seeing is that their jack of all trades is a lot more versed than what I'm seeing with us. He goes, but that's just my opinion. And so I didn't make a decision based on that. I just kind of sat with it and went through it. And I thought that it afforded me the opportunity to do a whole bunch of different things and to really just make my resume as diverse as humanly possible. Cause I knew I was already in it for 20, for at least. And I just wanted to be marketable when I was done. And it didn't matter if I had a trident or if I, or whatever pin or whatever NEC or whatever I, I had. I just wanted to be really marketable and that was how I looked at it.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  So, but I, but my motivating factor for leaving SWCC is I just wanted to be on the ground in, in the war. Because like, unlike you, like when I was a kid, yeah, I mean, I grew up on Rambo and Predator and you know, this commando movies, right? But it wasn't the inspiration. My time, my goals were short. I was like, where can I find six to eight foot on a crowded surf? So that was, that was my driving force. And so that when, when I'm watching, you know, the Iraq invasion, just like everybody else in March of 2003, or not like everybody else, but like most, most people that are not a part of the invasion, the initial invasion. It's like, I can't just sit here, man. So, yeah.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  Was it hard to get the package? Oh no, you already said they, they supported you. And EOD was open for people?

• 38:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. There's not that many freaking EOD people, is there?

• 38:19Speaker 01

  No, the number ratios, yeah, it was really, at the time was really low. And, and historically they had only ever allowed E6s. Like you had to do a minimum of activity in the fleet. They wanted regular Navy people with Navy experience, Navy knowledge then to come in.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  So when I got to dive school and went through dive school and then EOD school, they had started to change it. They're like, you E6s have only got one shot at this. We want E5s, E4s coming through now. Because they knew, I mean, you know, to their credit, they knew that this was going to be a sustained thing in the Middle East. And the IED threat is going to be real. And so, you know, we wanted younger guys instead of the older guys that were not going to be able to physically. Withstand it. So.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  Is there like a screening, like a, like a first set phase type thing where you're, they're really testing your physical?

• 39:09Speaker 01

  That was like 10 weeks of dive school. I mean, we lost, we lost quite a few people in dive school.

• 39:14Jocko Willink?

  Is it, is it the same dive school that the regular Navy goes through?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  The.

• 39:17Jocko Willink?

  Dive school?

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there's like, you have your open water, your scuba. So that's what we did first. And so like you've got in Navy diver, you have your two Charlies, your, you know, and then your one, your one Charlies. Those are like, you learn scuba all the same, but then it morphs into for those guys, it's going to be hard hat diving. We didn't do hard hat diving. So we would do scuba and then we went to semi closed circuit, the mark 16. And this is the system at the time. I'm not sure if they're even still using that system, but the mark 16 is a deep water, low magnetic, you know, signature diving system.

• 39:49Jocko Willink?

  And of course you're comfortable in the water. So this is kind of no factor for you.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was mostly, there was like awesome pool workouts, you know, but the pool hits, I mean, you know, very similar to, you know, uh, there's a lot of similarities between where they derive things from second phase, um, and there, you know, so similarities, you know, I'll leave it at that. So.

• 40:09Jocko Willink?

  You, Andy Stumpf was a second phase instructor for like three years. He passed four people.

• 40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, I believe in him.

• 40:17Jocko Willink?

  In pool comp.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  He'd probably still go back today and probably like, I shouldn't have passed it.

• 40:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you know what he told me? He goes, those four people fucking earned it.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Oh, that's cool.

• 40:25Jocko Willink?

  He sounds like, I bet they did.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  That's cool.

• 40:27Jocko Willink?

  He, he had a, he has a really, he has a really good stories about pool comp. I need to do an entire podcast with him about just freaking pool comp, the reactions that people had. He started to be able to read people like what they were doing with their hands was like, oh, this person's about to bolt to the surface in four, three, two, what? But they both like, he just got to reading them.

• 40:44Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  I can imagine he was, um, not very fun to have as a pool comp instructor. So that, that first 10 weeks is sort of where the weeding out process, that's the word I was looking for. It's like a weeding out process.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, other than the screener test, you know, and all that stuff, you know what I mean? But they had to get numbers. But yeah, that was a big, that was that, that phased out a handful of guys for sure.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  And then it becomes actual EOD school?

• 41:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, uh, it was, uh, I think it was about, yeah, about nine or 10 months. Yeah. 10 months of EOD school. And while we still did, you know, physical, uh, you know, PTs and things like that, but it was all, it was academic. And, um, the scrutiny on academics were brutal, you know, and here, here, keep in mind, here's this guy that barely made it through high school. I'm like. What I get myself into.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  So you just knuckled down and.

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you had, you know, and a lot of it was like sensitive material. So you, you can't study at home. So you, you know, you'd have the, the school day or the class day or whatever. And then you'd have study, the study hall. You know, see the three hours of study hall afterwards.

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  And it's 10 months of that?

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  Dang, why is it in the SEAL teams, you get like a half a day of demo training and you're good?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. We'll get to some of those stories later. I'm sure as to why.

• 42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you get rolled back or anything in that?

• 42:04Speaker 01

  Some guys that I didn't. So you got like, if you take a test, you get one chance to do a retest and then you're out and then they assess how far along you were, how close you were. And then they would just roll you into another class.

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  Was any of it a prac- practical tests?

• 42:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it would be, it would be.

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  Like diffuse this thing?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, they would, it would be like, if you're in tools and methods and it was like, how to remove a fuse off of like, you know, a mark 82, you know, bomb, a mechanical fuse. And it's like, how you do it remotely, you know? So you're like rig, it's a lot of rigging. So you're like doing pulleys and stakes and ropes and like tape and all this, you know, just off the wall shit and how to unscrew remotely. You know, a few things like that, or how to basically take an explosive tool and then render it safe, you know?

• 42:46Jocko Willink?

  So. And then you got, did you have to learn like basically every type of ordinance that we have in the military?

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. So you learn how to. You would test, you would test on it. So you would show up to a test site and it would be like, oh, this landmine.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Okay. Um, you know, if you draw pictures of it or whatever, take notes of it and then go back and then research it into the database that of all US and foreign ordinance. Basically that known US foreign ordinance at the time is in this database. And then it shows you render safe procedures, blow in place procedures, whatever you can do based on where it's sitting or it's.

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  But you didn't have to memorize that?

• 43:18Speaker 01

  No, but you started getting looks at things. You're like, oh, I know what I'm going to do here, you know? So, but it's in phases, like you would have ground stuff, which would be like landmines and projectiles. And then you go to air stuff where you're gonna have missiles and you know, shit like that.

• 43:30Jocko Willink?

  Did they give you like straight up pool comp for ordinance where you had to walk up and look at something? There's wires everywhere and it's like a movie where they're like, all right, and the clock is ticking down? Please tell me that you did this, because otherwise I'm gonna be so disappointed in our EOD community.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Not, not in EOD school.

• 43:44Jocko Willink?

  Cause we did that shit at TradeNet, bro. We'd have like bombs ticking down. You set that stuff up.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  I did, yeah, I did, because I wanted it that way. In EOD school, it's literally basic fundamentals. It's basically to show that like I can present something, that you can be presented with something. You can not freak out and you can basically take notes, observe, and then basically take action. And so that was just the very basic fundamentals. Once you get to the EOD commands and the mobile units, then that's where like advanced, any advanced schools or advanced training, going through your, basically your unit level training, um, and then going from there. But you've got to take a lot of the, a lot of that from the older guys, you know, the mentorship, you know? It's like, okay, you get guys that spent time in Bosnia, you know, that, that was like landmine, you know, landmine time. And so those guys were all trained up on that, so we would get buffed up on that.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  But I mean, I got to the EOD command in February of 2005. And IEDs were just really starting to pop off. And there you've got guys that were trained by the British, um, while they were, you know, stationed in Europe pre-war. So they've got a lot of influence and a lot of experience from, perhaps from when they were at war with the IRA. You know, because those guys were like some of the, you know, some of the real pioneers and improvised explosive devices during those, those, kind of battles during that time, so.

• 45:01Jocko Willink?

  So do you get your pen when you graduate from EOD school?

• 45:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get a basic pen and then like three years later, then you can basically apply or get recommended to do your senior EOD board. So that's basically the senior board has, you know, to paraphrase it, it's just, um, all tools, tools and procedures. Like how good are you at basically this charge and this scenario and things like that? And then two years after that, you're eligible for your master board. So you, once you graduate, it's five years before you get the final NEC.

• 45:27Jocko Willink?

  Is it a different pen each time?

• 45:29Speaker 01

  It's just a star that gets added.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  Did you go to jump school?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 45:34Jocko Willink?

  Just, did you go to Army Airborne jump school?

• 45:35Speaker 01

  So I went to Army Airborne as a boat guy in February 2002.

• 45:38Jocko Willink?

  So you already had that kind of checked off?

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, so.

• 45:40Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, is it in the EOD pipeline to get?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  It is now. At the time, it wasn't, but they had kind of started it. So, but yeah, so three weeks Army Airborne.

• 45:49Jocko Willink?

  How many, when you're at EOD school, again, I have my own fantasies about EOD school, I guess, right now, but like, are you, are you blowing shit up?

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Oh, I mean, during demo week, we are doing charges. Yeah. Yeah. So you're like, you're, you know, doing electrical and non-electrical cap work.

• 46:03Jocko Willink?

  But you were there for 10 months and there's demo week?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Like demo, yeah, there's, well, there's like demo phase and that was a couple of weeks. And then like at the end, you know, do like, I mean, it, that, the place out there in Florida, I mean, it's the Air Force place is, is one of the largest bases in the States. And they've got demo range where we're doing thousand pound shots. So you do like, you know, get to experience a thousand pound, you know, C4, multiples, you know, charges going off. So it was sort of like when, you know what I'm talking about?

• 46:31Jocko Willink?

  So then what's next? You get stationed out?

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'm at, I'm moving at three in February 2005, go through unit level training, you know, EOD training, the EOD portion of it. And then I find out they put me on a basically what they called an NSW platoon. And that wasn't real common that they had put new EOD guys on NSW platoons. And the training officer at the EOD command pulled me in to have him, you know, basically talk me through why they decided to put me on that. Was because I was a six-year SWG. And they said, this shouldn't be a problem. Like, do you think it's going to be a problem? I said, no, not at all. So they assigned me to SEAL Team Three. And so in August of SEAL, of August of 2005, I drove out to Nylund. That was where I met Tasker and Bruiser.

• 47:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right on. Welcome aboard.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  It's 110 degrees.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:21Jocko Willink?

  And you show up. How'd you, how'd you like it?

• 47:25Speaker 01

  Well, I walked in, I walked, I walked into the facility. Brian Yarbo was actually the one that told me how to get there. This was a map quest was the thing. It's like, you go down this dirt road. All right. So I walk in the facility, you know, desert canvies, name tapes, you know, and it's empty. Nobody's in the building. And everybody was sleeping, you know, because you guys had already been there for a week and come walking down the hall. This guy in, you know, cargo shorts and a, and a hat. And I'm like,

• 47:57Speaker 01

  Like that's Tony Frady, you know, and he's like, Kush, what are you doing here? I'm like, I'm your EOD guy. He's like, you're in child platoon.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  You know, and Tony and I were in Guam together in 99. That was the last time I'd seen him, but I was like, immediately recognized him. And then, you know, guys start waking up and they're having breakfast and it's like, I'm like, who's, hey, Tony, like, what does Tony do? And he's like, he's platoon chief. Oh, all right. So that was how it started with, uh, yeah.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  Had you ever done IADS or anything before?

• 48:25Speaker 01

  No, no. I mean, we did something. They taught some stuff to us basically in unit level training. And throughout the years, it's gotten a lot better. The EOD MoMians have basically buffed up a lot of their pre-training before they get cut over. So, so that is not an issue, you know, for, because that was, that's a legitimate concern. These guys are really good at EOD stuff, but when we put them in the house, in a kill house, in a turret of a truck, or basically getting shot at and, you know, have to go online and do them left and right peels or center peels or whatever. You've got to be able to, you know, react appropriately. But I did have some weapons fundamentals. Like I was a boat guy, so I know, you know, I know the weapon systems. So it wasn't that foreign. But yeah, then we were doing walkthroughs and went through Nylund with you guys.

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a, a kind of a pivotal moment in my mind. It was when I was a platoon commander at Team Seven and we were going to get assigned EOD guys. And I talked to my CO and I said, hey, sir, why, why do we need EOD guys? Let's just send two of my guys to an EOD school and have them learn the stuff and then they can just be good to go.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Be a collateral.

• 49:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 01

  The idea.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  And that's what he said to me. He goes, hey, that's fine, but you actually want someone that is actually focused on this thing. And if you have a, if it's a collateral for a team guy, that they're not going to care about it. The way an actual EOD guy is going to care about it. And this makes a lot of sense. That you want someone that's going to focus and be, that's their job.

• 49:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:56Jocko Willink?

  And so that's why when you guys showed up, I was super stoked and I was like, oh, cool. Now we have. And then on that deployment, I had EOD guys that were awesome. And they basically became assaulters for us and then handled EOD as a, as their, it was their collateral, but it was their primary. And they wrote, they found some IEDs that definitely could have, um, really jacked up, you know, my platoon at that time. We had one that was. Sitting in a, in a plant, like a plant, uh, planter vase outside of like the perfect spot where you'd stack to enter a building. There was an IED in there and there was a curtain in the

• 50:37Jocko Willink?

  house. We found it afterwards. There were the curtain with a plug where you plug this thing in and there was a literal rectangle cut out of the curtain where you could look outside and see if there's people there or not.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. When the SWAT stack was there.

• 50:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And so, you know, we see this wire and we can see the thing and someone's like, hey, let's see where this goes. And I remember like being part of the whatever two or three man people that were walking out. We find it like, oh, it goes to this planner. And so, you know, EOD. So they come over and they start like prosecuting it. And my EOD guy looks at me and he's like, hey, Jaco. And I was like, yeah. He goes, you don't have to stand there. And I was like, good call. I'm like, I'm out, bro. And uh, so, so I was super stoked on EOD guys and, and the, the value that you guys bring. And so, but I'm, I am surprised that you didn't have any IAD experience because you were good at it.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. No, I mean, I appreciate it. Yeah. But um, it's uh, I guess it's really, it's, it was, we did, Tony did really good walkthroughs. And when you look at it, it just, it made sense. You know, so, you know, it's like, if you're, this is happening this way, you're gonna go this way. But there was like, you know, some of the stuff that was kind of that I picked up on was like, all right, you know, hingman and some of these roles, right? But I mean, it, it carried forth and not, not only was land warfare such a pivotal uh, training block for me, but we actually used it. So like, you know, a year later. So it was really important. Um, but I remember when uh, Tony, when I was, we were sitting in the truck and uh, just waiting, we're like loading up, taking a break. And he comes up and he said, hey, you know, um,

• 52:18Speaker 01

  for this first run, like, you're not going to go live. Just go through the motions while everybody else is going live. He's like, it's not that we don't trust you. It's that we don't trust you. So I held on, I love that. I'm like, absolutely. And you just say, yeah, Roger, check, you know, no problem. And so we do our first night run.

• 52:34Jocko Willink?

  And that actually makes sense. Like, it's not that we don't trust you. It's just that we don't trust you.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  It absolutely does. It wasn't a dig. It's like, it's like, here's your platoon. I totally get it. Right? I mean, because, you know, uh, you know, two and a half years ago, there was an incident, you know, that happened with on the East Coast. So I completely, I was like, and I knew about it. And I was completely respected it. So we get, we, I start going live and everything was good. And then we go nighttime and Tony's like, hey, once again, go dry on this one. Don't shoot. Just go through the motions. I'm like, no problem. And so I'm sitting there, we're taking contact. I'm sitting there prone. Trade that guy comes up and he's like, why aren't you shooting? I'm like, Tony told me not to. So just go and drive for this, you know, first couple. And so, uh, but yeah, I mean, it was great just to understand the motions. And it's like, what I ended up in down the road was that it's so important that you earn the trust of the guys, you know, for the EOD role and

• 53:22Speaker 01

  coming over even, and I learned a lot of it as a boat guy, because you're not, you know, you weren't in Bud's class, you know, whatever, and going through hell week with whoever it's like, so you have to, you have that much more of a barrier. You have to earn the trust. You have to have, you know, good mediocre to high performance. But it's the trust that really takes the time and the effort. You know, they got to trust you in the house, trust you on the range and trust you in the bar. And so that's like, that takes time. And so that was like, that was what I adopted was making sure I earned the trust of the guys. Because that way, when I made a call, the next year, whether we were doing personal security detail, or we were in the shit in West, you know, in Western, in Al Anbar, they're going to trust me to when I say, get the fuck away from me. So.

• 54:04Jocko Willink?

  How was, you'd been around NSW, so it wasn't really too much of a, like, culture shock or anything to show up and?

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I mean, to me, it was awesome. Because now, instead of being the guy driving the boat, watching him climb the ladder, I was going to be on the ladder, you know, so to speak. So, so I was pumped.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  You get done with, you know, so we go through the whole workup, CQC. How was CQC for you?

• 54:31Speaker 01

  Phenomenal. I loved it. Yeah. I mean, CQC and then rolling into when we went to Fort Knox from out. That was crucial with the guys because it's like we're doing, you know, live fire, you know, starting from two man, just two man pistol room entries and moving through it was great because the guys, uh, yeah, we meshed, we meshed great, stayed in the house with them, went to, you know, Memphis with the guys, you know, the weekends. I mean, it was great. It was a really, it was, it was fast and it was, uh, I loved it. And it was like, I remember us talking with some of the other new guys, uh, was like, man, we, how do we only do this block once before we go on deployment? Like, we should have to do this like right before we leave. And we had so much fun and learned so much, you know, and it was very, it was all dynamic movements.

• 55:14Speaker 01

  So it was early on and so we were learning as we went and then we went to Fort Knox and that's when it kind of, that's where it turned up. You know, the game got turned up. So.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Fort Knox was a, was a pretty awesome trip.

• 55:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  There was a, a 10 million rounds of paintball fired.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  It was freaking May. I'm out there.

• 55:34Speaker 01

  No, I love that. And it's funny how it's like, that was such a key block that that's where I ended up. At the tail end of my career at trade out was in that, that urban combat block as a, as a cadre.

• 55:46Jocko Willink?

  We, we wrap up, you know, workup, you kicked ass in workup.

• 55:52Jocko Willink?

  You, didn't you go to free fall like prior, after workup or something like that?

• 55:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was like my pre-deployment leave.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I think we were in, um, we did, you know, we did like Hawthorne, we did Nellis or not Nellis, we did Hawthorne, um, Fallon. And then we were in Nellis and that was where I first, uh, there was, I remember I was just telling the story, um, I think yesterday with, with Debbie, uh, with Debbie Lee is that I'm at one of the trucks and, uh, Jake is, is in a truck behind me and there's a, there's a guy in a, in the turret, like doing some work. And I was like, hey Jake, who's that? He's like, oh, he goes, that's Mark Lee. He's like, he just got the platoon. But said, you had been with the platoon, but I hadn't seen you guys in a few weeks. And so that was my, when I first met Mark.

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Cause Mark, so basically when they decided that our task unit was going to Iraq, they gave us a couple guys from one of the other task units. And Mark was one of the guys that we got. So he was just showing up and he showed up for that trip. It was just like completely, completely in his element.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Oh, everybody's winner.

• 56:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, everybody's a winner. It was freaking on. So, so Echo Charles.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what a boondoggle is?

• 57:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So boondoggle is a trip where you're basically gonna go and waste a bunch of the taxpayers' money. And, and then that's what a boondoggle, like a true boondoggle trip is like, oh, we're gonna go to Hawaii and where you have a meeting with, you know, so and so.

