Jocko Podcast - 126: Leadership From WW2, Korea, and Vietnam, with Col. Thomas Fife

Episode Date: May 23, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:02 - Col. Thomas Fife. WW2, Korea, and Vietnam. 2:02:12 - Final Thoughts and take-aways. 2:07:12 - Support. 2:36:28 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 126 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And tonight also joining us is Mr. David Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. On September 27, 1950, approximately 60 American prisoners who had been confined in prison were taken into the prison yard in groups of 14 with their hands wired together.

These men were forced to sit hunched and hastily dug ditches, and then were shot by North Korean troops at point-blank range with American M-1 rifles using armor-piercing ammunition. Of the two seriously wounded survivors, only one lived to recount the gruesome details. Unnumbered civilians estimated at between 5,000 and 7,000 as well as soldiers. of the Republic of Korea were also slaughtered between September 23rd and September 27th 1950 Sergeant Kerry H. Ynell formerly with the 23rd Infantry Regiment 2nd Division Korea was the sole survivor of the infamous Tejohn Massacre and he testified at a congressional hearing and I'm gonna read some of that transombson Here's Sergeant Wynnell.

Toward the last, they was in a hurry to leave Tejong, to evacuate Teijon, so they took approximately the last three groups pretty close together. I witnessed the group right in front of me shot. After they was shot, we was taken to the ditch and sat down in the ditch and shot. And then Senator Potter asks, what happened to you when you were shot?

shot and Sergeant Wynel replies, I leaned over against the next man pretending I was done for. In firing, they hit my hand. Senator Potter, how were you? Sitting in the ditch? Sergeant Wynnell, they was aiming at my head. I have a scar on my neck, one on my collarbone, and another in my hand. They hit me three times. And you played dead?

Yes, sir. after they thought everyone was dead they started burying us i came pretty close to getting panicky about that time but somehow or another i figured as long as i had some breath there was hope in other words you were buried alive that is right sir i might add in that whole group that i was with there was not a man that begged for mercy and there was not a man that cracked that cracks under the ordeal sergeant how long were you buried alive that is hard to say sir as I say was shot around five o'clock in the morning and I stayed in the ditch until that evening until what time it was dark I would say approximately eight hours seven or eight

hours now that is from a report on Korean war atrocities written by the subcommittee on Korean War investigations and I want to repeat one line again from Sergeant Wynnell. He says, in that whole group that I was with, there was not a man that begged for mercy and there was not a man that cracked under the ordeal. So think about that. Think about the will and the discipline of those men to be facing certain death at the hands of a murderous enemy, but to face death with solemn silence and show no sign.

of breaking said before that war brings out the worst in people but it also brings out and that is but one of thousands upon thousands of examples of the dedication of our military fighting men and I'm gonna read you another example from the same war around the same time but this one is an award citation and it reads the president of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the silver star to 1st Lieutenant Armour, Thomas Wilford Fife, United States Army for Gallantry in action as a member of Company B, 72nd Tank Battalion, second infantry division in action against an armed enemy on 19 September, 1950 in the vicinity of Yang Sang Korea. On that date, Lieutenant Fife was in command of a platoon of tanks charged with the support of infantry elements in the defense of Yangsang Perimeter, The enemy attacked his position with superior numbers and a fanatic determination to penetrate through to the division main supply route. The enemy attack was successful in routing the friendly elements and inflicting casualties to the extent that the organization and combat effectiveness of the positions was completely disrupted. realizing the seriousness of the situation, Lieutenant Fife disregarded the heavy enemy fire

and dismounted from the protective armor of his tank to reorganize the foot elements. After reorganization, he remained on the ground and successfully reestablished the positions by controlling both the foot elements and his tanks by means of radio communications. During this same date, while engaged in a friendly attack against the enemy,

Lieutenant Fife again displayed, gallantry by refusing evacuation after being wounded. The leadership, loyalty, and gallant actions demonstrated that day by Lieutenant Fife are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service. So Lieutenant Fife was under attack from devastating enemy fire, but he did not remain in the protection of his tank. In fact, he did the opposite. He exited his tank to organize troops and stopped the enemy attack.

He risked his life to lead his men. And he would continue to lead even after wounded. Now, Korea was not the first war for Lieutenant Tom Fife, nor would it be his last. Lieutenant Fife had actually already fought in World War II. He fought in Korea and he fought in Vietnam. He also received three purple hearts for each of the three times he was wounded once in each war. And in addition to the Silver Star from Korea, he also received another Silver Star for his service in Vietnam and a Legion of Merit and a Distinguished Flying Cross and survived all that and served our great nation for 25 years. And I will say that it is my absolute honor to have retired.

Colonel Thomas Fife on the podcast today. Sir, thank you for coming on. It's nice to be here, I think. I listened to that story. It brought back tears, quite frankly. I'm upset just because of the memory of that. It was a horrible experience. But one that had to get done.

And I still remember getting out of that tank, wondering why in the hell I was doing it. But something had to be done. When you see thousands of people coming at you and you have nothing but your weapons, and the guys needed some help, they just they were willing to I guess run I don't know what they were they needed leadership and that's the only thing I could think of to get out and try to be there with them and thank God

we turned them around and we were able to stop the enemy you can't understand what it's like to be there and having thousands of people come rushing at you And the best you can do is shoot your tank guns and your machine guns. And they just kept coming. They just kept coming. I mean, talk about discipline. Those guys were discipline too. And we had to get our guys together, and we did.

And it was, I think I was lucky. I was damn lucky. By the way, my wounds weren't that serious. I got shot in the ass, and it closed up. The wound closed up and so it stopped bleeding. And for all practical purposes, I was as good as new for a while. So, I mean, it wasn't that serious a wound. I mean, I'd hoped to be evacuated to Japan, but didn't work.

So your million-dollar wound turned out to be like a 50-cent wound. At least. It was, you know, when you, when I got wounded, I felt the blood rush into my pants, and then it stopped. So why not keep going, you know? So as I was concerned, the wound was dead over. And when I finally got to the MASH hospital, the doctor said, nothing we can do for you. it's going to work its way out or stay there forever. It eventually worked its way out, which is how I ended up being evacuated when we were up in North Korea

and got to a hospital ship, Navy Hospital ship, and they took the piece of metal out of my butt. And then McArthur just said, General MacArthur had said, we're going to be home. my things by Christmas. So my objective was get off that hospital ship as fast as I couldn't get back to my unit. And, of course, the Chinese hit. And so

I was now trying to get back to my unit and the army was totally screwed up. We didn't know who was where, who was, were. So I ended up flying to

Pyongyang landing in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, and the airfield was totally surrounded by fire. We were destroying all of our equipment and whatever else was. We landed their plane. The plane landed, and I had to go find my unit, and nobody knew where it was.

So I got on the road and started hitchhiking. A guy came along. happened to be a classmate of mine who was in Signal Corps he stopped saw me picked me up took me back to where he was which was Corps headquarters and they didn't know where it had my office it was so finally they took me back to the Mass Hospital another MASH Hospital and the MASH Hospital knew where my unit was and they took me back to my unit in an ambulance and I wasn't wounded it was a way to convey get me back to my unit.

I still remember those days. Terrible experience, but fun. It's hard for people to understand that. I have that discussion with people a lot when you're saying, hey, this is the worst time of my life and also the best time in my life at the same time. Let's get into Korea, but let's talk a little bit about sort of,

where you came from, how you grew up, starting with, I guess, Sioux City, Iowa. That's right. Well, I was a kid grown up in the middle of the United States. I was reminded on the way over here I was talking when Pearl Harbor happened. I was almost 16 years old. I was in a movie theater. And they stopped the movie. And they announced that Japanese had just bombed Pearl Harbor.

I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. Now, I knew where the Hawaiian Islands were, but I didn't know Pearl Harbor was in the Hawaiian Islands. When you're in Iowa, there's no oceans. Nobody, you don't think about oceans. And so here we were in this movie. I was almost 16, as I said. And I said, hell, the war will be over before I ever get called in. Well, that turned out to be wrong.

So, as I said, I was going through high school. My whole objective while I was in high school was going to become a chemical engineer and go to Cornell University. Why? Because my best friend's oldest brother-in-law was a, was a, was a chemical engineer working in Sumatra. Well, you're growing up in Iowa. Sumatra sounded like a pretty good thing to be doing.

So that's why I wanted to be a chemical engineer, and I was going to go to Cornell because he wanted to Cornell, and that was going to be what I was going to do. Well, the war happened, and I suddenly became 18, and you get drafted. It's hard for people to realize today every place you go, people were in uniform. It weren't people walking around in civilian clothes.

