76: Knowing Darkness, 6 Years a POW at The Hanoi Hilton, to See The Light and Good in Life. With Capt. Charlie Plumb

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:03:59 - Intro to Capt. Charlie Plumb. "I'm No Hero" http://amzn.to/2qeVoYW (book) 0:16:43 - Vietnam War and Flight Training. 0:29:15 - Deployment to Vietnam. 0:44:14 - Shot Down. 0:59:07 - The Hanoi Hilton. 2:26:35 - Release from The Hanoi Hilton. 2:30:44 - Life after Imprisonment. 2:38:40 - Reflections and Lessons Learned. 3:01:06 - Support, Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498533&linkCode=ur1&adid=1DKYGWXQBV0KNEZ3MZZX&, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid http://amzn.to/2n9k6I9, and The Muster 003 http://www.extremeownership.com. 3:12:25 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 76 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  Freedom.

• 0:18Jocko Willink?

  That's something that you hear me talk about

• 0:23Jocko Willink?

  all the time and I say little things like don't take it for granted. And I say be thankful for your freedom and I even say things like you don't appreciate your freedom until it's gone.

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  Pretty common statements you hear from people.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  But how many of us

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  have actually had our freedom taken away?

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  And not

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  metaphorically speaking and not some self imposed and thereby self controlled way. And not in some way trapped by a situation in our life that we don't have the courage to get out of. But I am talking about an actual loss of freedom.

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  Caged.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  Controlled.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  Starved, beaten, tortured.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  How long can you take that for?

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  An hour?

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  A day?

• 1:51Jocko Willink?

  What about a week or a month?

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  What about a year?

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  Or six years?

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  What do you do?

• 2:11Jocko Willink?

  How do you survive?

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  How do you get up every day and face the awful reality?

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  That you live in?

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  Darkness? Fear?

• 2:40Jocko Willink?

  Oppression?

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  And how do you take that darkness and that fear and that oppression and turn it into something good?

• 2:58Jocko Willink?

  Well,

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  it is my honor today to have with us a man that can answer those questions.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  Retired Navy Captain Charles Charlie Plumb.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  Naval Academy graduate, F-4 Phantom Fighter Pilot.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  And prisoner of war. In North Vietnam.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  For six years.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  Six years.

• 3:45Jocko Willink?

  Sir. It is an absolute honor to have you on and thank you so much for being here.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Thank you Jocko, it's a pleasure to be with you.

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  And

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  let's just start from the beginning of Captain Charlie Plumb. You were... I know you were born where in?

• 4:09Speaker 02

  I was actually born in Gary, Indiana during WWII. My father was about to be inducted and so he moved us to a little tiny town in Kansas. Where he thought my mother and I and my big sister could live there while he went off to war. Well, as it turned out, he couldn't pass the physical, so he didn't go to war. But that's where I grew up, in a tiny town in the middle of Kansas.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  And I know you, uh, you did, you went to work pretty, at a pretty early age, throwing papers.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 4:42Jocko Willink?

  And you referred to that in the book and that I just, that's just a nostalgic thing, isn't it, throwing, but no one throws papers anymore. It doesn't happen. There's no kids with, uh, paper routes anymore.

• 4:50Speaker 02

  I guess that's true. I, I read a statistic one time of all the, of all the successful people in the world, most of them were paper boys when they were kids, but not anymore. You know, you're right. You don't, you don't see that.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, now they're throwing up Twitter posts.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's it. No, I threw, I, I threw the, um, the Topeka Daily Capital.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  In this little town of, um, 300 people and I had about 55 customers. The, the route was five miles long and on a cold, uh, February morning in Kansas, that was off, that was a long way. I finally convinced my father that I could, um, that I could, could buy a motor scooter with all of my earnings. And so we went across the river where there was no bank in town, went across the river to Perry, Kansas and, uh, borrowed enough money to buy a Cushman motor scooter. And I was only 14 when that happened. Yeah. So, um, I got arrested one night.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  Up to no good.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Up to no good.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  What were you doing that you got arrested on the motor scooter?

• 5:54Speaker 02

  Well, I was trying to go to the county fair.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  Cause can you even speed on a motor scooter? Is that possible?

• 5:58Speaker 02

  No, no, no. I, I couldn't. But I, I was small for my age. So at, at 14, I, I know I wasn't five feet and, and had my buddy on the back and he was even smaller than I. And I think that the cops just saw these two little kids on a motor scooter in the middle of the night and we were arrested.

• 6:16Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, at some point, I think it was you had a basketball coach, there were a coach at your school that was a pilot in World War II.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Uh, he was, he was actually, uh, he, he was a vet, but not a pilot. He was a dough boy in World War I.

• 6:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he had shrapnel in his leg from his war and he walked with a limp. Um, and, but, and he was quite a disciplinarian and he, he tried to make that little basketball team work, but we, we were just really not, not very talented.

• 6:47Jocko Willink?

  What is it about, I don't know, when I was a kid and I would see, you know, a Vietnam vet, for me, that's primarily what I would see is old Vietnam vets and I'd say, hey, that guy's got shrapnel in his leg and walks with a limp. When I grow up, I want shrapnel in my leg and I want to walk with a limp. That's my goal. Is that just, is that just part of male, you know, boy nature?

• 7:11Speaker 02

  It, it may very well be.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, so what did he tell you about, about pilots? Did he explain that to you? Or how'd you get the idea from, you know, being a doughboy to being a pilot?

• 7:22Speaker 02

  Well, quite a long transition. See, this was early on in my career. Now, I had a coach later in high school that had been a pilot in World War II.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  So, uh, Bill Johnson had been a pilot. In fact, he flew, uh, F eights off aircraft carriers. And I was fascinated by that whole idea. But I will tell you that being a hayseed from Kansas, I never even dreamed of flying an airplane. I, I, I, I'd never been in one. Uh, I seen them fly over, but the whole idea of ever even riding in an airplane, let alone piloting one, was, was beyond my grasp. It really was.

• 8:03Jocko Willink?

  And so, so how did you end up then transitioning from high school and you end up in, you know, going to the Naval Academy?

• 8:09Speaker 02

  Well, that was kind of by accident too. Uh, I needed an education. My parents were too poor to send me to college. I started looking for scholarships. And, um, I, my, my older sister was dating a guy who was an NROTC student at University of Kansas. And he gave me a book that says, here's how you apply for the NROTC in Kansas. Well, the back page of the book, in fairly small letters, said, oh, by the way, it's the same qualifications to go to the Naval Academy. Well, what the heck?

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  Did you even know what the Naval Academy was? Or did you figure it out right then?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I did not know. I, I really had no idea. I, I didn't know about the Army Navy game. I didn't know anything. Now, my closest relative in the military was a cousin in the Coast Guard. And so, I was just... I was just ignorant about the military in total. So, you know, I'd like to sit here, Jocko, and tell you that I had all these great dreams, you know, of being a fighter pilot and an admiral and commanding ships and squadrons and all that, but no, it was all by accident. In fact, when I applied, well, you know, you get appointments from congressmen.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  The congressman of my district in Kansas did it by a competitive method and everybody who was interested took a government test, you know, for a G rating, you know, a government service rating, a GS test. And there were about 35 guys that took the test. And so he nominated five of us who got better scores on the test than the rest. And then he appointed one guy to the Naval Academy and an alternate, and I was the second alternate. Okay. Well, the first guy also had an appointment to the Air Force Academy, so he took that. The second guy discovered girls.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  That'll throw you off track right quick from the Naval Academy.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, that... So I was actually the second alternate to go to... And so I got on that Greyhound bus in Kansas City, Kansas, and two days later, it took me two days to get to Washington DC. And of course, I was seeing country I'd never seen before. And that's when I raised my hand, as you did, and pledged to defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  And then, at some point at the Navy, did you know about naval aviation? I guess you did from Bob Johnson. He told you about naval aviation. Did you have that thought in your mind of naval aviation at that point?

• 10:50Speaker 02

  Not really. I still, I still kind of assumed that I could never qualify to do that. You know, and thinking back at it, you know, I think, well, where were my dreams? But kids that grow up in little towns don't usually have big dreams. We don't know how to do that. And my parents, my father had completed the eighth grade, that was his education. My mother had, in fact, completed high school, but I was one of the first in the family to ever go to college. And so, you know, it was...

• 11:26Speaker 02

  It wasn't even, it wasn't even a thought, part of the thought process. So, uh, once I got to the Naval Academy and, you know, thought back to Bob Johnson and, uh, and, and that kind of experience and saw that there was a possibility of doing this, then my energies and efforts turned, uh, turned towards naval aviation.

• 11:46Jocko Willink?

  And it must've been, I mean, that's always been ultra-competitive at the academy. And I know we had another pilot on, Dave Burke, and he was talking about how each step of the way, he kinda looked around and, and said, "I think I can actually do this." You know, it's kinda the same thing. You look around and say, "I think I can get the best grades, or I think I can get in this position." At some point, you must've said, "I think I can, I think I can do this."

• 12:09Speaker 02

  There, there was, as a matter of fact, and it's a great revelation, you know, when you finally, uh, talk to yourself into accepting the fact that you do have the talent to do this. Um, and until that point, you, you, you, you don't really try as hard, I guess.

• 12:24Jocko Willink?

  And while you're at the academy also, you, is this when you got involved with Ann for the first time? Is that at the, at the Naval Academy?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Ann was my high school sweetheart.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 12:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, we played the French horn in the band together.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  Those girls with the French horns, you gotta watch out for.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, she was, uh, she is a beauty and, uh, was a beauty and she showed up at our school, but was, um, she, she, she came, she, she came into our little, uh, town in Kansas, uh, from Indiana. And, uh, she had a boyfriend in Indiana, uh, and she wasn't telling me about, you know, for the first several-

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  Charlie don't care about that boyfriend.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  No, and his name was Bart, and they called him Black Bart.

• 13:11Speaker 02

  So, so Bart was, um, and, and, uh, she wouldn't kiss me, you know? I mean, uh, we dated for months and the girl wouldn't kiss me. Yeah, dang, you know what I mean? It's, it's tough. I mean, I mean-

• 13:25Jocko Willink?

  It's the most reaction I've ever seen out of Echo, by the way, on the podcast.

• 13:28Speaker 02

  I think he's been there.

• 13:29Jocko Willink?

  You just heard him. Yeah, he had some bad memories on that one. Finally we're getting some Echo flashbacks.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  It's hard, Bill, it's hard.

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Maybe we should talk about your story. Oh, man, some other time.

• 13:40Jocko Willink?

  All kinds of kissing denials going on over there in Echo Charlie.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  So, uh, finally, I think it was Thanksgiving. Uh, yeah, yeah, it was, it was right at Thanksgiving and I intercepted a, a letter that she'd gotten from Bart and

• 13:59Jocko Willink?

  Wait a second, how do you intercept a letter?

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Well, I

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  Without breaking an entree?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  No, it was all above board, but, uh, so

• 14:09Jocko Willink?

  We'll leave it at that, I guess. I guess we're gonna leave that one where it is.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Okay. I confronted her, you know, with this guy Bart. Oh, no, she said, no, we're serious and we're gonna get married someday. In fact, he's coming to Kansas for Christmas. I said, I'll make a deal with you. Um, I said, I don't think he's coming for Christmas. And so if he comes, I'll back off and you don't have to worry about me trying to kiss you anymore. But if he doesn't come, then you and I go steady.

• 14:40Jocko Willink?

  Huh?

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Legit? Well, he didn't come.

• 14:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:44Speaker 02

  And so I, that, that started a wonderful relationship. We then went steady in high school. Of course, then I go off to the Naval Academy, Fur Peace from Kansas, and, um, and she went to University of Kansas, uh, for her first year there. And, but we continued to communicate and, and I was, well, I saw her at Christmas time when I came home and then she decided to move to Washington DC to work for a senator out there. And, uh, so she spent the next three years, the last three years at Naval Academy. They're close enough so that we could, you know, continue to see each other. So it was, um,

• 15:24Speaker 02

  and it was one of those, uh, you know, one and only kind of a thing, cause I didn't really date a whole lot in high school and she was it, for sure.

• 15:33Jocko Willink?

  So then you guys got married? Did you, did you wait until you graduated from the Naval Academy?

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah, you, no, you can't, uh, you can't get married while you're at the Naval Academy. At least you're not supposed to. A couple of guys did, but, uh, I didn't. And so the day after I graduated from the Naval Academy, uh, we were, we were married. And my six buddies held up their swords. Well, one was a Marine and so he held up his saber as we came down from the chapel through the Arch of Swords. And it was a beautiful day and a beautiful wedding. And from there, we went immediately to flight training.

• 16:07Jocko Willink?

  Did you, so when did you find out you were getting picked up for flight training?

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Our senior, yeah, the last, last part of our senior year, you could apply and, and then you go through all of the hoops that, that you go through to try to qualify for naval aviation. So I found out probably a month or six weeks before I graduated that that was going to be my, my, my tour.

• 16:29Jocko Willink?

  Did you graduate in 64?

• 16:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  So when you graduated, did you guys, were you guys thinking Vietnam already?

• 16:36Speaker 02

  No.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  Or was it just too early and it was limited operation? So it wasn't really something that you guys were thinking about front of mind?

• 16:43Speaker 02

  I don't remember ever hearing the word Vietnam while I was at Naval Academy.

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  So you rolled to flight school just thinking, hey, we're going to fly around. We're going to go do regular deployments, which you'd heard about, but you weren't thinking about Vietnam.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:59Jocko Willink?

  So at what point, was that in flight school when you first started thinking to yourself?

• 17:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  Hey, we got guys over here dropping bombs?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, Ev Alvarez, Ev Alvarez was shot down, the, the first P O W to be shot down in August 1964. Okay, so it became a reality that while I was in flight training and another naval aviator was in prison in Vietnam. Now, I didn't, you know, I didn't understand the politics. I didn't question the politics of it at all. I just did the best I could in flight training and, and enjoyed it, you know? I mean, it's, it's, it's a kick.

• 17:36Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys, did your, did your attitudes shift at all? So for, for my generation, when all of a sudden September 11th happened, it was like, it was like a paradigm shift in everyone's mentality that, that day, it was such a clear, clear demonstration and we all knew that we were going to war and that was an immediate attitude shift. Did you guys start to have a shift in attitude or was it so, because the way Vietnam escalated more slowly, was it more of a, a slow escalation in your minds as well?

• 18:05Speaker 02

  No, it was very slow. Um, you know, the, the old story of, of the frog in the, in the pot of boiling water. You know, he jumps out in a hurry, but, but no, it was, it just warmed up very slowly for us. And, um, I didn't even, as I went through flight training, you know, I mean, I learned to drop bombs and shoot guns and all that stuff and it was, it, it was challenging and it was exciting, but I, I didn't see the reality of it. I didn't really picture myself as being in combat. And so, of course, when I got my wings and then was assigned the F-4 Phantom, which at the time was the hottest airplane in the world. I mean, we had the time to climb records and the speed records and it's a, it's a twice the speed of sound airplane.

• 18:49Speaker 02

  And it was, felt very fortunate to, to have been assigned that airplane. And so I came out here to San Diego to, to fly.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  And you were talking about in your book, you'd done a midshipmen tour where a Phantom went down, both pilots killed. And, and then you got assigned the Phantom.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  I did.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  Did that give you any reservations at all?

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't remember being afraid of the airplane, but I certainly gave it a lot of respect, especially around the ship. Because that's, you know, I saw this thing go down. At the Naval Academy in the summertime, you get exposed to the possible billets that you might have in the future. So, we go play marine for a while, and we go to submarines for a while, and, and we go aboard ships to be line officers for a while. And we go to Pensacola. And so I got a little touch of it there, of actually being in airplanes. And then my senior, my senior cruise, between my junior and senior year, I went aboard

• 19:51Speaker 02

  the Constellation, the aircraft carrier Constellation. And, and we were out of Sasebo, Japan. And I'm watching flight ops from the bridge. And, you know, I'm looking down at this, at the airplanes launching and recovering on this aircraft carrier. And the Phantom came in and actually broke the wire. The pilot did okay, but he broke, he picked up the wire and the wire snapped. This cable that traps an airplane is two and a half inches in diameter. It's a very thick steel wire round cable. I mean, it's really, really strong. Because

• 20:32Speaker 02

  it has to stop this 35,000 pound airplane going down the chute at 170 miles an hour. So.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  But for whatever reason, the cable broke. Okay, the cable snapped around and it cut off the legs of three different guys who were on the deck. Okay, and it was so fast that I couldn't even, I couldn't even see it. My eyes couldn't even follow this cable because there was just, I mean, there's so much pressure, so much energy involved. And then the airplane, the F-4, was slowed down to the point where the guy couldn't get it back in the air. And so it just dribbled off the bow of the aircraft carrier and into the water. Well, of course, then I, then I turned my view to the stern of the ship to see if I could see what had happened.

• 21:23Speaker 02

  Well, the few seconds that it took from when it settled in the water until I could see out the, the back of the, of the ship, it was gone. There was no debris, there was no oil, there was nothing in the water behind this ship after this airplane had gone down. So it was a shock to me, of course. But, you know, I think I started out with this mentality that it's always going to happen to somebody else, you know, never me. And, and that I'm, you know, I'm, whatever happened, I'm gonna do it better. And, and I think that's, well, you know this better than I. You have to kind of have that mentality in combat. You can't go in thinking you're gonna get killed.

• 22:07Speaker 02

  And so, so I, I wasn't reluctant to fly the F-4, but I gave it, I think, respect.

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  So you get that and you come out, you're stationed in San Diego, that was at San Diego, right? For when you, when you deployed for the first time?

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Miramar Naval Air Station. Yep. And that's where I helped start Top Gun. That was kind of an interesting experience as well. There was a There was a pool of students to fly the F-4 Phantom. And I showed up here when they had about a six-month waiting list for me to fly this airplane. Well, six months was a long time, you know, for a 23-year-old kid. And I wanted to get in the air. So, a buddy of mine, Paul Kruke, and I had gotten our wings at the same time and been assigned the F-4 Phantom. And we came out here, and so we were both gonna have to wait for six months to fly this airplane. So, we wandered down the flight line at Miramar and found the instrument training squadron

• 23:09Speaker 02

  was flying the same airplanes that we had flown in flight training, the old F-9 Cougar, a bent-wing airplane. It's a jet, but it's light and slow and kinda stodgy. It's a Korean warplane. And they were using it in flight training to teach instruments. And the way they did this, the instructor would sit in the front seat and the students sit in the backseat, and they had a bag that covered all the windows, covered you up. All you could see was the instrument panel. You're under this bag. And so, we signed on to fly this airplane for test hops and check rides and this kind

• 23:54Speaker 02

  of stuff, just to fly it, just to stay in the air, because we were already qualified the airplane. Well, Kruke and I would save a little bit of gas, okay, each time we'd fly these students around. At the end of the hop, we would lurk off the coast of San Diego and wait for the Phantoms to come out. And so, we, you know, we, these guys would come off the runway at Miramar, and they were heavy, you know, and they were stodgy, and they were slow as they came off. And they'd get about four or five miles out in the Pacific, and we would pounce on these guys. And it was all kinds of fun, because we were lighter and could turn quicker than the Phantoms.