• 57:21Speaker 01

  It's federal funding, not state funding.

• 57:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's what a boondoggle is. And so our, we get done with our, our, our actual unit level training with the training detachment. And now we conduct our own type of training. And it's what we want to focus on. We know we're going to Iraq and there's a good training site up in, up at Nellis Air Force Base, which is in very close proximity to Las Vegas. So, and we want to do vehicles. So we ended up setting up this trip and it wasn't a complete boondoggle. Cause we did, we did a bunch of awesome training.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  We did.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  And as a matter of fact, I was just talking with Ryan Job's parents about how we put him in charge of like a big giant, you know, hit in the training area. And he was, he was, you know, nervous, like, I don't know what I'm doing. What are you doing? Putting me in charge of this? And we put him in charge and that's how people step up and learn. But not only do we do some awesome training, but we also, you know, had weekends off. And so it was some time, some Vegas time was spent and well, very well spent. And that was the classic, some of these stories about Mark was like, I remember coming down and you know, we're meeting in whatever time because we're gonna roll out, not, not on, on off, but just everyone's gonna go out. And I'm walking like through the

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  damn casino and, and freaking Mark Lee from like across the casino. He's like, hey, sir. I'm like, look at him. He's like, when are the new Cadillacs coming out? Cause he's over there winning. You know, and then the everybody's a winner. And he was, he was really, I mean, he was a super charismatic dude and funny. And it's weird too, because he was a new guy, but he was just super confident and super cool. And so it wasn't like, like if you're a cocky new guy, man, that's weird. He had a good, he had a weird balance of like, being super confident, but he was self-deprecating enough that he worked.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  He had a good switch. He could really do it. I mean, that, that wasn't something he mastered by any means. He just was a natural master at it. Because you're right. He, he, he, he was just like that.

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And of course, he was kind of, you know, he was like a really good athlete and that helps. And I was actually telling Ryan's dad that yesterday is he was a good shot at CQC. And so it's hard for an older guy to talk smack to Ryan Job when he just beat him at the freaking headplates. And you're like, eh, well, you know? And so Mark wasn't there for that. But when he showed up, he was in, you know, he's in good shape and he's, he's quick, right? So if you, if you like talk some smack to him, you might end up, you know, a little bit, and listen, embarrassed. Yeah, you might end up a little bit embarrassed. Now, listen, there's always the, the gang fu that can get unleashed. So let's say you're

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  a new guy and some older guy talks some shit to you and you return fire and you get the upper hand, which Mark was pretty witty. Now you can still catch a beat down, right? You can still have three or four guys jump on you and you get choked or whatever.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Even if you were right, it's still just, just because.

• 1:00:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But even if you're, but even if you're right, or you, you get a little beat down, but your, but your shot was good. You kind of make the person that's giving you a beat down look like a little bit of a fool, right? So Mark was quick witted enough that it, you realize pretty quick that.

• 1:00:42Jocko Willink?

  If you talk shit to this guy, you're probably gonna end up on the receiving end. And it's not gonna, you're not gonna, you're not gonna end up looking as cool as you think you are. And so that was kind of the vibe for Mark. And um, and yeah, just being super charismatic and funny. And sitting playing blackjack with him when he's talking shit to the dealers. Like, oh, they're bringing out, they're bringing out the ice man, they're trying to, they're trying to ice me right now. Hey boss, they're trying to ice me, don't worry about it, I got this, you know, like, just freaking, just magnetic and um, and that's this trip. This was this trip a complete boondoggle? Echo Charles, no, it wasn't. There was highly valuable training took place. And some good times.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  Team building.

• 1:01:25Jocko Willink?

  Yes, some team building took place as well.

• 1:01:31Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we were doing. We, by the time we wrapped up with all that training, man, we'd put everyone had been in charge of, you know, training missions. Everyone was, we, we actually unfortunately had to, a couple of guys didn't make it through the training with tasking a bruiser. We lost a couple of guys that didn't, you know, didn't meet the standard. But everyone that did was, was, was freaking dialed in at this point.

• 1:01:55Speaker 01

  No, and I remember when we were in Hawthorne, I remember when we were in the bay. And that was like when you, you had first, it was, it escapes me like the time, I think it was like January. You had said that we got word that we were gonna be doing PSD. And there was a lot of deflated people in the room, because it's like, man, we don't want to do personal security detail. We want to get into the fight. And I remember he saying like, that's okay, because we're gonna be the best fucking PSD element out there, you know, best PSD task unit out there. And so we were all in, regardless of what it was, you know, like, because like the, you know, it was a contagious type of leadership that went, you know, that went, that trickled down. That we were all in from, you know, from what I felt like from land warfare.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  You know, and we were all in, and this is who we were, you know?

• 1:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was a, a, a tight crew.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  It was good, yeah.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  That's for damn sure.

• 1:02:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, but yeah, so then go back to that, yeah, I did free fall, was like pre-deployment leave, that I'd actually gotten a team three spot, that's, that one of the guys didn't go. So yeah, that was where I was introduced to that.

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, we were, so I went on PDSS and I went to Baghdad and in Baghdad, we were supposed to take the place of the guys that were working with the ICTF, the Iraqi Counter-Terror Force, and went over there, did like the beginning of the turnover from the guys, and I forget what team they were from, that we were going to turn over with, but it was, it was SEALs and Green Berets, met them all, a bunch of good dudes. The ICTF was impressive. They all had like M4s with lasers on them and they had night vision. It was, it was, you know, it was pretty impressive to see what these Iraqi Counter-Terrorist Force was like, and that has a whole story in its own right. But so it looked like we were going on a, a

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  pretty cool deployment. I, I forget about the PSD, if there was something, you know, at some point where that was still a thing. But by the time I went on PDSS, we were going to Baghdad and we were gonna take over that mission and they were doing a lot of direct action missions in and around Baghdad. And cool op tempo, like definitely seemed like it was gonna be a cool deployment. Hey, kind of a, kind of a mark one motto with a, with above average to like, hey, this is gonna be a kick ass deployment, you know? I was stoked to go do that. And then while you guys were on pre-deployment leave, what happened

• 1:04:18Jocko Willink?

  was they wanted to consolidate the entire west with under, under SEAL Team Three commanding officer. So the way it was set up, if we went to Baghdad, we would have been like underneath the east coast skipper and the west coast skipper would have had some east coast platoon or task unit under his, so it would have just been, they just looked at it, looked at it and said, this doesn't even make sense. So now Ramadi at that time was of, was, uh, was really bad. And for some reason, I had told everyone that before. This was like in the beginning of workup. Like, uh, I was like, we're going to Ramadi and I don't know why I had that feeling. But you guys were on pre-deployment leave and the skipper calls me and he's like, hey,

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  how would you feel about, you know, if you went to Ramadi instead? And I had to do total poker face, you know, inside. I was like, oh yeah. Outside, I was like, well, sir, you know, I'm gonna need some additional things if I'm gonna go over there. And I wanted the whatever this high-speed internet thing was and I wanted a couple more people and I wanted some more radios like that. And so I used it all as a big bargaining chip and, and he hooked me up. So that was awesome. But I don't even think we told, I don't even know if there was a way to tell you guys. I guess we had cell phones.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  We found out on the flight line.

• 1:05:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:32Jocko Willink?

  It was so late.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  I think like, um, a couple of guys had printouts of like what the today's news in Ramadi. Like, whoa.

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah. I think we found out that day.

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was very late. And then we went, the guys that went early, you know, we were just like sending word back. And I don't, I forget what bird you were on coming over. But there's only probably four or five of us that went over in the first crew.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  Um, to figure out what's going on. And so there you go. Um, did you, when you were looking at like the news, now, now you're on the flight line? Did you realize like how serious it was?

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Well, uh, yes and no. I mean, yes, but it was more of a, and this is even retrospect, right? So it's sometimes hard for me to kind of go, this is what I felt at the time. But I look back on it, I was like, um, yeah, um, we've been told a couple of different things. Uh, when we land, whatever we're told, you know, as long as we're all doing something together. That was really all that mattered, you know?

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And remember the Commodore pulled, we, we were sitting in the Commodore. Uh, he had a big speech and he told us, listen.

• 1:06:42Jocko Willink?

  Chances are no one in this room is gonna shoot their weapons. He told that to the whole team. He's like, chances are no one's gonna shoot their weapons on this deployment. That's, you know, but you still gotta be professional and, you know, it's, it's still a combat environment, even though you're probably not gonna be engaging anyone. And we're all like, okay, cool. You know, fair enough. I was suspect a little bit because I'm reading the intel and Ramadi's like, there's, there's casualties every day in Ramadi.

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  But it was just a matter of like, how much, how creative you could get and everybody could get and whether it would be approved or not, you know, to go and do any of these things. So.

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  So we show up there.

• 1:07:21Jocko Willink?

  From an EOD perspective, you must have been like, like, what the hell is happening?

• 1:07:28Speaker 01

  I mean, so, yeah, from an EOD perspective, it was, uh, this is fucking, this is dangerous. This is gonna be hard because we're very urban. This is Fort Knox times a thousand. You know, this is the, the mount facility times a thousand. And so it was gonna be tough. You know, while I know, knowing, oh, well, knowing that all of the personalities and every single person wanted to get into the fight and get, you know, you know, right on, right on the, on the front line and fight and fight. My job, my, my primary job was to keep the guys safe. You know, and that's, that's what it was from an IED threat. But at the same time, I also had to be fill the roles as an assaulter. So there's this switch that you've

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  gotta kind of basically know when to, to turn it from, you know, this left to right as an EOD guy as an assaulter, because you have to be able to do two man room entries and you have to be able to cover and you have to be able to do an IAD. And then if there's an IED there, then that weapon's gotta get slung and you have to go to work because that right there is a non biased threat. It's not gonna, it's not gonna, it's gonna, it doesn't discriminate who it's gonna kill. So you have to basically go to work. And so that was something that was weighed heavily on my mind, especially when we first got there.

• 1:08:43Jocko Willink?

  There was seven to 10 IEDs a day on Route Michigan, which is a three mile stretch of road.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:49Jocko Willink?

  Through, seven to 10 IEDs a day were detonated on that road.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  When you show up there, you just gotta be thinking.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  Let's not go down this road.

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  That was the safest road you could go down.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but it's just like, man, you're coming. It's like gritting your teeth and wanting to wear, you know, mouth guards, you know, because this is gonna suck.

• 1:09:07Jocko Willink?

  Those other like roads going off of that guaranteed. It's not even like this. You will hit an ID.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Going, you take a, take a right turn or a left turn off there. ID is coming.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, it's, if, if the feeling was, it's not, it's a matter of time. It's not, you know, if it's when, you know, and then it's like, okay, you know, we're not going to act invincible, but we know how to basically aggressive vehicle and do combat first aid and make the calls and do an IAD with the down guy, you know, multiple down people. We know how to, um, you know, basically take care of a vehicle that's down, you know, to basically destroy all the sensitive equipment. We know how to do this. So it was a second nature. So.

• 1:09:48Jocko Willink?

  How about that op tempo that kind of kicked in?

• 1:09:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it was, it got hot quick. Um, yeah, it got hot, you know, literally. And then also, you know, in, in the city.

• 1:09:58Jocko Willink?

  That's right. It did like the temperature. We showed up and it was kind of like.

• 1:10:01Speaker 01

  It was monsoon season.

• 1:10:03Jocko Willink?

  It just freaking temperatures was skyrocketed.

• 1:10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, yeah, when we started going out, it was, I remember we first, you know, discovered, uh, working with, um, the first of 506, um, which is legendary, man. I still hold that near and dear to my heart to be a part of like the history of Red Curry. And like, it's just, yeah. Um, but yeah, the op tempo was, was something else, you know, and then, you know, to be out east of the city, working that for a little bit, and then going back west and then just basically getting more and more dynamic. I mean, that's at the end of the day, it's like, that's what we're there for. It's like, cool. We have a down day. Jim, recover and plan, you know, because we, you know, we were partitioned into groups to work with, um, you know, the Jundis, the Iraqi army, you know, you'd be five, six man, you know,

• 1:10:47Speaker 01

  teams and everybody, which was great because it really showed, you know, guys on their second and third platoon, how to basically be like these, sort of fill these LPO roles and, um, you know, of these small, small teams. And it was great.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was wild to read. Had prepared, you know, to function as a task unit and perhaps break into platoons and maybe break into squads, but we ended up having to sort of formulate these elements, these little, these little

• 1:11:12Speaker 01

  Plussed up fire teams.

• 1:11:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, plussed up fire teams that were going to go out because we had, I think we had five, I think we ended up with five or six Iraqi units that we were partnered with. And so therefore you needed an element and you needed to have, you know, a senior enlisted guy in there. You need to have some kind of an officer in there. Well, that was what we tried to build. Senior or a senior enlisted guy, an officer, a machine gunner, a radio guy, an EOD guy, which we only had two. So guess what?

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Guess what?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, I was, I felt like it was like the parent that was just like, just not this extent. Like don't, don't spread me out this thin, but you know, that's what we had to do. You know?

• 1:11:52Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, two, two EOD guys to cover down on six different units, which basically means you're going.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:02Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that we did, which may or may not have been psychological warfare, but we would have strap hangers come in, like people from, you know, from different commands or different units would show up and or, or leadership or whatever, we call them strap hangers, but people that are not part of tasking a bruiser would come in. And you guys put together this freaking like mega EOD brief that was about all the IED threats and you would basically give that brief before the PLO, before the, before the op order. And you, you, he probably gave it like three times to the boys, right? And then eventually

• 1:12:46Jocko Willink?

  the boys were like, hey, all right. And if there was an update to that brief, you'd give the update.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:50Jocko Willink?

  But if there was no update, you'd be like, hey, same threats.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Well, with that brief was like, it would be contingencies because we never planned on like, we're going to go to an IED factory, you know, that's not what you do with an assault force, right? You, you know, you prosecute that with the basically like the, the guys that do prosecute IED flaps and, um, but.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  The contingencies would sometimes evolve as the different TTPs of the enemy would evolve. And then that's where we would plug in a little bit different on contingencies. And we would just highlight if that was a change because we were always studying any of the significant significant activity or new TTPs. It was a game of chess, you know, like they would do this, we would do that. You know, I mean, it's, it's, that's historic and especially in asymmetrical warfare. That's just the nature of it. It's like the TTP start changing, you have to respond or react and then try to counter that. And so that's where we would then update those briefs on like, okay, new contingency. If this happens or this is what we might see, but overall the calls were always the same. It was like this color chem light. If you see one of us take a knee, get the fuck out of the room and like, hey, do you need anything? Don't key up a radio. It's just stuff like, you know, common sense stuff that always stayed the same.

• 1:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  So.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, the psychological warfare that I was talking about was if we had one of these strap hangers show up, you would, you would give like this full EOD brief that was like a half an hour long that showed twisted vehicles that had been blown up, all the different types of IDs. And it scared the shit out of people.

• 1:14:08Speaker 01

  It just wanted people to appreciate what was going on.

• 1:14:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Freaking sketch people out. And, and it was, this is one of the examples I talk about. Um, my first deployment to Iraq, we would drive at basically the max speed of the Humvee, 60 miles an hour, super tight, close together, totally blacked out and haul ass. And when we got ambushed a few times and every time we were like through the ambush and never took a, took a RPG round or an ID that hit us.

• 1:14:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, or effective fire, which just wasn't.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  Cause we would be past it.

• 1:14:38Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and then you fast forward to our deployment and white lights out on the road, searching the ground, vehicles going one mile an hour spaced out. Like that's just radically different.

• 1:14:54Speaker 01

  It's still radically didn't make any sense as far as like a combat effective, but you're more now defensive and, and you're playing the reactive game. Because if you do get hit doing 60 miles an hour, that vehicle is probably going to, you know, depending on how big the charge is, now it's going to flip, you know, or, and now it's just, it's, the idea was let's try to spot it. Cool, we'll spot it and then back out and go a different way, you know?

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  Remember that time we came in from south and we rolled, we rolled in like whoever was on point, might have been Johnny was like, hey, there's, looks like there's something and you guys got out and looked at it and we drove over it. And then like two hours later, oh yeah, Dagger found a freaking triple stacked IED in there.

• 1:15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was a command wire that was, yeah. And one of the drivers, one of our guys got out and like, and I remember being in the vehicle behind him. He got out driver's side to like pick up this one. Like, whoa, whoa, didn't I not teach you anything, you know? You know, it's like, yeah, this is something, you know? So, but, and it was funny because that night, he goes, man, I'm, I'm sorry. I'm so dumb that I did that. You know? But yeah, thankfully, thankfully, we.

• 1:16:03Jocko Willink?

  But Dagger later found like the full on.

• 1:16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, on that route. I don't know if that was it at that location, but it was definitely on that route.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  No, bro, we got, we got, we got lucky with a lot of that shit. Um, that was like the other time where I think, uh, we were at Cop Falcon. We had just taken down Cop Falcon and we're all sitting up there. Most of you dudes are asleep. Chris Kyle's got freaking, what is it? Chef Boyardee or something all over his face. Uh, cause he's asleep. And Dagger was going down and they found an ID right in front of Cop Falcon and, and Leif is watching. He's got his head over the freaking, the, the, the wall, watching them prosecute this thing with the digger. And I think you were like, hey dude, that might not be the best place to like hang out and watch this happen.

• 1:16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, and there was a, you know, and, and at the same time, what they, they had a tendency to do because if they didn't get support from, um, you know, from the big, the forks basically from those guys running that thing, then they blew those things up all the time. Uh, not their fault, but they were just trying to prosecute, uh, suspect devices. There was a trench. Um, it would have been just west of, of where, where we set up Cop Falcon. And what they would do is they would burn. I mean, if there was a lot of like, you know, vegetation, they would burn it because what that would do is he would either sympathetically detonate it or it would expose, it would expose, uh, any, any ordinance or any IEDs. And they had done a burn and there was a bunch of little, they're small little 82 millimeter, um, mortars that were all like wired up, but they had burnt out all the

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  circuitry system and everything and it never detonated, but it was like sitting right there. And yeah, and we had crossed right over it, you know?

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  It was pretty quick, like how he gets hurt.

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  Oh, man, that was like the first two or three weeks, I think. Three, yeah, three or four weeks, yeah.

• 1:17:56Jocko Willink?

  We end up putting in cop iron, which was, again, there's some, those, those operations stand out because they were big. You know?

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Well, they were, they were so, they were joint. They weren't just us, you know, and, and when I look back on it, the remarkable part that we were, we, because like I said, you know, from the beginning, we were, we were all in, but what you guys did was not just go in there and like, hey, conventional forces, you're here to support me. It was what can we do to support you because without bragging about it, but it's like, we have these capabilities and these assets that we can then support you. What are you guys doing? And then working with them on how we can plug in to be, to have, to be involved, you know, with it. And that, that's, that was, I think that was such a huge change, not only for that region, but for a lot of part of the war was that all of a sudden,

• 1:18:47Speaker 01

  you know, soft guys are want to support us. Like that's kind of a new look. I mean, to be able to work with, and later on, you know, working with like a lot of the army units, I mean, like I said, first the 506, and then later on in my career with 10th Mountain is just phenomenal. You know, I mean, those are iconic, huge, like in my, in my world that you look up to and, you know, to be a, you know, a small part of their, their mission was, was phenomenal.

• 1:19:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the relationships up and down that crossed the chain of command, you know, was, that's what it's all about. And you had to, you absolutely had to. I mean, you can't go into, you, you can't just start walking around in someone's battle space. I mean, you will a hundred percent die.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  You can, you're just not going to get supported.