The only people who weren't in civilian clothes are those who couldn't qualify because of physical disabilities. So everybody was in uniform, no matter where you were in. So I got drafted. And fortunately, My dad was smart enough to send me off to Iowa State before I was 18, and I got two quarters and there's an engineer. So the Army and his great wisdom decided to make me a combat engineer, which was a hell

of a lot better than being an infinite man as far as I was concerned. So I went to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Now when you're from Sioux City, Iowa, Columbia, South Carolina is eons away. It took us five days on a damn train to get there. So we got there and all of us soldiers get off the train and the first sergeant got us all lined up there. And he's calling the roll. and he says Fifi

and I yelled Fife and from that moment on I was Fifi in this organization so anyway see that was in March of

1944 44 and so we went through basic training and learned to be a competent engineer and I became a demolition

specialist. Now it's hard for people to realize here's a kid who grows up in Sioux City, Iowa, and suddenly handing explosives. I had no more idea of doing that in the man of the moon. So in the training, we were primarily learning to build bridges and take care of roads. That was our primary mission. But we also were taught to be instrument. Common engineers have a secondary responsibility. And so we ended up, fortunately, going to Europe. When we were in training, we had no idea which direction we were going to go.

But in retrospect, I've always felt that we were lucky. that we were lucky to go to Europe rather than to the southeast. However, when I got to Europe and it was colder in hell, I wasn't so sure that was a really great decision, but it worked out all right. But our primary role was to go to Europe and become a take care of the roads and all the things that engineers do. And so you showed up there, were you right around the Battle of Bulge time frame?

Yes. I mean, the Battle of Bulge was, as I remember, right around Christmas time of 1944. 44, yeah. And we got to the continent right at that time. But our unit went to Luxembourg. it primarily was helping General Patton's army turn, make a 90 degree turn and go north to help stop the Germans. And so the roads had to be taken care of, and that's what our unit was doing. So during the actual combat at Bastogne, we were working on roads.

and keeping the roads open for the Patton's army to get up there. Our unit eventually eliminated the Germans, the last Germans, from Luxembourg, in a little town called Veyondin, which is on the Our River, right across from the Siegfried border, a Siegfried line. So the 1255th engineer combat battalion turned in an infantry outfit for a brief period of time. February 12th, 1945, we got rid of all the Germans, the last Germans in the country of Luxembourg. The combat engineers, I always have to always want to give them their due, because they continue to keep roads open. And when we were fighting, in Ramadi, it was the combat engineers primarily that they had the duty of mine clearance.

And it was a brutal and, I mean, obviously a highly dangerous job for them to be out there clearing those mines and keeping those roads open. That's a hell of a job. Well, as a demolition specialist, one of my other, one of my jobs was mine clearance. and I was operating a mine sweeper on this road down into the valley at Veyondon. And behind me were two tanks from the cavalry unit. And the Germans could see the tanks. I guess they could see us too, but they sure they were looking at the tanks and shooting at the tanks. and a lot of their machine gun fire would ricochet off the tanks, and that's how I got hit.

With ricochet off the damn tank got into my leg and arm, but superficially. I mean, all I'd just go back to the age station, get bandaged up and back into my unit. It wasn't any hospitalization at all, that kind of stuff. Another 50-cent wound for you. Exactly. I mean, I had a lot of those. So how long were you, so did you stay over in Europe until the war ended? No, actually, actually in March, the unit got orders for me to return to the United States because I had appointments to the United States Military Academy.

Okay. And so my very first airplane ride was from Lijer, Belgium to Paris. And I remember going into this office in Paris. And I was dressed in my battle gear, so to speak. And they looked at me and they said, and I was still wearing my steel helmet. And I can still remember this sergeant saying, we've got to take care of this guy,

we're going to dress him up. And so they put me in all brand new clothes. Two days later, I was on an airplane flying back to the United States. 27 hours later, and five stops en route, we ended up in Washington, D.C. So I ended up my first time ever visit the Pentagon. Here's this 19-year-old PFC dressed in brand new clothes walking into the Pentagon. and I can tell you I wasn't sure what the hell I was doing but I finally got orders to go to Cornell University Cornell University what for to get re-academic get reoriented

towards academics so wait so you had orders to West Point but they were going to send you to Cornell for a little while to prepare for it well no I had I had an appointment to the academy. Okay. If you had an appointment as the academy, in fact, this is still true today. If you're, have an appointment of the academy, they take you out of combat

and bring you back someplace, safe. And they brought us back. There was about 300 of us at Cornell, all from different parts of the service. Army Air Force, back thenstays, it was U.S. Army Air Corps. And we were there for them to get reacclimated to academia. Turn your brain back on. Yeah.

Thank you. And so that was. At this point, did you know you wanted to stay in the Army as a career? Had you enjoyed your time in Europe? and you said, you know what, I think I'm going to, do you think I'm going to go the distance? No. I had no idea. It wasn't until after, well, very quickly, my appointment to the academy was an alternate appointment.

And the principal, if he qualifies, the alternate doesn't get to go. And my principle qualifies. So now what did they do with me? And the Army in this great infinite wisdom decided to send me to Officer Kennedy School. So they sent me down to Fort Belvoir to the Engineer Officer Kennedy School. The Army knew they're going to need

a lot of sec lieutenants over in the Southeast Asia. And so, anyway, in the middle of Officer Candy School, the war in Japan ended. Now what? Well, they stopped Officer Kennedy, they slowed it down, I guess is the right word. And but I continued on and graduated into January of 1945. And here I was now, I was second lieutenant.

So you got your commission. Yeah. And I had an, and now I also had a principal appointment to the military academy. So what do they do? So they kept me at Fort Belvoir training recruits. And then in July, they discharged me from the Army to enter the Military Academy as a cadet in July 1st, 1946. It was somewhere in there that I sort of liked the Army.

But I knew if I wanted to be an engineer, I damn well had to get a college education. Well, we're better to go, then to place supposed to train you to be an army engineer which is in this case west point so i could i went on to west point and spent four years there obviously and graduated in 1950 so you got commissioned they took your commission away for four years you got and then they give it back to you at the end of four years the only rank i've ever had was in the army was twice with second lieutenant yes that's right point at this point is being run by just all World War II veterans I'm sure yes in fact

our our tactical officers were all lieutenant colonels who have been battalion commanders of some sort in World War II in Europe or in the Air Force in fact tactical tactical officer of my company the first two years was an artilleryman, and the second two years was a Air Force, well, it was U.S. Army Air Corps, became Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel. So, and then the superintendent was Maxwell Taylor, and the commandant was a guy named Paul D. Harkins,

who was Colonel Harkins. He was General Patton's hatchet man. and the deputy commandant was a guy by John Kay Waters, who was General Patton's son-in-law. So they were all World War II veterans, yes. And as were you at the time, was that fairly unique, or was there a lot of other guys that were prior enlisted

that were coming to West Point? Of my class who started, about 1,100 of us, I would guess several hundred were veterans of some sort. Navy, Army Air Corps, yes. I would say about 200 or 300 to 300. Remember exactly. Yeah. Now, when you're going through West Point, the war ends, are you, is war on the horizon for you,

or did you guys have an attitude kind of like, well, you know, we're going to go and be peacetime army officers for the next however many years? Or did you see trouble brewing? No, saw no trouble brewing. I mean, I don't think anybody really for sale what was going to happen in Korea. In fact, the only thing that was trouble, if you would, was the Berlin Air Lift happened while we were cadets.

And so we saw that kind of thing, but I guess maybe in our naivety, we figured that nobody was going to pull the plug and really have the Russians attack or vice versa. where were we going to do anything. So when you graduate, what's your next move? What was your next move after you graduated? Well, it wasn't my move. North Korea invaded South Korea. And General President Truman decided to send U.S. troops to Korea.

Now, one of the things when you graduate, by order of rank you're allowed to choose your branch and then where you want to go. Well my experience was being in front of that tank and getting shrapnel I decided I didn't want to be out in front of the tank I wanted to be in the tank so I chose not I chose not to be an engineers again I chose to go in at all armor. So I chose to go to once again growing up in Iowa. The state of washing was somewhere who knows where. So I chose Fort Lewis Washington as a place I'd want to go visit. So that's my first post was to go to Fort Lewis Washington. It turned out to be the 29th, no,

the 72nd Tank Battalion. which was part of the second Infant Division. President Truman, while I was on my honeymoon in Canada, decided to send the second division off to Korea. So in my infinite wisdom, not knowing this happening, I was in Canada, and I called home to wish my mother and dad happy Fourth of July. Oh, the Army had sent a telegram to my parents' house saying for me to get my ass to Fort Lewis as soon as possible.

Well, I'm halfway there when I'm up into Alberta, Canada. So we drive off to Fort Lewis. And so I arrive at Fort Lewis in middle of July. You got to, I'm now a tank, platoon leader, never been in a tank before. Let me tell you, that's an experience most people don't wanna have. The only thing I had going, by the way,

many years later, my platoon sergeant told me, he said, at that time he was my gunner. He said, we felt really fortunate, we had a guy who'd been in, combat in World War II, not knowing that I didn't know a damn thing about a tank. But the good news is the sergeant was smart enough to teach me how to be somewhat of a tanker on the ship on the way over to Korea. So you had no, you showed up, you get done with your, or you cut short your honeymoon,

you go straight to Fort Lewis, and then you immediately load up? Yes. My first tank ride was from the port, no, from the motor pool at Fort Lewis to the port of Olympia to put the tank on the ship and goodbye. That was my first tank ride. Yeah, the point you made about, you know, not just that your sergeant was smart enough to teach you, but equally important is that you are smart enough to listen. I get all kinds of young officers, and I'm sure you saw them through the years that they're not smart enough to listen to the people that the experience and and that's a huge lesson learned it seems to always need to get

learned by people I I wish I've told more people when I asked what do you do to be successful I say listen to your sergeants listen to your sergeants ask them don't be afraid to ask because they'll tell you their job is to make you successful. And unfortunately, there are too many people who don't have egos that can allow them to do that. No doubt about it.