• 24:38Speaker 02

  You know, we were a smaller, we had a better wingload than they did, and so, we could turn inside these guys. Of course, they were much, much faster. We were not supersonic, and they were, and so, they could get away from us in a heartbeat if they wanted to. But, we started this air combat maneuvering with these guys. Well... That went on for, I don't know, a couple of months. Until one day, Kruki and I, I mean, we played the role. We had white scarves, you know, and Snoopy goggles and all the works. And one day we came back and to the instrument squadron and checked in our airplanes back in and there was a sign on the bulletin board, "Plum Kruki, report to the F-4 commanding officer immediately."

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Uh, we were in trouble. So, two, two, two guys in their sweaty flight suits, uh, knock on the door of the commanding officer of the Phantom squadron. I'll never forget this scene. The, uh, they go, "Come in." And we opened the door. This guy sits at a long desk, okay? And, uh, and, and he's got glasses. And of course, he's an old, old guy. We were 23, so, you know, he was probably 30, but he was an old. Oldest guy you've ever talked to in your life. And so he's sitting there, talks over the top of his glasses. He's in a sweaty flight suit also, which should have been our first indication. He said, "You, you two guys out there in the F-9s hassling my fighter pilots?" Um, yes, sir, we were.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  Um, "Did you follow a Phantom through an entire loop?" Uh, "Yes, sir, in fact, we did." He said, "Did you have your gun sights on that Phantom the entire time?" Uh, "Yeah, yeah, yes, sir, we did." He said, "Do you know who was in that Phantom?" He said, "I was." He said, "I just came back from Vietnam. Our kill ratio over there is terrible. They're eating our lunch. We need to learn how to fight this airplane." See, the F-4 was designed during the Cold War as a supersonic interceptor. I was never called a fighter pilot. And in fact, I trained in a space suit so I could go above 50,000 feet.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  You know, off the aircraft carrier, climb to 80,000 feet, shoot down the Russian bombers and, you know, at 45-degree angle of bank, turn, return to the aircraft carrier. That was my job. I wasn't supposed to be out there hassling, because, because it was the Cold War. We did not expect to have a, a Korean War, World War II type, uh, hassle fighter pilot. Well, of course, Vietnam came around and suddenly, you know, they're, they're flying these older airplanes that were eating our lunch. So... The CO looked at us and he said, "You wanna, you wanna fight with me tomorrow?"

• 27:25Jocko Willink?

  "Well, yes, sir. That'd be fun."

• 27:29Speaker 02

  So for the next two or three months, Paul Krueger and I, with our white scarves and our Snoopy goggles, we're getting out of the F-4. We had to start about an hour ahead of time, you know, just because they were so fast. But we'd get out to sea, we'd go out to forty miles out to sea and turn around and here they come and we'd have these two-on-two engagements. And, and that became a syllabus within the replacement air group of the F-4s that eventually became the Top Gun School.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was the start of, of retraining. Well, and it was, it was very successful. We turned our kill ratio around by teaching pilots how to fight this F-4 Phantom.

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, clearly that's a, without training to fight, how are you gonna know how to fight?

• 28:16Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 28:16Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta, you gotta be, that's outstanding for the, for the commanding officer of that squadron to say, you know what? Instead of being, instead of being mad that you were doing it, instead he's humble and says, you know what? We need to get better at this.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:28Jocko Willink?

  Let's, let's, let's keep training.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 28:30Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. And you eventually do get your time in the F-4 Phantom. You learn how to fly that. And now it's time to go on deployment. You're going on deployment now in November 5th, 1966. You kiss Ann goodbye and you go on deployment on the, on the Kitty Hawk.

• 28:49Speaker 02

  It was, it was her birthday.

• 28:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's a great birthday present, sir.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 28:53Jocko Willink?

  Very nice of you. It's like my first daughter. My first daughter was born, actual birthday, like actual birthday. Yeah, I went on deployment the next day.

• 29:01Speaker 02

  Hell, man.

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  Everyone was really happy with me on that one. When, now when you were going through the flight training and you were getting ready to deploy, now were you thinking about Vietnam at all? I mean, you must've been getting feedback. I mean, you got feedback from the commanding officer. So now your focus had shifted somewhat.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  It certainly had. And the squadron that I joined was just coming back from Vietnam. And they'd had quite a few casualties. And, and so they were talking about it. You know, the guys were, the guys were, were giving us instruction on how to work. That, another thing about the Phantom was that we had, we had no indication when a missile was in the air. Uh, because we were faster than the missile, for the most part, or higher than the missile. And so one of the things the guys, the guys told me, the fellow's coming back from Vietnam said, Go down to Radio Shack, buy yourself a fuzzbuster, you know.

• 29:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like, like police detector?

• 29:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  Radar detector?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, the old fuzzbuster, yeah, it's a, he said, because the Russian-built SAM surface-to-air missiles are on the same frequency as the California Highway Patrol.

• 30:09Speaker 02

  True, true story. And so, we have found that, if you, because we have no indication in the airplane when a missile's in the air. And so, I did, went down to Radio Shack, buy myself a fuzzbuster. And it had a little suction cup, and you lick the suction cup, and you put it on the windscreen of this, of this Phantom, and you run a little white wire, you know, down underneath your G-suit and your tor- torso harness, and under your oxygen mask, and finally into your ear, you know, you get your little earbud in there. And so, here I am, flying this twenty million dollar airplane, being protected by a twenty-nine dollar fuzzbuster.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  It worked, but the problem was, there was no direction capability, you couldn't tell where it was coming from. And so, you know.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  That's almost the worst, psychologically, you just know it's coming.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  Absolutely, you heard the whirble, and boy, you know, you started to turn and jink, and, you know, your, your head went on a swivel, trying to figure out where this, this missile is.

• 31:13Jocko Willink?

  You, but you get overseas, and you're, you're flying, you start flying missions, you're doing, you're doing mostly strike missions, is that primarily what you're doing, taking out targets in, in North Vietnam?

• 31:24Speaker 02

  The F-4, of course, again, was considered, was configured and, and built from the keel up, as a, as an air-to-air combat machine, alright? The powers that be decided, hey, there's an airplane, we can hang a bomb on it. They put on an extra, I believe, four hard points on the bottom of this airplane, maybe five, can't remember.

• 31:49Speaker 02

  So that we could carry bombs on this fighter airplane. Well, we were supposed to be interceptors. We weren't supposed to be carrying bombs around, but we found out that sure enough, this big old airplane was a pretty good platform for dropping bombs. And so, we could carry, you know, we could carry 12, 13,000 pounds of bombs into the target, which was a pretty good load. You know, we could also support, you know, guys like you on the ground that, with all kinds of, various kinds of weaponry. And so, what happened was, we had a sister squadron on the aircraft carrier. So, for a month line period, we would be fighters for two weeks.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  And then, we would, we would, we would reconfigure our airplane to be bombers. And we'd be bombers for two weeks. And we would go back to fighters, and then back to bombers. So, to answer your question, half the time over there, I was dropping bombs. And half the time, I was, I was doing the air-to-air mission.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  And the air-to-air mission primarily be doing combat air patrols to support the other elements that were flying in with bombs, and you'd be protecting in case any MiG showed up.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah. It was a CAP, a CAP, Combat Air Patrol.

• 33:02Jocko Willink?

  So, you're pretty much almost done with deployment. We're talking, you, you spend, you did what, 74 missions at this point? You've been there for five or coming up on six months? And on the 19th of May, 1967, you get a phone call and you guys get like, a strike mission comes in that you are supposed to execute?

• 33:27Speaker 02

  It was a big deal. And it was called an Alpha Strike. An Alpha Strike was the top priority. And we knew that it would be a lot of airplanes in the air, and we'd have some pretty important targets to hit. And it was sanctioned straight from the Pentagon. It was JCS stuff. And, which of course, is one of the problems in that war, was that most of our instruction came from the guys back in the Puzzle Palace. And, you know, they wouldn't, they wouldn't let us decide targets, or altitudes, or anything else. It was pretty well, well-planned by the time we got the go.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  And I got a call, I suppose, three in the morning, something like that, saying that I was to schedule this flight. I was a schedules officer for the squadron. And so I was the guy that figured out who went on what strikes and who went with whom and the airplanes that they had. And so, so I got up early to start planning this strike with the airplanes and the pilots and the back seaters, our radar intercept officers, our co-pilots. And so I did. Then we went to the briefing room and got about an hour brief on these targets. I later found out that the reason for the whole thing, the reason why we were doing

• 34:49Speaker 02

  an Alpha Strike on the 19th of May was it was the birthday of their president, Ho Chi Minh. Happy birthday, Ho Chi Minh. Yeah, exactly. The brilliance of, you know, of our, our, our, our Siwar greats was that we would catch them in celebration of their, of the big day. Because they, it was like our president's day. You know, they had picnics and that kind of stuff. And so we were gonna catch them with their pants down. Well, as most things that happened in Vietnam, they knew we were coming, for whatever reason. And that day, there were eight F-4

• 35:32Speaker 02

  Phantom shot down. But I'll never forget the beginning of it, because, you know, I took off and I rendezvous with a tanker and took on an extra 3,000 pounds of fuel and then joined the squadron. And it was, in fact, a CAP mission. It was a Combat Air Patrol. I was not carrying bombs. And so we had four of us on one side of the strike group and four of the other. And just to look, because it was three aircraft carriers and five Air Force bases. We were just throwing everything we had at the enemy that day. It was, it was an amazing armada. And I could see from one horizon to the other, these airplanes.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  And I remember feeling really proud, you know, man, you know, just to be a part of this, doing something that very few people in the world would ever do. And flying this airplane at age 24. And so that was how it all began on the 19th of May.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that we were talking about just before we we hit record was the kind of the sense of humor that you have in the military and and what that's like and one of the, by the way, I haven't even mentioned that referring to a book that you wrote called I'm No Hero by Charlie Plumb and that'll be that's available on Amazon. You can get it through. It'll be a link on the website, but awesome book.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Actually better on my website because I I sign everyone that that goes out. So my website, charlieplum.com.

• 37:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, there you go. Even better. Going to the book here, you guys are getting before you launch, you're getting ready to launch, kind of getting ready for the briefing and here we go. "The pilots of the fighter planes gathered in their own briefing room and read from a television screen and teletype the weather information and the position of the ship. We reviewed once again the switches we would have to throw and I coordinated with the maintenance officer, the weapons we would need, the volume of the fuel, etc. Serious thoughts were in the back of all our minds, but outwardly, our mood was light. We laughed and joked, drank coffee and smoked. My regular Rio, which is the radar intercept officer, is their backseater because the the

• 37:47Jocko Willink?

  F-4 Phantom has two people, was up to his old habit of manipulating his slide rule. Being a self-styled math wizard, he again pinpointed his likelihood of getting bagged or shot down. This was based on some speculative formula he had found somewhere. Today, friends, he proclaimed, my bag factor is .019376." And then you replied to him, then save me a room at the Hanoi Hilton. Again, I'm glad you're still laughing about that, sir. The rest of you, as we go through this book, will see the true irony in that joke.

• 38:30Jocko Willink?

  You know, back to the book here, we left our ready room and entered the central briefing room where all the pilots, RIOs and standby crews scrutinized their master plan, which included maps and photographs of the targets and intelligence reports of enemy's fire capability. After our central briefing, we returned to our ready room, meditated last minute instructions and put on our flight gear. Altogether, these briefings took as long and sometimes longer than the mission itself. I looked up at the screen, pilots, man your aircraft. We gave each other, we slapped each other on the back, exchanged a customary give them hell dialogue and patted the posterior of our good luck girl hanging on the door. It was time to go topside.

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  You guys are now getting ready to take off. And again, just some of this, this humor, back to the book, engine run up is good. Takeoff checklist is complete. I'm ready to go. Gary, you ready?

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm ready.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I mocked. This is your captain speaking. Welcome to flight 403 to Hanoi, North Vietnam. We'll be flying an altitude of 11 grand and we have a high ceiling. Make sure your seatbelt is fastened. No smoking, please. So that's the attitude going out and legitimately, you're, this is your 75th mission. You've flown 74. You're feeling pretty comfortable. I mean, even though of course you've got thoughts in the back of your mind, but you're feeling pretty comfortable about how you do your job and what you get done.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  I am feeling bulletproof.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't going to go that far, but let's just go there. I know that feeling too.

• 40:04Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 40:06Jocko Willink?

  The, as you push in, back to the book, all this coordination, so it's what you just talked about, this massive effort going forward, dozens and dozens of aircraft. All of this coordination of men and machinery during the refueling was done in complete silence. We called it zip lip. Although enemy radar would have already detected us, we were careful not to give radio spooks any additional information. It was gratifying to experience such close rapport with my air wing. I knew and they knew what each was doing in this intricate maneuver, yet not a word had to be spoken. And that's, I've, I've actually talked about that on here. When we would train and when I was running training for, for the SEALs, I would tell them, hey, you're not allowed to talk during

• 40:50Jocko Willink?

  this training mission. You can't say one word to each other. And it was amazing after you do that a couple of times, how much better people get because they're reading, they're reacting, they're anticipating what other people are going to do. And you guys are just so far ahead at this point, five and a half months into deployment. It's, you guys are doing this whole thing without saying a word to each other.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  It was amazing.

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I think that's one of the, one of the incredible things about the military is even though you're just a little piece of that big machine, this big powerful machine, it's, it's, it's pretty awesome to experience when you, when that stuff's going on.

• 41:27Jocko Willink?

  And you kind of talked about what, what you were doing. You were positioned on the flanks, anticipating MiGs. How often are you guys seeing MiGs over there?

• 41:35Speaker 02

  Not, uh, not often. I had seen MiGs probably four or five times up to that point. And, um, so they, they, they really were, they were, they were really good about not showing up until they knew that they could kill something. You know, uh, of course they were, they had the advantage, they had the home field advantage. And so they could wait on their bases until we came to them and then they would launch. So if you didn't get close to a MiG base, you probably weren't going to see one. They were, they had a very short range, uh, and, and uh, they didn't stay in the air very long. And so, uh, we didn't see them very often.

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  And on this one, you get a call though. You hear that, that they, they gave you a call for there's MiGs, what is it? MiGs 20, 20 West? And you start to get a little aggressive, start leading out that way a little bit, right?

• 42:26Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 42:27Jocko Willink?

  And the, and the, the, uh, uh, flight commander tightened you up and said, hey, Plum, get back over in formation.

• 42:34Speaker 02

  Yep. Well, you know, uh, my, uh, my best buddy there, uh, Denny Wisely had already shot down two airplanes, uh, by that time. And he shot down another one after I was shot down. Uh, and so he, it, and you know, I mean, that's what every fighter pilot wants to, you know, to have a MiG to his credit. And I saw this opportunity, you know, five days to go, you know, this is, this is my, this is my day. You know, this is Charlie Plumb day.

• 43:02Speaker 02

  So I started to ease out of the squadron so that I would be the first to go after this MiG. And uh.

• 43:08Jocko Willink?

  Charlie Plumb's gonna get his.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Uh huh, uh huh, that's what happens.

• 43:14Speaker 02

  But no, that, that, that's how it began.

• 43:16Jocko Willink?

  And they tightened you back up. So you fall back into formation and now there's a Sam, is there a SAM call? Did you pick it up on the, on the fuzzbuster?

• 43:28Speaker 02

  I did, but there were a lot of them in the air and, and, and so that thing was warbling all the time. Um, they were, they were, they were salvoing their SAMs that day. They just, they just shoot a bunch of them off at the same time. And so every time they shot one off, and every time their radar would scan me, I would get the fuzzbuster. But we also had, you know, we had the, um, the, the big radar airplanes in the sky at the same time. And, and, and they would call us and that's how I got that call. That 20 mile away call was, uh, was, was from our, our electronic folks that were flying well above us with a radar.

• 44:11Jocko Willink?

  So you know that there's SAM surfstair missiles up there and here we go back to the book. Gary, that's your, that's your Rio sitting behind you in the plane. You say, Gary, do you see it? And he says, I don't see a thing, Charlie. We had both seen SAMs before. They resembled flying white telephone poles with huge 4th of July sparklers spraying silvery orange glows from their tails. If we saw them in time, we could dodge the missiles by letting them close in at the last second, pulling the plane into a high G barrel roll, six Gs or so, and letting the poles pass harmlessly underneath. Because of its design, the missile could not follow us without cracking in two.

• 44:54Jocko Willink?

  But we didn't see it.

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  Boom. I felt a thump in the apernage, the aft section of the airplane. Red instrument lights jumped across the panel indicating that I had two engines on fire. That wasn't good. This plane only had two engines. I yanked the throttles back to idle and the bird seemed to come to an immediate halt in midair. Charlie, we're hit. How bad is it? She's still flying. Then the aircraft started to roll and while I madly scanned the instruments, I looked up and found that the F4 had suddenly overturned. Ground was where there was where there should have been sky. And the nose was heading downward, ripping air at 500 knots.

• 45:40Jocko Willink?

  The altimeter needle collapsed to 4,000, then 3,500, then 3,000. We had to get out, but being inverted, we would be rocketed by the ejection seat right into the rice paddies. I had to roll the plane upright. I tried the stick, it was frozen. The only manual control was the rudder pedal, not normally used to roll an aircraft. I stepped on it as hard as I could, adrenaline surging through my veins. The plane shuddered once and again, slowly, it began to right itself. Rearview mirrors reflected a screaming fireball, 12,000 pounds of flaming gasoline and 30,000 pounds of fissionable aircraft. "You want to eject?" "No, wait a minute," I shouted back.

• 46:24Jocko Willink?

  The plane struggled, then the sky was where it should be. "Gary, let's go." I jerked my face curtain to eject, the rocket slammed me out of the aircraft. I tumbled a couple of times and the chute caught, just as advertised. All kinds of debris filled the air around me as wadding from the shells whistled by.

• 46:47Jocko Willink?

  Son of a gun, they've bagged my airplane, now they're after me.

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  I winched the concussions from the exploding shells, sonic booms battering my eardrums, rockets of heavy smoke clouded the sky. Gary and I had ejected so near the ground, however, that enemy guns could train on us for only a short time. I checked my parachute canopy, it looked good, torn in only a couple of places. I thought of escape, but where? Looking away, I saw my buddies and their aircraft blending into the horizon. Below, my landing zone was nothing but barren rice paddies. Down to my left, a huge cloud of black smoke billowed at the outskirts of a peasant hamlet, punctuating a row of four or five huts. My plane, had it wiped out a family?

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  If so, the villagers would certainly be unhappy. I wasn't happy either, I hadn't intended that to happen. I later learned that the plane had impacted just beyond the last shack on the road. There was precious little time before I could touch down, before I would touch down, and I had much to be done. I grabbed my two-way radio and tried to contact Gary, but I received no answer. Then I called my skipper. "Lynn Field, lead, Lynn Field, lead, this is Lynn Field 2. We've got two good shoots, we're gonna be alright. Request no SAR effort."