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're going to get shot.

• 1:19:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's not going to be a, a quick, you know, reaction force to necessarily help you.

• 1:19:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. How much did you go and? Like what other EOD elements were there? Did you go talk to Dagger? Did you go? Cause you would bring back, you had like pictures of IEDs. Were you getting those from those guys?

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we would go over and talk to them and it was funny cause I'm trying to, I don't remember the timeframe. Uh, but Tony and I actually did a ride along.

• 1:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I remember that because I approved it.

• 1:19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause you had.

• 1:20:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I'm like, dude, I'm.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Well, and I remember the, the, what you came back with, cause it was a Navy, uh, uh, team that had ripped into Ramadi that was doing, uh, IED response. And, uh, you know, I knew a couple of them and they, I was like, hey man, we go right along. And the response initial was like, so, and I think you asked me this, so what happens if you die? And that means, that means T U Ramadi is down in you, the guy, that's kind of problematic. And Tony was like, I'll go with them.

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:20:29Speaker 01

  Cause that'll help. Yeah. Well, it was funny because Tony, Tony comes up, we're, we're mounted by the vehicles. This is him and I. And he's like, he goes, hey, if they find something like a wire go to a house, I'm one, you're two. I'm like, okay. Thankfully.

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It was rad riding in the back of those things. So like in the back of Dagger.

• 1:20:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  Because in a Humvee at night, night vision on, you're like, can't see anything. It's just all freaking hunkered down and, but riding, like I did rides in the back of Dagger, getting from east to west, right?

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:00Jocko Willink?

  And dude, it was so chill. They had air conditioning in there.

• 1:21:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  And because you don't have a job, right? They're working, they're prosecuting stuff and looking, but you're just kind of sitting there and, and here's like, and they turn white lights on. So you just get to look around. It was pretty wild. And that was another funny story was Tony was, I think he was riding back from, um, from Corregidor and he was in a Dagger.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. Yeah. Cause you catch a ride with those guys.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, um, they like stopped and this was like, that was the first time we went over there. Now he's going back. And so he wasn't too familiar and he's like, he's listening and they're like, you know, like we got someone up here. Yeah. We got, yeah, this looks like something. Hey, we got a, you know, uh, we got an ID up here. And he said, he's sitting in the back and he's like, By IED, do you mean improvised explosive device? Like he was like, damn, we're sitting on it. Cause that's what we're saying. They were like, we're sitting on one and we need to back up or something like that. It was just classic kind of Tony, you know? You mean improvised explosive device? Like we're about to get blown up.

• 1:22:00Speaker 01

  I later on, like in Afghanistan, I had done a ride along with those guys again. And, um, I mean, and you know, terrain in Afghanistan is obviously very different, but it's like 14 hours, man. So it may have been a air conditioner. It was nice, you know, and everything like that, but holy shit.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. Play my last, I wasn't trying to make any kind of statement.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know you are.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  What those guys were doing and it was awesome when General McFarland was on. And, and, and same thing with, um, with Colonel Dean, like the, those guys, like he, like Colonel Dean was talking about it. He says, you know, I would get the dagger guys, which was these, these route clearance guys. He's like, I would get them for, I forget what the number was, but it was, you know, three days a week for four hours. And they'd go out into Tameem and they'd drive around and get blown up or, and those guys, those guys did that every night for, like you said, 14 hours a night or whatever it was, crawling along on the streets, waiting to get blown up. And yeah, there's some guys that are in the mind proof vehicles.

• 1:23:03Jocko Willink?

  They also have an element of guys that are in hummers on security that are holding security for those guys. Those guys just night after night after night. And by the way, those quote mind resistant vehicles, they were not always mind resistant. And there was, those things were taken out, guys were killed inside those vehicles. So, uh, the, the scene over there from that, from that IED perspective was freaking crazy.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Well, there was nothing, anything that we did, we couldn't do without guys, without those guys and without guys like that. Because I remember we would request like a dagger, a clearance before, you know, we would do a route, you know, a few hours or whatever ahead of time. Cause the way they're, I mean, and I'm sure it's changed, um, you know, it all depends on geographics and threatening in the areas. But they would roll, there would be like an eight vehicle package. And then one of the vehicles would be specifically EOD response. So they're waiting for whatever they're prosecuting. And then they're like, okay, we've gone as far as we can, they'll back out and then the EOD team goes to work. And it's like, I mean, so that's, you know, a scene could take four, five hours. Once they find something. So now everybody's trying to stay awake. You know, it's just, yeah.

• 1:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we inserted guys off of Dagger a few times, like sniper elements. Cause then it would be kind of a clandestine way to do it, because those things are out there. But I remember you could not rely on the timeline at all.

• 1:24:22Speaker 01

  Nope.

• 1:24:22Jocko Willink?

  Because you were gonna say, oh, just get them 600 meters down this road and they can go, they can get inserted. That 600 meters might take six hours or four hours, when it should take 20 minutes. Because they have to just dig out IED after IED after IED after IED. It's freaking totally ridiculous. And that's why when Tasking the Bruiser started putting sniper teams out and killing those IED emplacers, man, those freaking Army guys and Marines were freaking pumped.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:50Jocko Willink?

  Especially when we would do it like, oh, there was an IED that killed two soldiers in this spot? Cool. Sniper Overwatch, three days later, kill an enemy.

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  Emplacer.

• 1:25:01Jocko Willink?

  Emplacer. And it was like those Army guys would be, they were so freaking thankful, you know? So thankful that we were able to make that happen.

• 1:25:12Jocko Willink?

  When that opening thing that I read, read, that was like, again, the enemy was changing TTPs all the time. And that, the 38 Marines had been in an Overwatch and they were leaving the Overwatch. And as they left the Overwatch, boom, hit an IED.

• 1:25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that was in the firecracker.

• 1:25:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, it was in firecracker area.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  No, I remember that and we, we read the report on it. We're like, okay. So if at any point, we're not going to have a mutually supporting Overwatch, if we, you know, if we have two Overwatch positions, you have got to see my, my primary means of exit, of egress, and I've got to see yours. In that case, we had a mutually supporting, but they couldn't see. And that apartment complex only had one door. And so I remember when we were, the guys were making entry, I took a knee on the right side of the door. And there's like two, three little muds, mud steps. And the ground was really hard. It was really hard packed. I remember thinking to myself, this would take them a minute to bury something. So if it does, does, something does get placed here, it's going to be, it's going to be on the surface.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  So that should be easy if we do see something, but we had to clear, so that was our SOP was to clear the door. If it wasn't mutually supporting, then we started just clearing the door before the platoon would, we would basically make, you know, egress out of it from another angle, either above, you know, above it, a couple of stories or basically, you know, however, we just had to be able to look at the door before the platoon exited. You know, so.

• 1:26:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:38Speaker 01

  Cause that SOP, what they, what they, what that TTP that they were doing was they would shoot at you, drive a car, kick out an ID or bury one and then take off. And then the idea was during that firefight, you take a casualty, you have to then have bring trucks in, leave, and then they detonate it as you're leaving because they can see you. But it was never our MO to leave during a firefight because we just had so, you know, you would think there were six people in there, but there'd be 26 people in there. So we just never got in a scenario where we had to, you know, hot extract out of a building.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and that right there, that story is like exactly why when my old commanding officer said, hey, you want someone that's thinking about EOD, a team guy walking up to a door to go set an overwatch isn't going to be thinking, hey, let me just touch this ground and think about how long it's going to take to replace something and think, they're not thinking about that. And they wouldn't be thinking about that, even if they went to EOD school, you know, they would not have that mindset to make that happen.

• 1:27:29Speaker 01

  And that wasn't something like you, we learned in EOD school. That was like, we read the reports and it's like, okay, this is what I'm going to do from now on, you know?

• 1:27:37Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, that's what, uh, when team five replaced us, that's, that's exactly what happened to them.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. They, they had three positions, uh, from what I understand. And then, um, yeah.

• 1:27:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They were, they were getting shot up. I think they had a guy get wounded and they decided to exfil. And when they exfil, they hit a massive IED that thankfully didn't kill anyone, but it certainly gave a catastrophic, life-changing injuries to a couple of guys.

• 1:28:02Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Cop Falcon gets put in and it's, that's the other thing is interesting about these like big operations. You, you have to, it's totally joint. You're working with Iraqis, um, working with army or Marines and the planning process. And I didn't realize this. So, so General McFarlane came on and he, one of, one of the things that he wanted to do, and I just, when I look at the dates, his, his goal was to do a, like a battalion sized operation every three or four days. That's why these, these, these things took place. Like they seem, in my mind, they always seem like, oh, we did cop. Like if I was to ask you, how long was it between like cop, putting in cop iron and putting in cop Falcon and putting in the hospital?

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  How long do you think that was in between those? A couple of months, probably, I think, two or three, three months. I'm gonna, it was like, probably two weeks. Oh, like, it's, it's cra- I know, that's, yeah. So, like, you look at it, you're like, oh, my gosh, and, and, you know, I have the dates of when these things happened. And it's like, oh, yeah, it was like, oh, as a matter of fact, when the, when Cop Falcon and Cop Hawk, which is the hospital, those were planned to be simultaneous at the same time. And actually, they bumped one of them because they wanted, they wanted to have us in there overwatching it. So, but they just bumped it by like two days.

• 1:29:34Jocko Willink?

  So, all these operations were just like boom, boom, boom, boom. Wow. And it was like, oh, yeah, you guys can come back for a day, reload, refit, and you're gonna go do another one. And that's what it was like. Yeah, that really felt like it was a couple of months, not a couple of weeks. I know, the whole thing is, it's, it's, it was nuts. And that was the logistics behind that. Yeah. Like, I was talking, we're talking about this with Colonel Dean, because Colonel Dean, you know, he was a battalion commander, so he doesn't really, he, he would be surprised, he's like, oh, somehow, there's another freaking 200 uh, Texas barriers that just showed up, like, he didn't have to think about it because they were just there. But like, the logistics that it took to make that happen, and to have every two or three days,

• 1:30:17Jocko Willink?

  another 200 or 300 Texas barriers, barrier show up in Ramadi, ready to go out and put around a, a combat outpost? There was a freaking crazy amount of stuff going on. And it was also,

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  it was,

• 1:30:33Jocko Willink?

  it was awesome that so many of these big operations, it was SEALs going in first. It was SEALs going in first, Cop Iron, it was SEALs going in first, Cop Eagles, it was SEALs going in first, Cop Falcon. Those guys, they wanted us out there so bad. Um, and it was what I was talking about before, like, once Dagger come, came through to clear, that was so critical for them. Dagger would come through to clear, they would love if we had eyes on. If we had snipers overwatching that clearance and then watching to make sure, that was one of the, I wouldn't say it was go, no-go, but man, they were appreciative. And it was a- It was almost a go no go.

• 1:31:14Speaker 01

  But that goes back to like at the platoon level. That's a trust thing that was developed internally. And then we just had to basically, you know, the scope just got bigger and say, hey, had to develop these trustful and these trust relationships with these units. And that was something that I think that I learned and I observed was that, that I really carried over even into my life now is really bridging gaps with units, with relationships, with people, with other organizations. I mean, that like, that is so much, I found that that's, it's so much more effective. And then just basically, hey, look at me, look at this is what we're, this is what I'm doing, this is what we're capable of doing.

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  But building that trust and find that the mutually benefiting elements of these relationships are completely, they're so much more effective this way. And so that was like what I, that was my first real look at what, in the positive light of calling what the war machine is, because that's what it was. It's like you talked about all these like new, you know, HESCO barriers or all this other stuff shows up, guys just go to work. You know, I mean, yeah, there's a bit of self preservation with it, but they just, they just knew. And then that's where all that decentralized leadership really kind of comes into play. It's like, guys just know that this is their role. This is the machine that has to happen.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  This whole time, obviously, there's, there's people getting wounded, there's people getting killed. I

• 1:32:38Jocko Willink?

  I

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  I had to, I knew, I just didn't think it was possible to continue to do that

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  and be lucky forever. Like I, I, you know, I, if you guys were rolling out and I wasn't going on an op, it was like, I would have the most horrible feeling, right? And um,

• 1:33:13Jocko Willink?

  And not, not to be like fatalistic, but you just look at the numbers, man. Just look at the numbers of, oh, going out tonight, going out the next night, going out the night after that, going out the night after that, going out the night after that.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  It's, I, I, and I, I don't know if I was the only person that

• 1:33:40Jocko Willink?

  was looking at it going, the luck is, the luck is gonna run out, man.

• 1:33:51Jocko Willink?

  At some point, you know, it's just, you, you can't, you can't drive down Route Michigan that many times. You can't go on a foot patrol that many times. You can't get in that many gunfights and not, you, you just can't get that lucky. Or at least Iowa was, I had the feeling like, at some point, someone's gonna get wounded. Someone's gonna get killed. And the wounded came pretty quick. Um, and, and then there was guys getting shot in the camelback, guys getting shot in the chest plate, guys getting shot in the helmet. I mean, when the guys are getting shot in the camelback, the chest plate, the helmet, the backplate.

• 1:34:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you have that feeling? Or did you have the indestructible feeling?

• 1:34:42Speaker 01

  Oh God, no, no. I mean, it was, I mean, it was, you know, you don't, you, you, one doesn't develop courage by ignoring fear. It's by basically going into it. And so, um, the, it, it felt like it was, it was coming. Um, and we did do a shift, like, you know, in, in July, um, we did do a shift. We stopped in the afternoons and we started focusing on the mornings because the afternoon and the evening is kind of the witching hour, right? And I was like, where it was like, starting to cool off and then, you know, prayer time. And then that's where the activity would start. So we started focusing on the mornings.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  But yeah, it got it got nerve wracking and scary.

• 1:35:29Speaker 01

  It was then when we were actively in firefights.

• 1:35:37Speaker 01

  That it was like there wasn't a fear, there wasn't a fear. It was before it, it was when it wasn't when it was quiet, when it wasn't happening. Cause like in firefights, I mean, we were like in our element. This is like, fuck, this is this is actually kind of fun, you know? But we're effectively fighting as a unit and we are laying down fire superiority and we are making our moves and making our calls and and moving. Uh, but it was when it was quiet was when it was most unnerving and even planning. I mean, it was unnerving. It's like, we are going fucking where?

• 1:36:06Speaker 01

  And what just happened? Okay, you know, but we, I say we, but I think I can speak for just about everybody on that. But myself was like, well, this is war and this is bigger than just me and just us. This is the machine. I mean, we were supposed to be here to liberate this entire region to basically make them this is what we were charged with. But disagree with it or agree with it politically or not, it doesn't matter. This is what we're here for.

• 1:36:35Speaker 01

  You don't expect a unit like us to go and not bring everybody home. They weren't really necessarily trained for that.

• 1:36:46Speaker 01

  Train for down men procedures and things like that. And of course, you know, like the cadre down is the biggest guy because you gotta be prepared to carry the biggest guy. Win the firefight and then treat combat first aid.

• 1:37:01Speaker 01

  But when it shows that our unit is not invincible.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a stark reality and I think that the wounds that have lasted for decades afterwards was really unexpected.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:37:33Speaker 01

  I mean, I miss them all, man. You know, I mean,

• 1:37:40Speaker 01

  it was, um,

• 1:37:49Speaker 01

  but it's war. You know, it's war and,

• 1:37:54Speaker 01

  there's not a course that or a training block that you take or you go to during unit level training or any advanced training that teaches you how to deal with that and that that is a reality. I think it's more glossed over and some ego that it's like, ah, you know, if I get shot, you know, fine, whatever, and you know, just do this for, you know, for my family or whatever. But I think that when it really, it starts to get real when guys are getting hurt, just like you said. And it's like, you start to get that, that gut feeling that it's not a matter of if, but when.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  And you try to move and predict how it could happen. And then counter that with different SOPs and go here at this time and use the nighttime and, and all of your different

• 1:38:41Speaker 01

  advanced equipment and advanced procedures that you do. And then, out of nowhere.

• 1:38:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, um, Mark, uh,

• 1:38:54Jocko Willink?

  being the, being the lead turret gunner, right? And, you know, I, that lead turret gunner, bro, that guy is, you know,

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  Exposed.

• 1:39:03Jocko Willink?

  Exposed, you know? And I, and he would just be up there night after night heading out. And, you know, I, I remember I wasn't going out, so I'd be out there. And actually, it was awesome because when you guys were going out, everyone, like in the task unit, the non SEALs, the support guys, everyone would be out there kind of seeing you all off. And I remember talking to Mark and, you know, like, you good? And he's like, good to go, you know, just, just.

• 1:39:32Speaker 01

  It's who we are.

• 1:39:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep, just awesome.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  But that's contagious too, man. Like, it's like the, you know, fear and, um, questioning, I mean, that, that spreads like it's like wildfire.

• 1:39:48Speaker 01

  But so does, uh,

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  So does the optimism. I mean, this is what we're here to do. You know, like it or don't. I mean, it did even even over there. It's still a volunteer program.

• 1:40:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, you can, but it never, you know, it's, it's nice that it never comes to that. And so the support piece from, from, from the guys into each other started when we were first, you know, formed up, you know, and that's, that's how you can tell. So,

• 1:40:25Jocko Willink?

  so Ryan gets, you know, Ryan gets wounded, freaking horrifically wounded.

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  You guys get him out of there. You go back to Cop Falcon.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Armies identified some spots where they think the insurgents are. They're in, they're in one of the biggest gun battles. And by gun, I mean all guns. Like they're using main gun rounds. They're, and they, you know, ask Leif, hey, we think we know what can you guys come out and hit these guys? Can you guys hit some of these targets? Leif calls me like, hey, this is what they want. And, you know, can we help them? And to me, it was, it wasn't really even a decision. It was, hey, the army who has supported us over and over and over and over again, need help? Well, and I was like, yep, go.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  And, and, you know, that's when Mark gets killed.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  And then all that, you know, and, and especially because it's like Mark and Ryan, just two freaking, just badass with the, with that energy and that, that immortal like vibe.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Gone.

• 1:42:05Jocko Willink?

  And you know, when you're talking about, oh, we, we don't really, yeah, we trained for down man, we trained for the medical, we trained for this, we like, the war's not over. I mean, not at all. And, okay, we're gonna, we're gonna have a, we're gonna see him off. We're gonna stand down for a day, two days. And then guess what? Going back out. That's what's happening. Um, and there is no, there is no, uh, it's not like, oh, well, we, we, it's

• 1:42:48Jocko Willink?

  not like playing roulette where, or what people think roulette is like, oh yeah, well, it's been, it's been black, you know, 10 times in a row. It's definitely going to be red this time. Nope. Doesn't work like that. You took a casualty today, you could take one tomorrow. You could take one the day after that. Doesn't matter.

• 1:43:04Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's get gear back on and go back out there. And, yeah, I, you know, from, for me, it was like, there was no school. There was no, no class on any of this. And I remember you made this freaking video, like a memorial video for Mark. And you're, you were showing it in the tactical operations center. And like to basically confirm that it was all ready to play at the memorial service or something like that. It was my first time

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  seeing it. And I'm standing there, I'm watching it. And I remember like, I got done with it. I was just, just done. And I remember turning around, walking out, and I was just trying to not break down in front of you and the rest of the people in the talk. And I just turned out of there, walked out of there and just went outside and just broke down by myself alone. Because

• 1:44:15Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's a certain point where you're like, okay, yeah, this is not, you know, I, this is too much right now. And that was that, that was that moment for me. Like I'm, I watched your, your video. And got done with it. I was like, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm gonna break right now. And I did went outside and freaking by myself. Got my shit together. Um, but everybody, I also knew like, I was like, everyone is having this. Everyone is having this.