They think it's going to make them look bad when it actually makes it actually elevates them in the eyes of the sergeant. Yeah. So your trip overseas, you're on the ship and you show up in Korea. Yes. You can't understand what it's like to be several miles offshore and begin to smell what's going to be turned out to be

the Port of Busan. But you could smell it before you ever got there. And we knew we were pulling into, and I've never been to that far of the world in my whole life. And we offloaded ourselves from the troop ship, waited for our tanks to come on the other ships. And we spent four days in in Pusan waiting for the equipment to come and then offloading it and getting it ready to go into battle. Then at what point this is like the battle of Pusan. This is the Pusan perimeter. Yeah. And this is the beginning of it right now. This is, for those of you that don't know, this is North Korean troops coming down, 100,000 North Korean troops coming down and have you guys basically squeezed onto, it's almost a peninsula,

it's like a little knot of land that sticks out. 35 miles radius from the city of Busan was the Busan perimeter. That was the last territory held. Everything else was held by the North Koreans. And so when you landed there, that's the situation they were in. Yes. And how did you guys and how did you and your troops feel about that? I don't think we were even cognizant of how serious it was.

After we loaded the tanks onto the rail cars, if you go to the railhead of Merri-Hang, which is, I don't know, the 20 miles, 25 miles from Fuzon, where we offloaded the tanks, is where I first went into combat in Korea. I don't really know that we thought how serious it was. I got the impression several days later when the Division, assistant division commander called all the officers and senior

NCOs together in a place and he said, men, we live or die here. And I've thought to myself, what in the hell did I get myself into here but that's that's what it was I mean we would I you know in hindsight I've read books about what happened in Korea and we really didn't understand that I mean we were just there doing a job and I don't think we really understood how perilous the situation was. And at any point while you were there, did you understand the peril of the situation?

Or were you just in your particular battles day by day trying to hold the line where you were and didn't, was the communications kind of not effective enough to really, for you to understand the bigger picture? We had no idea what the bigger picture was. I mean, honest to God, we were just, doing our job and as I said earlier, watching these waves of people come across the Nacton River will never ever go away from my memory.

I mean, people were just coming, coming, coming. And all we were doing was shooting, shooting, shooting. And they were just keep coming. And we managed to hold the line. And they didn't penetrate. So, no. The answer is we didn't understand perilous of the situation. As your, were you holding the line specifically, you guys,

you were holding the line on that river? Yes. And so they were going to have to try and cross that river to get through the line? Yes. Were they swimming? Were they taking boats? What were they doing? They were waiting.

It wasn't that deep. It was pretty wide river, but it wasn't. that deep. So they were able to wait across. Yeah. And they just keep coming. I mean. And then how long, how long did that particular, how long were you under intense waves of attacks like that? It was like a, was it like 20 days or something of the whole, the whole thing I think lasted, I don't know, 20 days or something like that? Yeah, I don't know. It seemed like forever, but I think it was probably over in two or three,

a couple of weeks. My first involvement, we got off the tanks off the flat cars, and then we rolled into action. and my lead tank in front of my very eyes exploded. And I will never forget watching the tank commander go sailing out into the ditch, onto the right, and the tank exploding. We rounded a curve, and unbeknownst to us, there were two Russian tanks manned by Koreans.

up this draw and they fired at this tank and we had an M-4s, Sherman tanks and gas engines and they fired in as soon as they fired into the gas tank and the whole thing exploded and so my first day in Korea combat One tank destroyed. Five people, at that time, a tank had crew of five. Four of them were killed in the tank. The tank commander was back in the United States in less than two weeks after we left,

or three weeks after we left. And that was my first day in combat in Korea. And so from then on, we got into the perimeter. spent a couple of weeks there. I don't remember. You read earlier my citation, it was on September 19th, which is when I was, the only reason I know that was September 19th

is because of what you read. I didn't remember what exact dates it was. Because it wasn't too long after that happened that we had the Inshod Landing and everything broke out and we were heading north. So it was a couple weeks, I don't know. When you were from a leadership perspective dealing with losing guys

in comparison to when you were in World War II and you weren't necessarily in command of guys but you're seeing people get wounded, you're seeing people get killed, what was your mindset, what was your perspective as a leader when guys were getting wounded, guys were getting killed,

and then you had a bunch of you know you were saying that your sergeant you they felt they were lucky to have someone that had been in combat before and then all of a sudden i know that they were looking to you saying okay well what do we do now boss well one thing about uh in a tank the crews are inside the tank and as with the radio you could direct people to do this and do that and so I just told them what they should be doing and they did it I mean I didn't leadership is just telling people what they should do and they're trained to do it and they do it I mean I I learned actually I learned I talked to

growing up on Iowa leadership I didn't even know what that was I learned what leadership was all about at West Point and that's the major difference when I was in World War II I was just taking care of myself I wasn't really too concerned about the other guy what was going on we were all just doing our job. That's very different when you're in a combat situation and you got people depending on on each other and we were all dependent upon each other when we're at a tank platoon and each of us were trained to do a job and they did it. I mean one of the things my platoon didn't exist prior to on paper it existed it didn't exist physically so what happened when we ever activated the guardhouse was emptied out and we got replacements from Fort Hood Texas and that was my

platoon one of the best soldiers in my platoon was my loader who had spent most of his army career in the guardhouse but you can't believe what it was great soldier who was in combat. I mean, because he knew what he was doing and he was trained to do it and he did it. I will never forget those young men. I mean, I'm still in email contact with my former gunner, who's now retired as a command sergeant major, but he still calls me lieutenant. Because he was, he kept my ass, out of trouble, I'll tell you that. I mean, he taught me more about how to be a platoon leader than anybody will ever understand. And I guess the leadership training I had at West Point,

combined with what these young men were teaching me, allowed me to become a pretty effective leader throughout not just my military career, but my commercial career too. I'm a strong believer in that leadership works, not just in the military, but in commercial business. Yeah. You talked about leadership inside a tank. What did you see and how did you see what was going on that got you to get out of that tank and tell you that you needed to get out of that vehicle and start directing what's going on on the ground? I wish I knew the answer to that.

I mean, it just did it. I mean, I knew something had to be done. And my radio communications with these guys on the ground wasn't working. So you've got to communicate. And the only way you can communicate, if the radio isn't working, you've got to get your butt off the tank and down there so you can talk to these guys. because they weren't trying to talk to me.

I was trying to talk to them and get them figuring out what the hell they should be doing. So I just did it. I don't know what prompted me to do it. It's a good question because I have no idea. You know, I talk about that sometimes. I talk about as a leader being able to identify what I would call, I just call it the void of leadership.

And it's very easy to see when you, are used to seeing leadership filling the void. When you see a void of leadership, if you're aware to look for it, it's really easy to see when it's there. And you go, wait a second, someone needs to step in here and take charge. And so you had that instinct of, hey, there's a void of leadership here. I got to do something. And here we go.

That's right. As much as you said to yourself at one point, I'm going to be inside that tank. And then the damn time you needed the tank, you got out of it. Well, in hindsight, You had to do what you had to do. Absolutely. And then once you guys held the line, and, you know, it's funny because I use that expression a lot just talking about, you know, holding your line with your personal discipline and holding the line with your subordinates. And we use it metaphorically.

And it's incredible to hear and talk to you about actually literally holding the line. when you guys got done holding the line and you had defeated that that onslaught from the North Koreans, what was the next phase? Move out and move north. And the first weeks, we moved four or five miles at the most. The next couple of weeks, we moved hundreds of miles. And I remember going as fast as we could. North to marry up with the guys who invaded at Inshund.

And we just kept going. I mean, I don't remember how many opportunities we had to really get into combat after we cleared the Pusan perimeter until after we got north of Seoul. I mean, we, the invading, I mean, the invasion force invaded pretty well clear to that stuff away. And so the city of Seoul was open when we went right through it. And we kept going north. The enemy was retreating pretty fast. And we were just going as fast as we could drive enough to roads.

and in fact our unit got almost to the Yalu River, which is about the time they decided to take the stuff out of my butt. So I was sent back to the hospital ship in the Harbor. So that's when you got Shrapnel, was when you were up by the Yalu River? No, no. Oh, that had already, that's right, that had happened earlier, and now it was coming back.

If the stuff was working, now, one of the things you've got to remember is this piece of metals in my butt. Now, in a tank, the tank commander sits, has a little thing to sit his butt on while he's riding around in the turret. Well, you don't do that when you have a piece of metal working his way out. It is painful to say the least. And so I couldn't hardly wait for that to happen, but they wouldn't let me go back to the hospital until they got reasonably close to the surface. So when it got close to the surface, they evacuated me.