• 48:21Jocko Willink?

  And SAR is search and rescue, for those of you that don't know. And when I read that part right there, I stopped in my tracks, because here you are, you're shot down, you're in a parachute, you're gonna obviously be landing in these rice paddies surrounded by enemy.

• 48:41Jocko Willink?

  And you had the wherewithal to understand that if you requested for a search and rescue to come and get you, it was just gonna get more people killed.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that had happened before. I'd seen, I had seen that happen and we were so far be- behind enemy lines, I mean, it was impossible. A Jolly Green was the, was a callsign for the helicopter that would come get us off the aircraft carrier and they would have to go through probably seventy-five or a hundred miles of enemy territory before they ever got to me and, and I was in such a populated area that I could see that they were, that I was gonna be captured immediately. And so to get those guys, but them in harm's way was, was kinda silly. So that's why I did that.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  When, you know, I've experienced a couple times in combat where things slow down and the time starts to, to really be different than it normally is and they say it's because you get this big adrenaline dump and all of your sensors, all your, your perception awakens to such a high point that things actually slow down. Did you experience any of that when you were, once that SAM missile hit?

• 49:53Speaker 02

  I did, yes. It was almost like slow motion and I, you know, I, I remember thinking, this is unreal. I, I've, I've never had this happen to me before, but it was almost like I was in a, it was in a movie and everything was slowing down in my life. And, and I, you know, I, I tried to sense every possible thing because of course I'm thinking escape now, trying to get, get out of here in some way. And so I'm trying to memorize all the little roads I could see and all the little trees and all the little huts and where are they and where am I, that situational awareness.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  How far from the water, the ocean were you at this point?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Oh, I was seventy-five miles.

• 50:34Jocko Willink?

  So no chance of that?

• 50:34Speaker 02

  No chance.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  We were on the outskirts of Hanoi, the capital city. And, uh, and, and that was the bad news, good news. Um, the bad news was that I was going to be captured immediately. There was no chance whatsoever. I mean, they were shooting at me from the ground while I came down. Uh, the good news was I didn't have to go very far to the, to a formalized prison camp. Like a lot of the guys did. You know, you had Bill Reader on this, on your podcast and he was dragged for, I don't know, weeks. Um, and, uh, because he was, he was captured in South Vietnam. The guys that were in Laos or Cambodia, uh, who were brought to our prison camps were all just really torn up.

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Not just because of, um, of, of the enemy, uh, but just because of the rigors of the travel. So.

• 51:26Jocko Willink?

  And you're gonna, you're gonna talk about this, you talk about it in the book, but you know, just to kind of point out the fact that whatever two minutes earlier you were part of this giant, powerful force with a multimillion dollar, you know, aircraft under your command as a 24 year old, as part of this group that of, of many, many multimillion dollar with this huge destructive power launching off of these ships and, and airfields. Uh, and to go from having all that to now you're under a parachute and you're about to have all of that just absolutely taken away.

• 52:07Speaker 02

  It was a major transition in my life. But, uh, you know, unlike, unlike someone who's diagnosed with cancer, you know, or unlike someone who, who just lost a job or, uh, just lost a child or just had a car accident. I mean, that's, you know, there are similarities in normal civilian life. I think that can be just as impactful as being blown out of the sky.

• 52:35Jocko Willink?

  You're floating down to earth and I'm going back to the book. Then I bowed my head. Well, Lord, here I am. I'm really in a bind now and I need some help. Give me strength and give and strength.

• 52:50Jocko Willink?

  I was surprised at how calm I was when I should have been panic stricken. But there was too much to think about and do. I couldn't let myself become irrational. It would all be different now. I tried to envision myself in this new world and prepare for it.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  I had a lot going for me. I was in good physical condition and I could probably withstand torture. I didn't believe I would be killed because I was too much of a blue chip for the enemy.

• 53:20Jocko Willink?

  Which,

• 53:22Jocko Willink?

  again, for you to say you're shot down, you're about to land in enemy territory and your statement is I had a lot going for me? It's a positive attitude, sir. It's a positive attitude.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  Hey, that's your philosophy of saying good.

• 53:32Jocko Willink?

  It is indeed. That's my notes right there.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Good.

• 53:36Jocko Willink?

  I wrote good. I've thought this before.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  So, you touched down. I plunged backward into the mud and water. Trying to get my bearings, I took off my helmet and mask and crawled out, crawled without direction in the quagmire. With slimy hands, I tried to wipe mud from my eyes. I saw that I was about 10 or 15 yards from an embankment. I looked over to see that Gary, touching down in an adjacent paddy about 100 yards away, had disappeared behind the eight-foot embankment. A barefoot peasant, wearing khaki shirts, shorts and t-shirt, ran at top speed down the path toward me grimacing with excitement and anger. Above his head, he waved a double-edged axe with blades about eight inches long. My instructors never documented that type of weapon.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  I heard him scream, "Hand up, hand up." I didn't understand what he meant and I kept working with my gear and shoot. I had a .38 revolver strapped to my chest and it, and as long as he stayed in the embankment, I would not touch it. It wasn't long, however, before 10 or 12 more peasants came rushing toward me yelling and waving their shovels and hoes. Now there was power in numbers and they charged out in the water after me. I raised my hands away from my body, they started ripping my G-suit, found my survival knife and proceeded to cut away at the suit and the torso harness. I tried to tell them to use the zippers and even attempted to show them how to do it, but they knocked my hands away.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  The more certain they were that I was harmless, the meaner they became. The shovel and hole blades flailed at my body to prove to me that I was their loathed captain. Captive. Strangely, the peasants failed to see my revolver. Probably because it too was covered with mud and the 38 rested in my holster at least three or four minutes before a peasant finally spotted it. He yanked it out of the holster and sloshed a few steps away. A moment later, he returned and screamed for special attention. He fixed the barrel to my head. I could see that at least two of the chambers were empty. I had always kept five of the six chambers loaded,

• 55:50Jocko Willink?

  so I knew that he must have removed at least one of the cartridges. There was little I could do as I felt the muddy barrel against my temple. The peasant pulled the trigger. Click. He guffawed and sneaked away, wiping off his unexpected prize.

• 56:20Jocko Willink?

  You're... As far as your thoughts about being killed at that moment, did you accept them? Did you... were you just thinking, "He's not gonna do it"? What's your attitude at that point?

• 56:36Speaker 02

  I never, in the entire experience, never thought I was going to be killed. And I didn't think so at that moment. Of course, I was very happy when I heard the click of that revolver. But, uh, but it was actually very encouraging to think that...

• 56:55Speaker 02

  They were going to feign this execution and not go through with it.

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  And it was encouraging to me to think that, yeah, they were going to hammer me around and get me pretty bloody, but they probably weren't intentionally going to kill me. I guess I worried more about that they would kill me accidentally than intentionally. But, and there were two or three times during the entire experience. One of them was while I was being tortured, how when I felt like I was losing it and I was close to death and they loosened the ropes because they saw, I think, that I was getting pretty close to death. And so, and that, you know, again, that was good because I thought, all right,

• 57:46Speaker 02

  this hurts a lot, but it looks like they're not going to kill me. I may wish I was dead, but I don't think they're going to do it.

• 57:54Jocko Willink?

  Now, you guys are blindfolded. They captured Gary as well. And you're blindfolded, but at this point, they put this kind of marginal blindfold on you that's not working really well. So you can actually see, and again, I'm going to go to your, go ahead and highlight your twisted sense of humor here. So here we go. You're in the back of an old Russian Jeep. Back to the book. Gary was held captive in the Jeep ahead of mine. At the instant I recognized Gary, I started calling hysterically for a doctor to attend to his burned arms. The guards restrained me violently, screaming foreign but distinct warnings to attempt no more communication. I did, however, shout one more thing. I don't

• 58:37Jocko Willink?

  know why unless it was for morale. I shouted out, "These people are a thousand years behind in blindfolds."

• 58:47Jocko Willink?

  And it says later, "The POWs who were in nearby cells heard you screaming that and still laughed about it." So, I'm glad you kept your sense of humor.

• 58:56Speaker 02

  You know, sometimes I look back on that and think that I was in some form of shock.

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Because, I mean, who would come up with that? Who would write this stuff?

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  And they bring you in, they kind of parade you guys around, and you hear cameras clicking, and eventually you get put into New Guy Village, and you get put into, you know, a torture, basically a torture room. So here you go back to the book. Several torture cells in the prison. The green knobby room, so-called because the walls and ceiling were covered with gobs of plaster the size of golf balls, which looked somewhat like mud dauber nests. The globs had a particular function. Acoustics. To muffle human sound.

• 59:51Jocko Willink?

  Now you get through this day, sunset. "I had difficulty in seeing what was beyond my cell. So I began reminiscing about the world of active life I had loved so much. Outside, my every minute had been filled. Outside, I had been king of the skies. Outside, I had been continually learning, doing, accomplishing.

• 1:00:15Jocko Willink?

  I had been proud. So very proud.

• 1:00:20Jocko Willink?

  And now I was tired. So tired, so perplexed, so confined, so very lonely.

• 1:00:29Jocko Willink?

  The trauma of overwhelming change caused my mind to reel with disorientation.

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  I was afraid. I stared at the emptiness. Shadows crept up the walls gradually becoming more pronounced.

• 1:00:44Jocko Willink?

  Curiously, a vague ghost-like impression materialized. The image took the appearance of the master with arms outstretched, a symbol."

• 1:00:56Jocko Willink?

  It was strange, yet something I felt I should expect. I began to utter the first lines of the 23rd Psalm. "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul. He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake."

• 1:01:23Jocko Willink?

  I repeated it aloud several times, not because of any deep religious drive, but because it simply seemed the thing to do.

• 1:01:33Jocko Willink?

  And then I prayed. I considered making a deal with God,

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  but rejected the idea.

• 1:01:42Jocko Willink?

  I made no big promises and asked for no miracles, just strength.

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  Strength to endure the hardship and strength for my wife, Ann.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  It would be difficult for her too.

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death."

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  That was certainly where I was.

• 1:02:12Speaker 02

  An interesting point here is that in Colonel Reader's podcast, you found the same thing, that he went to the 23rd Psalm. And again, it was just almost like, well, this is what I should do.

• 1:02:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I see there's no atheists in foxholes. And I guess there aren't any in the prison camp. Although you do talk about some atheists in the prison camp.

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  I do, as a matter of fact, a couple of guys consider themselves atheists and...

• 1:02:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you know, you also talk about faith. And one of the things that I, and we'll get to this, but when you talk about faith, you're, you talk about faith, not just in God, but faith in your country. And the one that I think that regardless of what someone's religious beliefs are, faith in yourself.

• 1:03:05Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm, absolutely.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  And I think all three of those are, whichever one of those faiths where you find strength in time like this, lean on it.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 1:03:17Speaker 02

  And, and you know, faith in the team as well. And we had to have faith in each other. And that was awfully important to, you know, to be a part of a group like that that could trust one another.

• 1:03:27Jocko Willink?

  How quickly did you realize that there was, that you were part of, I guess we'll get to it, but I mean, when you first got, you're in this room, did you feel completely isolated at first and there's no one else here?

• 1:03:38Speaker 02

  No, no, I knew that there were other prisoners there. I could hear them, uh, you know, some of them were being tortured as I was. I could hear the torture. I could, um, you know, I could peek out sometimes and see them walking by my cell. So I knew there were other prisoners in the area and they just wouldn't let me, they wouldn't let me talk to them.

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  So the interrogation begins. The torture begins. We're going back to the book. We read copy regulations, you obey. You live. No trouble. Okay? I did not respond. First regulation, you answer all questions. The way that the North Vietnamese justified torture was peculiar. When they asked me questions and wanted military answers, I was not tortured to answer questions, but punished for disobeying camp regulations. What, what airplane you fly?

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm sorry, I can't tell you.

• 1:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Lamb, and they were calling you lamb. What airplane? To answer this question was, of course, not in my rules. I'm sorry, I can't answer that.

• 1:04:56Jocko Willink?

  The officer again reminded me about the punishment for disobeying camp rules.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you talk me, or you talk steel?

• 1:05:08Jocko Willink?

  To which you responded, bring it on.

• 1:05:13Jocko Willink?

  The two higher ranking officials left. The remaining officer with one word ordered the guards forward. They brought it on. The steel mentioned by the interrogator consisted of iron manacles, shackles, and a leg bar. The shackles were cylindrical iron bars shaped like horseshoes but rounded at the end so that the five-foot leg bar could be slipped into them and locked. The prisoner's ankles could then be forced through the openings and secured by the bar. The junior officer walked out. Guards blindfolded me, forced my wrists behind my back, and placed the open jaws of the manacles around them.

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  These had obviously been intended for the more modest Vietnamese arms. They were so small that they had to be forced together just so the screw could be seated in the bottom of the threads. With what looked like a roller skate key, a guard began to turn the screw. My skin was pinched between the metal and quickly succumbed to the vice.

• 1:06:18Jocko Willink?

  I screamed in agony.

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  Surely the guards wouldn't get these things much tighter. Blood oozed down my hands, and still the guard kept turning the key. Like powerful magnets, the iron was finely set flush. Circulation stopped, my hands burned grayish-blue, tingled, and became numb.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  A guard then wrapped the rope first around my left elbow and then around my right and drew my elbows together behind my back.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  My shoulder muscles writhed, and I feared that my sternum would separate. I gasped for air.

• 1:07:01Jocko Willink?

  Then I was thrown abruptly to the floor, shackles were jammed around my ankles, and the leg bar was fastened and padlocked.

• 1:07:09Jocko Willink?

  Electric wire similar to the kind that I had hidden underneath the table was brought forward. I thought that the guards were going to use this to shock me, but typical of the Vietnamese, they didn't have anything else to use for rope. And it torn the wire down from some light fixtures. This became the apparatus to wrap me up. It was first tied to the manacles, then thrown over my shoulder, and at last secured to the shackles around my ankles. Guards forced a bamboo pole under the wire and started rotating it, so that the wire contracted, bringing my wrists up high on my back and drawing my face completely to my ankles.

• 1:07:50Jocko Willink?

  I was a human pretzel, a teacup with arms for a handle and the rest of my distorted body for the bowl.

• 1:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Circulation was impaired throughout my limbs, making them extremely painful to the touch. The guards, apparently drugged, exhibited wide and glassy eyes.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  They maliciously kicked me in the sides, the limbs, the back, and the head, giggling and having a great time. They picked me up a few feet from the floor and dropped me. Since I was on my side most of the time, they especially enjoyed standing on my head, symbolically victorious. The rubber tire sandals tore at my ear. My face, a ready target for abuse, was repeatedly subjected to fisticuffs and kicks. I remember staring at the floor and seeing my tears drop in pools of blood coming from my nose. The louder I screamed, the more they flailed.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  After about an hour, the junior officer returned. You talk now?

• 1:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:09:01Jocko Willink?

  The guards loosened the wires and ropes, blood rushed back into my veins with knifing pain. What airplane you fly?

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  I hesitated a moment at the thought. Well, they know the airplane I'm flying, and it's so ridiculous to undergo such torture for information they already have. The F-4B.

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  That part right there, I mean, where you hesitate for a moment. And then you say to yourself, okay. These guys shot me down in an F-4, which crashed into this paddy and they know exactly what I was flying. This is not make sense for me to get this kind of abuse and torture for something that they already know. And when you came to that conclusion, how did you, did you, was it pretty, were you feeling comfortable with it in your mind when you came to the conclusion, look, this is stupid?

• 1:10:11Speaker 02

  No, I was really never comfortable at all in that. I felt very guilty. I was very, really, I was very remorseful that I had not been as strong as I wanted to be. And, uh, and through the, you know, the first several months of that experience, I, uh, I, I, I felt like, um, I felt very guilty about having given up, you know, fighter pilots are not supposed to give up, you know? And the code of conduct, of course, name, rank, serial number, date of birth. Um, I flew over this, the enemy thinking that I was strong enough and I was good enough. And, uh, and, and suddenly I was thrust into this situation.

• 1:10:55Speaker 02

  And I even wondered, would I, would I ever be able to go back to my country? Can I face my fellow fighter pilots that were stronger, you know, and tougher? And I, I found out that that, that feeling was across the board. Every, every POW that I ever ran into felt guilty. And some guys even considered suicide because they felt like they could, they could never live with the guilt of having given up.

• 1:11:29Speaker 02

  And it was, it was quite a revelation to me when I finally made contact with another prisoner and confessed to this guy. I remember that my first contact and I said, I said, "I need to confess something to you and when I tell you what I've done, you may not want to communicate with me. You may hate me and if our roles were reversed, I would probably hate you if you did what I did." Because I assumed that I was the only one that ever gave in. And so he said, this is Bob Schumaker, he said, "What'd you do, Plum?" I said, "Well,

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  I broke. I tried to be strong, but I wasn't. I broke." And his response, and we're, we're talking on, on the end of a wire, we're tugging on a wire to communicate with each other with this secret code that I had, that he had just taught me. He said, "Hell, everybody broke." He said, "There's not a man in this camp that is as strong as he wanted to be." He said, "So get over yourself," you know? And that was a, that was a great revelation in my mind, you know, to know that I wasn't the only one that had given in.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  As you, you continue this and again, you're, you might've felt like you broke at this point, but there's still some unbelievable spirit that you show. And I'm going back to the book. Around the courtyard in a nearby room, my co-pilot, Gary Anderson, was undergoing about the same treatment. As soon as I heard him exploding obscenities, I knew he was near.

• 1:13:16Jocko Willink?

  "Hey Gary, you all right?" I called. The guards were immediately on top, kicking and striking. Gary heard me and yelled back. It was four years later that I came across a POW who had been in a cell close to ours at the time. He said, "Boy, that was one of the craziest things I ever heard. You yelling, 'Hey Gary, are you all right?' Bang, crunch, thud. Fine, how about you?" Smack, crash, crack.

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Jocko Willink?

  You eventually get, they're gonna take you and kind of parade you in front of Vietnamese people. And

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  going back to the book, "The officer briefed me once more. I was to walk with my head down until he gave me the command, 'Let people see face.' The guards removed the cuffs and I pumped my hands and twitched my shoulders to restore circulation. The guards carefully directed me to the door, removing the blindfold and warned me not to look around. They then prodded me down the hallway lined with photographers and journalists, a group composed of Orientals and a few Caucasians. With the officer at my side, I walked out of the building onto the patio where a battery of motion cameras started whirring. The officer shouted to me, 'Let people see face.' Slowly and deliberately, I looked up, staring blankly into space, bowed deeply to the cameras and lowered my head.

• 1:14:46Jocko Willink?

  I was uneasy about this entire charade, feeling a combination of resentment and embarrassment at being featured as a sideshow attraction."

• 1:14:57Speaker 02

  What I didn't know at the time was it was Ho Chi Minh's birthday. And so that was part of the celebration, was I was being presented to the president of their country as a birthday gift, popping out of a cake.