• 1:44:49Jocko Willink?

  And the only, what we have to do is move forward. That's one of the things, you know, that's, um, and I remember telling you guys, it's like, when I finally, when we got together, I was like, hey,

• 1:45:03Jocko Willink?

  we're gonna go back to work. And I remember the look on everyone's faces was like, you know, everyone's a little bit different.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  But everyone, it was the one common language that I think that everyone had was,

• 1:45:22Jocko Willink?

  we go back to work. We, hey, I'm scared, I'm horrified, I'm pissed, I'm angry. All those emotions could all be turned into going back to work.

• 1:45:38Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's what, that's what we did.

• 1:45:44Jocko Willink?

  That was, um,

• 1:45:46Jocko Willink?

  what you have to do. That's what dad, father figure teaches you when you fall off your bike at, you know, three or four years old. You have to get back on it. You can't be afraid of it. I mean, this is what we're doing. And I remember what, if it had been me and not Mark, you know, and Mark was sitting in that room. Yeah, well, you have to get back to work. You know, we'll grieve and, and we'll memorialize. And we'll carry on, but it's not going into a corner. You know, for the next, for the rest of the last two and a half months of deployment and not doing anything.

• 1:46:24Jocko Willink?

  You have to show and be resilient.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  God doesn't just give you resilience and strength and discipline. Gives you opportunities to develop those things. That's one hell of a way of sending that message, but that's what it was. It's like, we have to get back to work. And notoriously, every unit is known for that. You have to. You know, Mark was, um, God, he was such a, he was such a good 60 gunner. You know, when, when, I mean, hell yeah, fucking animal, dude. That dude would carry that thing. I mean, he got big on deployment and he would carry that thing without a sling. And when Ryan was shot and we're bounding back to Cop Falcon, you know, we're stopping at intersections and we had, you know, people passing.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  And he would, I would see, I'm holding on an intersection with, you know, people coming up and we're bumping each other out. He would come sprinting up like an Indian sprint from the back. Bumped me out, like, I got it. And I'd look back at him and there'd be like another eight, 10 people behind him and they would all go past him. And he would clean up the rear and then he would sprint past and clear. I mean, like, bro, I mean, that soccer stamina is kicking in right now, dude. But he was, yeah, he was, uh, he was an animal. He was a machine. And, um, the great thing about the way with it, you know, you and Mama Lee and Leif, you know, and guys like myself and, and other guys that are, you know, Bobby.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  We have done, um, a, a good thing and continuing to make sure his legacy and his story is not lost. And we do memorialize him, um, the, the, the right way. I mean, there's, you know, Andy had said it really well a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago. He said, you know, a lot of people can't, just your average American can't named a name of somebody that died in World War II or Korean War or Vietnam. And the list goes on. And because this long stretch of combat operations, um, spanning over 20 years was, has involved so many people. Um, it's the right thing to do is to continue every August 2nd and every March 20th, you know?

• 1:48:40Speaker 01

  You know, I'm utilizing the social media to get the message out there to people that knew him and the people that didn't know him. That's what he meant to us, you know? Not what, not how he died, but really how he lived, you know, it was inspirational. So.

• 1:48:57Speaker 01

  I used to was doing, talking about him a while back and I said that he was a very spiritual man. He was quiet about it. And he was a family man, quiet about it. He's a great soccer player, not quiet about it.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  But you know, I often, you know, and I struggled for a long time, you know, a long time after his passing. And my way of putting the pieces back together was just to not face it and get right back on a platoon, get right back into something else. I mean, I think that that's how you deal with, you know, sadness, you know, some bouts of depression and losses. You've just got to get back to work. Get back to work. And even, you know, today with guys that retire, you have to get to work. Build something. Build something within yourself. Build something with your family. Build, find a new tradecraft, but you have to get to work. Because if you sit dormant, you will not recover and you will not heal and you will not continue to grow. But you have to get back to work.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:09Speaker 01

  Because I know that's what he would have done.

• 1:50:10Jocko Willink?

  Yep, that's, that's what he wanted. That's what he would have done. That's what, that's what Bagels was telling us to do.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  That's exactly what he was telling us. Like, don't feel sorry for me.

• 1:50:19Jocko Willink?

  Get back to work.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  And again, you know, I, we were not unique at all. Like, we were not unique at all. The, the, the Army and Marine Corps, companies and platoons and battalions that we were there, that were with us, we were not unique at all. They lost one, two, three, five, seven guys.

• 1:50:47Jocko Willink?

  Team dealer, 25% casualties. Like, there was, there, Charlie Company, first of 506, I forget, but it's just so many of these units, lost so many guys. And the things that we're talking about right now, they went through the same things. And guess what they did? They went back and they did their job.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  And till the end and you know, like when Mikey got killed September 29th. This was, look, was it his actual last mission? It was close. I can tell you that it was close. And you know, might have done one more, maybe, but it was close. And what was he doing? He was working. That's what the, the boys were out, working. And again, we were not unique.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  People, um, you know, the, the, the 11 AD extended for an extra three months. They lost another 20 guys in their extension. Or 20 odd guys. I don't know what the number is, but they lost people. They were supposed to go home. No, you're staying an extra three months. Oh, by the way, you're going to lose another however many people that is. And that's the, that's the key component, what you just talked about. It was what I said, what you said is like, get back to work. Now, listen. At some point.

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  You gotta take a breather. At some point you gotta take a breather and I'm sure we'll get to that. Um. We lose Mikey, September 29th. When, when did you go home? Do you remember?

• 1:52:40Speaker 01

  I made it, uh, in time. Well, I get back for Mikey's funeral.

• 1:52:47Jocko Willink?

  That must've been, um. Just the crazy to be like, oh, we're in Ramadi and now we're home and we're going to Mikey's funeral.

• 1:52:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, um, I wanted to see, yeah, I wanted to see Debbie Lee. Um, you know, I mean, it's, uh, and wanted to make sure that she was not at all, uh, that she was taken care of, you know, at least welcomed by us coming, getting off that plane. This was really awesome that she was there. Um. Yeah, I mean, it was, I think it was, I think if I remember right, the, his funeral was on the 11th or 12th of October. And then we got back like the 9th or 10th, like right before. And, um, yeah, it was, it was, we, we, we weren't,

• 1:53:40Speaker 01

  we were doing that for the family, but because it was so significant, we were also doing it for the entire community, you know, I mean, the turnout was, you know, was phenomenal. And that support was all for the family and for each other. I mean, that's what it was. I mean, it's a huge, huge loss within two months.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  But then, um, yeah, and it didn't take any time personally, um, a little bit, but I got right back to work in November and I got assigned back to SEAL Team Three, Charlie Platoon. You know?

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  And this is now, Stoner took this over.

• 1:54:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:22Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:54:25Jocko Willink?

  you actually got married 2006.

• 1:54:27Speaker 01

  I got married, um, yeah, about a month and a half before we deployed.

• 1:54:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you were married while we were on the planet?

• 1:54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:54:36Jocko Willink?

  And she's a psychologist. Was she, she, was she a, where was she in her schooling at this point?

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  She was.

• 1:54:42Jocko Willink?

  Was she psychoanalyzing you already?

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  She never has done that. And that, and doesn't do that today.

• 1:54:54Speaker 01

  So at that point, she was still doing her internship and, uh, cause she had done, um, her masters and her doctorate, uh, through Pepperdine. And we had met, uh, through friends, you know, when I was like, man, within a week of me getting back to, getting to San Diego in, um, February, March of 2005. And, uh, funny story too, as I had told Biggles when we were at Shaw's, um, in October of, of 05, that, and we'd only, you know, her and I'd only been together like six months. And I told him that I was considering proposing to her in December. And then, and then at a later time, Biggles and I were out, uh, like going, he wanted to go grab Sonic or something, you know? Biggles.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  And he asked me, he said, he goes, hey man, like you're talking about proposing, like, how do you know? And I said, well, you know, I'm, I'm at that age where.

• 1:55:46Speaker 01

  She is like, not to sound cliche or cheesy, but she's rounding off everything like in my life and she's the one that I want to spend the rest of my life with. And I said, keep in mind, I'm not that much of a planner, right? Like five year, 10 year, eh, you know, but I do know that whatever I end up doing, she's going to keep me in check. And I like to think that that was when he first started the, the consideration of proposing to Kelly.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  And later on that, you know, he had mentioned it, you know, like after, after we all got back and everything, he'd mentioned that he's like, hey, man, you know, like that chat, like, yeah, that was cool. Fuck, man, don't put this on me, dude.

• 1:56:27Jocko Willink?

  I've actually, I've actually had that chat probably four times where people would ask me like, hey, how did you, how'd you actually like know? You know, like they, they're looking for some magic answer.

• 1:56:38Speaker 01

  Well, what I would tell guys is marry up, don't marry down. You know, marry up. I mean, she was gonna, you know, she finished her, her internship and was defending her, doing her dissertation, defending her dissertation. And eventually, you know, finished and graduated with her doctorate out of Pepperdine. So, clinical psychology. That's the same, people would ask me the same thing. Like she analyzed you? I mean, she could do her second dissertation on just me alone.

• 1:57:05Jocko Willink?

  So the attitude going into, now you go back into task unit at, you know, Seth's running it. I remember he was, he's like, we're not tasking a bruiser.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  He would, he would say that. He's like, we're not, he's like, we're not tasking a bruiser.

• 1:57:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:21Jocko Willink?

  He's like, that's, it's not happening. He's like, I'm not doing it. He's like, I'm not taking it. That's you. You're good. Like, I'm not, we're not tasking for this. I was like, whatever.

• 1:57:29Speaker 01

  That's cool. I didn't know he said that. He never, he never echoed that to us. So.

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Jocko Willink?

  But the conversation was when we got home.

• 1:57:41Jocko Willink?

  He's like, I'm getting out. I was like, I was like, you know, because you know Seth, right? Yeah. Very emotional and would, you know, there's a lot of, you know, he, he wouldn't show it. But like when someone was, when he didn't like someone, it really bothered him, you know? When someone was a backstabber, when someone was weak, when someone like just, there's a lot of people that he would get very frustrated with. And so, you know, he comes home, I'm getting out. And I was like, dude, like chill. And, and then so finally he's, or he's like, I finally convinced him. He's like, well, I'm out. Then I was, I'll go to language school.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  So he's going to go to language school and learn French. And then he's like, and then I'll get out or then I'll do something or he'll do a freaking uh, an ops tour and then I'll get out. So I at least I was like, okay, cool. And then I was like, dude, because then they needed a task unit commander. I go, bro, you should do this task unit commander. And he's like, no. Well, you're bad. He's got blah, blah, blah. And I go, I go, dude, just do it. And he goes, I don't fuck do this shit again. Like this freaking trade act guys. And I'm like, I'm the OIC of trade. And he was like, all right. And he literally walked right down to the XO's office. It's like, hey, I'll take this task unit. And that was a hundred percent. And he took the same task unit. Yeah. So that's, that's how that went down. But the other thing I told him was like, hey, dude, like you're going to go over there on deployment.

• 1:59:11Jocko Willink?

  It's not going to be shit going on. Go out, train jiu jitsu, get jacked and freaking play guitar. Like no factor. This is, and he was like, hell yeah. You know, so freaking guys kicked ass in the workup and everything.

• 1:59:27Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, those kind of became famous last words, but

• 1:59:32Jocko Willink?

  April, we went to DC is April of 2008. You guys were all locked and loaded to go on deployment, but they had the ceremony for Mikey Monsour Medal of Honor for being presented to his parents at the White House. And they turned that into a really. Powerful and meaningful thing where basically they gave out task unit awards. So they brought everyone out there.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  Biggles was out there with Trey, his dog, like it was freaking, it was awesome.

• 2:00:01Speaker 01

  It was, there was a ceremony at the Navy Museum, the Pentagon, and then the White House. Yeah, I mean, it was, yeah.

• 2:00:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was, that was an awesome time. It was, it was, yeah.

• 2:00:13Speaker 01

  So when I, when I got back and then was basically gonna take over, you know, go to another team at the, at the EOD Command that was gonna pair it up, they want to be back with SEAL Team Three, which I respected the consistency. It's like, yeah, I mean, you know, I'm gonna know half of those guys and then like, you know, it's, it's good. The rapport is gonna be there and it's gonna be easy to bridge that gap. And I can help get the guys on the EOD platoon ready for, you know, when we get through EOD, ULT, you know, level training, that'll be easy for me to get them brushed up on getting ready for IADS, CQC, et cetera. So my mindset was I need to put all this in a package and pass it on as quick as possible.

• 2:00:55Speaker 01

  I think within about two or three weeks of me getting back, I went and sat down with a team that was getting ready to go. That was their, Advon was already gone. The EOD, some of the EOD guys were waiting to go with Team Five. And I was like, here, here, here, here's what's going on. Here's, you know, and it was just a matter of just trying to pass on this information as quick as possible. And I obviously told them to say, look, TTPs are gonna change, SOPs will change and, and, and everything, it's a chess game. But this is just everything. So I felt like I had so much information that just I couldn't keep to myself. I had to get it out, you know, to as many people as I could. And so they put me in a training cell for a couple of months before I got on that platoon to go back with Seth.

• 2:01:37Speaker 01

  And so that's what I was doing. I'm like, here, here. And so we just would put together scenarios and different and break down. And we even had a couple of teams come through and we sat down and briefed them on if you lose a guy, you know, recommendations, if you're going out. I mean, this is stuff we started doing was like, before we went out, before I'd go out on an op in 2006, I'd pack. And put my laptop in a bag on my bed. So that way I was easy to, you know, if I was injured, that's what was going to Germany with me. So it wasn't taxing the guys to pack up my shit in my room. So just like, just trying to explain that because nobody explained that to us, you know, and this is what happens. This is how it goes. When somebody gets hurt, you lose a guy,

• 2:02:19Speaker 01

  you know, the emotional onslaught of it. And then, yeah, and then formed back up with, with Team Three, uh, child platoon and felt right at home. So.

• 2:02:34Jocko Willink?

  That's actually what I did too, in the fact that, you know, um, getting done with that deployment and the Admiral, who had been the Admiral's aide, whatever, probably two years or a year and a half earlier, you know, so I, I knew him and he was like, what do you want to do? And I was like, I want to go to trade at, I want to, I want to go to trade at, I want to pass on what I learned and I want to make sure that these guys know what they're doing when they go over there. And that was a no brainer for me.

• 2:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, as quick as possible. It's like, it's fresh. I was just there, here, you know?

• 2:03:05Jocko Willink?

  And we changed a lot of training, like we stepped it up and, and the guys that were there before training, the SEAL Teams does great training, most of the time. And so the training that we went through together was great, freaking outstanding. And we were able to take that and even go, go harder and go better. And then, yeah, like I said, we did that ceremony, you did the workup, we did that ceremony, you end up going on deployment again, 2008. The plan is, you know, we're all gonna, you guys are all gonna get jacked and, you know, play guitar, whatever, take college courses, all that stuff. You guys show up and there was actually

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  leadership, senior leadership in country that had been in Ramadi, who said, oh, those guys are back? Let's, let's do something down in Solder City. That was kind of the, the genesis of the whole thing. And so they get tasked, Team Three gets tasked with sending a troop into Solder City to go and basically provide overwatch as they're building this wall down there. And.

• 2:04:22Jocko Willink?

  They ended up putting together an ad hoc crew, um, ended up instead of just taking one task unit and putting them in there. They ended up assembling like three, four, or five guys from various platoons, east and west coast, different troops.

• 2:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Probably not ideal to, to do that in some aspects. Like if you haven't worked, worked directly with people before, look, everyone went through BUDs, everyone knows what an IAD is, but even in platoons, there's be like a little different. Now you're talking different troops. There can be more difference. Now you're talking different coasts and we did our best, you know, when we would always get together, we'd meet with the east and west coast would, we'd get together, we'd go over TTPs, we'd make sure that we were in the same, you know, in the same, in the same lane, on the same sheet of music, but still just like groups of friends, you know, groups of friends have different sayings, you know? Well, two different platoons, they have little different sayings in them.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  An echo for the east and west coast thing, that's called a curriculum review.

• 2:05:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, there you go. Yeah. Hopefully we're doing that in Vegas as well.

• 2:05:36Jocko Willink?

  But you guys, you guys get put together. Seth is actually put in charge of it. It gets called debt defender, which I want to say one of the, one of the assistant platoon commanders came up with that. Seth told me the story, said, what should be called? The guy said, defender. Boom. Done. Um, St. Michael becomes the, the symbol.

• 2:05:56Speaker 01

  Two weeks, I was in out west, we were building racks in our new rooms, way, way, way out west. Two weeks. And then they're like, hey, we got a meeting. And we go in like, so they're forming a team and it's going to be working out of, out of Baghdad International Airport, going into solder city. But they're only going to take like four or five guys from each platoon. And I look at Johnny and I'm like, watch, check this out. Like, you know, so and so, so and so, so and so. And they're like, and Nick, I'm like, told you, you know?

• 2:06:24Jocko Willink?

  EOD up, right?

• 2:06:25Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep.

• 2:06:27Jocko Willink?

  And you had the experience and you know Stoner.

• 2:06:30Speaker 01

  Well, he's a troop commander, you know, so, um, yeah, so that's, that's how it looked. And so, yeah, we formed up with the East Coast guys and it was good. I mean, uh, you know, we did a long drive from way out west, all the way, you know, and made our, you know, various stops at different, at the different stations with the guys. It was interesting to see Ramadi two years later. Place looked like it was just a regular town.

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  So crazy.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it looked like Rosarito, Mexico. It was just like people were out and just like, I mean, it was, we were drive, we drove through during the day. I'm like, why, I mean, it was, it was definitely a culture shock.

• 2:07:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that, that is the model of counterinsurgency.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:07Jocko Willink?

  That was, you know, points is, is pointed to and called, uh, the model of counterinsurgency.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:07:14Jocko Willink?

  And, and just was, and urban combat, like, there's so many awesome things that happened there. And the, the 228, the 11 AD, outstanding. And that, you got to see that success.

• 2:07:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was brief, but it was just, it was remarkable. But yeah, married up with the guys and it's like, I knew a handful of the guys from the East Coast. A lot of it, and actually some of the guys I knew when I was in Puerto Rico as a boat guy, that they had deployed down as newer guys. And so, yeah, a lot of that stuff kind of comes full circle. But yeah, we had to do some IAD walkers, you know, little TTPs were a little bit different. Helmets look different on guys, you know, just different kit, you know, East Coast, West Coast gear. It's kind of funny. But, uh, yeah, you know, what you did was, what you did was a shakeout patrol, you know? You had to basically shake out gear and shake out just normal, you know, tails up, head counts, stuff like that. So, but I mean, it was great. It was great to like really open that up because then now we're working, you know, the infamous solder city and, you know,

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  the, you know, the wall down, I think it was Route Gold or Copper and being part of that, you know? I mean, another significant, you know, unexpected combat deployment to Iraq.

• 2:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was talking to Stoner, like, you know.

• 2:08:22Speaker 01

  I'm sure.

• 2:08:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so, and he was telling me what was going on and everything and, uh,

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  I forget the way he put it, but he was just like, um,

• 2:08:32Jocko Willink?

  Basically calling the fighters in solder city like this, the fighters in Ramadi were, you know, like the enemy fighters in Ramadi were like good and clever. And the, he's like, these guys in solder city are like brave and they are coming. And there might not be as clever, but they're freaking less like crazier.

• 2:08:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  And, um, yeah, and you guys went in there and, and really, really put down the sword. Um, and the whole thing was like, six weeks long. And it was, what happened?

• 2:09:15Jocko Willink?