And it was in November of 1950 that they sent me back to the hospital ship. And then I think you covered this, but then you got done, the metal comes out, and then you go back again because you're thinking, to get home by Christmas if you can get back to your unit. And I got back to the unit eventually, but I didn't get home by Christmas.

In fact, by the time I got back to the unit, we were, the second division had already moved back south almost to the Hahn River. And so I found the unit again somewhere south of, somewhat north of the town. Han River, but still, we were still in North Korea, but it was the south part of North Korea. And were you in a situation, did you guys get dug in? Because I know part of the Korean War was like they dug in, and it was almost like trench warfare.

Did you enter that phase? Or were you guys still moving north and south? We, as tanks, we never dug in. Now, later on, I think the line stabilized pretty much around the 38th peril. And there was a lot of digging in defensive positions as well. But that was more infantry, not the tanks. So how did you, how did you end up?

What was the last phase of you being over there? Like, and what ended up bringing you back to the States? Well, the line sort of stabilized around the 38th peril. We would go forward and then we'd come back. We would go forward, come back. Oftentimes, we would do patrolling, I guess, is the right word. controlling in force. We did, a tank company with an infantry company attached riding on the tanks would blast

forward to some enemy position, get into a firefight, take the ground, and then we'd move back again. We were just going back and forth around that so-called, the now turned out to be the 38th parallel, but it was generally that sector. Oftentimes, the infantry would get into a lot more heavy firefights than the tanks would. I spent a lot of time supporting infantry attacks with my tank guns and machine guns, covering their advancements forward, but dug in, no, we never, the tanks were never dug in. And then how long did that last for? What, how long did, was your unit deployed over there?

Was it the whole unit that ended up going home? No, no. At a certain point, they decided that people who had been there a year would come home. And we started rotation. And I was one of the, first ones to rotate out of my unit because I had some decorations and because I'd been there a year and et cetera, I had a lot of points. And so I was sent back I guess

I got back to the United States Labor Day of 1951. So I was evacuated. The word evacuated is probably not the right word. I was just sent back home. And then, so you get back home. You know, here you are coming home from Korea. It's obviously you at least experience some pretty intense stuff.

And you know, you hear a lot of times, especially nowadays with guys coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, with guys struggling to readapt to life back. America. And I think it's a little bit different because when you came home, you were still in the Army. And I think that's the best thing for veterans. You know, if you're still in, I think the veterans that have the hardest time are veterans

that get out and all of a sudden the brotherhood that they are used to is gone and the mission that they're used to is gone. But is that what you experienced and you came home and you still had your mission of moving forward in the Army? Yes. I mean, I had no feeling. of not being appreciated. I mean, obviously, when I came back,

I came back, I had a daughter born while I was in Korea, scared the hell out of me. I mean, I still remember this four-month-old child. I hold for the first time. First time I've ever held anybody that. size scared the hell out on me I mean I was more scared about that than a lot of the things to happen to be but anyway I came back went to Fort Knox when they sent me now they sent me to school to learn to be a platoon leader and and so

and then they asked me if I wanted to stay there at Fort Knox and run an officer candy company and I did and so So we spent several years running an officer candy company. And then they decided they didn't need any more officer candy at Fort Knox. So they closed that down. And I got to selected to be an aide to John Waters. John Waters is with General Patton's son-in-law. and a wonderful experience learned a lot from a real gentleman he was he ended he is he was a

burglar general at that time became two stars but he eventually retired as a four-star general and but he taught me a lot about being a being an officer Not so much about leadership, but being an officer and a gentleman. He was an outstanding person, and I learned from him. I mean, you know, when you're working as an aide, you get pretty close to somebody. And I always feel very fortunate that I was able to be his aide and learn. I don't know if you know. He's the one in the movie about General Patton, sending troops into rescue somebody in a prisoner war camp.

He was the one who was into prisoner war camp. And it was wounded very seriously there. I mean, and it was quite an experience working for him for several years. That was multiple years. Pardon? Multiple years as an aide? I spent two and a half years as his aid. And then as he went on to his assignments,

I went on to my assignments. And one of the experiences I had in 1950, I was a company commander of a chain company, company in Baumholder Germany. Yeah, and he at that time was running the military assistance command in Yugoslavia. And he decided to come up and visit me. Now here's the Major General, and he's coming to visit this captain

in Baumholder, Germany. And it was, you can't believe all the other stuff that went on and what the hell is the general coming to see you for, et cetera, et cetera. But anyway, we got through all that. But he didn't come to visit me in Vietnam when he was Pacific Commander, but he took care of watching what I was doing. So it was an experience, wonderful experience, and a great learning experience to be his aid.

Yeah, I was actually in aid too for the admiral that was in charge of all the seals, and it was a very similar situation for me. It was a great guy, and I learned a ton about the way the whole big machine worked, which you have no idea when you're a young lieutenant. You have no idea what's going on behind the scenes, and I definitely got to learn a lot about that. And the same thing you just talked about, you know, I just had a great relationship with him,

and he took care of me and my guys on many. occasions which was great and since he was the Admiral one time we we were he was a surfer and I was organizing a trip for us to go to Hawaii and we were gonna see some of the seals that were stationed out in Hawaii and the big thing I had to do is get organized so that when we got picked up at the airport there were surfboards in the vehicles ready to take us directly to surfing as soon as we showed up and it's the same no people say what do you want these sharks So you just get the surfboards ready.

That's what you need to do for the boss. And then so you did that. You end up, you end up, so 56, you're over, you're a company commander. And what happens in between then? And then I was in a unit, second harbor division. and at that time in 57 they had something they were going to rotate the fourth division which a fourth armored division which I'd been in at Fort Hood rotate it to Germany and the second Army Division was going to rotate back to Fort Hood however I'd only been in

country a little over a year and I wasn't eligible to rotate back so this They, in their decision, for those of us who weren't eligible, had to be reassigned. And I was reassigned to be at the Secretary of the General Staff at Heidelberg, which is U.S. Army, Europe. So now I'm going from being a company commander in bomb holder, Germany, which is the end of the line, all the way to the very senior Army command in Europe. And I'm working now for a four-star general in his general staff organization. And I had once again a chance to go from learning,

knowing what's going on down here to watching what's going on, very senior leadership. And it was another, opportunity for a year and a half I had that job and it was just a great experience learning if you would the other extreme of where you'd been that was my and then rotated back to the United States in 59 to become a math professor at West Point but I spent four years being a math professor and and then went to the Army, the Command General Staff College out at Fort Leavenworth.

And then the Army decided that they needed to have people counteracting McNamara's Wiz Kids. And so they figured that somebody had been teaching math probably could... So they sent me the University of Michigan to get a degree in return. out to be operations research, but the Army sent me to get a degree in automatic data processing, which they didn't have such a thing at Michigan, but the closest thing to it was industrial engineering operations research. So I spent two years there getting a degree, and then I, rather than go back to the Pentagon for utilization tour, I volunteered to go to Vietnam. So I, you know, you

And when you say that they were that the army knew that they needed someone to counteract the whiz kids and I've talked about the whiz kids and I've covered them somewhat because a lot of the people operational on the ground said hey these these statistics that you're coming up with don't take into account the human aspect of these kind of this conflict in Vietnam. So was that something that was felt and and understood inside the army at that time? I mean clearly it was. Yes, and that's, the whole idea was to take somebody who knew something about the Army and give him some education to, these kids, so-called kids had, and statistical analysis and all that stuff. And so to be the other part of the board, and that was to be my utilization tour. So there's a great example of that and it's the Battle the Idring Valley and Colonel Moore talks about it. The fact that what the Wiz kids basically said, one of the things that they said was, okay, we can kill 170 Vietnamese soldiers for every one of ours that they kill.

So statistically, we'll just keep running that problem over and over again and we'll end up winning. And I always point out, and which everyone points out, and I'm sure you would point it out as well, is what they didn't take into account is the fact that, number one, 170 Vietnamese killed to the Vietnamese was not as big of a deal as we thought it would be. And we also didn't take into account that one American dead is a lot bigger than the statisticians thought it would be to us. and that's just a huge tragedy to go into that situation like that. Well, in fact, I many times thought body count was the dumbest thing we've ever come up with is a measure of success in combat. And I have said that I don't know how many times,

and I am still convinced that was the dumbest thing we've done over the time, and I was there participating in it, and it was terrible. Yeah. So let's go to Vietnam. So you volunteered for Vietnam in 1966? Yes. Or 65? 66.

Okay. And did they automatically say, okay, well, you're a lieutenant colonel. That means you're going to take over a squadron or a battalion? I wish that was a case. The fact, the fact, give the army more credit than this due. Now, along with everybody else, I was a lieutenant colonel, I arrived in country,

and I was assigned initially to be the executive officer of the combat operation center of McVee, which was the headquarters of all. And the combat operation center was Westmoreland's operation center and it was run by a Marine Brigitte General Bill Jones by name and it was a great man I mean and I was his exec and and we quote ran the war so to speak the word we is a very loose term from the COC and and the COC and That was headquarters right there in Saigon.