• 1:15:17Speaker 02

  And the good news was that I was in the media, that they were taking pictures of me. And so after a few months, my family saw those pictures.

• 1:15:31Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:15:32Speaker 02

  And so that was the good news about being shot down on the 19th of May.

• 1:15:37Jocko Willink?

  So that was the first indication that people knew that you were actually okay?

• 1:15:41Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:15:41Jocko Willink?

  Or you were alive. Maybe not okay, that's a strong word, didn't mean to say okay. You were alive.

• 1:15:45Speaker 02

  The picture that was taken and transferred to my family has me with my eyes closed and my face was pretty well swollen. And my little brother thought that I was dead. He thought that was a picture of a dead man. And so, but I think most people, you know, thought, yeah, no, he's alive.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  You actually get, how'd you get stabbed? Bayoneted, so you were about to fall or something?

• 1:16:17Speaker 02

  Actually, I was, I was being prodded to walk faster by these guys. And I was, I was hurting at the time, and I was injured from the, from the ejection. And I wasn't able to walk very fast. And I was blindfolded as well. And so I hit a, I hit a rut in the road, and these guards with their bayonet fixed behind me stabbed me in the, in the thigh. And so that was, in fact, that was the worst wound that I had, and it festered for months because I had no medical care. And, but I never really knew if it was intentional or if it was accidental, but that was, that was how I got that wound.

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Now, you get back in and they're gonna give you, they give you the rules for the first time that you're supposed to follow. And the guy reads them to you, and I'm just gonna, I gotta read these rules because I think they give a good indication as to what you were facing. Here we go, back to the book. "You are the blackest criminal that this country has ever seen. But due to the lenient humane policy of the Vietnamese people, if you follow regulations, you live in peace. Regulation number one: Criminals must give full and complete answers to questions asked by Vietnamese guard or officer. Number two: Criminals must make no noise in room. Number three: Criminals must keep room clean and neat and must not mark rooms so graciously

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  given by Vietnamese people. Number four: Criminals must get up and go to bed at sound of gong. Number five: Criminals must get under bed when imperialist aggressor bomb and strafe our sovereign country. Number six: Criminals must say 'Bao Cao' when they want 'Ask Anything.' Number seven: Criminals must go only in area that guard orders when they go outside of room. Number eight: Criminals must bow to every Vietnamese, guards, officers, and people. Number nine: Criminals must not bring anything into room from outside.

• 1:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Number ten: Criminals must not communicate with or look at other criminals in any other room or outside." With minor variations, these were the rules for the next six years.

• 1:18:42Jocko Willink?

  Big one was the communication. They didn't want you guys talking to each other.

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  No, they didn't. And they did all that they possibly could do to keep us from communicating. But, we got very clever. And we had a lot of ways to communicate.

• 1:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Now, you spent some time in solitary confinement. And, here we go back to book. During this period of solitary confinement, I had much time to think. From the start, I established a definite schedule for personal reflection and appraisal. This included a two-hour worship service in the morning and a similar one in the evening. I spent much time praying, talking informally with God, and recalling as many scriptures, verses, and Bible stories as I could. I also revived the words and tunes to songs from a Tennessee Ernie Ford album that I'd enjoyed on the Kitty Hawk. Once in a while, I would start humming too loudly, and a guard would bang his rifle against the door.

• 1:19:40Jocko Willink?

  I spent more and more time thinking about intangibles. The purpose for living, ethics, the supernatural, faith, pride. Because the tangibles which I had identified with were no longer present. My aircraft, my ship, my personal possessions. This was the onset of a thorough reexamination of my life. Often, these intricate thought processes ended in slumber.

• 1:20:15Speaker 02

  One of the interesting things that are really most difficult to understand is how we had nothing going on. You know, I mean, the average American has hundreds of thousands of inputs every day. Colors, and sounds, and smells, and touch, and all these things. And when you're in a little prison cell, especially if you're in solitary confinement, you know, you might, you might hear a bird, you know? And that's delightful. That's a big deal, you know, to hear a bird. And nothing else. So, again, the good news and the bad news is your mind goes internal

• 1:20:54Speaker 02

  and you start, you have to, you have to create things on your own. And so you think about these intangible things and you go back through your life and, and, and, and you think about the things that sustain life and why we are here, because there's nothing else to do.

• 1:21:13Jocko Willink?

  Did you put some kind of structure around your thoughts? It seems like you, people might have a tendency just to let their mind wander and maybe it wanders into places they don't want it to wander into.

• 1:21:24Speaker 02

  No, there was a lot of structure to it. And in fact, one of the things I did was to go back through my life to the very first memory that I ever had at three years old in Lee Compton, Kansas, when my grandmother came through and wanted everybody to, to go with her. Well, and I remember that date. And then I went from that to the day that I was shot down and tried to remember every book I'd ever read, every friend I'd ever met, every girl I'd ever dated, every teacher, books, movies, experiences. And, and it took me about, as I recall, maybe three months, working pretty hard on, on that, that total

• 1:22:07Speaker 02

  autobiography in my mind. And after that, then I would continue to go back through those individual days and try to remember something else, you know, a different color that I'd forgotten or a different person that was in the room. And whenever I would, when I would discover something that I hadn't discovered the first three months, it was like, it was like meeting an old friend. I could think about that one person or that one book or whatever, you know, for an entire day. And so it was just, it was a way of, of, of using that time and making the time go by, by working our minds.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  Did you somehow catalog the days in your mind?

• 1:22:50Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was a, it was a chronology. It was a, and, and most, everybody did that. And a lot of guys did it much better than I. They could tell you, you know, what was going on, um, this day, last year, the year before and the year before. They, you know, they, they, they could remember everything, had it all packed away. But yes, it was very well categorized.

• 1:23:19Jocko Willink?

  You finally get some pair of pants, couple pairs of pants, couple shirts, some underwear, undershirt, toothbrush and some soap. And you are gonna use it for the first time. "I stripped and with my little drinking cup doused myself with water, lathered with my new bar of soap and rinsed shedding a two-week layer of grime and sweat. Then I shaved using a double-edged razor which had no handle. At last I was clean. No itchy beard, no reeking body. I put on my new clothes and wondered what impressions I would now make on the newly captured POWs.

• 1:24:01Jocko Willink?

  Dressed in fresh hablament, I experienced a sublime physical and mental catharsis. Even the pain of my wounds seemed to wash away with the filth. Fifteen minutes later, I was back in my cell, re-inspired to outlast any Vietnamese endeavor to debase me. The door opened. I waited for something to happen and then in the doorway sauntered in a tall man, back hunched and forehead deeply lined. He studied me with uncertain eyes. An American, another American. I rushed to the door as quickly as I could and grasped his hand, a hand which was completely numb from inadequate circulation at the elbows.

• 1:24:43Jocko Willink?

  'Hi,' I said, 'I'm Charlie Plon.' So now you're linked up with another American.

• 1:24:50Speaker 02

  I am. Kay Russell was shot down the same day I was. And so he and I were, uh, he was my first roommate. And, and, you know, I was, I was, uh, in the same cell with a lot of different guys. And they moved us around a lot. About every six months they'd move us around. But they would give us different roommates every few months. Or take them all away and I was in solitary confinement again. And, uh, we never really knew why. But we assumed that it was, tried to destroy any fraternization with the guards and tried to disrupt any unity within the prisoners.

• 1:25:29Speaker 02

  And so, um, so that, in fact, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to describe exactly what it was like because we were in different camps and different cells and you were different guys for the entire six years.

• 1:25:44Jocko Willink?

  But didn't you, didn't you like it when you got a new roommate? Cause it's like a new, you kind of explained the, it's like now you have a bunch of stuff to talk about with this person.

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. It was, it was glorious, you know, to find a, because you know, he of course had all of the stories and he had the movies that he could tell you about and the things that he had learned and that he could teach you. So, you know, it was, it was wonderful. Now, that would last for maybe a few months until you ran out of things and then it became almost like a marriage, you know, where you've got those, those periods of time.

• 1:26:18Jocko Willink?

  Honey mood periods over.

• 1:26:19Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. Well, the fact of the matter is you couldn't, in some of those cells, you couldn't be more than eight or 10 feet away from a guy 24/7 for months and months and months at a time. And so little things start to bug ya, you know? And not the least of which was, was our toilet, you know? We, the toilet was a two gallon bucket in the corner and lots of times it was rusted out of the top with no lid and it was just quite a, you know, it stunk to high heaven in a lot of the cases. And, and it was quite an irritant.

• 1:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You guys established a routine once you got in there and you know, there's a whole chapter in the book called routine and you're waking up at 6:30 in the morning, you're doing prayer at that time, you're at seven o'clock, you're, you're practicing piano, which I like, right? You're practicing piano and that was just from memory? You, had you ever played piano before?

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  I hadn't, I had not. Now, what I did know was that my span from my pinky to my thumb was not, was, I could span nine notes on a piano. And so I laid out a keyboard on my board bed and I knew where the black keys were and I had played in, in the band and I also played guitar. So I knew a little bit about chords and scales and that kind of thing. And I thought, well, I've always wanted to play the piano, you know, now's my chance.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  This, this piece of wood looks good to me.

• 1:27:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, this, this'll work.

• 1:27:58Jocko Willink?

  And then at eight o'clock, you're doing pushups.

• 1:28:00Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:28:01Jocko Willink?

  And situps and leg lifts and whatever else. So you're doing some, some physical training and then you have school, the school bell rings at nine 30 a.m. and you guys are. You guys are learning and teaching each other whatever you can possibly teach each other. Whatever subject you were good at, you were gonna teach.

• 1:28:18Speaker 02

  We did. And it was serious stuff. As a matter of fact, when we got home, University of Maryland gave us credit for what we had, you know, the courses we had taught, you know, without books or paper or PowerPoints or instructors or professors or anybody, because we were so intent on using that time for something of value. And these guys, most of them smarter than I, would go back through their minds and recapture all of the subjects that they had learned. One of the guys, Joe Milligan, I was with him, I don't know, the first few months, I

• 1:29:00Speaker 02

  guess, and he taught a course on chemistry. No, no, biology, it was biology. And I'd never taken a course in biology, and I was very interested. And his course lasted about a week, and that's all he knew. But Joe, and I lived with him for a while, would lay back on his rack about an hour a day and just think about biology. And after being there for six years, his course lasted six months, and he knew everything from protozoas to metazoas and all of this, just because that was back there in his mind.

• 1:29:40Jocko Willink?

  So you were able to recall that information?

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  He could recall that.

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  If you dug deep enough.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  And it is amazing, you know, what's back in there in your human brain. And we found that out. If you think about something long enough and hard enough, and again, you don't have these distractions of everyday life, that there's an awful lot stored back in there.

• 1:30:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I had to bring this one up too, because you talked about how you didn't have PowerPoint or whatever, you didn't have pens and chalkboards, and here you go. Often in my dreams, I must admit, I envisioned leaving the Noe Hilton, going home, looking for and finding a brand-new yellow pencil, and bringing it back to my cell, or I would dream of entering shops containing nothing but rows and rows of pencils.

• 1:30:30Jocko Willink?

  I've never since taken a pencil for granted.

• 1:30:35Jocko Willink?

  That's, you know, we take so much for granted. I mean, we take so much for granted. And to, and to think about that right there and what, what power a pencil gives you, the power to take notes, the power to create, the power to draw, the power to write. This incredible power comes from this little thing that we just gaffe off like it's meaningless.

• 1:30:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:30:54Jocko Willink?

  And for you to have that much appreciation for it that you would dream about it at night.

• 1:31:00Speaker 02

  True.

• 1:31:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's incredible. Uh, 10 o'clock you'd eat. And what was the, what was the food? You just eating rice balls?

• 1:31:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, mostly rice. Uh, that was the mainstay. You'd, um, you know, you get a, a, a small bowl of rice twice a day. Once about 10 o'clock, once about two o'clock in the afternoon. And then you had a 20 hour stretch with nothing to eat. Uh, sometimes they'd give you a bowl of broth, uh, and sometimes it would be, uh, some kind of vegetable turnips or, uh, weeds of some kind. One we call sewer soup. You couldn't identify this stuff.

• 1:31:39Speaker 02

  But I didn't eat, you know, there was not enough, uh, meat, uh, to put in a coffee cup for a year, you know, we, we, there really was no, there was no meat of any variety.

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  How much, how much did you weigh when you got out?

• 1:31:51Speaker 02

  Uh, I weighed about a hundred and 40 when I came home, but they fattened us up before we came home. And I figure most of the time I was there about a hundred and 15 pounds.

• 1:32:02Jocko Willink?

  Did you, uh, ever? Was the hunger, did the hunger go away? Did you, or were you just grinding hunger or did you just get used to it?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  Uh, it went away for the most part, you know, after, I don't know, four or five months. Um, your, your, your stomach sort of shrinks. And when you know that there's nothing else to eat, um, and so, you know, that they, in all fairness, they gave us enough to keep us alive. And, um, uh, and, and so that, you know, and rice is a pretty perfect food. This is unpolished rice. It wasn't the Uncle Ben's that we have today. And, uh, and there's a lot, there's, there's protein in there and there's nutrients in the rice. So that kept me alive.

• 1:32:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. At dusk, you guys would have?

• 1:32:56Jocko Willink?

  Showtime. And people would do what you're talking about describing everything and every movie they've ever seen, every book they've ever read and all that. And you mentioned in here that in the beginning of confinement, the movies that would get described or created, because people were creating movies too, right? In their head.

• 1:33:12Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 1:33:14Jocko Willink?

  And they went from PG to triple X over time.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  So, did anybody come out and, and execute on some of these ideas that they had? Is there anybody that came out and said, "Yeah, I thought of this movie or I thought of this book"?

• 1:33:32Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. In fact, several guys had great plans. One, one guy was a farmer and he had planned a pig farm. That's, that was, that was his whole thing. Um, and he did, he came back and he, I, I live with a guy by the name of Danny Glenn, who, um, was an architecture student at the University of Oklahoma. And Dan and I were together for a lot of years. And he dreamed about building this home. And, uh, and that's all he thought about was building this dream house. And he, he had several little things about this home that were very peculiar.

• 1:34:12Speaker 02

  One of them was, uh, as the sunlight would come through the top of the wall around our prison, the wall was capped with barbed wire and electrical wire and broken glass. The, the glass was from bottles that was various colors. And in one particular cell that Dan and I were in, the sun would come through the glass, the colored glass and onto, uh, this, this, this tank of water. And then reflect up under the eaves of our thatched roof and into our cell. So it had all these colors and it was a beautiful thing, you know? It was a kaleidoscope of colors. And so he designed a house and he figured this whole thing out, you know, with the, with the asthma

• 1:34:55Speaker 02

  of the, of the sun and, and, and all of this stuff and how he was going to do this. But, uh, and he would lay this out and he would draw on the concrete floor with a, a piece of, of brick. And, uh, he was a great artist, you know, the, the guy could, could design all this stuff. And, uh, and of course, you know, he wanted me to be involved in this and, and bore me to tears. And he's, "Charlie, what color do you think my bathroom ought to be"? I don't know, Dan, I don't know. No, no, no, Charlie, green or blue? I, I, I don't know, green. Dan, green. Okay, so we, we get home in about a year after we, I was living in Kansas and he was in Oklahoma. And he called me up.

• 1:35:40Speaker 02

  Charlie, I got us something to show you. And so I had a little airplane at the time and I flew down to Norman, Oklahoma. And he picked me up at the airport and we drove outside of town. From about a quarter of a mile away, I saw this house that I recognized, but I'd never been in Norman, Oklahoma. And I, I swear, I could have walked in that house and, and touched any faucet or any light switch, you know, on the whole place because it was exactly as he had designed it, the prison.

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:36:07Speaker 02

  So I went to the, the bathroom and it was blue.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  He had gone back, you know, he had built it from building materials that he had remembered. And over the years that we were there, they changed. And so there weren't, some of the, it was not available. And so he went to these old lumber yards and he would find the building materials that he had planned this house with and use those to build his house. But it was incredible. But yeah, a lot of the guys, a lot of the guys wanted to sail around the world. You know, a lot of us Navy guys knew how to sail and, and that was the, the big fantasy was to take a sailing trip around the world. And two or three of the guys actually did that when they came home.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. The guards, some of the guards were pretty sadistic. And here we go back to probably the most sadistic practice of all was a game involving mice or puppies. Guards would douse them with gasoline, set them on fire and turn them loose to squeal and scurry in search of relief from the heat. Then the soldiers would chase them with sticks, playing polo with their live fireballs until the little animals blackened and died.

• 1:37:23Jocko Willink?

  So you had some serious sadists just doing evil things. And you say you didn't see anything? Book, magazine, newspaper, lyrics to song, written speech, any billboard or anything while you were there that wasn't just 100% propaganda?

• 1:37:41Speaker 02

  That's true, you know, their music doesn't talk about love except for love of Ho Chi Minh and love of their country and dedication to that. It's really incredible how they just fill the minds of their people with this propaganda. And you know, you tell somebody long enough and loud enough and they believe it. And that's, you know, that was the whole, that was the whole country.

• 1:38:04Jocko Willink?

  The, at one point, you got this propaganda newspaper and it's, the front page headline was that there's been a revolution in rice planting technique. And you were thinking to yourself, oh, man, they must have invented some big machine that can like plant all the rice and now they don't have to be out there on, doing the manual labor in the fields. And here's the actual article. For 4,000 years, the Vietnamese people have been laboring, sweating and toiling in the mud and water of rice paddies. We've discovered a revolutionary method of planting rice. Through extensive research, we have found that. Instead of grasping the rice sprouts and planting them with the palm of the hand facing downward,

• 1:38:42Jocko Willink?

  it is much more efficient to plant the rice sprouts with the palm of the hand facing upward. So there's, there's the propaganda coming at you. And there's the advancement of the, you know, them trying to tell the people how we're moving forward in the world. And that was another thing that surprised me, or it didn't surprise me, but how, what their, their understanding, you know, their, their brainwashed and their understanding of what American culture was like. And when you'd say, well, yeah, I have a car and I have an air conditioner, to them that was unbelievable because the only people that could afford that in Vietnam were, was the state itself.

• 1:39:22Speaker 02

  True. And they assumed that if you had a car, you could carry pigs or chickens or something in your car. I guess that was the whole purpose of any kind of transportation was to haul something around. And, and they, you know, they were really surprised that you could actually just get in the car and go wherever you wanted to go.

• 1:39:38Jocko Willink?

  And they also thought that a third of Americans were starving to death.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  So that's, you know, something to think about always when you deal with these countries where people are being indoctrinated and they're being fed information from the state. It's gonna be, it's gonna be lies. And you, you, you can't be surprised when they believe something like that. You just have to say, you know, it's what they believe. How do we re-educate them?