  They, basically the, the sheikhs that were in there, the hoodlums and the sheikhs and their, the Mahdi militia leadership, like they had been just wantonly killing Americans for five years at this point. And really doing it sort of uncontested. Uh, because solder city was off limits for, for all practical purposes, it was off limits. And so now, American forces went in there, they're trying to build this and they're still getting away with a lot. And then you guys roll in there with that defender and kill a ton of, of moosh fighters. And they came to the table and said, uh, let's work something out.

• 2:10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then we stayed for another two or three, or three months.

• 2:10:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:04Speaker 01

  You know, didn't have to go back into the city. We were just going back into surrounding cities, but no.

• 2:10:15Jocko Willink?

  This is, you know, again, you get, you get tagged your way out there in the West. This is a, once again, you're stepping up into a situation where the outcome is known, is not known. But we can, we can start running some numbers and start running the odds. How do you feel about going in with that defender?

• 2:10:35Speaker 01

  Well, we got that call or we had that meeting. Um, I had a message and email from my wife that day. And so I called her and, um, she was pregnant.

• 2:10:46Speaker 01

  I'm like, yep. Yeah. So this, you know, the same day, I'm like, well, then this might be it. Then there's at least my legacy will at least continue. So yeah, there's that, you know, bit of acceptance then, okay, you know, I mean, this is how things are lining up. And this was, this is the messaging. So, um, yeah, so, uh, yeah, go back out there. And, and like I said, it's like we formed back up and, you know, new faces, new names, you know, and, but, uh, it was great. I mean, in, in, you know, in retrospect, it was, I mean, I get to do more demo than I know I need to do with, you know.

• 2:11:23Jocko Willink?

  What demo were you doing?

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  Loopholes.

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  Just getting your loophole charged on.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And really figuring out like the best way to the science behind it. And I was, I was showing preachers and snipers how to do it. So it could basically not have to set up eight or 10 charges myself, you know? But it was great, man. I mean, it was like, there was, um, we were in it and we were living in like, we're, we're at the, the zoo, um, Saddam Hussein Zoo is the, like the building we were living in. It's like open bay, but he didn't care, you know, we were, you know, we were part of it. So we got picked and we got picked because of our cell responsibility, our, you know, our sole responsibility of the platoon and because we were trusted and we were experienced. And so it was this varsity super platoon that was put together and, um, we were just, man,

• 2:12:11Speaker 01

  I think that, I think we were all just stoked to be there and not, you know, not out west. So, you know, here we were expecting, you know, Jim, tan and eat, you know, kind of deployment.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Coming home from that deployment.

• 2:12:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  How are you doing?

• 2:12:36Speaker 01

  Uh, good. Um, yeah, good. It was time, uh, to.

• 2:12:43Speaker 01

  Occupy the mind with something else. I wasn't, I wanted a break and I wasn't that hard to sell that on the EOD commands. It's like, hey man, like, I'm tired and want a break. So I went over to the training command, the EOD training command and I was running an air program, a jump program. So the EOD jump program had been really good for a few years and then I basically bridged a gap with the East Coast Training Command that was running a freefall program. So we were running a freefall advanced course, you know, basic like rope stuff for new EOD students and then it's like some sustainment stuff like, you know, static line and, you know, boat drops and things like that. And so-

• 2:13:22Jocko Willink?

  Did you get like hooked on freefall? Right? As soon as you did it, were you like, oh, hell yeah?

• 2:13:26Speaker 01

  Well, I did it and then I got back from that, our deployment 2006. And so I started just doing it. And it was like, I mean, what was it? It was occupying me with, you know, this, you know, I had this loss and it's like, this is just like, I'm, I'm driving on something. Just this is, I'm just gonna go, go, go. And it was great. So, yeah, I did that for a couple of years and it was, it was really cool because-

• 2:13:50Jocko Willink?

  And your son, your son was obviously born when you got back?

• 2:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was January 2000, January 9th, 2009. Yeah. Yeah. So the, we got, uh, that air program, NSW, didn't have much. And so I started inviting the West Coast, you know, SEAL platoons and working with their airloft and like, do you guys, you have guys that want to come? And so I would start getting like a squad from Team 7, Team 3 guys came through. I didn't even get SDV guys to come through. So we were basically doing this advanced two-week, you know, hey ho, jump profile in Arizona. And so it was, I mean, it was really, it was, I loved it. You know, we're facilitating this advanced training

• 2:14:34Speaker 01

  for sustainment and currency. Whether or not, you know, this side would ever use it as a real operational capability, didn't matter. NSW funded it. SOCOM looked at it as like, it's a viable program. So if we can get guys good enough, then perhaps at some day, some, somewhere, they could at least, you know, jump into a, you know, a-

• 2:14:56Speaker 01

  A like a static kind of compliant, you know, like hey, we gotta get these guys into this, you know, AFSB or whatever it is, you know, they've got to get them in and we can't land a C130, we can jump them in. So at least the proficiency was there. So that was my mindset. I was packaging this information that I had and just trying to basically build curriculum and get training out to the guys. So.

• 2:15:18Jocko Willink?

  And how long did you do that job?

• 2:15:19Speaker 01

  About two, two and a half years.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  And what was after that?

• 2:15:22Speaker 01

  Then that was coming up on 2012 and I was going to basically get slated to go back over to Mobbing at three and they had changed the dynamics because I'd picked up E7. They had changed the dynamics of the structure of a EOD platoon. It was that if you were going to do an LCPO, you had to be a senior chief. So they wouldn't put me on an EOD team going back with any of the West Coast teams unless I was an E8 and I wasn't. So I'd done my master board. I was a master EOD deck at the time. And then a buddy of mine who was former East Coast was the training officer at Trade at. He's like, hey, man, you should come over here. And then the CMC at Trade at also knew him from all the jumping stuff because I got, you know, met up with, worked with

• 2:16:07Speaker 01

  a lot of the East Coast guys. They pulled me over to Trade at and then was working with a couple of guys that I had deployed with in 2008 from Team Three and then was, and I got assigned to assaults and I was in the SAUC cell.

• 2:16:24Jocko Willink?

  Just setting some IDs on people.

• 2:16:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so, and there was a, there was a disparity. There was a little bit of a disparity in that block where I looked at it as this is urban, it's, you know, the guys are finishing CQC and then now doing urban combat. Well, I'm assigned here. I'm going to, I'm going to ramp this up, but I'm not going to like, I'm not going to like really test and evaluate the platoons, the SEALs. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull the EOD, the four EOD guys that are assigned to them, and I'm gonna train them on how to train their SEALs. Because it's better coming from them than coming from me. So that's what, then I basically built up like IED classes, practical, like on-target stuff where they'd have to prosecute, you know, a suicide vest or an IED at the doorstep, you know, like,

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  these like full-blown egress off of a houseborne IED. So like these different things, working with the JTACs to be able to like drop on things. So their EOD guys would get schooled up from me, and then they would train their respective platoon. So that way, that report, because I'm not going with them, they are. So I wanted them to look good. So I never did like anything that was like gonna make the EOD guys look like shit in front of their platoon, right? Tried to, but, you know. So that was like, that was the mold that I tried to create with those guys. At Trade-Ed, and from what I understand, it's still really successful and that model is still going.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a great model.

• 2:17:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:48Jocko Willink?

  2012, your daughter's born.

• 2:17:51Speaker 01

  December 2012. Yeah.

• 2:17:53Jocko Willink?

  So everything's kinda going like pretty awesome at this point?

• 2:17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I'm busy, you know. Yeah, I'm busy and kinda trying to start to look a little bit forward, you know? It's like, where am I gonna surf next? Not so much that anymore, you know? So.

• 2:18:10Jocko Willink?

  Got mouths to feed.

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:12Jocko Willink?

  Not just stoked to reel.

• 2:18:13Speaker 01

  Responsibility, you know. But yeah, you know, life, life seemed to be, yeah, life was kinda shaping up pretty good. And then what I really noticed too, and was that, and it was kind of like, it was a little, it was kinda contagious in the, in that, in that cell with us at Trade-Ed, was that a few of us started having some like short-term memory loss stuff. Because, I mean, we were, we were breaching. And the guys, we, because we wanted the guys doing heavy breaching, mechanical, manual, and explosive breaching. And then so. They didn't, nobody was doing any studies, but we kind of started throwing it around like, we understand as a breacher, or so you're supposed to have like a ballistic helmet. We're like, we started wearing bump helmets because of the venting.

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  So like when the shockwave would go through, we wanted to vent out the top as a, this is our own science, right? You know, that we're looking at. Bro science. Don't worry, Echo's got a PhD in bro science. Yeah, yeah, so make sure you wear eye protection and you know, yeah. But, um, so that kind of, that was like, that was a, that was a little bit of a tough time. You know, sleep was kind of tough, um, you know, at least for me personally. And, um, yeah, just kind of fatigue, but I was ready. I really loved it there. I loved it because it felt like being back on a platoon. Trade at was awesome. Trade at was like, one of like, next to being on deployment, it was one of the, that cell was one of the coolest places I'd been stationed. I, I'd been assigned. Um, and then it was awesome because then I got a, I got a, like, uh,

• 2:19:40Speaker 01

  I had a conversation with one of the guys who was a platoon chief at Team Three. It just so happened to have been a new guy on my first deployment to Guam in 1999. And I was a platoon chief at Team Three and he's like, hey man, you want to go with us? Yeah. So I ended up doing an augment for about four months to Afghanistan with them in 2014. Um, just as an E5.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  An E5 chief? Yeah, since an E5, took, took, took two bags and a, and a weapon suite and I was set. How was that, how was that deployment? It's fantastic. What was going on? So, um, I first got paired up with, uh, with Alpha Platoon and then I moved out to Tragel Platoon. And it was, um, yeah, it was, it was something else to be in Afghanistan in January. You know, like my first, my first look at it. Um, but it was long, uh, over watches. I'm like, damn, this is my, my specialty. Rural or urban? Mostly rural, but there was, there was some urban. We did end up getting into some urban situations. But it was really cool because we had a lot of friends that I'd worked with at Trade at. And I knew through the air, uh, program I was running that to be in Afghanistan with and a lot of snipers,

• 2:20:51Speaker 01

  a lot of, you know, big gunners. And so it was great, you know, to be part of that, uh, with those guys. And I got to, and as luck as it have it, I got to pull up and, you know, pull up a pressure switch IED and, and rip that out of the ground. Yeah. So that was unexpected. So it really was it? Cause they had EOD guys and it was like. You know, that was not my role. My role was to help the assault force, to be part of the assault force and then help, you know, be a part of the EOD guys as well.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Talk me through this shit. So you're free, what, you're on patrol and all of a sudden it's like EOD up or did you see it or what?

• 2:21:22Speaker 01

  No, so there was a, so we were in vehicles, we were in vehicles coming back and the, one of the,

• 2:21:31Speaker 01

  one of the Afghans had stepped on basically a pressure switch and he, they, they got him out and we were stuck. We were waiting for dagger for like the, at the time it was called something else, but for the route clearance to come and clear it. And I was like, hey dude, like it's already blown up. Like there might be a secondary, but let's, you know, check it out. And so went down and it's like, okay, well there's wire going to the blast hole. There's another wire there and it's all night. You know, I'm like, yeah, it's like, um, you know, take out my, uh, my little, little, uh, non metallic knife, you know, it's like a ceramic knife. So there's no, you're not, you know, closing any contacts. It's like, yeah, it's good to go. Grabbed it. I'm like, hey, it's clear, man. And the guy's like, we're just gonna wait and just give it some time, you know, but the stuff I was good because

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  like that, it's like, wow, you know, you, you, and I can say this now, but it's at the time you're supposed to like turn that in, but it's like, it wasn't anything new. So what did I do? I brought it back with me and I put it on target during, uh, you know, full mission profile for, for trade at. It's like this, and I talked through it like not, not me grabbing it, but like this is real. Like this is like, here's, here's how they're building them. This is what it looks like. So.

• 2:22:41Jocko Willink?

  You get done with that, you keep working at trade at, is that where you close out your career?

• 2:22:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, that was 14 and then, um, I was coming up to rotate out of trade at, and I was talking with one of the EOD commands and it was like, hey, there's a spot at team seven, you know, on a, on a EOD platoon to get paired up with team seven. And like, I'm ready to go. And it did, this time I've already been in 19 years. And, um, they're like, we're gonna put you on a different team.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you make senior chief?

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  Nope. And so that was why. And so they're like, not gonna put you on that team. Had a few discussions trying to get a little bit of leverage and I said, okay, so I'll put in my retirement papers and I got some calls from a couple of Master Chiefs at Training Commands, like, hey, will you come here? I said, no, I'm just now leaving a Training Command. I mean, yeah, I got a deployment out of it, but you know, no. So I'm either gonna go with one of the West Coast teams and do this again. Or not, I mean, like you guys are, it's silly to not put me back there. I've got this experience. So, but it's okay. So I put in my papers and, and my wife was, I asked her like, well, where do you want to go? The trade-in had put me into a role as the, the, um, the, the Assaults Deputy,

• 2:23:50Speaker 01

  because the Assaults Deputy was a GS, he had then transferred over to BUDS. And so they're like, hey, you've been here the longest, you can help do in logistics for ammo requests. And I was like, sure, you know, and so that was kind of cool until they hired a new GS there. And so I considered putting in for that.

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:04Speaker 01

  To stay in San Diego. And it's like, I know this place. But she really wanted to go back to Florida. So it's like, okay. So I figured, well, let me get current back up on the jumping side. And we'll go to Florida, um, into this, this little town, you know, population 40,000 of, that's like the Mecca for parachute manufacturing. So that's where we went, you know, a little Deland, Florida.

• 2:24:27Jocko Willink?

  Did you have a plan, like specifically what you were gonna do? Obviously you got your jumps backups, you got your calls backup, did you know some people?

• 2:24:34Speaker 01

  I did, yeah. So I reached out to two different companies in December of 2015 and said, hey, you know, like I'm coming, I'm looking to come to Deland, you know, this is, you know, here's my resume, et cetera, et cetera. And I both had interviews at the same time while I was still on active duty, um, in February of 2016. Interviews went great. They both made me an offer and I went with the 1099 route. So I was working as, under an LLC as a contractor, teaching, um, how to basically military units, how to fly, you know, advanced parachute flight. So I did that for about a year.

• 2:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you like it?

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  I loved it. Yeah. I mean, I learned a lot. I mean, you know, I, I learned a lot, a hell of a lot as far as like. SOPs for, you know, advanced parachute flight for what like what the, what the guys that, what the end users needed and what they were doing. And it was a great, it was a great segue for me because, you know, I retire, I leave where I've been stationed forever with all the guys. I go to Florida and there's nobody there. And but now I get to work these contracts and I still get to be around sort of like my guys. Yes. Yeah. Except I'm not putting on the body armor anymore and I'm not part of the platoon anymore. But I'm still getting to be around the guys and that's like that personality.

• 2:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because when I retired, you know, after 20 years in the teams and something like 18 of those years. So Trade at, you know where the Trade at building was? Trade at SEAL Team Three, SEAL Team One, all right there. And when I was also at SEAL Team Seven, when I was at SEAL Team Seven, it was in the building, it was in one of the BUDs buildings that's right next to Team One.

• 2:26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:15Jocko Willink?

  So like my whole career was within a 300 yard radius.

• 2:26:20Speaker 01

  It was a circle.

• 2:26:21Jocko Willink?

  It was like a little circle. And, um, and then, you know, like you clean out your locker, you put your stuff into your minivan and drive off base, turn your badge, leave. And that's it.

• 2:26:35Speaker 01

  Thank you for your service.

• 2:26:36Jocko Willink?

  For me, I was in San Diego still. So I'm still gonna like, you know, here and see the boys and whatnot. But you just straight, now, look, it still was, it still is a very bizarre thing. It's bizarre thing when you spend your whole adult life from freaking 18 until 38. That was me. Like, that's your whole development. Like, you're not even a, you don't, you don't even have your frontal lobe developed until you're 25. My frontal lobe was developed at SEAL Team One. Like, that's it. And then it does just like boom, boom, boom. So when I left, it was definitely strange. I would say a huge piece that I had that was very lucky was I had jiu-jitsu. So I had

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  friends that weren't jiu-jitsu, which I had no friends that weren't jiu-jitsu, that weren't team guys. So I had team guys. If I wouldn't had team guy, if I wouldn't had jiu-jitsu friends, I would have been. Not really having anybody to hang out with or do anything. But I had the, so I had the gym, I had victory. You know, coming in here every day, guess what we're doing? We're sweating, we're working, we're getting after it. So you, and there's team guys, by the way, here at the gym.

• 2:27:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:27:42Jocko Willink?

  So it was all kind of, sure, there was a disruption because you pull out that, that one chunk of your life. But everything else kind of filled it in pretty quick. But you just straight uprooted to, to Florida.

• 2:27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it was July 2016. Um, I went on terminal leave, July 2016, offloading the movie van at 10 o'clock in the morning in Florida. And I'm sitting there going, what the hell did I just do? Cause it's like 82, feels like 820, you know? It's just like, you've got to be kidding me. Thankfully you get used to it pretty quick. Um, so yeah, so I did that contracting bit for about a year. Um, I did a couple of other little side things with some friends, you know, like some, taught some cops how to do a dive soup thing with their, you know, like on, in Tampa. And, um, then I got approached, um, by actually a prior team guy, 1980, 1990s era team guy who is the president of a company.

• 2:28:39Jocko Willink?

  Also like my era.

• 2:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:43Speaker 01

  And so he runs a company out there and he asked me if I would, if I would consider, um, interviewing for a research and development job. And I did, and then they brought me on and I worked there for about four years and I was doing research and development. What that looks like in the parachute manufacturing world is, um, it's kind of like a very business resume way of saying I'm a crash test dummy. Um, for testing parachutes as a test jumper, um, for the, that organization. And so we would do new projects wherever, um, government solicitations would come up and then we would respond to it. And then we would, I would work with the manufacturers and developing, um, a new system for whatever the curtail of the solicitation.

• 2:29:17Jocko Willink?

  All right. What's the most wazoo dumbass thing that you did when you were doing that job?

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Well, I'm still doing that job though, so.

• 2:29:23Jocko Willink?

  So what's the most wazoo dumbass thing that you do? Let me ask you this, do you ever, do you ever jump, do you ever test a reserve parachute with a third parachute?

• 2:29:33Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, not all that often, um, because there's like.

• 2:29:36Jocko Willink?

  Do you like put on a belly band or something?

• 2:29:37Speaker 01

  You just, you hook it up to chest rings and so it's all right here.

• 2:29:41Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 2:29:41Speaker 01

  I mean, it's not that like sketchy at all.

• 2:29:45Speaker 01

  But and then so I left that company in August of 21 and wasn't sure what I was gonna do. Started my own LLC, just like everybody supposed to do or does. And then I got a call from one of the manufacturers that I've been working with. And they asked me to come on. So I've been with them for coming up on three years. So and I do kind of the same thing. But I'm at the manufacturer. So I'm in the engineering shop with the project leads that are, you know, on the AutoCAD and on the computer designing parachutes and making changes, things to it. But being a test jumper nowadays is not like, I hope it's gonna work. It's gonna work. It's just a matter of how well it's gonna work or what are some of the problems with it? So.

• 2:30:21Jocko Willink?

  So so nothing too sketchy. How many cutaways you have right now?

• 2:30:24Speaker 01

  Oh, maybe like 30 or 40.

• 2:30:28Jocko Willink?

  How often do you cut away purposefully because you want to test something else?