And it was a cushy job. I mean, I went to work on a regular hourly basis. I used to go in at night once in a while because President Johnson was going to talk to some of the action officers trying to find out what was happening to these patrols that we were sending out. That's a serious sign of microman. Well, let me tell you, it was micromanagement of the first order and I saw it absolutely saw it and

Happening more often than I care to remember and But I had one of the evenings I met one of my former colleagues Armour who was commanding the first the fourth cavalry of the first infantry division and And he told me he was going to rotate home in December. I said, can I get that job? He said, he'd take me up and introduce me to General DePue, who was the division commander. And I went up and I passed a test.

He'd have to know General DePue, and he was a no-nonsense guy. he he would people thought I was crazy because General Depew was relieving battalion commanders for incompetence right and left and I figure

you know if you go up and do your job you're going to be okay so went up and General Depew interviewed me and General Hollinsworth did it was the assistant division commander

and Hollinsworth had been an old cavalryman. I mean, and he couldn't, the two of them passed on me, said it was okay. And so I got reassigned to take command of the first and the fourth cavalry in December of 1966, which was a plum job. That was, it was not only a plum outfit, but it was, it was, General DePue used the cavalry squadron like it should be used. Many times later, my successors were all not as lucky as I was. I mean, I was able to fight my unit as a unit. I had three ground troops.

One, I mean, a D-troop was a D-troop was a, helicopter's troop, I had 31 helicopters in it, and I had a division commander would assign B company of the tank battalion that was assigned to my unit. And then since there wasn't any real enemy aircraft, he assigned several of the batteries of the anti-aircraft unit to my unit. So I had a unit that unparreled in history because General DePue believed the cavalry was supposed to go find the enemy and didn't keep them there until his infantry could show up. And we did it more often than not. And one of the stories I tell people, I'm self-styled king of the mission. plantation which is you know 70 square miles of trees and historically

there's little communities of workers throughout the this place and it became these little towns became havens for the North Korean for the North Vietnamese and so we took it upon ourselves to evacuate everybody out of the little villages to the perimeter of the plantation and then took it upon ourselves to destroy the villages because the North Vietnamese were coming in at night using these places and shelling our units. So we were destroying all these little hamlets. In fact, I had an engineer company assigned to me, and one of the contests was between the captain, who was the engineer company commander and myself, I'd be up on my chopper, and he'd be down on the

ground, and he was going to implode these villages. Now, if he imploded them all, he won. If any of the villages, buildings would still be standing, I won. Now, what did we win? A beer. And more often than not, I won. He didn't win him. He didn't lose many, but we got, so in the spring of 1967, Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker arrives in Vietnam. The first unit he wants to visit his mine. There is, everybody. is what in the world is why did he pick this and why is he coming to see you well he gets out there and all the he's got a four-star general that's a three-star general and then division commander all with them and then we're out in the middle of nowhere i'm briefing the ambassador i get emotional when i say this

he says colonel i got more correspondence of my desk from the first of my desk from the first French about what in the hell you're doing up here destroying their village and all the people and causing all this commotion. What are you doing and why you're doing it? And I explained to him that why we were doing it because these villages were being havens for the north and they were coming in and shelling our, killing our troops. And I've always remembered to say, Colonel, you just keep doing what you're doing and I'll take care of the French and I said God bless you I mean I still get emotional was that that man that gentleman understood what the hell was going on and here we talk about State Department people not knowing what's going on he knew what was

going on and he told me to keep doing what I was doing and I did it but I will always remember him I think at the time, I'm not sure of this, he was either the oldest or next oldest ambassador we ever had in the State Department, but he was out there trapping around in the boonies with me. And it was a rare experience, but anyway, it was one of those days, you know,

when you really think you counted. Yeah. Indeed. And he was, To me, that's leadership, too. You know, he was, he knew what the hell was going on, and he was able to tell me to keep doing what I was supposed to be doing. Yeah, he was, he was a great man.

So those operations that, was that the primary type of operation that you'd be doing, is going into areas and basically disrupting what the enemy was up to? Basically, we, the mission. was search and destroy and what we did was go find try to find the enemy and then destroy them so in that in the Michelin plantation we thought the enemy was not there but we spent there was something called the Iron Triangle north of Saigon is about 30 miles north of of Saigon, which was our operational area. And it was traditionally a haven for the north

and or the whoever, anyway, the guys that were shooting at us. And you never know whether they're North Vietnamese or they're constricted South Vietnamese, but they all looked the same to me And they still do. In Korea, I couldn't tell the difference between the North Korean and the South Korean. I still could never tell the difference

between the South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese. And maybe there's a way, but I never figured it out. And so we just went in and constantly were searching and destroying. And if we find the enemy in strength, our job was to hold them there until, General of the Pughan could get his infantry into helicopters and bring him in and really defeat the enemy. On occasion we got in more of a firefight and we expected to be, but we generally were pretty good at finding them. And the tanks would roll right through this forest and knocked the trees right down, and it was no problem.

at all. And I was in my helicopter directing. And you could see and you tell the tanks where to go in the tanks and the ACAS, which were primarily what the unit was all about. And so we, that was our job. So often I read about units that were over there that never or very, very seldom would they see the enemy. They would lose guys to sniper fire. They'd lose guys to mortar fire. They'd lose guys to booby traps. But very seldom would they see the enemy.

Obviously there's units that are different than that, but it sounds like you were able to find the enemy on a fairly regular basis. Oh, yes. Or they found us. You know, who finds who is not sure there's an answer to that. but yes we more often or not we got in we had contact uh i had uh more than i would like to remit casualties uh which didn't happen because they uh couldn't find the enemy i can tell you

they could find us you know and often remember uh somebody a long time in my go in my career tell me Something about reconnaissance by fire. And I remember with a tank, you had a lot of machine guns, and you could do a lot of reconnaissance by fire. And the trouble with reconnaissance by fire is you never know whether they see you or not. You just know there's somebody shooting at you. Well, that's good enough. That's good enough.

You don't need any, you know whether he's aiming at you or not. when you one of the things that also I talk about and I've read a lot about is the Vietnam War being very difficult from a leadership perspective for some leaders more than others but because you had draftees and and you had draftees not just draftees that got drafted and okay I'm going to go do my duty but drafties that got drafted that literally did not believe in what was happening and barely even believed in America as a country. How much of that did you see? And what was your leadership approach to those troops? I saw zero of that. I mean, I don't know. I was just absolutely lucky. I know I'm not that naive.

I'll tell you, the last few guys have been talking to and reading about this, and there's something that I've noticed a trend. So have you heard the term millennials about the new up-and-coming kids? I know what millennials are. So people complain about, you know, especially from a leadership perspective, people talk to me about, well, you know, I've got my company and we've got these new, these kids checking in, they're millennials, they're different, they're entitled, they don't want to work as hard. And I started thinking about in my head, well, basically you've got a workforce that's a little bit different. And this is very similar to the draftees in Vietnam, who had a different attitude. And what I've found from good leaders is it didn't matter.

It didn't matter that they had draftees. As a matter of fact, General Mukuyama, who I just talked about, when I asked him about draftees, he said, I didn't even know who was a draftee and who was a lifer. I couldn't tell the difference. And Colonel Hackworth wrote in his book, he wrote, I love the draftees because they were straight shooters. They didn't, well, they weren't trying to protect their career. They tell you what they thought. you could take their input and you could do something good with it. I've said all along, the soldiers I served with

in three different wars got better. And they were all draftees. I mean, I didn't ever serve with an all volunteer outfit. They were all, no matter where I was, they were draftees. And they all did their job. I mean, I've never seen, had anybody tell me it wasn't their job, it wasn't this, wasn't what they wanted to do. It was, they just did it. And I don't know if that's leadership, or I don't, it was just, it was just the way it was.

And they were all proud to be in our outfit. I mean, now, I'm sure. people later on I mean I've heard of people later on in Vietnam having little problems with drugs and all that we didn't have any of that but now fortunately I left in 1967 so I'm not sure how things got worse perhaps but I think drugs are an issue period but I don't know I didn't have any of that kind of a problem and as I said earlier I'm not naive I believe in knowing exactly what's going on the way you find out is walk around and talk to people you don't sit in your

tent or in your helicopter you got to go down and talk to the guy on the ground and find out what the hell's going on and that's you know There's a fellow who wrote a book, his name was Peters. This is many years later. And he wrote the book, it's called Management by Walking Around. There's a guy made a fortune, just doing what I used to do. I mean, it's scary. But it's true, that's what leadership was all about,

is find out what's going on. and then using it some common sense to tell people this is what you're supposed to do or give them some guidance but I mean people who used to tell me well you know how to do things because you could order people to do things and I'm saying let me tell you something ordering a guide you get out of a tank to fix the track when somebody's shooting at you is not anybody going to going to just do it. He's going to do it because he knows if you don't get the track fix, we're going to get our ass killed. I mean, we're going to get going. He's going to do it because that's his job. And that may be leadership, but I'll tell you. It's discipline that comes from people being trained right and taught right and treated right. If you don't treat people right, they deserve to treat you wrong.