• 1:40:06Speaker 02

  I went back to Vietnam, uh, first time in forty-three years I hadn't been back. And, uh, a lot of things had changed, you know, I mean, they, they still call themselves a communist country, but, oh, by the way, capitalism is alive and well. But, the propaganda still exists there. And, uh, in the, I took my family with me, uh, my wife and three of our four kids. Uh, and in the eleven days that I was there, I never met anyone, and I was at, you know, I was at the embassy, I spoke to the students at the university, I spoke to cab drivers and waitresses and anybody, and they were really, really nice people and very, very nice to me.

• 1:40:51Speaker 02

  But nobody knew that Americans had been tortured in the Vietnam War. And in fact, it was just the opposite. They all would tell you that we got better treatment than the soldiers did, and better medical care than the soldiers did. And so, in, in fact, and, and one of the, uh, one of the last days I was there, I ran into, uh, a lady in a park selling card, postcards. And she was missing, uh, one leg. And she was about my age, and so I sort of pieced this thing together. And, uh, she said, wanna buy a postcard? Well, I'll buy a postcard, but I want to hear your story. Sit down on this park bench and then tell me your story. And she did.

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  I said, how'd you lose your leg? She said, linebacker two. Linebacker two was the code name for the B-52 bombings that ended the war in nineteen, in the Christmas of nineteen seventy-two. But, it was a secret code name, you know? And for her to, to say, it wa, she, she didn't call it an air raid, or a bomb, or anything else, she just called it linebacker two. That was our, you know, that was her pilot jargon, not her jargon. And, uh, and I said, uh, what, what, what, what was the date? She said, twenty-four December nineteen seventy-two. So I knew that she wasn't lying to me. She said, um...

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  B-52. Oh, yeah. Well, so, we talked for maybe thirty minutes on that park bench. And she spoke very good English. And, uh, and, and at one point, I said to her, "You speak excellent English. You could be an interpreter. You could be a guide. Why are you out here making a living selling postcards in a park?" She said, "Oh, my, my, uh, country would never give me a permit because I'm an invalid." Ah, man, what a country. And, and then I said, "Well, um, uh, do you know about the, uh, the museums?" Uh, "Oh, yeah, I know all about the museums." And the Hanoi Hilton Museum.

• 1:42:59Speaker 02

  See, they've made a museum out of my old prison camp. The Hanoi Hilton is now a museum. And I said, "Well, how were the prisoners treated at the museum?" "Oh, they were treated great. They had great food. They played volleyball. They had ping pong." I said, "How do you know this?" She said, "Oh, documentaries. The government shows us documentaries." And so, she finally figured out that I was about her age. And she said, "Were you a pilot?" I said, "Yeah, I was a pilot." She, uh, she said, "B-52?" I said, "No, I flew F-4 Phantoms." "Oh, so, were, were you flying, uh, on the twenty-fourth of, of December of nineteen seventy-two?" I said, "No. I was right here with you.

• 1:43:44Speaker 02

  I was in the Hanoi Hilton, and I was being tortured." She said, "No, that's impossible. That, that can't possibly be true." I could not convince this lady that I would, that I'd be, or anybody else.

• 1:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:59Speaker 02

  And, so, the propaganda is alive and well. They keep, continue to tell their people the lies, and, uh, and, and the folks have no way of figuring it out.

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, it's, uh, a, another thing that, that you point out in the book, on that culture or that, that system of government. Back to the book, "The Vietnamese rarely exerted themselves. Why should they? If they were gonna get a meal at all, they'd eat regardless of whether they worked for it or not. They didn't worry. They didn't have to. The state was responsible for their welfare as well as their guidance. Even the upkeep of state property was not their problem." So, the scary thing when...

• 1:44:40Speaker 02

  It really is. When, you know, when folks are indoctrinated to that level. And, um, but it's so prevalent, you know, uh, and, and they tried to do the same thing with us.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  They tried to brainwash us. And it was more important.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  And you were kind of worried about that too, in the beginning, right? Like you thought it was something you needed to be concerned about. And then you saw how ridiculous all this.

• 1:45:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And, you know, they, they, uh, they used a lot of, of the Russian military equipment, but they never invited the Russians in to try to brainwash us. And we felt very, very happy about that because their brainwashing techniques were so silly. And, uh, you know, they would tell us just unbelievable things that, uh, that we laughed at.

• 1:45:25Jocko Willink?

  But you thought the Russians would do a better job.

• 1:45:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, I'm sure they would have. But more important than the rice we ate or the water we drank, in every prison cell I was in, the first thing they put in there was a speaker. And, um, you know, lots, lots of the prison camps didn't have any electricity at all, but they had speakers. And they were put well above our reach, so we couldn't turn them off or adjust the volume. And, um, several times a day, uh, they would come on with propaganda and telling us, you know, how bad we were and how terrible our country was and how wonderful they were. And, um, and, and, you know, it was pretty easy to turn these guys off, you know, just to ignore the, uh, the broadcast.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  But it was also very concerning, you know, to see that that's the way they, it's the way they indoctrinate their own people.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Horrible. You, you talked about, a little bit earlier, you talked about the communication and, and what that was all about. And you had this, the first time you were in your cell. You hear a little scraping and eventually you go over and it's a little wire and eventually a note comes through it and here we go back to the book. It had a piece of toilet paper tied to it. I unfolded it and found these words, memorize code, eat note. The code was easier to memorize than the note was to eat, but I did both. I rechecked the door, sat back down on the honey bucket and tugged on the wire. The code was a series of tugs which represented letters of the alphabet and it's, it's basically a five by five code,

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  A, B, C, D, G, E, F, G. And that is how you guys communicated. And that had to be, how long does it take to have a conversation with that code? Cause you give, you know, one, two tugs to go down and then one, two, three tugs to go across. How long does it take? Well, you, these conversations must've taken a long time.

• 1:47:21Speaker 02

  Well, that's true, but that was the beauty of it because that's all we had was time. And, and that was a very good way of, of wilding away the hours, just tugging on the wires or tapping on walls and, or, or sneezing and wheezing. We had all kinds of ways to communicate. And, and we took great pride in our communication effort.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  And the sneezing and wheezing, that's a, that just, was it Morse code? How did the sneezing and wheezing work? Coughing?

• 1:47:50Speaker 02

  It was the same kind of thing, you know? It was all based around this five by five matrix of the alphabet. And so a cough would, would be one, a sneeze would be two, a wheeze would be three, uh, and, and so forth. So that, so that two sounds would equal a letter. And we use this in a lot of different ways. If a guy was outside chopping wood for a fire, for instance, and he would chop in this code, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. And it was, well, we called it, we called it a radio station because everybody could hear it. And, and so, um, if, if a

• 1:48:33Speaker 02

  new guy came into the camp and, and we knew who the president was, you know, lots of, we did, we had no information at all. Or knew, uh, who won the world series, for instance, why that was really big deal, you know, to get out there and, and chop the wood in the radio station and, and tell the entire camp who was the president.

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  Did the, did the, did the guards ever catch on to that five by five code?

• 1:48:58Speaker 02

  Yes, occasionally, a couple of guys were tortured to, to reveal the code. But they could, but they were, it was really interesting because they were so, um, uncoordinated that they couldn't replicate the code. And they, on several cases, they tried to trick us. And they would empty out a cell and they would go into that cell and try to tap on the wall or tug on the wire in the code. And we knew immediately, you know, that it wasn't an American.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you guys would get, like I said, it's interesting, you count, you, you laid out two things that first the Vietnamese were like, pretty much okay with stealing. And so you wouldn't get punished for stealing that bad, but the communication thing is what they, is what they would definitely punish you for.

• 1:49:45Speaker 02

  Yep, true.

• 1:49:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, uh, I, I, I mean, that's the same thing. I mean, when we'd capture prisoners overseas, we don't want to talk to each other, we'd separate them and you don't want them to talk to each other. And at some point you started getting letters and receiving letters. And how did that change the environment?

• 1:50:06Speaker 02

  Well, um, you know, first of all, we were just overjoyed to see that our, that our families, you know, that my wife, uh, was, was okay. And, um, and that they knew that we were alive. And so it was, you know, it was a wonderful connection that we made. Now, we, we call them letters, but actually they were, uh, postcards. And, um, and they were highly edited. Uh, it began with the postcards were just blanked out and then the Vietnamese decided that's not good enough. They actually would cut out certain words.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  And so you get a postcard, them six lines, and maybe of the six lines, there might be, uh, 15 words that were just cut out with a pair of scissors. So that sometimes you really couldn't figure it out what they were trying to say. But, you know, that the fact that, uh, that was in the handwriting of a loved one, uh, was, uh, was, was, was very comforting.

• 1:51:11Jocko Willink?

  And yet those bastards, and I use that term very specifically for this situation, the Dear John letters, they'd leave those completely good to go and turn those over.

• 1:51:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  Can I say bastards for that, that kind of behavior?

• 1:51:25Speaker 02

  Bastards.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were quick to, to tell us that our wives had filed for divorce, or that, you know, our parents had died, or that, any bad news, they were, they were very quick to promote.

• 1:51:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:43Jocko Willink?

  The chain of command that you guys, you know, here you are in this prison camp, and you guys all, you know, you figured out, you realize we need to have a chain of command, and you put that structure into place, and when you did that, did that, I mean, it seems like it would have, it seems like that gave you guys so much strength as, as a group, to get in the chain of command, to organize yourselves, it seemed like that gave you guys so much strength and, and fortitude as you, as you were there.

• 1:52:17Speaker 02

  It was absolutely our survival, was our chain of command. What, what you don't know in reading my book, because that only happened two or three years ago, a study was done, of all the combatants of Vietnam, of all the million and a half people that were exposed to that war, 30.6% had PTSD. Almost a third of the combatants in Vietnam, post-traumatic stress disorder, of the prisoners of war, 4% of us had PTSD. And it's primarily the guys who were shot down near the end of the war, were only prisoners for a few weeks or a month or two. And what we really believe, this is spelled out in, in another book, called Lessons From

• 1:53:01Speaker 02

  the Hanoi Hilton, which was written about two years ago.

• 1:53:06Speaker 02

  Lessons from the Hanover Hilton explains that the reason why we came back and are in such great shape is because of the unity that we had and the leadership that we had in the prison camps. Because of the 591 guys came home and of the 591, and they thought we'd be in baskets. They thought we'd be vegetables. They had our families briefed to institutionalize us for the rest of our lives. That's what they thought was coming home from the prison camp. And what can you expect? From 591 guys, we've produced 17 generals, seven admirals. Most of us retired as senior grade military officers. We have doctors and lawyers and preachers and teachers and bishops and judges.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  We have a bunch of congressmen, two United States senators, two ambassadors. We have a vice presidential candidate, a presidential candidate, my old flight instructor, John McCain. And they're telling us today we're healthier mentally and physically than if we hadn't been shot down. And it was primarily because of the leadership, the chain of command that we had over there, the unity that we found and the purpose. That's what the leadership in the prison camp did for us. Jim Stockdale was our senior SRO, senior residing officer in the prison camp for a long time.

• 1:54:28Speaker 02

  And he said, "We are no longer victims of circumstance beyond our control. We are not on the defensive here. We are military men, we are combatants, and we will pursue this war till our last breath." And so what he did, what that did was it gave us a reason to live, a reason to be, a reason to unify. And the way we fought the war from the prison camp was to try to deny them any propaganda. Because as you've already said, Jocko, that propaganda was the mainstay. I mean, that was numero uno in their world was propagandizing. And they felt that...

• 1:55:14Speaker 02

  That they could use us to tell the rest of the world how wonderful communism was and how terrible capitalism was and how they were right and we were wrong. And so they would, they would force guys to make tapes or write letters to the anti-war element and proclaim the wonderful nature of communism. And so our job was to defend against this. And so we set up all kinds of methods so that we would deny them any propaganda. Or even in some cases, we would even go farther than to deny the propaganda. We would use their tools against them.

• 1:55:58Speaker 02

  And that we would tell the world that, oh, by the way, we are being tortured. And oh, by the way, you know, this, you know, these guys are attacking our neighbor in South Vietnam. And so, so that was the big effort. And, and, you know, like I said, this whole thing just came out a few years ago that this was the big reason that we did so well and that we're so healthy mentally and physically today was because we had this chain of command.

• 1:56:28Jocko Willink?

  And on top of that, and this is what I've really, one of the big points I wanted to talk about today was what you're just hitting on is that people have this idea that the military chain of command is this rigid structure and that's why it survives. And that's what, but you guys were put into a position that it was, yes, there's a military chain of command, just like I had in the SEAL teams. And if you, if you think in the SEAL teams that I was the guy that was in charge and I was barking the orders and everyone was following everything I said, it's like, no, it wasn't like that. It's a much more collaborative deal. And you, you, and, and this really became clear, one section of the book here, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna read that. What you were dealing with and how challenging this leadership position was for the people that

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  were were leading. So here we're going back to the book. Making sure that everyone was on our team was the first of many objectives. Understanding the rules of the game was the second. It was assumed that all of us had a basic knowledge of the military discipline and the code of conduct. This code, a very general document, was open to many interpretations. How we construed the code often depended on the severity of the situation. No longer could we pick up a telephone and call the Pentagon for advice. The broad spectrum of the code divided the men into at least two groups. Those who were disciplinarians by nature and interpreted the code strictly,

• 1:57:54Jocko Willink?

  and those who were liberal and rendered the code loosely. We called these two groups the tough guys and the softies. But this is the key part right here. Softie was not derogatory. The name simply indicated a different approach to the code. Tough guys who referred to the line, "I will never surrender of my own free will," sometimes flaunted their incorrigibility and taunted the guards. The Vietnamese answered with torture, and the tough guys occasionally relinquished more information than the softies who never committed themselves. Regardless of our attitudes, we were all in the same boat. Each of us had acquiesced to the Vietnamese control to some

• 1:58:36Jocko Willink?

  extent, whether accepting cigarettes or bowing to guards. The line which separated the tough guys from the softies was often unclear. The important thing was to display unity, regardless of our individual philosophies. We clearly understood that the Vietnamese would capitalize on any chinks they found in our armor. Unity didn't evolve automatically. Learning its value required from us such introspection and sacrifice. How could a camp SRO appease the softies if he interpreted the code too strictly? Or if he was too lax for the tough guys? He was

• 1:59:16Jocko Willink?

  in an untenable position, having little control over the actions of men in other rooms. He had excessive responsibility, but none of the tools of authority.

• 1:59:27Jocko Willink?

  No reduction of salaries, suspension of liberty, court martial. Indeed, most of the fellows he had never seen. His only association being a tap on the wall or a scribbled message. To meet this impractical setting, the SRO wielded gentle sticks of diplomacy. They knew we were not boots, meaning boot camp, guys fresh out of boot camp, who, who, who asked how high at the command to jump. We were all trained leaders who acted independently. For the first few years, the SRO's authority was limited to advice rather than orders. Realizing the importance of unity, we respected his, this advice as though it were an order.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  What if we refused an order on the basis that it did not come from the commander, but rather from five men who interpreted through an error-ridden system? What if compliance to the order brought certain torture? We were very alone in answering these questions. Once I received an order, plumb, request you communicate with Captain Abbott at all costs. What did the SRO mean by at all costs? Did it include being caught and put in leg irons for months at a time? So, the, the way that that is laid out, it reflects not just leadership in a prison camp. I'm here to tell you, it reflects leadership in every situation. Cause the minute that you as a leader decide that you're just going to impose your will

• 2:00:55Jocko Willink?

  on other people is where you start to lose respect and people start questioning what you're doing.

• 2:01:00Speaker 02

  That's very true.

• 2:01:02Jocko Willink?

  And I think that the way that this comes out, and that probably is one of the reasons why, you know, I didn't know about the, the facts that you just told me about the only 4% having PTSD. I mean, and obviously rattled off all the successful POWs that came out of this horrible situation. But that openness, that open mind as leaders and, and as subordinates to say, look, I'm getting this advice, right? This is so-called advice from the boss. I respect it. I'm going to act on it, not because I have to, but because I understand the mission. I understand why we're doing this. And therefore it's not something that's being imposed on me.

• 2:01:43Jocko Willink?

  It's something that I am accepting and pushing forward of my own accord. That's a huge difference.

• 2:01:49Speaker 02

  It truly is. I, I, but I must admit that when I first heard about this. I was taken aback and I'm thinking, you know, this is really silly. I've got some senior officer down to the in-cell of the cell block and he's putting more restrictions on me than I already have, you know. What's he gonna do? You know, take away my liberty card?

• 2:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Throw you in the brig?

• 2:02:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, throw me in the brig. I'm there. And I had to be convinced, you know, that this was in our best interest.

• 2:02:27Speaker 02

  But it truly was and obviously that's the reason we came out as healthy as we did was because we'd, well, you say it better than most, discipline, you know, a discipline brought about freedom.

• 2:02:43Speaker 02

  And it was kinda crazy because we were being restricted even more and yet because of the restriction, we had unity which gave us the freedom.

• 2:02:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And then you guys started taking the broad code of conduct and specifying it, because you guys had so much time, into these things that you called plums.

• 2:03:02Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:03:02Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't really know where the establishment of the word plums came from, but they were detailed tenants of how you all were going to carry yourself. And you called them plums and they were things like the order that you were gonna go home, you know, not aiding the Vietnamese in whitewashing the truths, the resistance, how, what level of resistance you were gonna give when you were interrogated, how much resistance you were gonna give with, and ResCon 6 was just, you know, military bearing and then ResCon 1 was straight up hunger strike.

• 2:03:38Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:03:41Speaker 02

  That was one of the greatest displays, I think, that really affected the enemy was when they found out that when our commanding officer of a camp could say, okay, ResCon 3, no more bowing to the enemy. And so throughout the camp in these individual cells, you know, there might be, there might be 75 different cells and suddenly at the stroke of one, one button, you know, nobody would bow to the guards and it really frightened them to know that we had that much control, that much unity. And it was a silly thing, but it, but it really felt so good, you know, that we had, that, that we had some leverage here.

• 2:04:24Jocko Willink?

  And, and the, the other thing was that how you stayed unified was by not accepting favors. And then you had to just the dichotomy of leadership, right? You got to balance between, hey, if I can accept a favor and it's going to help us and it's going to make me healthier, it's going to, then I should probably do it. But then they put this, then the commander, the SRO would put a, a restriction or a reasonable timeframe. So this was a classic example because I already talked about how, how, how in love you were with pencils at this point. And at some point you got a pencil, somehow you got a, they gave you a pencil. And you know, the word spread that you guys had a pencil and the, the, the report or

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  the, the direction came back was, okay, you have 30 days to get more pencils. So we're all equal or you got to give the pencil back.

• 2:05:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't get any more pencils and you had to give that pencil back.

• 2:05:17Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:05:18Jocko Willink?

  That's, but that you can see how, when you, uh, how unified you are and how, but just like you said, that shows the, the, the guards and the camp leaders, hey, we are unified. You can't break us. You can't give, you can't give somebody some special help and not give it to everyone.