• 2:30:31Speaker 01

  Not that often. Yeah, not that. It's like if we're gonna test something like that's gonna be really meticulous. And it would be like a whole team kind of gets involved. So a team about four or five people get involved. As far as like making sure all the checks and balances are done. So it's a it is a really thorough process and and they and they like to they say that if at any point you are not comfortable doing this, you are not, you do not have to do it. So this is like, you can volunteer yourself off of it really quick. So. But I get a lot of experience with a lot of exposure with, you know, military units. And that's where I get to kind of keep my sanity a little bit is that I still get to be around the guys. And that's great. You know, like I said, I'm I know that I'm not, I'm I've aged out. I'm not part of the assault force right anymore.

• 2:31:13Speaker 01

  And that's that's okay. Now, my my role now is a lot real similar to when I was an EOD guy on the assault force was I'm I'm here to basically serve, you know, something a little bit bigger than myself. I'm here to basically help make equipment, develop equipment that's safe and effective. So that way these guys can use it to go, say, rescue an American hostage someday. So that's my like my my service has been continued by that. And that's how I frame what I'm doing for a living. Yes, it's a lot of fun and I love it, you know, and enjoy it. And the way I looked at it was when I was getting ready to retire. This 20 year span, I go back to what that senior chief had told me was like, hey, you're gonna have this really big resume of all this experience. And so I looked at it and said, yes, I got to do all these great things.

• 2:31:57Speaker 01

  I have all these qualifications, these different experiences. Instead of trying to recreate this, I'm just gonna pick what I liked the most. And I'm just gonna do that. And so far, it's been about eight years riding that one out, so.

• 2:32:10Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Now, at some point, and I forget exactly when it was, you went through like a pretty rough patch with, well, I know you went through a rough patch as far as like marriage goes. What was going on there?

• 2:32:28Speaker 01

  So, you know, when, you know, post 2006 with Mark, with Mark Dine, I mean, I was standing right next to him. And so you, I processed like, you know, why me? Like, why not, like, why not, like, why him? Why not me? And then because I, I just kept working and just doing so many different things throughout the rest of my time in, that I never really stopped to reflect. I could get pissed and just be angry. That was no problem. I could be, you know, I could be abrasive. That was a really easy emotion to act on. But when things finally shut down and it was silent around me,

• 2:33:12Speaker 01

  then that's when like the darkness started to creep in. So we got to Florida in the summer of 2016, and I was just struggling with

• 2:33:25Speaker 01

  not a, not a whole lot of self compassion. Like, I, I, I'm not supposed to be here, you know? And so when I married, when I met Christie, and we got married and things were great, and I was, you know, came back from that deployment in 2006, she was everything. She solved everything because, I mean, and you know what it was like, or even what it is like. It's like, I'm having a bad day and just the smile, just the words, just the empathy, just the there, the compassion, took it all away. So now that I'm going through this stuff, she's not able. I'm not letting her basically take that away. And so I built up some resentment toward her. And then through no fault of her own, just through, all through mine.

• 2:34:09Speaker 01

  And then in November of 2017, I come back from a work trip and I left her. And so we split in December of 2017 and it rocked the kids and it's something that

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  I just, I can never do that again. I never see my kids face when I told them that I was leaving.

• 2:34:36Speaker 01

  And so I left and I just continued to work and I was just working and doing as much I could. I stayed close.

• 2:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Is there yelling and screaming? Is there like, or are you just full freaking no emotion mode?

• 2:34:49Speaker 01

  No, there's no, I mean, it was never explosive and thankfully I never crawled into a bottle. You know, I never, it never turned into that. It was never, there was no, yeah, there was no yelling and screaming and fighting like that. It was just, I was done.

• 2:35:06Speaker 01

  And

• 2:35:10Speaker 01

  yeah, so I went and got some.

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and in your mind, again, I'm trying to think of this from a, someone that's listening to this right now, that maybe could be able to go, oh, I, I feel that too. In your mind, you're just thinking, this is a dead end or like,

• 2:35:27Speaker 01

  I just didn't, I didn't like who I had become. And I, it's like, I had this, this life that I was, I was going through and it was you know, it was, it was upended. And I'm just, I'm,

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  I, I don't know how to take responsibility for it. I don't know if this, I, I just don't like who I am. I don't like who I've become. Yeah, what I've created is good, you know, family and we're financially fine. I'm doing what you're supposed to do is, as a man of the household, is support and protect. But I just, it wasn't, I, I, there was nothing I did that was going to be fulfilling.

• 2:36:06Speaker 01

  Where I, where I could sit there and say, well, if I just do this, then, then this will happen. I was, I was just done. I was done. And if something had happened to where I had died, like no problem, totally good with it.

• 2:36:21Jocko Willink?

  I remember hearing that you split up and I was just like, oh, I was so,

• 2:36:30Jocko Willink?

  I was so surprised and like, looking back, you know.

• 2:36:37Jocko Willink?

  To be like, hey dude, like if I'd have reached out and been like, at least, because I didn't, of course, the loser over here, but like, hey, man, what's going on? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, um, because it was very shocking because whenever I was around you, you two, it was like, kind of like a, kind of like a little fairy tale scenario. I mean, that's what it always, I, I was, this was like fairy tale just turned into a straight fairy tale. From my perspective, turned into like nightmare.

• 2:37:06Speaker 01

  You know, it's funny is that she would have probably said the exact same thing that it was. It was just fairy tale. And then all of a sudden I came home and she asked me, she said, hey, I just want to check in to see how things are going like with us. And I looked at her and said, I'm leaving you. And then it just, her whole world crumbled. She had no idea. So, because I just kept it in. I just wasn't talking because I didn't, I didn't trust myself to have any conversations. I didn't, I didn't want to. And, um, I just wanted to go off and figure it out on my own, you know, then about a year and a half later, I went and got some help, um, worked through some things. And then about six, seven months later, um, so December of, uh, 2019, um,

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  she's always a University of Florida Gator fan. So I bought her, you know, it took, was taking her and the kids to a UF Gator game. And, uh, we made a little stop and I bought her a new, or you know, a newer Ford Explorer because she loved Ford Explorers and hers was falling apart. And she was just like, what the hell is going on? Uh, so that was like me tapping into like when we first met, because it was the kind of the romantic things that I did when we first met, right? That I hadn't been, I hadn't been motivated to do. And so, uh, yeah, a couple of months later, we got back together. So we've been back together since February 2020.

• 2:38:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, so you're back in the game.

• 2:38:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. It's been a great four years. Yeah, it's been awesome. Yeah. And you know, what's funny was that I looked at other couples that had that family, you know, together, what I could see on the surface. I mean, it was, it was inspirational. It's like, man, I want that, you know, I want that. And I had that, but I didn't know how to face, uh, all of this, this darkness. And I finally learned how to have some self compassion and forgive myself for being so resentful and just dark, you know? And so, yeah, kinda came around and it's been, it's been a great, I don't feel like, um, I don't feel like I'm a, a, a building under construction with scaffolding around it all this, so much anymore.

• 2:39:08Speaker 01

  You know, not exactly a finished piece of art or anything, but, uh, you know, it's always, I, I accept that it's always a work in progress, but I'm not closed, I'm not closed for repairs anymore.

• 2:39:21Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you've been doing some writing and, um, I was looking at your Instagram. I'm gonna read some of this. I look at my hands and think, fuck, what these hands have been through is beyond measure. The things they've done, the things they've seen, they're old, they're scarred. My hands have provided for me and others. They are witness to everything I've seen and done, the good and the horrific.

• 2:39:48Jocko Willink?

  They've been there for my birth. They've held others' hands in times of despair. They've brought people together and ripped them apart. My hands have been clenched fists in the face of victory and defeat. They've played rock, paper, scissors and thumb wrestled with a child. They've saved my life and also nearly killed me countless times. These hands have been above the earth and below the ground, in the dirt, snow, water, fire, in the wind and through the clouds.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  These hands have been covered in blood.

• 2:40:26Jocko Willink?

  They've saved life and taken life. They've held death. They've given life. They've prevented pain and caused pain. These hands have destroyed lives and healed others. They have shaken violently from fear and anger. They've applauded and fist bumped friends and strangers. They've dragged dead bodies in the street and pushed friends across the finish line. They've embraced with love and pushed away with fear. They've made things happen and not happen. They've shaken other hands in greeting after making deals and also ending friendships.

• 2:41:09Jocko Willink?

  They've waved hello for the first time and waved goodbye for the last time. They've saluted people, flags and the coffins of my friends.

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  These hands have pulled triggers, grenade pins, and smashed people's faces in.

• 2:41:28Jocko Willink?

  My hands are destroyers and healers. The same hands that have nourished a baby and provided life.

• 2:41:37Jocko Willink?

  These hands are worn and ragged. They are tired and sore. They've held her face as she looked into my heart.

• 2:41:47Jocko Willink?

  These hands have felt the beating heart of someone they loved, and felt the final heartbeat of someone they loved.

• 2:41:56Jocko Willink?

  They lift, they pull, they drag, they throw, they struggle. They've been through heartbreak and triumph.

• 2:42:05Jocko Willink?

  They try to nurture my heart when they hold my face and catch my tears. I look at my hands and I can see everything.

• 2:42:14Jocko Willink?

  These hands are the truest part of me. They are the worst of me and the best of me. They hold my story.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  I feel like, um, you know, obviously I've written a bunch. And I feel like it's very helpful. And, um, I have, yeah. I realized it, kind of going through, uh, losing guys, right? Cause I oftentimes ended up being the guy giving, um, you know, some kind of a eulogy, some kind of speech memorial services. And I got into the mode where when someone died, I would like just start writing. Cause I knew what was coming and, but what I realized is I, it kind of made me,

• 2:43:13Jocko Willink?

  feel better. Um, and when Stoner died, it was like,

• 2:43:21Jocko Willink?

  probably three or four months later and.

• 2:43:26Jocko Willink?

  My son, who was really close to Seth, and he was probably like fourteen or something at the time. But, and he's not like, he, he's, he's, he's a tough kid. And he came home from school one day, and he, and he would not, he doesn't complain about anything, like especially to me, because he's not getting any, you know, any sympathy from me. So he's never gonna be like, oh, you know, I need this, or I need that. But he said, when I'm in school, I'm having trouble working because I keep thinking about Seth. And I could see like he was sad, right? Because I mean, dude, Seth took him, when I wasn't around, he was like, and he, I would

• 2:44:10Jocko Willink?

  love to say Seth was like an uncle to him, but he was more like a brother because Seth was kind of like a fourteen year old himself in many ways. So, so they were more like bros than they were some sort of, you know, older brother or situation or, or uncle situation. But he was, you know, so my son was, clearly this was bothering him, of course. And I said, hey, all right, this is what I want you to do. Write a letter to Seth's mom and explain to him, explain to her what, why you miss Seth and what he meant to you. And he did

• 2:44:49Jocko Willink?

  it. And he never talked to me about it again, you know, in a negative way. And I've always told people, like, that's one of the things that I think is very beneficial, is it's a, it's a way to detach from your emotions, right? Because you write the words down, you have to process what you're thinking, and then you see them on the page. You think that's been helpful to you?

• 2:45:13Speaker 01

  Oh, and it's like, yeah, I mean, that's great advice to, to have, to have given him for sure. But writing has, and it, and it snuck up on me. I've always been You know, I I try to be very grammatically correct because I like that's like that style of writing. And it's like when I went, when I went to school, I was really, you know, I learned a lot about, you know, at least proper writing and the best I can. I'm still, you know, a caveman, you know, look at the fire I've created. But I really do love writing and because I I always try to keep it in, you know, in the first person and with me as as the as the as the main sort of antagonist of the of the like both the protagonist, like both roles.

• 2:45:57Speaker 01

  Because it is about me and it's a way for me to be able to keep in touch with my emotions. Because while I can sit there and I can't, if I'm not, you know, communicating anything.

• 2:46:07Speaker 01

  It's one thing when you're having a conversation with somebody and you are basically going to get some type of response. This way, no one's responding and it's just me. And it's funny because I'll write and I'll go, oh, there needs to be a comma there. But it's not like anybody's going to read it, but it's just for me to actually get it out. And sometimes it's, sometimes it's a story, sometimes it's a dream or an interpretation of it. It's just anything, but it is getting it out there. I was working with this coach a couple of years ago and I just lost a buddy of mine. This is back in in 2021 and she was saying, she's like, you, you guys are, you're so, you're so similar in so many ways. You can just, you're just, you don't play checkers, you play chess with your words.

• 2:46:50Speaker 01

  You're like, I'm going to ask you something like, how do you feel? And then you're like, oh, well, this, this, this. And she goes, stop. Feel. And we're like doing this on Zoom and she's like, you know, just feel. And then she goes, well, how do you feel? And then I would respond and she'd say, stop. She goes, it's a, it's a trick question. You're not supposed to respond. You're supposed to sit there and just feel. You don't put words to it. There shouldn't be. An emotion is an emotion. We, we have created words on how to describe how we feel. I just want you to sit there and feel. And so I do that and then I write. So I sit there and I just don't even like whether I'm sad, struggling, happy, whatever it is, I'll just sit there and then just go to work and then I'll put it to paper.

• 2:47:33Speaker 01

  And I usually, I very rarely do I ever change anything. It's almost always the same. Sometimes I'll write about Mark. Sometimes I'll write about me. Sometimes I'll write about the kids. Sometimes I'll write about, you know, God and spirituality and whatever it is and philosophy and anything and just nothing. Sometimes it's just free association. I'll just go and that's it. I can do it at any time because I'll do it on my phone. I don't care. You know, yeah, it's not pen to paper, but it's like, I will just go. We were driving, my wife and I, we were driving like up to Northern Florida. This is like a year ago and we're getting off the freeway and I said, hey, can you take over driving? And she's like, you okay? I said, yeah, I just need to write. Like I got something and I don't want it to leave. And she's like, sure. And so I just, I didn't, even we were 20 minutes from it, but I didn't want to lose it. It meant so much to me and it was just like, just go. And so I really

• 2:48:18Speaker 01

  think it's a really good form of self-therapy because sometimes you like what you write, sometimes you don't. So can you really be your own worst critic? I mean, because we usually are, but nobody's going to see this. No, there's no judgment, no pressure, no expectations. Just do it. And that's, that's the work that I put in because it's a choice. Did someone advise you to do that or did you figure it out? She did, the coach I was working with, but I didn't start writing until- You say coach, what is it? So I was doing some, basically some work with like, well, like Nick Norris and he was working with like basically some coaches for guys like post-service. Got it. You know, just basically some talk therapy stuff. And it's like, you know, she's not, she's not a, you know, a therapist. It's a coach. So, you know, it's not all the state

• 2:49:02Speaker 01

  rules that go with it. So we just worked with her for about four sessions and we're just chatting, getting to know each other. And she had recommended it and I'm like, yeah, okay, writing, cool, whatever. Sure. But between work, the gym, seeing my kids, seeing the world through my kids' eyes and writing, like life is pretty good right now and I really like it.

• 2:49:29Speaker 01

  So I don't have a five year plan.

• 2:49:34Speaker 01

  So, but I did stop surfing, so I chilled out on that. So that's good. So.

• 2:49:38Jocko Willink?

  Wait, why is it good that you stopped surfing? Cause you went to Florida?

• 2:49:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, what's a Florida? Yeah.

• 2:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it? Aren't you, what are you, 40 minutes from the coast?

• 2:49:45Speaker 01

  Like 20.

• 2:49:46Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  It's also New Smyrna Beach is like the shark bite capital of the world. So I'm good. Cause like, if you get, if you get attacked by a shark off the way, this is where my brain works, right? If I get a, you know, attacked by a shark off the coast of San Antonio Island while I'm surfing out there on a work trip, probably not gonna make it. I get bit by a shark in Florida, I'm gonna be out of work for like eight months. I'm not gonna die. So it's like, you know, this is how it works for me. So, and it's really not worth it, you know? I mean, very rarely is a surfer really get like, you know, Southern California quality. So, but.

• 2:50:19Jocko Willink?

  You also, well, that's awesome that you're like in a good spot and you kind of had to be because you did that. The, the seven skydives in seven continents in seven days.

• 2:50:31Speaker 01

  No. Yeah. So I was approached in June, July of 2021 about this concept. And I was asked if I could be sort of like the, kind of the expedition lead on basically helping plan all of these different locations.

• 2:50:48Speaker 01

  My response was, man, you're biting off a lot. Like, that's a very huge puzzle enigma to try to piece together, especially all seven continents in seven days. But what did this do? This gave me some, that gave me a purpose because I mean, that's what it is, man. I mean, for us, for us men that we get to an age, it's like, what are we looking for? I just want to be valued. I don't need to be like loved and adored. I want to be valued and respected. And you give me a mission and I'll do anything to get there. And so this was that opportunity. And it's like, you get to be around some other like-minded individuals, military, prior military guys. And so we started planning, you know, what, 18 months, 18 month planning cycle for it, couple of training camps. And we were looking for a nonprofit to support.

• 2:51:32Speaker 01

  Because we had, you know, we had support from sponsors like Black Rifle Coffee Company, you know, Andy Stump's podcast, and then we had some other, you know, ancillary sponsors, but we wanted to support it for, for a nonprofit. And I had done some work with Folds of Honor, just kind of here and there, doing some jump stuff with them over the years. And so I approached Larry, who kind of runs a lot of the fundraising for it. And we got in some discussions and then we agreed to, we all agreed to support Folds. And what I loved about Folds was that, you know, they're not biased. You don't have to have been, you know, a Green Beret, you know, an EOD guy, an Navy SEAL. Like, we support, you know, whoever. And they're, what they do is they

• 2:52:13Speaker 01

  do education scholarships for deceased service members or disabled veterans for their dependents, kids, wives. So they do private education scholarships for private school or college or, you know, things like that. So that to us seemed like it made the most sense. Because we didn't, we had, you know, Ranger, a couple of team guys, Ranger Regiment, Ranger, Marine Scout Sniper, we had a JTF Two Canadian guy. So we wanted to really open it up to where it wasn't just going to be for one specific foundation. Yeah, and it went off, it went off pretty good. I mean, it was, like I said, it was something post military that gave all of us something to like buy in and believe in.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  It'd be kind of hard to go and eat a burger on seven continents and seven days, you know what I'm saying? Like, yeah, like just doing that alone would be pretty impressive.

• 2:53:01Speaker 01

  It was, it was, it was, it was hard. I mean, we spent a week in Antarctica, because when you go to Antarctica, you have to stay there for a week.

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  Wait, why is that?

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  Because, I mean, it's a giant piece of ice on the planet, and planes don't just go in and out of there all the time. So we flew there, and I think it's a 737 that we flew in from Punta Arenas, Chile, that flies about a four and a half hour flight down to Union Glacier, and it's a two mile long ice runway. So when you, yeah, it's really cool. So when you land in a plane, you know, the plane lands on any normal runway, hits its brakes. Well, this one doesn't. It has to power down and slow down because it's ice.

• 2:53:35Jocko Willink?

  Did you say two miles?

• 2:53:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's this two mile stretch of runway.

• 2:53:39Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:53:40Speaker 01

  It's crazy. So the guys that work, it's called ALE, Antarctica Logistics and Expeditions, the company, one of the companies that runs Union Glacier Camp. I mean, they do all sorts of stuff, like in this December, they'll have the Antarctica Marathon. Expedition teams will go down there to do expeditions down to the South Pole, cross country skiing, you know, and there's like Penguin, you know, excursion, stuff like that. But it's really a lot of really cool people that run that camp down there. So Mike McDowell, Tim McDowell. And then the rest of their team is pretty awesome. So.

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  So then you hit that and then it was just like.

• 2:54:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. So our clock started.

• 2:54:14Jocko Willink?

  Airplanes, airplanes.