And I'm a great believer in treating people the right way. I'm just from hearing you talk about treating people the right way and listening to people. You say when I told people to do stuff, they did it. Well, yeah, that's because you treated them well. You listened to them. You had those relationships with your troops. And that's what makes people, like you said, when you've got to have somebody that's going to go out and fix a track under fire, well, that's somebody that's, they're not going to do that just because you order to do it.

You better have some relationships. You better have treated them well. And they must understand the why on the mission as to like, hey, why this is important. So when you look back at World War II, Korea, Vietnam, I was from a tactical perspective, actually maneuvering troops. Is there any big lessons that you would think back of that you say, this is something that I did consistently, or this is something that I would never do because I knew it would cause problems? I can't think of anything.

I'll go back to what I said earlier. I've always believed, and maybe this is from growing up in Iowa, I don't know. Just treat people like you'd like to be treated yourself. And it worked out. I don't know. I told you about my first sergeant calling me Fifi, which pissed me off, quite frankly. But because he was a guy who didn't treat people like to be treated.

And I've always was amazed how much I exulted in the fact when he got busted. I mean, we were in England on the way over to the continent, and he got busted for, I don't know what reason, but he got busted back to being a private. That's a big jump from first sergeant down to being a private. And I was happy because I didn't think this guy was... He's also the guy when I took a test to see where I could be smart enough to go to the military academy.

He said, what the hell are you taking a test for like that for? You're not smart enough to go to the West Point. And I always would like to be able to say to this guy if I ever saw him again, I'm sure he's dead by now. I told you so. But, you know, if you don't treat people like they should be treated, you deserve to be treated the opposite way. I just have always practiced, or tried to practice that anyway.

And so far it's been relatively successful. That's a huge underpinning of leadership from everything I've seen, everything I've ever read, every person I've ever talked to. If you care about your people, you care about and you want to treat them well as human beings, that's the underpinning that really makes leadership work. And it's a lot of times, and you mentioned this earlier, a lot of times from the civilian side, they think, well, in the military, you can just order people to do things and they'll just do it because you're the boss. And that's not true. And it's actually, when I got out of the military and I started working the civilian sector, I thought to myself, well, if you didn't want, if you want somebody to do something and they don't do it, you can just fire them.

But that's not true either, because guess what? You'll run out of people really quick. And so what you have to do is you have to lead. That's what you have to do. And one of those, the most core underpinnings of leadership is really caring about the people that work for you. And I think the more you care about them, and I know for me, I cared more about my guys than I did about myself. I wanted to make sure that they were okay and that things were going to go well for them. And that was always my priority, my real priority.

and I suppose someone that was very jaded might think, well, then you know, you're going to get passed over. You're not, things are going to work out good for you because you're more worried about your troops. And the opposite's actually true. That's right. And my career was beautiful. And all I ever tried to do is take care of the people that worked for me.

Because that's the way you get to be successful. You know, hiring people or working with people, you know, in the civilian sector, you hire people. In the military, whoever arrived, that was it. You get people. But I've always said, your job is to make the boss successful. And vice versa, the boss's job is to make them successful. And if you work that, it works out. for both of you and to me leadership you know we talk about it but it's easy if

you follow a few basic principles it you don't have to have all the stuff that goes I mean people write books on leadership you've probably written books on leadership yourself yes indeed but the fact of matter there's some basics and you just expand on it you don't have it isn't that magic if you just follow a few basic principles. One of the things we talk about in the book, actually, is simple, not easy. Yeah. Because it is.

And we say that in our book as well as we're not, we didn't invent any of this. This is stuff that's been around and there's no eureka moments. And we're not claiming to have anything startlingly new. This is fundamental stuff that if you think about, some of it might be stuff you already do as a leader. Some of it would be stuff that you know you should do as a leader. And just making it clear for people to understand is probably the only real benefit of the book itself. It's like, okay, this is good stuff. But nothing, no rocket science there. I didn't need to be a whiz kid to write that book. I can promise you. So did you, you mentioned earlier

when we were not recording that you actually ended up going back to Vietnam. And were you a civilian at that time? Oh, yes, yes. My wife and I like to travel. So we've traveled most of the places in the world by now. And she wanted to go back and see where I'd been in Vietnam. And I wasn't too sure about that. But anyway, we had this opportunity.

and so we went back and I went to Hanoi which was an experience and go to the Hanoi Hilton and seeing how they've turned that into a propaganda place and I still remember seeing this picture on the wall of Senator McCain and a couple of other guys I can't remember the names. Another one was what high school classmate of mine, Bud Day by name, who was an Air Force retired colonel who got the Medal of Honor, but anyway, and they were shown them in these white pants and white over shirt as if they were on a barbecue, you know, you know, you know everything you've heard about, this place was just and they showed you some of the cages that they had people in we actually have

had two guests on the podcast that were in the Hanoi Hilton and one of them went back and was talking us through that same propaganda went went back to the Hanoi Hilton as a civilian and just the the feeling he had was was pretty strong I can't imagine I mean, but, you know, when I was there, I was just seeing it from the propaganda and what they were, because it's a big tourist attraction apparently for the Vietnamese. And so we obviously saw it and knew what it was and for what it was. and I hear all kinds of stories about the people that were there, you know. And then we went from there to Danang and then down to Saigon.

And I'd hired a car and a guide to take us up, back up to my old operational area, and drove through the Michelin River Plains. the Michelin rubber plantation, which was sort of a fun experience to see. Now, it's no longer Michelin as the state on, they took it over obviously from the French, but it looks exactly the same. I mean, trees are lined up, rubber trees, just rubber trees, rubber trees, and people are out there working with trees. And I don't know. if you know this this is an aside you cannot burn a living rubber tree it won't burn and I've tried hard I mean I have flame I have two flamethrowers in my

unit and we tried hard to burn those trees down on the sides of the road doesn't work doesn't work and so anyway the but we went back up to the Ode Operation Ar-A in the same place. I was pretty close to where I got wounded. When I was in Vietnam, I was in my helicopter flying over this river. And I was pretty close to where that happened. I could do that because I had the map cord,

and so where I'd been wounded before. Otherwise, I guarantee I'd never be able to recognize the place. But my old base camp, which was because I had helicopters and so forth, I had an airfield, is now being turned into a strip mall. So we watched all that happening. But it was a, seeing Saigon again was an amazing experience to see what they've done. you see all these tall buildings now but the one officers club that was on the roof of one of the hotels is still there exactly the same and we my wife and i went up and had lunch there and

and in my time before i went out to the unit i used to go up there and we'd go up there and you'd watch out here and see the sabers, not sabers, what do you call the rounds that are? Tracers. Tracers, thank you. See all the tracers from being fired up and upward back down. And it was sort of unique experience because you really weren't fighting a war.

I mean, in Saigon, you know, it was, it was, so different from there when you went out into the field. So, but it was fun to go back and see what they've done. And I was impressed with how much the South Vietnamese have really been serious about getting real business and going, and a lot of things happening business-wise. Up north, it's still aggrarian. It was still agrarian at the time.

Very agrarian. I mean, very few tall buildings, very few businesses and so forth that you could identify. And maybe it's still the same because that was 11 years ago now, but I don't know what's changed over there. So the North Vietnamese won the war, so to speak. I say that with tongue and cheek actually, but they won the war, but I'm not a war, but I'm not sure that the South Vietnamese aren't coming back and taking over and running the country. They certainly have the financial strength there. And I hope that's a way it eventually will work out. Well, the way the rest of the world's gone, it's been freedom and democracy and

capitalism that eventually wins the long war. We've seen that worldwide, so hopefully it'll happen for them as well. How did you get wounded, your third time getting wounded in Vietnam? Well, I was, one of the missions we had, every evening we'd go into a perimeter, and most of the time we'd be in a perimeter around our artillery unit. So they could fire at night without worrying about getting overrun. And so I put all of our unit into its perimeter from my helicopter flying around. And I noticed a bunch of sandpans evacuating the area that we had. So I thought in my John Wayne failing, I'm going to go down and shoot some of these guys. So I got the pilot to...

I was flying in this case in a two-passenger... I mean, one passenger... Bubble helicopter. And anyway, so I had this M-40. You know what an M-40 is? It's fires, it looks like a shotgun shell. Okay. So I'm up there, and I'm shooting at these guys in the sandpan.

And I'm doing pretty good, missing a lot, but eating some, one of them shot back. And my God, it hit me in the leg. And so I told the job pilot, take me back down to the headquarters, which was where the squad and surgeon was. And he, I will never forget, he, he, cut my pants away and there was blood spruing right out all the way out at least 18 inches from my leg

I hit something they call us furter and he said this is a captain speaking to me Colonel you goddamn dumb son of a bitch you could be dead so anyway he managed me up and the metal's still there still in my leg but uh we're that And you were you, you returned to duty though, right? Oh, yeah. I mean, I hadn't been in command more than 30 days. I was scared to death. I couldn't be evacuated.