• 2:05:37Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable. Now you started talking about this a little earlier and I had to a little bit deeper on it because I think it hits a pertinent message, right? So when you talk about living with somebody and how when you're living with somebody and the furthest you can get away from them is eight feet. Sometimes I feel like this with Echo and we're, you know, we don't even live with this guy, but sitting in this podcast thing for, and you start saying, okay, that's good. What, what, things start to grind on you and irritate you. So whether they were exercising, you get a guy that's going to exercise while you're trying to sleep, or you get a guy that snores, which if you've ever dealt with somebody that snores, they can't help, but they don't even know that they sound like a chainsaw in your room. And you deal with, you might get roomed

• 2:06:22Jocko Willink?

  up with somebody that snores every single night. And the worst thing about somebody that snores is when you start thinking that it bothers you.

• 2:06:29Speaker 02

  It bothers you even more.

• 2:06:31Jocko Willink?

  Right? The pacing, pacing was another thing that would, you know, I'm just gonna get up and pace and hey, man, just sit down. So all these things, some POWs ate rice a grain at a time, a grain at a time. And, you know, like, all these little, um, these little,

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  I, I guess these little idiosyncrasies, right? And what you eventually said was, I'm gonna take those idiosyncrasies that bothers me about you, and I'm gonna take the blame on myself. I shouldn't be bothered by this, and I'm the one that can't let it bother me. And that is a huge difference to what most people do, which is, hey, it's all about me, and if you're bothering me, you need to change. And your all's attitude was, no, you know what? My attitude's, you don't need to change. I need to change. I need to become more accepting of the way you are. That's a big deal. If you can make that transition in your life, you'll be a much happier person.

• 2:07:33Speaker 02

  That's true. And I'm, I'm still trying.

• 2:07:39Jocko Willink?

  And, uh,

• 2:07:42Jocko Willink?

  it's, it's one of those things where it really is a game changer, because now, in, you know, it's extreme ownership, right? I'm not gonna blame everything on you for annoying me. I'm gonna take it on myself. And then sometimes you would, you'd have something that really like, maybe you couldn't sleep, and now you gotta talk to somebody else and have, have an indirect conversation. Instead of saying, hey, Echo's really bothering me clicking his pen over there. It's, it's gonna drive me crazy. Can you maybe talk to him about his pen etiquette and have him stop that? He's not doing it today, sir. But there was, there was an episode where- He had the pen in his hand, things got a little bit fidgety.

• 2:08:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:17Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, yeah. I didn't let it bother me. You know what I did?

• 2:08:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:08:21Jocko Willink?

  Brought him a new pen that didn't have the clicker on it. I took ownership of that situation.

• 2:08:25Speaker 02

  You did. You know, in today's world, we have so many people that are so offended by certain things and, and it's the same principle there is that if you offend me, that's really more my problem than it is your problem, you know? It's, uh, I'm the one that, that decides if you offend me. So, so I need to change my idea of what's offensive.

• 2:08:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:52Jocko Willink?

  One of the things that, and, and, you know, where, where it's easy to sit and laugh here a little bit about some of this stuff, but one of your chapters is called insanity. And, um, I'm going to the book here. The first I knew of it was in the fall of 1968, and I didn't understand. An old beat up French ambulance rammed, rattled into the courtyard and an American wearing prison guard crawled out. He weaved like a robot with head down and shoulders slumped. It was odd. Guards never allowed POWs to walk that way. We double timed. Who was this man? Had he just come from the hospital? Was he tortured into semi-consciousness or was he faking? When would we find out?

• 2:09:33Jocko Willink?

  The man was hallucinatory, insisting that his cellmates were communists pieced together with limbs and heads of dead Americans. Whose arm is that? He asked. Is that my pilot's arm? How can you commies speak such good English? Because this man was wasting away, it was necessary for his cellmates to force feed him. The hostile patient was still strong, requiring four or five men to constrain him so that a bamboo stick could be forced between his teeth. Another prisoner mashed rice down his throat. When they finished, he would gag himself to regurgitate what he thought was poison from the communists, spewing rice all over the room. He was entranced. When the Vietnamese entered the room, he refused to bow.

• 2:10:18Jocko Willink?

  Angered, a guard screamed, bow, bow, and whipped his fist across the expressionless face. The man continued to stand. The guards continued to beat him unmercifully.

• 2:10:30Jocko Willink?

  And you guys continued to see this every six months or so, we saw our sick POW comrade transported between solitary confinement and the hospital. We felt helpless. The only way we could assist was with prayer. After September 1970, we never saw him again.

• 2:10:48Speaker 02

  There's a little more to that story that I did not know when I wrote the book, that he had been a part of a, of an experiment done by a Cuban. The Cuban came over to the communist country and as near as we could tell, his sole purpose of being in Vietnam was to establish the breaking point of an American fighting man. And so this guy that I'm talking about in the book, and I didn't know his name at the time I wrote the book, Earl Cobial, was actually tortured to insanity. And that's, and that is why he was insane. And, and so his roommates, and he was very belligerent.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  And, I mean, here's another leadership principle, because you've got a group of guys in that prison cell that were being threatened, and some of them were, had broken bones or lacerations because this crazy man, he goes on a hunger strike and is going to kill himself by not eating. And they had to decide whether or not they were going to force feed him and keep him alive, and bring him back to his belligerence, or let him die. And so, it was, it was quite a dilemma in the prison camp, and quite a dramatic time when that was happening. And, and they did, they forced feed him and brought him back to health, and then the Vietnamese,

• 2:12:11Speaker 02

  for a reason we never really knew, but possibly because they saw that we had some control, and they didn't want us to have that control, they pulled him out of that cell, put him in solitary confinement, and, and then he died after that. But, but it was, it was a tragic event, that a guy would be tortured to the point of insanity.

• 2:12:33Jocko Willink?

  And that was the purpose of the torture?

• 2:12:37Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:12:38Jocko Willink?

  You said, you said they were, the purpose, oh no, the purpose was to find his breaking point.

• 2:12:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, to find the breaking point, and they found it, with this, with Cobial.

• 2:12:48Jocko Willink?

  You have another chapter, and we touched on this a little bit earlier about faith. Going back to the book, "Thy will be done." "Thy will be done." "It seemed presumptuous to try to change God's will, to make a deal with the omnipotent. If I promised to devote my life to the ministry in exchange for freedom and failed to follow through, what then?"

• 2:13:12Jocko Willink?

  No, trying to bargain with God was unfitting. "From the beginning, I offered prayers of acceptance. I remembered the experience of seeing the Christ-like shadow in the green knobby room and the comfort I felt in that time of great need. That day, I asked God for strength to endure whatever hardship I might face, and I prayed for Anne, not for her fidelity or success, but for tolerance, courage, and most of all, her happiness, with or without me." I continued this daily prayer.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Now, this was, faith was not just yours, but everyone. And here we go, again, showing some of the power that you guys had as prisoners. Back to the book, thousands of Bibles had been sent to us from church groups all over the world, but the Vietnamese gave us none. Asking wasn't enough, so we decided to go on a hunger strike. Our senior officer informed the Vietnamese that we simply didn't want more food until we could have a Bible, an uninterrupted worship. They retaliated by shutting off our drinking water. After a few days, the Vietnamese were ready to settle, and so were we.

• 2:14:34Jocko Willink?

  They would give us a church service if we abided by certain stipulations. The service would be held according to their schedule. No one could sing, no one could stand, and everyone would adhere strictly to camp regulations. Every word spoken in the ceremony was to be written down for the censors' perusal. After all the restrictions, we hadn't gained much, but at least the V had given an inch. After a few weeks later, the V saw that our services were not militant and relaxed restrictions. They permitted a four-man choir to sing two hymns. Most important, they gave us a Bible for two days.

• 2:15:18Jocko Willink?

  So you guys decided to hold the line on that one?

• 2:15:21Speaker 02

  We did, and it wasn't easy. They, an interesting thing, back to the leadership, was the guy who promoted this was a very staunch Christian guy. The number two in command was an atheist and really had no great interest in having a Bible in the cell. And so, when the number one guy told the Vietnamese that we were going to go on a hunger strike, they hauled him out of there. They took him away, so that the number two guy, the atheist, was suddenly in charge. And it was interesting to watch what was going to happen here. And it was very encouraging when the atheist said, "Continue the hunger strike. We're

• 2:16:06Speaker 02

  going to get this Bible."

• 2:16:09Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. You talk about their perception, the Vietnamese perception of religion in general. Back to the book, "The large majority of Vietnamese were not Catholic, however, and when they discovered us in prayer, as they did only the last year, they asked, 'What you derive from this thing, God?' We tried to explain that we received strength, comfort, help, and promise of eternal life. These concepts were too difficult for them, yet many seemed interested and did not mock our beliefs. To the diehard Vietnamese communist, the state was their god, their truth, their way, their light.

• 2:16:51Jocko Willink?

  The controlling body in the government decreed infallible canons without fear of correction. Whenever peasants asked, 'Who is the state?' They were told that they themselves were, and that they had control in making decisions. Each was told that he was part of the omniscient state. He was, as long as he didn't interfere.

• 2:17:14Jocko Willink?

  I consider my confinement in prison to be spiritually beneficial. I was given an opportunity that few men have, the time to pause, to reflect, and to establish priorities. I found that my previous value system was unrealistic. Stripped of all my material wealth, the only beacon I could home in on was my faith in an unchanging god."

• 2:17:44Jocko Willink?

  And you also went very deep on thoughts around patriotism. And here's you're talking about patriotism. Some POWs were super patriots, feeling the United States could do no wrong. A few felt that we had made a mistake and it was time for us to get out. With most of the prisoners, I accepted the fact that we were not perfect, but felt that we were fighting for a worthy cause and should persevere until the end. And this is something I've brought up on many occasions, the fact of how hard we, when I fought in the war in Iraq and we went through extreme measures to try and

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  protect the civilian populace and the civilian infrastructure. And here's your comments on that. Back to the book, "Great efforts were made to persevere the lives and property of civilians. Pilots were threatened with court martial if they failed to pinpoint accurate military targets, even to the extent that they would jeopardize their own lives by swooping just above treetops to preserve a peasant hut 50 yards from a SAM radar scope. The Vietnamese capitalizing on this made targets especially difficult by placing their military equipment in the middle of peasant hamlets or next to schools. In fact, several anti-aircraft artillery guns were stationed on hospital rooftops."

• 2:19:14Jocko Willink?

  And your thoughts about the involvement here, "The most powerful free nation in history could not idly watch the communist world gobble up and dissolve sovereign nations. We had to play the surgeon to excise the malignant disease of mind control. I don't condone war. I think there are few justifiable reasons for killing."

• 2:19:41Jocko Willink?

  In Vietnam, war was a last ditch effort of international diplomacy. It was difficult to justify my six years of imprisonment when politicians with expense-paid trips to Paris should have solved the problems through negotiation.

• 2:19:56Jocko Willink?

  In this case, our negotiations were at the end of their rope.

• 2:20:01Jocko Willink?

  The communists didn't understand anything but the big hammer. When our B-52s shattered Hanoi's defenses with thousands of bombs, the Vietnamese realized we meant business.

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  In this thought here, we faced east once a week and pledged our allegiance. We contrasted our Bill of Rights and the Constitution to the Communist Manifesto. Daily, we saw how Big Brother destroyed individuality. We compared our lot with that of the guards. While prisoners of war were behind bars, the Vietnamese were captives inside their own bamboo borders.

• 2:20:53Jocko Willink?

  We considered ourselves more fortunate than they. One day, we would leave ourselves.

• 2:21:06Jocko Willink?

  Powerful statement.

• 2:21:08Speaker 02

  And that's exactly the way we thought was that they were the prisoners and we weren't. We were always, we were always of the belief that we would go home and they had to stay there. They had to stay in their prison and we would eventually be released.

• 2:21:29Jocko Willink?

  And you were right.

• 2:21:33Jocko Willink?

  During the week of 21 to 28 January 1973, for the first time, treatment was actually humane. The Vietnamese set up a volleyball net and allowed us to play or to exercise. They gave us books and magazines from home. We knew something was happening. So you guys started to sense that...

• 2:21:53Jocko Willink?

  It was, and you, and you talk about this in the book. I didn't go into it much, but there was always some people that were, what'd you call them? The people that would look at the amount of food you got?

• 2:22:01Speaker 02

  Oh, yes.

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  And they would, they would read the amount of rice you'd be given as to some, foreseeing the future of how long you're gonna be in there. What'd you call them in the book?

• 2:22:10Speaker 02

  Uh, we call them, um, I forgot.

• 2:22:13Jocko Willink?

  Like fooditarians or something like that? No, gastronomers.

• 2:22:17Speaker 02

  Gastronomers, that's what it was.

• 2:22:19Jocko Willink?

  Gastronomers, yeah. Anyone that said, oh, they gave us more rice. We must be getting ready to be released. And you hear that feeling. It sounds like, you know, once a year, once, once every 18 months.

• 2:22:30Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, of course, it depended on the person, but some of the guys were so optimistic. And, uh, and I was an optimist, you know, I would think, you know, home. In fact, when I was first shot down, uh, I, I thought we'd had finally given him the, the big blow. You know, we'd finally brought them to their knees on the 19th of May. And, and the first few days in prison, I thought, you know, this is really gonna be ironic because if the war is over and I fly home and, and my squadron has to take the ship home, I will be there to greet them when they come home.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  That's a seriously positive attitude right there.

• 2:23:09Speaker 02

  That is optimism.

• 2:23:10Jocko Willink?

  Those poor guys have to ride the ship back. I'm gonna be home before them.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man. That's like I was, I've said this before on the podcast. I always, when I'm in, in a commercial aircraft, flying, I always think if this thing blows up in the sky, I'm gonna live. I'm gonna be that guy. You know, of course, I'm not gonna get killed.

• 2:23:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Everyone else is gonna die, not me.

• 2:23:34Jocko Willink?

  And so finally,

• 2:23:38Jocko Willink?

  here we go. Back to the book. The camp commander once again called our group together, about 180 of us old timers. It was the first time that all prisoners in the camp were gathered in one place. We lined up by buildings in military formation and were called to attention by our acting wing commander, Lieutenant Colonel Norm Gaddis. Although Vietnamese officials did not recognize our rank structure, they said nothing. The camp commander read an announcement and the interpreter read the translation. It had been a long time since I'd heard English worded so professionally.

• 2:24:13Jocko Willink?

  When he finished and told us that we could go, our wing commander again called us to attention and dismissed us. With bowed heads, with heads bowed, we walked quietly back to our rooms. We were stunned. Some had waited for these words for over eight and one-half years. The war was over. We were going home. Did that even feel real at that point? After you'd had your hopes up so many times?

• 2:24:46Speaker 02

  It really didn't. And they'd tried to trick us many times, you know? They would call us and, "Hey, sign this confession, we'll send you home." And, uh, and so even when it happened for real, it, it, it, we couldn't believe it. And it wasn't really until we finally got aboard that, uh, that C-141, and it took off, the wheels in the well.

• 2:25:09Jocko Willink?

  And, and when, there was a little, a little bit of a administrative situation when it came time, because you guys had all knew that you were gonna follow the order that you were capped, the, the sick and injured were gonna go first, then the enlisted guys were gonna go, and then order of capture.

• 2:25:27Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that was part of the plums.

• 2:25:29Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:25:30Speaker 02

  Okay, that was, that was part of all of the rules that had, that, that we were binding by. And so, uh, we were in, uh, we were numbered, okay, the sick and injured guys got, uh, went home. And then it was our turn, but by number of the date of shoot-down. And they pulled 20 of us out that were out of order of the shoot-down date. And, uh, we made a big deal of this. And, uh, and they, they told us, well, Kissinger told us, we, that we almost caused an international incident, because for, for whatever reason, and we really never knew for sure, except

• 2:26:07Speaker 02

  that all 20 of us had, um, had some, some disappointing, um, uh, feature to our return. And we never knew if that was the reason or not, but we were either, either coming back to deaths in the family, or disease, or divorce, or that kind of thing, all 20 guys. And so, but we were out of order, and we did not know why we were out of order. And so, we, we told them we weren't going home. And it went back and forth for almost a day, uh, that we refused to go home.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  And then finally, Colonel Gaddis just pulled you in and said, "Listen, you guys are going home."

• 2:26:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, he gave us the direct order.

• 2:26:56Jocko Willink?

  And then you get to the airport. At the airport, the bus halted near Pockmark Runways. We exited solemnly through a crowd of people, and by microphone, we were told

• 2:27:09Jocko Willink?

  to walk to our receiving officer when our names were called. As I heard my name, I stepped past a table where Vietnamese and American representatives marked off the exchange. I saluted a Colonel, then another, and was escorted by an officer who was so excited, he could have, he could say nothing more than, "Isn't it great? It's so nice to have you back. We've all been waiting for you. Isn't it great?" I felt as though he had previously composed what he would say, but in his excitement, his record stuck. He was right. It was great. I walked up on the ramp of the C-141 and saw the first Navy uniform. The officer inside that uniform grabbed me and hugged me and told me his name. I didn't know him until he told me he was the briefing officer on the Kitty Hawk the day I was shot down.

• 2:27:51Jocko Willink?

  Gary Morrow and I had once worked many hours together, and now we can joyfully recall old times. Soon as I was in the airplane, a nurse kissed me and started the first of a long chain of flashbulbs. We were given American cigarettes, magazines, and information sheets telling us what to expect at Clark Air Force Base. The pilot taxied down the runway, pushed off, pushed the throttles, and at the moment of liftoff, suddenly it hit us. We were off north Vietnamese soil. We screamed above the noise of the engines. Minutes later, we were soaring above the Gulf of Tonkin and saw some of our ships.

• 2:28:31Jocko Willink?

  The commander of the 7th Fleet sent a message of welcome, and Jim returned the radio com with a thankful acknowledgement. By nightfall, we reached the Philippines and Clark Air Force Base. As soon as the doors opened, we could see and hear the enthusiasm from what must have been 5,000 people. Banners and bands, choral groups and cheerleaders, everyone seemed to be there. I walked down the ramp, saluted a general, and then an admiral. As I shook the admiral's hand, I was so overcome with emotion that I hugged him.

• 2:29:12Jocko Willink?

  So you hugged the Admiral.

• 2:29:13Speaker 02

  That was embarrassing.

• 2:29:18Speaker 02

  I don't know why I did that. You know, it was just one of those things.

• 2:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Sir, can I maybe take a stab at that? You've been gone for six and a half years. I would have hugged him. I think I would have kissed him. It'd been on. Thank you, sir.

• 2:29:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir, you're allowed to hug the Admiral when you come home after that. No, that's uh, but I could tell when you wrote that, you were sort of like, oh, what'd I just do?

• 2:29:40Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:29:41Jocko Willink?

  Overcome with emotions and, and then you start kind of the in-processing thing. And, and that had to be, when they start handing you magazines and cigarettes and food and all that, you go into that somewhat in here where they're just, how overwhelming is that?

• 2:29:57Speaker 02

  That was wonderful. It was joyful.

• 2:30:01Jocko Willink?