• 2:54:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the clock started. I think it was on January 9th. We did our, we did our jump into Antarctica. An hour and a half later, we're on the seven thirty seven flying to Chile. So we get to Chile, do the jump in Santiago, two continents down in like 14 hours.

• 2:54:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's legit.

• 2:54:29Speaker 01

  Fly to Miami, getting ready to execute the North America continent FAA, no TAM system goes down. So all, the whole commercial travel had, it's shut down, hadn't been shut down since September 11th, 2001. So like we're flying commercial. What, what are we going to do here? So guy, it was cool. It was a really good, really a good example of why we put the kind of team together. We didn't put the team together because they were the best jumpers in the world. Some guys had, you know, less than 200 jumps. We put the team together because they're so resourceful. And so guys just went to work and so got funding, got some support. We ended up, you know, chartering a plane from Miami Executive to Barcelona.

• 2:55:10Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:55:11Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:55:11Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's expensive.

• 2:55:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that part I was like, as long as we get, I worked the Barcelona piece, not getting the Barcelona piece. So we got to Barcelona. We spent about five and a half hours on the Europe continent, jumped there and then bounced down to Cairo, jumped over the pyramids and then from the pyramids, from, from Cairo to UAE, jumped in Abu Dhabi and then bounced down to Perth and did the last, skydive in Perth. That's six, I think we did it in six days, six hours.

• 2:55:40Jocko Willink?

  Got it done.

• 2:55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then the documentary was released in May. There were some screeners like in New York, Tampa, LA, a couple in Texas. And then they were doing some stuff in Colorado. So I'm not sure if it's going to get put on a streaming service or anything, but a lot of the information, um, yeah. So that's how it's, uh, it's going. But we did really good. We raised a lot of money for folds, did some Fox News bits and things like that.

• 2:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 2:56:02Speaker 01

  So yeah, it's, it's, it's been a really cool experience and journey for that, you know? And that's where it was like, that gives me, that gave me something really to occupy myself for about 24 months to like, mission oriented, you know, and all, all the well, all, you know, all the while doing, you know, a full-time, a couple of full-time gigs. But that's where I've seen a lot of the guys that I'm still around that, you know, prior team guys especially, be successful at home because they've been able to find some value. So a good friend of mine is a prior East Coast guy. His name is Greg Andrews. He lives in Tucson and does a lot of, we do a lot of work together and he runs, he,

• 2:56:42Speaker 01

  he came out to San Diego to get MIRK treatment, that magnetic EEG treatment.

• 2:56:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:56:49Speaker 01

  You know what MIRK is?

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like magnets around your head, right?

• 2:56:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so it's like, I think it was like a 12, seven or 12 week program he did. And he saw a huge boost in his anxiety gone. It's a lot, it's a lot of PTSD treatment, TBI treatment. And so he started his own in Tucson and it's called Brainwave Now. And so he's, and he's working that hard and he's trying to, you know, marry up with nonprofits. But what my point is, is that when guys get out and they find a purpose that's serving others instead of just like, what about me? That is going to be what's going to be the service part. That that's what's going to make you feel full of gratitude is that, you know, serving others. And that, that's a kind of the, the adage is that, you know, continuing to serve those who served. And that's what I'm just trying to do.

• 2:57:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think that's with, you were talking about Debbie Lee earlier and I think that's one of the things that's just, for her to just go into full service and support mode.

• 2:57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:47Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, starting from the very first phone call from the tactical operations center that Leif made to her and the first thing out of his mouth is like, how are you guys doing? And like, it was crazy. And she stayed in that mode the whole time with America's mighty warriors.

• 2:58:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:05Jocko Willink?

  Just doing the hyperbolic chambers. Have you done that yet?

• 2:58:08Speaker 01

  No, it's hard to get like, 12 weeks to it.

• 2:58:12Jocko Willink?

  We have mutual friends that have done it and it has changed their lives, like changed their lives. And they're, I'm trying to get some of them to come on here, but you know, not everyone wants to go on a podcast. So it's understandable, but. Their lives have been changed, like drastically changed. So that's, that's awesome. And I think that's, you know, what she's focused on, right? She needed a new mission and, and she found it with America's mighty warriors. Uh, so that's awesome.

• 2:58:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:47Jocko Willink?

  And then, so what are you up to? So what's, so what's going on right now? What's the current, what's the current Nick Kush getting after?

• 2:58:53Speaker 01

  Well, um, I'm doing, uh, so I'm in between contracts right now. So I just basically will be, you know, contracting my own LLC and just do, um, like, I kind of call it advising as opposed to instructing, but sometimes I'll play like a, a military free fall instructor role, um, and coaching and things like that. So, um, it's been, I've been extremely grateful, you know, for a lot of the, the way the path is shaped up, right? You know, cause these guys will contact me and, and soul source me directly. So it's incredibly, um, you know, it's humbling, you know, to, to still be a part of the community, um, to a certain degree, right? Um, but that's what I'm doing. And then as well as working for, uh, a manufacturing company that it's called Performance Designs located in Deland, and they've been around forty plus years making parachutes.

• 2:59:35Speaker 01

  And so I test jump parachutes for their project leads and their engineers, and we basically try to put forth, uh, end products for military clients. It's awesome.

• 2:59:45Jocko Willink?

  And the kids are rocking and rolling?

• 2:59:47Speaker 01

  Kids are crushing it, you know? Jackson's fifteen. He's taller than, that's taller than my wife and he picked up golf again. He's going to try out for the high school golf team. He's playing the trombone for the marching band. My daughter is eleven and Jocelyn is crushing it with art and soccer. And, uh, they're getting ready to go back to school. So she's not stoked because she's going to middle school. So, you know? But, um, yeah, and then I do a lot of, a lot of trips to Europe, you know, working with, uh, clients out there. And so I'm going to take Jackson next year when I go to Norway and, uh, get, get him packing parachutes and, you know, helping out.

• 3:00:23Jocko Willink?

  How many jumps you got right now?

• 3:00:24Speaker 01

  A little over thirteen thousand.

• 3:00:25Jocko Willink?

  Damn, dude.

• 3:00:28Jocko Willink?

  They take Echo for tandem skydiving.

• 3:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, is that get us up to speed? Were you there like?

• 3:00:37Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah.

• 3:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Freaking, um, and where can people find you?

• 3:00:41Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, uh, like my, my extensive, uh, Instagram, I think it's Nick Kush 237.

• 3:00:48Jocko Willink?

  What's 237?

• 3:00:49Speaker 01

  Uh, it's a, it's an old, not a lot of people know this. It's kind of funny. Um, so the, the movie, The Shining. Okay. So there was, uh,

• 3:00:57Jocko Willink?

  Room 237.

• 3:00:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. There was, there was a documentary that was called Room 237 and it's about the, you know, the room that Jack Nicholson's character, um, it basically didn't, wasn't supposed to go in. He goes in and then he goes in and, um, all of the great things that he thinks like the materialistic and wonderful things think that, that he thinks that he wants in life, all of a sudden turns to the worst and darkest things in life. So to me, like I resonated with it because of the, the shit that I was going through. It's like, okay, here's this contrast and I'm always looking externally and then finally to be able to turn internally. And then that's where I can start to forgive myself still, show myself some self compassion and grow from that. So it's always kind of a reminder, you know?

• 3:01:42Jocko Willink?

  There you go, dude. I just got the, the nugget right there.

• 3:01:46Speaker 01

  Layers.

• 3:01:48Jocko Willink?

  And then, uh, how do you say D land? Cause I got it in my head. So I was looking at your stuff and I was like, oh, D land, uh, high performance, D land HP. And I thought it was like, you were saying, hey, it's skydiving. So we're like D land, like getting away from the land. Like we're going to decouple from this thing. I thought it was like a play on words like D land. We're going to get away from land, but that's actually just the place.

• 3:02:09Speaker 01

  With you saying that it might actually stick with everyone that lives in the land. So like, it used to be called, uh, persimmon, I think is what it was, it used to be called and, uh, Henry Deland, um, and whatever, you know, in the early 19, early 1900s had basically then, uh, sort of conquested the area and made it into like the citrus, you know, orange plate, orange grove place. And so Henry Deland, long hair, long beard, and now it's Deland. And in the nineties, he used to call it Deadland because nobody was there.

• 3:02:40Jocko Willink?

  But it's skydiving Mecca for

• 3:02:42Speaker 01

  Well, it's funny because like when I went, that's what I thought. And I mean, and it is, it's like this like manufacturing epicenter. It's like where all these guys in the seventies and eighties just landed was to do it here. But what I'd say it really is closer to, it's like, it's a middle of them, kind of a middle of America, it's Florida. But it's home to Stetson University, which is the Stetson Hatters. And it's a baseball college, you know, it's like they had, they've had like three or four pitchers that go, you know, go to the pros out of there. And yeah, pretty simple town and it's, it's cool. It's a nice little old town and kids love it. And I mean, if you get used to the heat, it's okay, but

• 3:03:18Jocko Willink?

  And mosquitoes.

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  It's not, they're not that bad, you know?

• 3:03:22Jocko Willink?

  Are they not?

• 3:03:22Speaker 01

  No, they're not that bad.

• 3:03:24Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I remember when I was a kid, I was going to Florida, it was like

• 3:03:26Speaker 01

  Some parts of Florida.

• 3:03:27Jocko Willink?

  And I'm talking, you know, coming down from Maine, which they say, I'm sure they say this in a lot of states, but they say like the mosquito is the Maine state bird. Yeah, cuz they're freaking gnarly.

• 3:03:36Speaker 01

  I mean, like, we put a pool in and I did put the big giant screen around it. You know, it's funny cuz I'll, I'll post pictures and people are like, hey, man, so like, do you have to clean that glass? No, man, it's a screen. You know, if it were glass, it would be, it'd be a greenhouse.

• 3:03:51Jocko Willink?

  Right on. So you can get, so you can be found, you can get this, this shirt that you're wearing.

• 3:03:55Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:03:55Jocko Willink?

  Skydive Mars.

• 3:03:56Speaker 01

  Yes, this was kind of a play on, you know, Elon's Occupy Mars. And then the guys at Black Rifle did a thing called Caffeinate Mars. And I said, well, I wanna skydive Mars. So with, you know, Johnny Kim and I being so close, you know, I said, put a good word in for me. So he's got a T-shirt. So if he can get us to Mars, I wanna jump into Mars.

• 3:04:15Jocko Willink?

  And people can get those T-shirts at Deland.

• 3:04:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:17Jocko Willink?

  HB.com.

• 3:04:18Speaker 01

  Deland HB.com.

• 3:04:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's where it's at.

• 3:04:20Speaker 01

  That's where it's at.

• 3:04:20Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 3:04:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, I got some.

• 3:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool, cool.

• 3:04:26Speaker 02

  You mentioned Greg Andrews.

• 3:04:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:28Speaker 02

  I'm assuming this is the same Greg Andrews. I know, tall, handsome dude.

• 3:04:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:04:33Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, yeah. You know, his nickname is Mr. Wonderful. Did you know that?

• 3:04:37Speaker 01

  I feel like I did know that. How did you know him?

• 3:04:39Speaker 02

  Uh, he was one of the first guys I met when I moved from Diego through my friends.

• 3:04:43Speaker 01

  No kidding?

• 3:04:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So he was, we were pretty close actually for a long time. I mean, he moved away and stuff.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  All right. Well, I hope it's the same guy.

• 3:04:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 3:04:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, he's a prior East Coast guy.

• 3:04:52Speaker 02

  Was he here for a while, like in two thousand one?

• 3:04:55Speaker 01

  Oh, he might have been. That's a long time ago. He might have been. I'm not sure his career, because I only met him, I only met him about two thousand twelve.

• 3:05:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Actually, I think he did go to the East Coast.

• 3:05:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, okay.

• 3:05:05Speaker 02

  Right on.

• 3:05:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, good guy.

• 3:05:07Speaker 02

  Go back to EOD days. So what's a loophole charge?

• 3:05:12Speaker 01

  Oh, I forgot. This is like, this is where Echo rounds off.

• 3:05:16Jocko Willink?

  Where Echo rounds off the thing.

• 3:05:17Speaker 02

  Court nurse.

• 3:05:18Jocko Willink?

  So a lot of people, a lot of people just press stop and they're carrying on with their day right now, but there's a couple of people that are listening in, dude.

• 3:05:23Speaker 02

  Or they, or they fast forward to this part.

• 3:05:26Jocko Willink?

  No, he gets some love, dude. Whenever I make little snide comments like that, first of all, there's people that just think I'm like a mean person. Because I hassle Echo, but then they'll all be like, no, we're still listening. We're still listening. We like hearing Echo's, you know, concepts and questions, so.

• 3:05:42Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's good though, because it's like, you know, you get to talk into someone like me and it's like we just gloss over acronyms. So he's like, oh, I want to write that one down.

• 3:05:49Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Got to understand.

• 3:05:50Jocko Willink?

  So you do know that he asked Admiral McRaven?

• 3:05:53Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 3:05:54Jocko Willink?

  He, he goes, do you have to be in the Navy to be an admiral? And, and God bless Admiral McRaven. You know, I was like trying to hold, I was like embarrassed. I was going to smack him. I was going to, you know, but I'm like, and Admiral Craven, like a pro. He's like, well, yeah, you know, Echo, yep, I guess you could be in the Coast Guard, but you know, generally speaking, you do have to be in, in, in the Navy to be an admiral. Yeah. And I don't even know what you were thinking, to be honest with you.

• 3:06:21Speaker 02

  First off, I didn't know that. Some, some people in the world don't know that. I'm one of those. I was.

• 3:06:27Jocko Willink?

  By the way, this was like four hundred podcasts deep. This is after we've had multiple admirals on here, but it's all good. It's all good, bro.

• 3:06:34Speaker 02

  Okay, there you go.

• 3:06:35Speaker 01

  So loophole charge is basically, so if I've got a wall, I've got a wall and I want to be able to basically put a hole, you know, say this big through it. I will assess what it's made out of. Is it mud? Is it concrete? Is it going to, is it reinforced? And that will determine how much of a charge I put in. Because the idea is I'm trying to get a hole that looks like, say, like damage from the outside, so I can see out. So snipers can actually see through that. So I'm basically blowing a loophole that looks about that big. Sniper would have standoff, so you can't see on the outside that there's a gun. In the, in that hole.

• 3:07:09Speaker 02

  Right, right. Okay. All right. Um, and one thing I'm just going off, you, you mentioned, or you said the expression, uh, take a knee, right? Is there anything behind that besides the normal take a knee? Well, you almost like you said it like it was like part of some real official like.

• 3:07:23Speaker 01

  Well, if, if, if you're, if you see an EOD guy take a knee, um, he's either, you know, tying a shoe, tired, or he's working on something that you don't want to be anywhere near of.

• 3:07:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:07:35Speaker 01

  You know, anywhere near. So that's what I was.

• 3:07:36Speaker 02

  So it is kind of like a thing though?

• 3:07:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I would tell guys, if you see me take a knee, um, like just give, give a few step because, because you know, what I would, you know, this is going through when I was especially at trade at, working that EOD portion at trade at, was that it was so important that you guys got so proficient at training your guys, because when you go to work on something, just for the love of God, make sure that you don't get someone else killed because of your decisions and your actions on. Like that's your number one responsibility is them, not you, you know, put them first.

• 3:08:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Speaking of that, I was talking to Leif and he knew you were coming on and he was like, yeah, ask him about the time that, I think him and someone else were like, hey, we need to breach this door. And you're like, hey, I got it.

• 3:08:24Jocko Willink?

  And he said they're like standing there and you put a breach on the door and then you go running past that.

• 3:08:30Speaker 01

  I, I mean, yes, but there was, because I came up and there was no room for me. It's like, well, you guys want to be the closest, you know? Yeah, that's, that's what's going to happen. I mean, yeah, I, I did just like to, uh, over emphasize the blast wave, you know, propagating through everybody. It was like when Tony asked me to disable a car. I'm like, okay. He was surprised what two blocks of C4 did on the steering column. And so was the ISR. They were like, what the hell was that?

• 3:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Didn't that do something to the roof of the, um, uh?

• 3:08:58Speaker 01

  The building? No, but it took the, the hood of the car, it blew it across the street and I came back and I was surprised that the, the car looked like a canoe. It was, I mean, I was really, I was impressed. I mean, so Tony's like, what the fuck? She said to disable the vehicle.

• 3:09:14Jocko Willink?

  Hey, hey, chief, vehicle's been disabled.

• 3:09:18Speaker 02

  All right. Last one. Um, okay. So me being a, what do you call it? The layperson, if you will. So you know how in the movies you got the bombs and they get real sophisticated, you know? Is it like that? You know, like, you don't know, don't, you know, clip the red wire.

• 3:09:33Speaker 01

  I knew it was coming.

• 3:09:34Speaker 02

  Come on, bro.

• 3:09:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I knew it was coming. Uh, no, but it can be. Uh, but you, you would, you know, the, uh, guys that got really good at it, like I, I glossed over it a little bit was like the IRA, the Irish Republican Army, you know, back in the seventies, you know, when they were really at it, heavily in conflict, um, they would do a lot of trick fuckery with their wiring systems because they knew they were going up against bomb, you know, British bomb techs. Um, and so it would be like guys would have to study wiring and it wasn't about a color. It was about where it was going and where it was gonna end up. So, but yeah. Yeah.

• 3:10:09Speaker 02

  You've watched MacGyver?

• 3:10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:10:11Speaker 02

  Okay, we're the same age, by the way. So I assume, you know, that, that might sound like a crazy question to some people, but we're the same age. So there's this one, um, I forget the name of it, but it's like a real sophisticated bomb. Are you familiar with that one?

• 3:10:22Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:10:23Speaker 02

  Oh, it's too bad, bro. That's too bad because I think you'd very much enjoy it. You know?

• 3:10:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10:28Speaker 02

  Well, you know?

• 3:10:28Speaker 01

  Did you get it done?

• 3:10:29Speaker 02

  He got it done. His friend, it's a long story, but his friend died because there's more than, it turns out there's more than one. It's a whole thing. That's why I think you'd enjoy it.

• 3:10:38Speaker 01

  All right.

• 3:10:39Speaker 02

  Good to see you, brother.

• 3:10:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. You too, man. Good Echo Charles?

• 3:10:43Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. I'll, I'll hit you up, you know, if I have any more.

• 3:10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, MacGyver memes back and forth.

• 3:10:48Speaker 02

  Come on, Rick.

• 3:10:49Speaker 01

  Right on. Yeah. Well, um, before we close out, at least for me, it's like, I want to thank you for, you know, for reaching out and having me on. I mean, it's like, um, uh, being part of like a lot of these things that, uh, you know, I try to basically still, as opposed to just, you know, doing the contract things and working, you know, for myself, um, to be part of the community, you know, like where we're, um, went to France. I think you, you reached out to me right before I went to France for the 80 year anniversary D day, is I think the further away I get from, you know, the service, uh, from my service, I, I tend to appreciate it a little bit more. You know, I think I miss it, you know, you know, you know, there's, there's times where it's like, man, I can't wait to get the hell out of here. But then when they're like, hey, clean your cage out. So and so needs it. You're like, uh, so it kind of stings a bit.

• 3:11:29Speaker 01

  But, um, finding that value, um, within what I'm doing, you know, with my life. And so I really appreciate what you guys are doing and what you've done. Um, uh, you know, especially as of recently with a lot of, um, carrying on, not just stories that you were part of. Of guys that you knew, but going back in time and it's like you're, you're, you're cracking up in this time capsule. So people can actually be exposed to it. And so I have a lot of gratitude for that. So I really appreciate it. And yeah, it's a lot of people would talk about that. And that's when, you know, when, when your name comes up in some of my circles, it's that I didn't know this, you know, you do a lot of stuff with Patton and like the about face thing. That was one of

• 3:12:10Speaker 01

  your first starters, you know, that we really was, um, seemed to be very influential. Um, so I appreciate it. So thanks for having me out.