Hell, I had to finish out my tour. I mean, so. One of my friends named Tim Kennedy is a Green Beret, and he has a TV show coming out called Hard to Kill. I think maybe we need to get you on that show. No, no. Somebody might take me up on it. I mean, I've been fortunate.

I mean, a lot of people got hurt a lot more serious than I've been. And I've seen some. In fact, I've had too many hurt pretty seriously. I had one of my ex-hole was in a helicopter and got and got shot up through the seat of the helicopter and all the shrapnel, everything went right into his leg and he was forever in bad shape. I mean, so I've seen a lot of people get hurt pretty badly.

I've been fortunate, I mean, but I've also had the attitude, I'm not gonna get shot and killed. I mean, no. That's worked out, but going back to, you know, when I got out of that tank to go back in Korea, I had no more idea that I was gonna get killed. That wasn't gonna enter into my mind. I just had something to do.

And that may be foolish, but it's just the way it was. Yeah, I think if you're, if you were thinking about what could happen, you wouldn't do anything. You couldn't do anything. You wouldn't do anything. You wouldn't do anything. Yeah. So you wrap up your squadron commander in Vietnam.

And again, I mean, you were taking, how often would you guys, you're getting in firefights a lot, what was your, what was your, rate of casualties like? How many guys did you lose? How many people were killed while you were there as a squadron commander? How many were killed? probably 10 not too many I mean

when you have ACAVs do you know what an ACAV is that's a personnel carrier I mean ACAV stands for armored cavalry assault vehicle but it's

it was the M113s back in those days I don't know I don't know what they're called today We still used M113s we used M113s in Ramadi the same exact vehicle so we are very familiar with Okay.

We both ridden in the back of them. Yeah. Well, they're pretty well protected, and the tanks, we had patent tanks, and they're protected. So, yeah, we had casualties because in a cavalry troop, we have infantry right in the ACAS. So when they get out, they got her. But I don't know the statistics.

I wrote enough letters, but not very, I mean, one's more than enough, but I don't remember how many I wrote. But because I did that for everybody who was killed. But I don't know the statistics. Not too many, not overburdened, Burdened, I mean, in the sense that I got several people's names on the wall. I go there every year just to stand there.

But I don't know, Jaco, I don't know the answer. I understood, sir. When you got home from Vietnam, you know, you talked about coming home from Korea and everyone's in uniform. And, you know, we hear stories of guys. coming home from Vietnam and they literally get told don't wear your uniform around. How different was the reception from World War II Korea to Vietnam? Well, coming back from from Vietnam was a sad experience. We thought we'd been doing a good job. We thought we were doing the right job. And I came back to the

Pentagon and I sort of witnessed the experience of the country being up in arms about Vietnam. So it didn't feel too appreciated, I guess, is the right word. And yet it didn't feel like, I felt like I've been doing a good job. So I don't, I didn't have, I didn't have any bad feelings. Most of those feelings about what was going on came after I got out of, I mean, I retired in 69 and things began to go to hell in the country about what we were doing over there. Well, right after I got out, I guess. My job, when I got out, I mean, when I came home

was at the Secretary of Defense's level. I told you earlier, the Army was sent me to school to learn to counteract the kids. Well, guess what? When I came back, Army sent me me to be a whiz kid. I was sent up to the Secretary of the General Staff, Alan Antoban's organization, which was called Systems Analysis, and that's where all the whiz kids were. And they had a representative of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Brink Corps, all four of us,

and we were sort of the other end of the teeter collar. We were supposed to balance some of these smart young men that were the quote whiz kids and as I tell people I've never a whiz or a kid but I was in that organization and it was an experience they wouldn't let me work on anything army and I had because they knew I had to go back to the army see that was and you had to be sitting there making decisions that could be against the Army what the Army wanted as opposed to one of the one of this one of the things I was involved with because I was involved with the Navy in the Air Force the Navy wanted to build another nuclear submarine well there's only so many

capital ships that was by law and so the Navy I asked why there was I can't I think 13 capital ships or whatever the number was. I asked, why is that number 13? It took quite a while for them to figure out the answer. And it really was very simple. Going back to the League of Nations, probably in 1920-something, when they parleyed out to the various World War of One winners,

the number of capital ships, I called battleships, numbers of ships that each country would have. And that's where this number came from. Well, that was just, now, I learned to ask that question because when I was going to Michigan, one of the professors said, this was in statistics class. I want to know what she wanted, what, not, what the results are, I want to know what the assumptions are. So I was asking this assumption,

why is there X number of capital ships? It was a simple question. I didn't know I was creating a challenge. I mean, it turned out to be exactly what I was saying. It was a strange phenomenon for them to try to figure out why that number. I don't know what the world is now, but I can tell you at that point, this was in 1968, I guess, that was a question that took a while to answer. By the way, I don't know how many capitalships we have, I don't know what they're called today, but we have a lot more than I think we had back in those days. So what made you decide to retire? Well, I had 25 years in the military. and I decided I wanted to think about doing something else.

Part of it was I used to listen to people tell me, you just order people to do things and they do it. And I said, that's just a lot of bologna. So I wanted to go and cut my, if you would, teeth on trying something in Savina world. So I sent a bunch of resumes out and I eventually was hired to go down to Texas. And the fellow that hired me was a retired Navy aviator who, by the way, as an assigned, was assigned to the first squadron, I think it's called,

that flew jets off of aircraft carriers. A guy by name Felix Jablonsky, who was a wonderful man. And, but if you wanted to know what time it was, he'd tell you how to build the watch. But he hired me, and our job there was was to figure out how to use from LTV's computer resources, how to use these in civilian application. And one of the things we did was we developed for Dallas, X's and O's that they used to do on the chalkboard on the computer screen. And this became a way that,

that apparently Dallas Cowboys would teach the guys how to react to whatever plays it was. So that was using some of this fancy technology that LTV had to build something that was applicable in civilian life. Well, Ling of LTV, Ling, Tim Kovart, suddenly got challenged. because he was creating a huge empire,

and the antitrust people got after him. And all of a sudden, the part that I was in was one from 30 people to four, and I was one of the four. And I don't know, to this day, I still don't know why they kept me, because I've just been there less than a year. But the guy who tried to hire me into computer sciences, sciences previously offered me a job with computer sciences. I mean, even though I had a job, I knew that this place was not a place that long term

going to be. So I went to work for computer sciences and they spent 15 years there and ended up retiring from there. It was one of the presidents, one of their divisions. And one of the things that my bosses used to say, I was one of the few leaders they had. They had a lot of managers, but I was leading a group, and we became very successful, much more so that I ever imagined we could be.

It was primarily in sales and marketing. And I had a boss that said, who was from IBM, and strict IBM, suit kind of guy. You know, you've heard all the stories about, and he said, if I would go back to my comrades at IBM and tell him that I just hired the former Army colonel to be head of sales, they'd all think I was goddamn crazy. And so, anyway, I had a great career of computer sciences, and as I said, I retired from there. I'm not a typist.

When I was going to high school, if you took typing, you weren't going to college. It was back. So this thing called voicemail appeared to me. And I thought, so another fellow and I started accompanying in the voicemail business in 1984. And it was pretty good. It was pretty successful. And we sold it in 1998. And I've stopped working since then.

That is awesome. I know we've kept you here for a couple hours now and probably a good place to at least stop for this particular session. Is there anything else you want to say? Anything else you want to close out with? Well, I can say this. I met my wife.

on my first assignment from the Pentagon. And my job in the Pentagon, among other things, was to control the number of troops on the ground in Vietnam. Congress mandated that there be 550,000 people on the ground. My job was to be sure that that number was met. So when the Secretary of Defense went to Fort Congress, always say that we have never so on a quarterly basis I would go to Hawaii and then people from Hawaii Thailand Korea Philippines and Hawaii would all meet at

the headquarters there up on the hill and we'd go over because what when Westmore will want to replace an ACAC battalion with an infantry battalion that's different numbers and everything's different so we had to do all this monitoring and keeping track of how many troops we had. My wife was a school teacher in California and she was over there on a vacation and one of my former colleagues from Vietnam, she knew him and somehow another we met. For the next two years, we dated cross-country. She in California, me in the Pentagon. And I would go. go every quarter to the Hawaiian Islands for this meeting I'm telling you about. So I'd

plan the meeting to be started on Tuesday so I could fly from here to California spend some time with her and I'd fly off to Hawaiian Islands and then on the way back I'd stop into the same thing and then it'd be up back here. So anyway we got married in after I got out, retired in 69, and we got married in October 69. And the reason I'm still living today is because of her. She keeps me alive. Takes care of me. I mean, so she's the principal reason that I can sit here and talk to you.