  You know, I was reading through some Vietnam POW poetry. And I got caught, you know, I was just looking for background. I want to learn more. And, you know, people express themselves in poetry. And I've got locked into probably a dozen poems that was nothing but different foods. Like, like raspberry cake and I just steak and milk and chocolate milk and everything. You know, there was like a dozen poems that were just about food.

• 2:30:32Speaker 02

  My, my favorite one was Jerry Coffey wrote a poem. It was called Ode to a Weevil. And the poem was, little weevil in my bread, I think I just bit off your head.

• 2:30:45Speaker 02

  That was it. That was the end of the poem.

• 2:30:49Speaker 02

  That was the end of the weevil, too.

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  So you guys, you guys are, you know, that had to be somewhat overwhelming. But, you know, like you said, you guys, you guys were, were in good, relatively good mental status at this point.

• 2:31:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:31:06Jocko Willink?

  Amazing.

• 2:31:08Jocko Willink?

  Now, as you're going through the motions with the doctors and the physical people and the, uh, the, uh, the PAs, the public affairs people, you're, you're saying, hey, um, you know, why don't I see my wife? What's up with my wife? And no one's really answering that question for you. And finally, you get the chaplain, and you say, going back to the book here, I looked up at him and said, Chaplain, I have a great deal of faith in you, and I want you to level with me. So far, I haven't been able to get a straight answer from anyone, and I want to know about my wife. Would you please be kind enough to tell me what's going on? And he says back, well, Charlie, there is a problem with your wife. She is well, but she has some misgivings. I'm not sure as to the extent, but I'm sure that everything

• 2:31:52Jocko Willink?

  is going to be all right. She's written me a letter, but I didn't want to open it.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  I felt that you should.

• 2:32:01Jocko Willink?

  And you get the letter, and it's nothing crystal clear, but the message is clear enough that, you know, she's not wanting to stay married to you anymore.

• 2:32:19Jocko Willink?

  And you call her the next day.

• 2:32:23Speaker 02

  Actually, I called my, my parents first.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:32:26Speaker 02

  Back in Kansas. Um, I tried to call her, but, uh, it didn't, it didn't work. In fact, they were, they were very protective. You know, first of all, they thought, they thought I might be suicidal when I heard the news. And so they were very protective of me. And I, they wouldn't, they wouldn't let me call home. Um, even the chaplain and the psychiatrist and psychologists wouldn't let me call home.

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Home, even to your parents?

• 2:32:55Speaker 02

  Even to my parents, yeah. They, they had this plan of, of how they were going to explain this to me, I guess. But they wouldn't let me call. I finally found...

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  A social worker in the hospital, you know, hey, I wanna, you got a telephone around here? I found a phone and I, and I called my parents back in Kansas and, and they're the ones that actually told me. You know, never forget my mom's word. She said, "A son had given ten years of my life if I didn't have to tell you this, but she's engaged to be married to another man. She's, she's filed for divorce and judge wouldn't give her a divorce." You know, it's her, the, the justification was abandonment, you know? She said her husband had abandoned her and the judge wasn't buying that. And so, but no, that was the first I knew was when my mother told me that she had filed

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  for divorce.

• 2:33:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, um, going back to the book here, a few days later, so you talked to Ann, but then some of the stuff you say here is, I actually, I just, I just have to quote it. Um, back to the book, "Yet Ann had told me that she wanted to remarry. I would not become an obstacle to her happiness. I called her parents and they seemed quite unsettled about Ann's decision. A few days later, I called Ann again and she complained that many members in the news media had been harassing her. She said she had often been misquoted and was the victim of character assassination. I then talked personally to some of the newspaper men and told them that I did not want her to be maligned in any way.

• 2:34:37Jocko Willink?

  In fact, I wanted them to say nothing at all about my wife. For the most part, they were receptive to my wishes. I gave them a quote which they could use if they felt they had to. The divorce is regrettable, is a regrettable but inevitable drifting apart after so many years. By this time, my hope for reconciliation was dead. I was determined to take it on the chin and roll with the punches."

• 2:35:02Speaker 02

  Well, I may be coming off as a white knight here, but it wasn't at all that way. She, I really, to this day, believe that, in many ways, the ladies had it worse than we did, you know, and it's the, it's the families back here, you know, I mean, the military guys are over there, and I'm sure you've seen this in your experience as well, is that we, we believe in what we're doing, we're dedicated, we're focused, you know, we're over there having a high old time. The families back here don't have that, and especially, my wife didn't know if I was alive or dead, from one day to the next. She went through the same years, twenty-four to thirty, that I did. She was supposed to

• 2:35:44Speaker 02

  be faithful to me, and she was supposed to, you know, believe that I was coming home, not knowing if I'd ever come home, and if I did, would I still want to be married? Or would I be a basket case and a burden to her the rest of her life? And the, the other part of this, which was, which I, I didn't know at the time, of course, but she lost her support group. You know, they had a big wives' club, the squadron pilots, all of our wives got together, and they would take pictures and send us cookies and make tapes and all these things. And it was a very close-knit group, the, the wives of the pilots. Well, when I was shot down, or when anybody was killed or captured, that

• 2:36:26Speaker 02

  wife was sort of summarily shunned by the rest of the group. Not officially, but just because they didn't, you know, that, they didn't want to, um, they didn't know what to say, and they didn't want to be associated with somebody who had that problem. They didn't want, they didn't want that to affect their life. So she lost her support group. She, uh, she went back to Kansas, went back to school there. And then, when she fell in love with this other guy, she lost what support group she had at home, because her parents were upset, my parents were upset. I have a brother ten years younger than I am that that looks a lot like me.

• 2:37:09Speaker 02

  And he was of about the same age during this, the latter part of this experience that I had been when when Ann and I met. And he would go over to mow her lawn in Kansas and she would break out in hives, serious, emergency room kind of hives, uh, just at the sight of my little brother because he looked like me. And and so they finally, the doctors restricted him from ever seeing her because it caused her so much grief. So it was tough on the ladies, any way you look at it. And and I saw that and I felt that and I felt like I needed to do whatever was necessary to give her a little peace.

• 2:37:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, you might not think you came off like a white knight, but that's a pretty, you know, awesome treatment of someone, for sure.

• 2:38:01Speaker 02

  Well, and a lot of people, um, you know, didn't understand it then and and even don't understand it to today. And, you know, some people want to blame her, uh, but I I have no animosity, no blame whatsoever, um, for what she did. I mean, it was, uh, I have other people that will say, well, don't you wish that she had known early on that she was going to divorce you? No way.

• 2:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'd say no to that one.

• 2:38:29Speaker 02

  No, her, her, the thoughts of her kept me alive, you know? That was, I mean, that was my purpose, was to go back and be with her. The fact that it didn't happen, of course, is somewhat incidental, but the six years I was there, it was certainly a positive for me to think about her.

• 2:38:48Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, you you wrap up the book with, um, a chapter called Reflections, which is just phenomenal. And, you know, looking back at kind of what you learned there. And I'm gonna hit some of the, some of the parts of it because there's so much that everybody can can learn from this.

• 2:39:12Jocko Willink?

  Going here to the book, "Our Closed Society Subsisted." "We ate, slept, breathed. We laughed and we cried. We were frustrated and we were gratified. We were embarrassed and we were proud. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, particular patterns of behavior edged into our daily activities until they became folkways. There was nothing unusual about a man pacing the floor for hours like a caged tiger. No notice was given to the man lifting his soup bowl and licking it spotless. There was no stigma in bearing our souls to one another. We had our own mores and sense of propriety.

• 2:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Our microchasm was a Petri dish containing its own strains and culture. Although we had not been handpicked, we were, for the most part, out of the same mold, that of the professional officer and pilot. We were unique prisoners who acted differently from those of Korea or World War II. We had been exposed to a different selection process and a new era of lifestyles. Gathered together in a dubious fraternity of Hanoi skydivers, we were a group of cocky individuals. We knew we were the best. Stripped of personal possessions,

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  of million-dollar airplanes, of rank and prestige, we suddenly found ourselves at the bottom of a dark pit. We could no longer look outward. Our only alternative was to make the best of what we had." And when you have so little, and for you guys to take that attitude, then there's so many people, you know, and I hear from people all over the world that will reach out to me and talk about the situation that they're in, a bad situation, in a negative situation, and, you know, it's hearing from people like you that makes everyone realize, "I need to make the best of what I have.

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  You know, I need to make the best of the situation I'm in, because if you guys could do it, anyone could do it."

• 2:41:29Speaker 02

  You know, again, this sounds like grand, high-level philosophy, but it was almost a survival technique. You know, it was almost, hey, this is the way that we can make it through this is believing in the future and believing in ourselves. And I look back on that six years, and it was probably the most important six years of my life because I came through this silly experience with this kind of discipline, this kind of thought process that, hey, it's not the hand you're dealt, it's the way you play the hand you're dealt. You may not have four aces this round, you know.

• 2:42:13Speaker 02

  You may have trash, but if you play it right, it can still be a winning hand.

• 2:42:19Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of talk about you coming home. Back to the book, my first impressions of home were not too encouraging. Newspapers and magazines were devoted largely to the drug problem, permissiveness, the energy crisis, abounding crime rate, and eroding family structures. I was worried, worried from a selfish viewpoint. I had sacrificed many years for my country, and I didn't want some young whippersnappers destroying it. But I decided to give myself a one-year moratorium before taking a firm stand on any of my observations. And I found that the news media in particular had exaggerated the negative.

• 2:43:01Jocko Willink?

  I didn't have my wallet stolen, nor did I see opium dens or gang wars when I visited schools. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised with student demeanor. Young people freely asked questions and showed a genuine concern for answers. To me, they seemed to have been unduly criticized by an impatient adult society rather than given wise counsel. They have more freedom, and I think they are generally capable of handling those freedoms. They are more mature than their counterparts of my generation. They have to be to survive.

• 2:43:41Jocko Willink?

  And one of the reasons I called that little section out is because guess what we hear about? The millennials right now. We hear the same thing about the millennials. And maybe just everyone should give a little moratorium on themselves. I'm gonna start imposing more moratoriums on myself. I think that's a great idea. We'll have to start definitely doing that. Self-impose moratoriums on things. Yeah, you hear, and you know, me with, you know, we work with a lot of businesses and companies and people will ask us about, you know, we got these millennials and it's so hard to lead them. And I say, oh, why is that? Because they want to understand why they're doing what they're doing? Because they want to know what the goal and purpose of their, of their job is?

• 2:44:21Jocko Willink?

  That's nothing new. Oh, because they're, because they want to step up and run things? I want that person working for me. So, yeah, put a little moratorium.

• 2:44:36Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:44:39Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. While in prison, I had a lot of time to think. The same question kept popping in my mind. What am I doing here? I'm 10,000 miles from home, cooped up in a communist prison camp, unable to enjoy all the wonderful freedoms I was sent here to protect. My first answer was obvious. I'm fighting for my country. I'm serving the United States of America. I'd learned in school that America was purple mountain majesties and amber, amber waves of grain. That it was Congress and the executive and the judiciary. These were self-evident, but I had to get more personal than that. America had to mean more.

• 2:45:18Jocko Willink?

  It had to relate to my own freedoms, the product of nearly 200 years of a pioneering spirit. My nation is a skinny kid who climbs on his bike before dawn to sling newspapers. My country is a librarian who sits behind glasses with pencil in her hair and is quick to find answers to my questions. My homeland is a truck driver who smiles down from his cab and signals me through the intersection. My America is a personal friend. And I am proud to serve her.

• 2:45:58Jocko Willink?

  And you go on to say that there must be a thousand definitions for freedom.

• 2:46:04Jocko Willink?

  Mine is simple. Freedom is the ability to walk through the door. It's not the act of walking through. That's proof of freedom. It's not going to church, or speaking one's mind, or demonstrating in the streets. Freedom is the ability to choose whether to go to church, to step up on a soapbox, to carry placards.

• 2:46:28Jocko Willink?

  Now that I am released, again, I move about at will. I say what I wish. I criticize and take criticism. I feel freer now than ever before, because I know what freedom is. I appreciate those freedoms, because I was once denied them. And is there anything, is there anybody that appreciates freedoms more than people that have had those freedoms denied?

• 2:46:57Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 2:47:00Jocko Willink?

  Is there any way to transfer the appreciation for those freedoms? I mean, I'm doing my darndest here.

• 2:47:08Speaker 02

  You're doing your darndest, and we're in the same business, you know, I speak a couple of times a week, all over the country, have since I came home. Trying to impress this on people, but the truth is, there's no way that you or I can put people in that situation that we've been in, and make them feel the way they feel. There's no way I could deny a person a freedom. I do corporate workshops, as you do, and I'll put, I'll put a person in a room by themselves, with nothing there for 15 minutes, and they go crazy, you know?

• 2:47:43Jocko Willink?

  Do you take their phone away from them?

• 2:47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. You can cut that down to five minutes with my kids?

• 2:47:49Speaker 02

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  They're going nuts.

• 2:47:51Speaker 02

  And so, there's very little, well, I should say this way, it's difficult to make that transfer, to make a person appreciate freedom when they've never lost theirs, and all I can do is tell the story. And I appreciate your helping me tell the story.

• 2:48:09Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying over here. I'm gonna, you know, occasionally, I just have to go a little bit of the distance on some stuff that I have to read in here. And this is one of those situations to wrap up, because I think this is just such an important message for me, for everybody. Back to the book. I'm often asked, "How did you do it, Commander?

• 2:48:32Jocko Willink?

  How could you take six years of filth, brutality, and loneliness? I could have never done it."

• 2:48:40Jocko Willink?

  My answer is, "Of course you could." As a matter of fact, you rub elbows each day with people who have done it. We weren't the only prisoners. Millions of Americans have experienced the manacles of the body or shackles of the mind. They've been bound by unfortunate external circumstances: automobile accidents, disease, natural disaster, paralyzing grief from the loss of a loved one. They have suffered deprivation and humiliation.

• 2:49:15Jocko Willink?

  Once a victim of misfortune, many become too insecure to open doors. Instead, they allow themselves to wallow in despair. They become alcoholics, drug addicts, unfaithful wives or husbands, unruly children. Inability to face personal responsibility is often hidden in seemingly innocent pastimes: golf, poker, television, sleep.

• 2:49:44Jocko Willink?

  These diversions spawn intense feeling of guilt and worthlessness.

• 2:49:50Jocko Willink?

  And some victims ultimately isolate themselves and become despondent.

• 2:49:58Jocko Willink?

  A few commit suicide.

• 2:50:02Jocko Willink?

  I had ample opportunity to damn society and curse my fate.

• 2:50:10Jocko Willink?

  But what good would that have done?

• 2:50:14Jocko Willink?

  To be sure, the Vietnamese would not have released me simply because I felt sorry for myself.

• 2:50:21Jocko Willink?

  On the contrary, they used every available means to make that happen.

• 2:50:28Jocko Willink?

  A despondent prisoner was a prime candidate for communist indoctrination.

• 2:50:35Jocko Willink?

  My secret for enduring six years of hell is really not a secret at all. First and foremost, I had faith in God. Knowing that his will would be done, I never doubted that I could persevere. I simply trusted God's promise to answer my prayers. I also loved my country, its people, and its freedoms. I realized that because of the human element, mistakes could be made.

• 2:51:07Jocko Willink?

  But in growing up, I had discerned that most of the people in this great land are honorable and compassionate.

• 2:51:16Jocko Willink?

  Second, I had self-discipline. It would have been easier to avoid torture by succumbing to North Vietnamese interrogation. It would have been easier to assume helplessness by blaming an evil world. I could have rationalized myself into mental and physical paralysis.

• 2:51:39Jocko Willink?

  However, strict self-obedience gave me the ability to persevere.

• 2:51:47Jocko Willink?

  Finally, I had pride. I was proud to know an omnipotent God. I was proud of my country and its heritage. I was proud of my family. I was proud of myself.

• 2:52:03Jocko Willink?

  Faith, discipline, pride.

• 2:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Each of these nurtured the others. Combined, they allowed me to endure.

• 2:52:16Jocko Willink?

  I have joined the ranks of millions of Americans who have applied heroic principles in overcoming hardships. Every day, a disabled veteran steps away from his wheelchair. Every day, a life is resumed after a death in the family. Friendships erase loneliness. Addicts throw away the crutch of alcohol or drugs or obsessions. Every day, someone discovers how to love life. No matter what the obstacle. Every day, someone sees the light at the end of the tunnel.

• 2:52:59Jocko Willink?

  These ordinary Americans are not held in esteem as heroes, yet they have suffered grave misfortune and have recovered, just as I.

• 2:53:12Jocko Willink?

  So you see, I'm no hero.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  And I think it's that very humility, sir, that makes you a hero because you are certainly a hero to me and certainly a hero to this great nation.

• 2:53:35Speaker 02

  Well, thank you. Thank you for that.

• 2:53:38Speaker 02

  And I show those bouquets right back at you. You're one of my heroes.

• 2:53:47Jocko Willink?

  I don't accept, sir.

• 2:53:50Jocko Willink?

  Not at all.

• 2:53:52Jocko Willink?

  You know, as you look at other people's struggle,

• 2:53:57Jocko Willink?

  with all the things that you mentioned, the drugs, the alcohol, the obsession, the depression after the loss of a loved one,

• 2:54:05Jocko Willink?

  how can people find the faith, the discipline, the pride that you talk about? What do you think is that kernel, that starting point that allows those things to grow in someone's mind so that they can overcome these kind of challenges?

• 2:54:28Speaker 02

  I think the first seed that you have to plant and nurture in your mind is that you still have the choice, that you still are in control. Because I think so many people that get bogged down with these challenges we're talking about, assume that there's no way out, that it's somebody else's problem or somebody else has to affect their lives and they feel like they have no control over the outcome. And so I think that's the beginning part of it is that each of us makes decisions every day that control our destiny. And it truly is not the things around us. It's our, it's our...

• 2:55:11Speaker 02

  Our approach to the things around us, it's our definition of the things around us. It's our willingness to accept a challenge and make choices about the things around us. And so if you can nurture that, if you can believe that, yes, I have control of my life. I am the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my soul. And if you can really believe that, then the rest is just a matter of the discipline it takes to work through it.

• 2:55:43Jocko Willink?