• 3:12:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man. Well, uh, thanks for joining us, bro. I appreciate it. And thanks for sharing your, your, your lessons learned and obviously thanks for your service to, to the Navy, to EOD and to the teens. Um, most important, thanks for protecting my teammates, our brothers from harm. And at great risk to your own life. Thanks for keeping them safe. And thanks for living, truly living today to honor the ones that we lost. Thanks, brother.

• 3:12:52Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:12:55Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Nick Kush has left the building. Another, another individual, another human being who stepped up over and over and over and over again, and kept getting after it. So awesome to have him on here. Awesome to hear his perspective. And we, we talked for like an hour prior to, and then another hour, another hour after. So probably owe another, you know, another recording of more things. But this is like, uh, when you doing the podcast like that

• 3:13:35Jocko Willink?

  with Nick is almost like writing down the outline of, of, of a story, right? So you're going to get, you kind of got the major moving pieces, but dude, there's so many like details in there that could be expanded on and give color. Um, cause he definitely experienced a lot of, uh, very.

• 3:14:02Jocko Willink?

  Dynamic things. I mean, you could write like a little, you could write a chapter about, look, in Extreme Ownership, we wrote chapters about like one thing. Well, we did a lot of those things. Nick did a lot of those things. So you can start getting his perspective on stuff. It'd be awesome, but anyways, awesome to have him on here.

• 3:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So getting after it. He was getting after it. Speaking of getting after it.

• 3:14:31Speaker 02

  Oh, Countdown. I was trying to remember something. The name of the MacGyver episode with the bombs. Called Countdown. Look into it.

• 3:14:41Jocko Willink?

  I remember. What was MacGyver's background supposed to be?

• 3:14:44Speaker 02

  His background was actually super, it was like science, math, like that kind of stuff. He never carried a gun. He was like a trouble, he was a trouble, professional troubleshooter. At first for the government, then for then it kind of morphed into the secret like foundation called the Phoenix Foundation.

• 3:15:00Speaker 02

  And you'd just go out to like certain places.

• 3:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Cause it makes sense if he would have been, if he would have been an EOD guy.

• 3:15:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:15:10Jocko Willink?

  It would have made sense.

• 3:15:11Speaker 02

  Right. Yeah. If he had an EOD background.

• 3:15:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. If he had a EOD, he was Navy. Oh, this guy was Navy. He do. Kind of like, uh, Thomas Magnum.

• 3:15:18Speaker 02

  Magnum P I?

• 3:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:19Speaker 02

  Oh, hell yeah.

• 3:15:20Jocko Willink?

  You know what his background was, right?

• 3:15:21Speaker 02

  Navy SEAL all day.

• 3:15:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:23Jocko Willink?

  And TC.

• 3:15:24Speaker 02

  TC.

• 3:15:25Jocko Willink?

  He's a Sea Wolf pilot. I'm pretty sure he was a Sea Wolf pilot.

• 3:15:27Speaker 02

  Oh, for real?

• 3:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I don't know. I think the other dude was supposed to be special force, Rick.

• 3:15:34Jocko Willink?

  I think he's supposed to be special forces.

• 3:15:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:37Jocko Willink?

  Jack Carr. We need to consult with Jack Carr. Cause Jack Carr knows what's up with Magnum.

• 3:15:42Speaker 02

  Well, Magnum P I, that was when I was really young. Cause that's a Hawaii show too. And then they did a remake that I, that I, I tried to get into kind of, you know, what everybody, I, I feel like the, you know how when they do remakes, they change certain things, like kind of big things, you know, they have different takes, you know? Yeah. Like the Higgins is now a girl. And then, you know, the, you know, the, there's all these different changes, you know? Where it kind of throws you off, you know, especially if you really like the old one, it just throws you off. So it just won't feel the same. But it was pretty good. But anyway, yes, I dig it. Either way, Magnum P I, hell yeah, all day, background, fit, suited him. Private investigator now with kind of overqualified, right? So yeah, MacGyver.

• 3:16:25Jocko Willink?

  But, but you know how Jack Carr, he'll post like clips from Magnum P I. And you know, when you're watching him, when you're a kid, they're just kind of like entertainment or whatever. But Jack kind of fires them up a bit. You know what I mean?

• 3:16:39Speaker 02

  I am with him.

• 3:16:40Jocko Willink?

  He's like, this is the, he's got one, he wrote one, it was like, I think Magnum P I shoots somebody. And he explains that this is one of the first, you know, direct gun violence in a TV show.

• 3:16:53Speaker 02

  Oh damn.

• 3:16:53Jocko Willink?

  In history. Cause you remember in the old days, hey, if a man and a woman were in bed, they had to have their feet on the floor. You ever hear that standard?

• 3:17:01Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:17:01Jocko Willink?

  So in the old days, maybe it was the fifties or something. If a man and a woman were in bed, in order to make it, you know, proper.

• 3:17:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:09Jocko Willink?

  And not offensive.

• 3:17:10Speaker 02

  Not overly sexual.

• 3:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, not overly sexual. They had to have their feet on the ground.

• 3:17:13Speaker 02

  Oh, for real?

• 3:17:14Jocko Willink?

  So you'd see the, these scenes where there's like a foot on the ground, but they're kind of in bed. But yeah, I forget what it was, but yeah, Jack Carr, he knows a lot about that kind of, sort of, he's all, he's so into the, I don't know what the name of that genre is. What's the name of the genre? Tom Clancy and all that?

• 3:17:30Speaker 02

  Oh, I don't know, bro.

• 3:17:31Jocko Willink?

  And what, it's what Terminal List is. It's a genre.

• 3:17:34Speaker 02

  Oh, for real?

• 3:17:34Jocko Willink?

  It's like military adjacent thrillers or something like that.

• 3:17:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:42Jocko Willink?

  But he, he read all those things growing up.

• 3:17:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it makes sense. Do all that kind of stuff. But yeah.

• 3:17:48Jocko Willink?

  So, not me. I wasn't reading books growing up. Jack Carr was reading books. I was not. I was an idiot. Good times.

• 3:17:58Speaker 02

  Was? Okay.

• 3:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I am an idiot, Jack. Well, I do read books and I've run, read a ton of books now, but I, I didn't have that. I didn't have that, uh, gene, really.

• 3:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:08Jocko Willink?

  You know, the, the book reading gene. I had the rock throwing gene. I had the stick, you know, throwing gene.

• 3:18:15Speaker 02

  We'll just say you were a late bloomer. Let's say the genes were expressed a little late in life and that's good. That's actually worked out great for all of us. So thank you for that. Speaking of things working out great for all of us.

• 3:18:27Jocko Willink?

  Working out's great for all of us. Look at you, dude. Look at you with your little. Foreshadowing. Good job, bro.

• 3:18:33Speaker 02

  We call this like, nonetheless, Jaco Fuel. Okay, this is what we're doing. Look.

• 3:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Good seg.

• 3:18:36Speaker 02

  We're working out, we're working out hard. Hopefully.

• 3:18:39Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you asked me this morning, why my eyes were red when I showed up here. I was like, well, I worked out.

• 3:18:44Speaker 02

  Worked out hard.

• 3:18:45Jocko Willink?

  Heard of it?

• 3:18:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I heard of it, bruh.

• 3:18:49Jocko Willink?

  All right, we're gonna need some fuel for that. Get Jaco Fuel, JacoFuel.com, check it out. Also, you can go to JacoFuel.com. Also, we're going into Walmart, so should be buying about September. We're in Walmart, getting after it. Check that out. Also, we got a thing, we got a thing to reward people that are, let's say, consistent customers in the game. There's like loyalty. Haven't thought of a cool name for it yet. We need some kind of a thing to call it.

• 3:19:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:19:18Jocko Willink?

  We don't have that yet. But we got, if you, if you go to JacoFuel.com/Rewards, we just put little discount sales in there. If you need to get, if you order some stuff, we can support you ordering stuff, so you can support yourself. So that's what we're doing. Jaco Fuel, you guys know the deal. Protein, hydrate. God, hydrate's good. God, the protein's good. That milk train. So get yourself some. It's called the good flavor. No artificial sweeteners. That's the same with everything that we make. So check it out, JacoFuel.com. Also, we're at Wawa Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hannaford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Firm, ShopRite, HEB, Myers, or sorry, Meyer. If you put an S on there, people are like, what are you doing, dude?

• 3:20:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:01Jocko Willink?

  So Meyer, Wegmans, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, small gyms everywhere, Jiu Jitsu Gyms, CrossFit Gyms. Email [email protected]. By the way, we're the official sponsor of, speaking of Jiu Jitsu, we're the official sponsor of Craig Jones Invitational, where the real sponsorship should be orthopedic surgeons replacing ACLs. Also, speaking of Jiu Jitsu, you probably need rash guards for your Jiu Jitsu. First of all, we hope you're training Jiu Jitsu. You probably need a rash guard. You probably need a gi. Go to originusa.com. Get American made goods. American made jeans, American made boots, American made hoodies. Just get your American made gear.

• 3:20:47Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing. Go to originusa.com and get yourself the clothes that you need for on and off the mats of justice. Bro, I did that radio call today. That sounded good, right?

• 3:21:01Speaker 02

  It worked good yesterday.

• 3:21:02Jocko Willink?

  You liked that, didn't you?

• 3:21:03Speaker 02

  I did like that, yeah.

• 3:21:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:05Speaker 02

  Still do.

• 3:21:06Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles, Echo Charles, we need you at the front desk.

• 3:21:12Speaker 02

  Great work, 100%.

• 3:21:14Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna see, I was gonna do something tactical, like we need fire support, but instead I sent you to the front desk right there.

• 3:21:20Speaker 02

  Thank you for that.

• 3:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Clean up in aisle four. Echo Charles, clean up in aisle four.

• 3:21:26Speaker 02

  I'm here to help. Whatever you need, bro. Anyway.

• 3:21:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, we know that you push the envelope when it comes to carrying your groceries, so occasionally, you know, we're gonna have a mishap.

• 3:21:35Speaker 02

  I'm trying to do the best I can. Also Jaco's store. It's called Jaco's store. Jaco's store.com. That's where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom shirts, hats, hoodies. We have socks coming soon. I know. I know, I said it before, but they're coming soon.

• 3:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Here I was over here with a regular pair of freaking tube socks.

• 3:21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, fool. I know, but you're the main guy who needs them, by the way.

• 3:21:55Jocko Willink?

  How tall are the, are socks gonna be?

• 3:21:58Speaker 02

  Two sizes. Crew socks, I think they're called, the regular ones, right? And then the higher, the high ones that go up to almost your knee.

• 3:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Tube socks, son?

• 3:22:06Speaker 02

  I'm going with both.

• 3:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Socks, boy! Representing.

• 3:22:10Speaker 02

  I'm representing both. Hey, bro, you're gonna thank me when you go to the airport and you gotta take off your shoes and everyone's looking at your socks. And now you don't have to wear those freaking grandpa socks that you always wear. Now I can wear some cool stuff and people will be happy. You see what I'm saying? So yeah, you're welcome for that. Also.

• 3:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Thank you so much.

• 3:22:24Speaker 02

  Also, shirt locker. S H U R T. Like hurt, but shirt locker. That's a subscription scenario. You get a new shirt design every month.

• 3:22:34Jocko Willink?

  People like them, by the way.

• 3:22:35Speaker 02

  People do like them. That is true. That's a good observation, Jaco.

• 3:22:39Jocko Willink?

  Have you, do you like the fact that you kind of have a medium now to express yourself in the world? Besides your video. Rare, your rare videos that you make occasionally.

• 3:22:47Speaker 02

  Oh, you mean talking right now on this microphone? Is that what you're saying? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Thank you, thank you.

• 3:22:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm talking about your shirt locker.

• 3:22:54Speaker 02

  Oh, okay, okay. Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:22:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying to give you a compliment, bro. Sensitive?

• 3:22:58Speaker 02

  Oh, you're trying to give me a compliment?

• 3:23:02Speaker 02

  No, bro. I call it, I'm used to certain things, you know, the pattern interrupt. I wasn't ready for it. Thank you.

• 3:23:07Jocko Willink?

  What was I audited about today during the podcast? With net cushion here. What was it? I was harassing you about something. People, some people get really like, don't like that. So you got some protectors out there, bro.

• 3:23:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, you know, it's my people. Oh yeah. The Admiral thing you're, you're talking about. Yeah.

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  That one's hard, bro. It's hard to not, it's hard for me to not bring that up and chuckle.

• 3:23:29Speaker 02

  Did you always know that? Like when you were a kid before you joined the Navy, did you know the Admiral had to be a Navy guy or a Coast Guard?

• 3:23:38Jocko Willink?

  Or are you asking if I was born inherently with this information?

• 3:23:40Speaker 02

  Exactly right.

• 3:23:41Jocko Willink?

  No. But as a forty-two-year-old man that has sat through

• 3:23:47Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 3:23:48Jocko Willink?

  three hundred and fifty military podcasts.

• 3:23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:51Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 3:23:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So the point is, and will always be, you're not born with information, just like leadership. See what I'm saying? You're not just born with it. At some point, you gotta learn this stuff. Okay? I know now.

• 3:24:06Jocko Willink?

  You know what? Good. You learned.

• 3:24:07Speaker 02

  There you go. See? Anyway, back to the short locker.

• 3:24:12Speaker 02

  New design every month. They're outside of the box a little bit, but they still do represent discipline equals freedom.

• 3:24:16Jocko Willink?

  You should put on a T-shirt. Do you have to be in the Navy to be an Admiral?

• 3:24:19Speaker 02

  Maybe I will. Maybe I will. Or the shirt will say you do have to be in the Navy to be an Admiral. See what I'm saying? Educate the people, you know, instead of just making jokes all the time.

• 3:24:29Jocko Willink?

  Hey, man, we could just put graphics on there. We could educate them. Educate America. Educate the world, really.

• 3:24:34Speaker 02

  Or both. Nonetheless, it's all on jocko store dot com. So, you know, if you like something, check it out. If you like something, get something. How about that, Jocko? Is that cool?

• 3:24:43Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Hey, you need some steak in your life. Maybe you need some burger, some ground beef in your life. Maybe you needed just a straight bone-in ribeye in your life. Maybe you need a beef hot dog in your life. Could be any of these things. Could be required, needed. That's why we have primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. The best quality steaks you're gonna get.

• 3:25:12Speaker 02

  You're a steak person? Oh, so there's rib steak and then there's ribeye?

• 3:25:21Speaker 02

  When I go to the store, sometimes I'll see the difference.

• 3:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:25:26Speaker 02

  What's the difference, do you know?

• 3:25:27Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what, just a rib steak is.

• 3:25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, rib, well, to me, it looks the same as a rib, I maybe slightly different, but it looks the same, in my opinion. But I think there is a subtle difference, otherwise I wouldn't designate them like that.

• 3:25:39Jocko Willink?

  We'll check with the, we'll check with the team.

• 3:25:40Speaker 02

  Maybe ask like Leif Babin, you know, he's a barbecue person.

• 3:25:43Jocko Willink?

  We might just go to the source and just check with ColoradoCraftBeef.com or PrimalBeef.com and say, hey, what's the deal?

• 3:25:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:25:50Jocko Willink?

  With this scenario here.

• 3:25:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:25:51Jocko Willink?

  Rib steak.

• 3:25:52Speaker 02

  Rib steak.

• 3:25:53Jocko Willink?

  Huh, interesting. I don't know. I don't know. Also subscribe to the podcast. Also subscribe to JacoUnderground.com. Also subscribe to the YouTube channels. Jocko Podcast Channel, Jocko Podcast Clips Channel, cause Echo's over there making clips.

• 3:26:11Speaker 02

  Making it happen.

• 3:26:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just making it happen. Look at you.

• 3:26:16Jocko Willink?

  Also, OriginUSA.

• 3:26:17Speaker 02

  Look at me.

• 3:26:18Jocko Willink?

  Channel, also Jaco Fuel Channel, all good stuff. Psychological Warfare, FlipsideCanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Bunch of books. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. You guys know what they are. I've written a bunch of kids books. I hope you know what they are. Way of the Warrior Kid. One, two, three, four, and five, by the way. Movie coming. Don't wait till the movie. Your kids already wasted a year of their life if you wait for the movie right now.

• 3:26:41Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:26:42Jocko Willink?

  Get them the books. Besides, there's a different, there's a different quality when you're reading the books. You're gonna get a thing that you won't get from the movie. There's some, some, some things you're gonna get from the movie, you won't get from the books.

• 3:26:52Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:26:53Jocko Willink?

  Let's get all those things. Way of the Warrior Kid. Check it out. Also, Echelon Front. We have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. We got the Women's Assembly. I will not be at that. Unless you go onto Instagram and you tag Jamie Cochran and say, we want Jaco. Even then, I don't know if I'm going. I think I'm not going.

• 3:27:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, I could see how that could be maybe defeating the purpose a little bit if you're rolling in.

• 3:27:22Jocko Willink?

  What if I just went for an hour?

• 3:27:25Speaker 02

  Then you'd be defeating the purpose for one hour.

• 3:27:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, Echelon Front, Women's Assembly, September 11th through the 13th, down in San Antonio, Texas. It's, I haven't been to it, but the reports that I've gotten have been awesome. So, check that out. Also, we have a bunch of other events. We have the Dallas Muster, October 16th through the 18th.

• 3:27:49Jocko Willink?

  And then of course, we have a leadership consultancy where we go into your company and we work with your team to get them aligned and solve all their problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for more information. Also, we have an online life training academy. Cause there's skills that you need for life.

• 3:28:11Jocko Willink?

  There's skills that if you learn them, your whole life will get better. And we will teach you these skills. Go to extremeownership.com and learn the skills that you need for life. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, you heard us talk about Mark Lee today, and you heard me talk about Mama Lee, Mark's mom. She runs an amazing charity organization that has helped out so many of America's mighty warriors with the treatment that she gets for them. And that's one of the many things that she does. But if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 3:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Also, heroesandhorses.org, taking our veterans up in the mountains, Micah Fink, helping them find their soul. And of course, Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org,

• 3:29:06Jocko Willink?

  helping SEALs get out in the civilian sector and be productive and awesome. And if you want to connect with us, Nick is on the interwebs. DlandHP, or Deland, I call it DlandHP.com. Also, @nickkush237. You now know the backstory. Nick Kush. N I C K K U S H 237. For us, I'm at Jaco.com. And on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. Echo's at Jaco. Echo is at Echo Charles. Just be careful, because there's an algorithm that'll get you. And thanks once again to Nick Kush.

• 3:29:52Jocko Willink?

  For joining us for talking through these experiences and lessons learned and thank you Nick for looking out for our brothers on the battlefield. Won't ever forget it, bro. And thanks to all our servicemen and women around the world with a special salute to our EOD technicians out there who stepped towards that horror. Step towards the potential death, step towards the potential maiming. That is packaged up in every little ounce of explosive. Thank you for taking that risk to protect your teammates. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all first responders.

• 3:30:36Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for what you do as well. Thank you for stepping toward danger to protect us. And everyone else out there. Life's gonna be a challenge. But it will be that much easier to overcome those challenges, it'll be that much more fun to overcome those challenges. If you connect with other people, if you build relationships, if you build a team, if you support your team and if you, like Nick, lift up your teammates. Protect them. Keep them safe.

• 3:31:20Jocko Willink?

  And if you do that, your challenges and struggles and hardships will be overcome. And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.