  You know, it's interesting, I was talking, you know, I was talking to your son Alex. And we were talking about how, you know, as he was growing up and he was hearing your sort of philosophy of life in the world. And when he heard me on the podcast and he started saying, wait a second, I've heard this kind of stuff before. And then we were talking about how, you know, I've kind of said that now that, you know, there's some, I hate to go so far as to say, universal truths, but there's certainly some things in human nature and human life that are very similar across the board. And when you take people and you put them through this crazy thing of life,

• 2:56:25Jocko Willink?

  and you provide them with some similar challenges, they're going to come to very similar conclusions. And from what you just said, you know, there's two things that you said that I say all the time. And number one, this perspective of, you know, what's that initial spark to say, hey, I can take discipline, I can take pride. The first thing in my mind you got to say is like, okay, these problems that are happening, I gotta take ownership of what I can do, I gotta take ownership of my problems. I can't blame this guy, I can't blame that guy, I gotta take ownership of them. And that's the first thing. And then the other piece that you said that I say all the time is you've got decisions to make. You've got little decisions to make. And if you can make that right decision, if you can do the right thing at that moment in time,

• 2:57:10Jocko Willink?

  it's not going to change your life, that one decision won't change your life, but then you're gonna... Three minutes later, thirty seconds later, an hour later, you're gonna make another decision. And can you hold the line and get yourself pointed in the right direction? And can you have the discipline to do that? Can you have the faith in yourself that you're gonna make that happen? And can you have the pride? And you know what? Dick Winters talked about that too on the last podcast, you know, Dick Winters from the first of 506 Band of Brothers. But one of the big things that he was concerned about with his men was if he saw them begin to lose pride. And how, hey, if I don't care what Echo thinks of me, if I come in here, I'm not ready for this podcast and he's gonna look at me like, oh, I guess Jocko's just letting it slide. And all of a sudden, if I don't care anymore, I don't care anymore. Now I'm not preparing, now I'm not getting ready.

• 2:57:55Jocko Willink?

  And then you take someone in combat and they start to lose pride and all of a sudden they say, I don't care who sees me acting the wrong way, who sees me slacking off on a watch, who sees me not cleaning my weapon. If I don't care about that anymore, that's the beginning of that downward spiral. And pride is one of those things that you have to be careful of. Because just like any other dichotomy that we have as human beings, yes, you can get so much pride that you no longer think you can do anything wrong, in which we know where that leads. That's right. And you can have not enough pride to keep yourself on the right path. Amazing stuff.

• 2:58:38Jocko Willink?

  Echo, did you have any questions? Just wondering.

• 2:58:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, this one part I kinda wanted to reflect on that I thought was pretty important. Even on a smaller, like the part where you're regarding the guards as in their own prison, you know? So you almost like you said that they had it worse than you did. So this one time my wife told me this story where she was in the checkout line, you know, in the store. A lot of stuff happens in the checkout line.

• 2:59:08Jocko Willink?

  A lot of things happen with the grocery store.

• 2:59:11Speaker 01

  A lot of lessons, a lot of lessons. So she was, she found herself in the express line, but she had more than the fifteen items, you know? And the guy behind her started, he was tripping the whole time though. So she's paying, she's trying to hurry up and he's like, you know, you know, what do you call loud talking? Like talking to the person next to him about my wife. So. After the whole ordeal, it was kind of like a scene, you know? So my wife afterwards was like, oh, I I hope you have a nice day, you know? Like, you know, she left.

• 2:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Wait, did she say it earnestly?

• 2:59:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59:45Jocko Willink?

  That didn't sound real earnest.

• 2:59:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, well.

• 2:59:48Jocko Willink?

  And I don't, I don't know. Good enough to think that she probably.

• 2:59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was probably salty for sure, but at the end of the day, it's kind of like, hey, I hope you have a nice day. And she, so she told me that story and she was like, but you know what? A big part of me was like, he has to go home with himself, you know? And I get to come home and be cool and have all my, you know, all this stuff. And I was like, dang, that's a good way to look at it because he has to go home. He's probably pissed.

• 3:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:10Speaker 01

  For the day and, you know?

• 3:00:11Jocko Willink?

  She gets to go home with seventeen grocery items too. After blazing through the checkout line.

• 3:00:16Speaker 01

  Blazing right through, it's true. Oh yeah, one question, you know, when you got arrested when you bought that scooter, right? The Cushman?

• 3:00:23Jocko Willink?

  He's been thinking about this for three hours.

• 3:00:25Speaker 01

  I've been in this experience because you get the scooter, right? You pack your friend.

• 3:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:00:28Speaker 01

  Right? And then the cops say stop you. That happened to us all the time. But why did they arrest you though? It was, I mean, is it like, hey, you guys can't do that? You're going to jail.

• 3:00:37Speaker 02

  Well, it was rather unusual, I think, for these, these cops to see these two little guys. You know, we were thirteen and fourteen years old and then we weren't very big to begin with. And the motor scooter was bigger than we were and it's in the middle of the night and we're. I, I think they, they felt, they felt like there was something suspicious going on there.

• 3:00:57Speaker 01

  You just took it, you stole it.

• 3:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, all right, Echo, what? Sir, do you have anything else on that, on that right there?

• 3:01:06Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay. No, no, no, no further details on the scooter rides. We got that clear.

• 3:01:13Speaker 01

  We'll, we'll drop that.

• 3:01:15Jocko Willink?

  Echo.

• 3:01:18Jocko Willink?

  You know, do you think that you could maybe?

• 3:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Tell us how to support the podcast if you want to.

• 3:01:23Speaker 01

  Sure, of course I can. That's what I'm here for, one of the many reasons. So.

• 3:01:29Speaker 01

  If you want to support this podcast in many ways, first way you can support yourself. I said it before, I'm gonna say it again, Onnit. Supplements, right? If you're doing physical stuff, supplements, that gets you through. I'm not gonna spend too much time on it. I want to, I won't.

• 3:01:46Speaker 01

  I'm gonna recommend the krill oil and the Strongbone. That's it.

• 3:01:50Jocko Willink?

  See, now just, sir, I'm not letting this annoy me. I'm just gonna, I'm just like, okay with it. It's my problem. If I don't want to listen to him talk, that's my problem. He has the right to speak for a long, you know, hours about, you know, this stuff.

• 3:02:02Speaker 01

  But here's the thing, though, part, like, let's say you were to get annoyed. The only reason you'd get annoyed, get annoyed is because you know this stuff.

• 3:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:02:10Speaker 01

  Some people, they don't know.

• 3:02:11Jocko Willink?

  There's all those people.

• 3:02:11Speaker 01

  Or maybe they want to hear it again.

• 3:02:12Jocko Willink?

  Hanging on your every word.

• 3:02:14Speaker 01

  But the good thing about Onnit, you know, that's a good stuff, because supplements can be kind of junk sometimes. But this one, 100%, this is the good stuff. And there's stuff for everything in life, everything. We only talk about the krill oil, some other stuff. But you go on there, protein, wellness, even like digestive, everything they got on there. Onnit.com, that's where you get it. If you want 10% off, Onnit.com/Jaco.

• 3:02:40Speaker 01

  Another way, before you do your Amazon shopping, click through JacoPodcast.com to do your Amazon shopping. And then, you know, do your shopping as, as normal. Good way to support, small action, big reaction. Takes what, three seconds? Something like that.

• 3:02:56Speaker 01

  Maybe four, I don't know. Either way, do that, that's a good way. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. That's iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and other podcasting platforms. Subscribe on YouTube, I put some excerpts on there.

• 3:03:13Jocko Willink?

  I watched that last one.

• 3:03:14Speaker 01

  That was a good one.

• 3:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Good one. 12 minutes, is your, just so you know, you're getting outside the boundaries of, of an excerpt.

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  Man, I'm listening to it, I'm like, yeah, it could end it right there. But I'm like, oh, wait, wait, that kind of helped, you know.

• 3:03:25Jocko Willink?

  What was the title of that one?

• 3:03:26Speaker 01

  Uh, what was it?

• 3:03:28Jocko Willink?

  It's a good one. It's 12 minutes long.

• 3:03:29Speaker 01

  Emotion, oh, hangry, getting hangry.

• 3:03:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, getting, controlling your, stifling your emotions.

• 3:03:33Speaker 01

  Your emotions.

• 3:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Because I kept saying, stifle your emotions.

• 3:03:35Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right. When it's level two or- Lower on the Richter scale of emotions, you can't behave your emotions. Your behavior can't be based on them. Anyway, look at that little excerpt. Uh, put more on that.

• 3:03:48Jocko Willink?

  What do you subscribe to? Jocko Podcast YouTube. Subscribe to that. That's what you subscribe to.

• 3:03:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, the Jocko Podcast YouTube channel. It's like, just like a channel. It's a YouTube channel. Anyone who knows about YouTube is gonna know this, I think.

• 3:04:02Jocko Willink?

  I know a little bit about YouTube, but I didn't quite put all that together.

• 3:04:05Speaker 01

  It's all good, bro. I think you're already subscribed. You get the notification.

• 3:04:09Jocko Willink?

  I do. No, I am subscribed.

• 3:04:10Speaker 01

  You're all good. You're all good. Hundred percent. Um, also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. jockostore.com. There's some good stuff on there. T-shirts. If you like t-shirts. We wear t-shirts, right? I know, I do. Some women's stuff on there. Shirts, patches, rash guards, hoodies. New rash guard out.

• 3:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 3:04:32Speaker 01

  Maybe. Maybe, maybe not. You gotta look. jockostore.com. Get some good stuff. Uh, we got some kid stuff too up there.

• 3:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right. You're, you're wearing one of those.

• 3:04:40Speaker 01

  Some Warrior Kid stuff. If you're on YouTube, uh, call model it.

• 3:04:44Jocko Willink?

  People are hitting me up for Warrior Kid t-shirts. And, and then immediately, people said, we want them for adults too. So we made some for kids, but then adults said, we want them. So now we got Warrior Kids. Cause can you be a forty-five-year-old Warrior Kid? I think I am.

• 3:05:03Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 3:05:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm in the game as a Warrior Kid.

• 3:05:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, and if you didn't, I mean, you're gonna obviously talk about the Warrior Kid, where the Warrior Kid book. But man, when you read that book, you're like, dang, I wish I would have read this, whether it be when I'm a kid. I wish I would have read it one day before I read it that day. It's like, that's how much you wish you would have known all this stuff. Cause it's real basic, but it's so deep, man.

• 3:05:23Jocko Willink?

  Uncle Jake's got some info for everybody.

• 3:05:25Speaker 01

  Layers upon layers.

• 3:05:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. There's people now identifying layers on Twitter, by the way, which is a pretty, there's been some really good identification of layers. There's some layers in that book.

• 3:05:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:35Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna get deeper too.

• 3:05:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, it's good. So yeah, anyway, yeah, back to the store. jockostore.com. You can see what's on there. It's cool stuff. And if you wanna support.

• 3:05:45Speaker 01

  Get something, you know, also psychological warfare. If you don't know what that is, which I know you already do, but in the small event that you don't, it is an album on iTunes.

• 3:05:55Jocko Willink?

  With tracks.

• 3:05:57Speaker 01

  And Amazon Music with tracks, not music tracks. Spoken word tracks, technically that's what it's called spoken word. Number one, by the way.

• 3:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, still.

• 3:06:08Speaker 01

  Still.

• 3:06:09Jocko Willink?

  Number one since damn release.

• 3:06:11Speaker 01

  That, I mean, for good reason, because look.

• 3:06:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I need to put together psychological warfare too. And I got some really good suggestions from everyone.

• 3:06:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:18Jocko Willink?

  On things that need where we need help as a group. So if you got those, hit us up on Twitter to give suggestions for psychological warfare. Two tracks.

• 3:06:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:31Jocko Willink?

  What you need, areas where we need help, we all need help.

• 3:06:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got some, some, some, uh.

• 3:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gave me forty seven requests.

• 3:06:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're all my personal ones. Yeah. I think I got forty eight now. But yeah, if you don't know what that is, it's like, it's an album. You get it, you have, you know, in your journey of what getting after it, in your getting after it journey. But you, you're not strong the whole time. You're just not.

• 3:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, moments of weakness.

• 3:06:56Speaker 01

  Most of us aren't, you're gonna have moments of weakness, but guess what? In those moments of weakness, you listen to the designated track. If you're having a weak moment of weakness when you're trying to wake up at four thirty. Come on, bro, that's, that's early, four thirty every day.

• 3:07:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:07:11Speaker 01

  The day is probably gonna come where you're like, you know what, I'm gonna hit the snooze. Guess what? Listen to.

• 3:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Get up and get after it.

• 3:07:17Speaker 01

  Get up and get after it. There's like two or three of those two, and I guarantee you won't hit the snooze. You'll get up, you'll get after it. Anyway, that's, that's what I think with hundred percent certainty. Anyway, again, it's called psychological warfare. It's on iTunes and Amazon Music and some other places where you buy and download music. They're on all, all up on in there.

• 3:07:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good. And also, by the way, the book that we reviewed today with Captain Plum. It's available on charlieplum.com. C H A R L I E P L U M B dot com. That's where you can get it. It's called I'm No Hero.

• 3:07:55Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 3:07:56Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 3:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Also, you can get some Jocka White Tea on there. If you need to drink liquid in your life, you might as well drink a liquid that's gonna make you smarter, stronger, faster, and a more dynamic human being. There's only one drink that does that, and that's Jocka White Tea. By the way, it's 147% double-blind placebo-approved and tested in a laboratory with people wearing white outfits. So you know where to go. Way the Warrior Kid, and this is the book right there that's gonna hit your kids from another angle.

• 3:08:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, in a good way.

• 3:08:33Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna get them to understand some things like hard work, discipline, honor, physical training, mental training, studying. No one think Jocka was gonna write a book and teach people how to study? They didn't think that, did they, Echo? Tell me the truth. They didn't think that?

• 3:08:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:08:50Jocko Willink?

  They didn't see my college grades, did they? So, you learn how to study, you learn how to get stronger in the book, Way the Warrior Kid. Get it for your kids, and you know what? You're gonna read it first, and then you're gonna get a copy for yourself, Way the Warrior Kid. Get that.

• 3:09:04Speaker 01

  Can I say something about one small part?

• 3:09:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, sure. We have another four hours of space on the recorder, so let's do it.

• 3:09:12Speaker 01

  There is a part when he sees small progress. I think he was after one pull-up, and he's like, "Yeah!"

• 3:09:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:09:19Speaker 01

  Fired up. The part when he said, he scolded him, small, mild scolding for celebrating too early?

• 3:09:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:27Speaker 01

  Or too much too early?

• 3:09:28Jocko Willink?

  Uncle Jake says, "Hey, take it easy there."

• 3:09:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, good. And but then he said, "Now come over here, give me a high-five and get back to work." Ooh, he let him celebrate a little bit. That was good, man. I thought that was good.

• 3:09:39Jocko Willink?

  Uncle Jake is a good man.

• 3:09:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good, man.

• 3:09:41Jocko Willink?

  He puts it out to a right. Also, you can preorder the book, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which explains to you how to get after it. So get after it and order the book. Of course, Extreme Ownership, this is for your leadership principles, tested. Tested in combat, tested in the business world. They're there for you to read, learn, lead.

• 3:10:09Jocko Willink?

  Win. And if you need more than that from the book, if you need more than the book and the podcast for your business or your team, Echelon Front, echelonfront.com, you can email at [email protected]. Leadership and management consulting, training. Also, the muster, number three, number three, Austin, Texas, July 13th and 14th, Omni Barton Creek Resort. I'm not going to say spa anymore. Not going to the spa. No, I'm going to have that thing shut down while we're there. No spa going on. So come down, July 13th and

• 3:10:49Jocko Willink?

  14th, join us in the pursuit of world domination. That's the goal. And if you can't make Texas, you can come to San Diego, September 14th and 15th, back in SD for number four. And in the meantime, while you're waiting for that, if you have questions or comments for us, you can get us on the interwebs. Now, first of all, speaking of millennials, Captain Plum, sir, you are all up in the technology here. You are on Twitter, at Captain Plum, right?

• 3:11:28Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:11:29Jocko Willink?

  Facebook?

• 3:11:30Speaker 02

  Facebook.

• 3:11:31Jocko Willink?

  What's that at?

• 3:11:31Speaker 02

  LinkedIn, yeah, same thing. Captain Plum.

• 3:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Just a social media junkie is what I'm hearing.

• 3:11:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, my kids keep me honest.

• 3:11:41Jocko Willink?

  And, and you also, you mentioned quickly while we were talking that you do speaking engagements and all that. Where's the best place to contact you for those type of events or consulting?

• 3:11:54Speaker 02

  All on my website, charlieplum.com. It's all, it's all there.

• 3:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 3:11:59Speaker 02

  So.

• 3:12:00Jocko Willink?

  And that's where they can find you. As far as Echo and myself, we are also.

• 3:12:08Jocko Willink?

  Cruising on the interwebs. On Instagram, on Twitter. Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink and we are also in the Facebook. So you can check that one as well. Echo, you got anything else for us today?

• 3:12:27Speaker 01

  I don't. Thank you so much.

• 3:12:29Speaker 02

  Dan. Surely.

• 3:12:30Speaker 01

  An honor.

• 3:12:31Jocko Willink?

  And sir, do you have anything, any other closing thoughts you want to add?

• 3:12:36Speaker 02

  Well, I want to tell you about the rest of the story. Since people might be interested in knowing that my ex-wife married the guy she was engaged to and they're, they've been living happily for the last 43 years. I remarried a wonderful lady. I have four kids, two grandkids and one on the way. My daughter is married to a Marine and they're pregnant with her first child, should be due in fact, any day now.

• 3:13:02Jocko Willink?

  Semper Fi.

• 3:13:03Speaker 02

  My daughter. I have a wonderful wife that supports me and, and puts up with me. And, and, and I'm, I'm living the dream. I really am. I don't know how I could be happier in my life. I could not write a story that would bring more fulfillment to me personally than what I already live. I still fly airplanes. I have two airplanes. I have a home in a hangar as well, my man cave. And it's just, it's, it's a delight to be alive. And I appreciate you for helping me tell my story because I believe it's an important story. Now, not everybody is going to be a prisoner of war.

• 3:13:45Speaker 02

  In fact, I hope, I hope and pray none of the people listening to this podcast will ever be in that eight foot cell that I was in. But we all get into our own little prisons and, and we can be, I am convinced just as confined in our little eight inch box as I was in an eight foot prison cell. And so if if those challenges are the same, then the solution is the same. The solution to the prisons that we find ourselves in, you know, the self-discipline that it takes, the believing that yes, I am in control of my my own life. I I am a captain of my soul and and that I do and I do make a difference.

• 3:14:30Speaker 02

  So you put all those things together and and you can't in fact live the life with the hand that you're dealt.

• 3:14:37Jocko Willink?

  I won't even try and make any additional points on that, other than to say, when you have a hanger with two planes in it for your man cave, you win the man cave contest. Absolutely. That's unbelievable. And sir, obviously, I I can't thank you enough for coming on the podcast, for writing the book, for sharing the knowledge that you paid so dearly to acquire. And more important than all that, I can't thank you enough for your service and your

• 3:15:17Jocko Willink?

  sacrifice for six years, for us and for this great nation. And you dedicate your book, very simply, to the families of those brave men who will never return. And for those families, and for those brave men, we will live.

• 3:15:54Jocko Willink?

  And we will try to live as you have exemplified, with faith and pride and discipline, to overcome whatever hardships we might face and whatever obstacles might be in our path. And through those adversities, discover every day.

• 3:16:32Jocko Willink?

  How to Love This Life

• 3:16:39Jocko Willink?

  So until next time This is Captain Charlie Plumb

• 3:16:46Jocko Willink?

  And Echo and Jocko

• 3:16:49Jocko Willink?

  Out