Well, then we'll say thank you to you for coming on, and we'll say thank you to your life for getting you here. Because, sir, once again, this has just been an absolute honor to be able to talk to you, to be able to hear the stories and the lessons that you learned. And thank you from all of us for your service, your sacrifice, and it's been an honor. Well, you all deserve the honor. I mean, you guys, I don't know what it would be like to be in the service today, frankly. I mean, I see these guys, my nephew deployed six times, twice to Iraq, once for the Somali extraction,

plus three other times just deploying, you know. and now how he did this I'll never know but he never left Camp Pendleton I mean he did he he was a drill sergeant down at MCRD but he'd commute back to back to Pendleton I mean I mean his wife lived there the whole time his 20 some years in the Marine Corps I'll understand I never figured that out I moved around like, but my wife would tell you, she and I got married after I got out of her. We're in our 17th house.

We've only been married for almost 49 years. I mean, so everybody said, well, you were in the military. We didn't do this one. She was never in the military. We moved all the time since then. I mean, you stay in San Diego. I'll do my best, sir I'll do my best

And again, yeah, absolutely The troops that are out there today And there's a lot of troops that listen to this Guys out there holding the line and doing those deployments Over and over again But you know, the work that we do today It's based on the lessons that we learn From your generations from the three wars that you fought

And what you passed on to us And it was an honor for us to continue to carry the flag So thank you. Keep carrying it. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. And Colonel Tom Fife has departed. And obviously it is a honor to get to talk to him.

And thanks for setting that up, Dave. Yeah, man, that was awesome. Much appreciated three war veteran. I mean, come on. Come on. That's just unbelievably awesome to sit and listen to. And you know what? Thanks, Dave, for setting that up.

and also thanks to everyone that supports this podcast so that we have the opportunity to bring people on like Colonel Tom Fife and be able to share those lessons on it, which there was a ton in there. So thank you all for supporting

and Echo. If people do want to support, sure. Can you maybe fill us in on how to do that? Sure. Let me start with our company. Oh. Origin. That's the company.

Origin. main.com is the website. There, you can get Jocko has supplements. You can get Jocko supplements. Jocko Supercryl oil for your joints. Joint warfare for your joints. Don't run out, by the way. Dave Burke.

I don't know if you ever been in the situation of running out of Super Krill when you depend on Super Krill. It's a bad situation. And if you ever want to reduce the risk of running out, do the subscription thing. That's what I do. Kind of. Subscripps.

Subscripts, yeah. You just get your allotted amount per month or however often you need it. Also, pre-mission supplement. It's called discipline. Hold on, Dave, you're firing up on discipline. You said to me, and I quote, I live on discipline. Yeah. It has become a daily part of my life, for sure.

You've got it in the brain. Yep. You use it before you work. Yep. You're studying, you're working, you're prepping. That's your go-to. The stuff is awesome. I use it probably more than I should.

Yeah, it's legit. I don't know if there's some kind of a, you know, limitation health-wise. Like if you're drinking nine gallons. I'm going to explore that. I don't know. I'll let you know. Yeah.

Check. All right. Well, there it is. It's a free everything. Pre-mission, pre-workout, pre-test. taking pre-meeting pre-jitsu. Now, you're going to get mad or whatever, or you're going to make, give me your attitude.

Sure. You know you make fun of me because I wanted it to taste good, right? Yeah, yeah. You make fun of me. And there's not even that much I can say about that because it's a legitimate thing. For me, Big Jocko to be like, oh, I want it to taste good. It's kind of a weakness, right?

It's kind of soft. Right. Well, that being said, we have another flavor coming. I'm going to tell you what. What? Well, first of all, I'll tell you two things. Well, first of all, it tastes good. Yeah, I know, bro.

Second of all, it's, it's basically pinia collada. But I can't call it that. That's like, I can't do that. Yeah. I can't do that. So it's going to be called like coconut pineapple. Sure. You know, we're not going just straight.

Pinoa clata. Because I just can't. No, no. It's not, that's not how. Yeah. No, no, that's not how. Yeah, you did mention that. Yeah.

And I'm impressed that you're sticking with the delicious. luxurious It's really good You know But that's one of those things Like you like peanut calada You like that flavor Like I've heard of people not really liking it

But that could have to do with the fact that You know how like when you drink alcohol too much And it has like a strike Like tequila will have it Pinacolada is like that If you just drink too many of them You get drunk You get a bad experience

Now you can never drink it again Now if you smell it You feel off Are you thinking of tequila right now Tequila is like that for sure Yeah Yeah, yeah. During my younger years, I had like a 14-month hiatus from Yeager after I had a bad sitch. Yeah, bad sitch. Yeah, so peanut collars. I was young and stupid. You know what, young, stupid, and motivated.

Like, you know when you're actually motivated, like, oh, I'm going to do this. That's bad. Sure. Dumb. Yeah. But if you haven't had that experience with Pinacolada, I would assume that that that's a pretty high rate of acceptance as far as deliciousness goes. in my opinion or in my by my estimation I think my hypothesis or whatever nonetheless it's called disciplines pre-mission this whether you love pinocalada or love lemon limeish flavor with other delicious factors in it that's a good thing but it's good because it makes your brain more healthy and your body pre-mission pre-workout pre-workout pre-worketing pre-jitsu pre-workout cognitive and physical force multiplier is what that is

So get on now and of course. Also, Gies and Rashgarts, Dave Burke. You didn't talk about Mulk. Yeah. You missed the Moke. Yeah.

I didn't really miss it. I was going to save it for a last, but no, no, no, I'll get back in my lane over here. No, because I just had a whole thing I was going to do with it.

Rash guards, tell me about it. I feel like we should do the Moke now because you got kind of kind of brought it up, which is, you know, if for lack of a better term, it's actually, it is a better term.

It's not protein part. It's protein powder, but it's a better term for this particular protein powder. Moke. Yeah, yeah. Mint chocolate, just in case he didn't know Dave Burke. Dave Burke, you're on the milk yet? He's not on the milk yet. He just told me he's going to get it this week.

Well, I will say this. I never was into protein powder. Aside from, you know, when you're in high school. You're still not. You're in the mold. Right. Correct. Correct.

But this one is one of those good ones where kind of like you in the discipline where you're like pounding it all the time. So I give my daughter. dessert oh yeah this is a dessert straight up straight up yeah it tastes that good and don't put a couple of drops of vanilla in there try to do that but two drops of vanilla really put an egg and put it in the blender day where to you in fact you know what don't do it don't do it you'll be in the same boat as me that's nonetheless it's like a dessert and there's protein night's good man because I used to make these milkshakes

when I was young like I'm just a homemade milkshake you more swole probably probably Big turn. And the last I used to make these milkshakes when I was young. They had vanilla egg, like a teeny tiny piece of banana, milk, and some other stuff. Some sugar in there. And it was good. It was like a solid milkshake. Like a good, like, almost like you bought it from a gourmet spot.

No, the mulks. No, the milk is no joke when it comes to milkshake simulator. Yeah. Mint, mint, chocolate. Peanut butter's coming. Peanut butter is coming. Chocolate peanut butter is coming. Chocolate peanut butter.

Mulk is on its way Straight up. Dave Burke, when you get on it, you're going to stay on that. So you're just going to be pounding discipline in Malk like all day, the way Dave Burke. Only Dave Burke can't. He's going to look like Echo Charles. Yeah. Swollen. Six months, dude. Lifting, Jiu-Jitsu, Mok, all that stuff.

Also, Gis and Rash Guards. We can talk about that. If you want, unless you have another suggestion on, what else I should talk about at this point? I'm saying, I want to do the right thing over here. You know what I'm saying, Dave Burke? What kind of ghee you have with Dave Burke? You do I do. I have two. So here's the

one good thing about starting Jiu-Jitsu at 45. I discovered the one good thing about it instead of starting at 15. I never have any of those stories where I tell about how uncomfortable the gear is or how the rash guards gave me, you know, or the geese are hard to wash.

I got origin main geese time to. From the get-go. From the get-go. This is like someone that never had a flip phone in 1994. Just woke up and they had an iPhone 6. Started with the iPhone 10. Out of the gears. You're just out of the game.

Yeah, origin of Maine rash guards. So I don't know what it's like to have grown up with all the terrible gear you guys used. You don't know what it was like, man. Back in the day. Yeah. Well, that's actually good news in my opinion, you know, because working, not working, but, you know, like, working out and doing Jitsu in a junk glee, by the first gear ahead, man, you know, like any, like you ever, when you buy your first suit, same deal? Like, you don't know.

I don't know. I don't know how the suit. You thought that was just how. Yeah, like, oh, I see a guy who soon? Let me go buy one. I don't know. Whatever. So same thing.

So I went and bought a guy, and it was like, I bought a cheap one. Yeah, yeah. $40. Well, no, see, I bought my first gieu is an akito. I bought from the Akito store. Yeah. Because the jihitsu place, they were like, it's $100. I'm like, oh, cool, not happening.

I'll go find a different one. Yeah, yeah. And I found a cheap one. Unbleached. Have you ever heard of this? Unbleached cotton. That was even cheaper than the bleach cotton. It's an off white.

It feels like it's filled with steel wool, scratching at your skin. Yeah, yeah, but that's hard. And it lasted like four weeks. So yeah, get a quality gie, get yourself an Ikedo gai, get yourself an Ikeed-a-Gi. That was an I-Kido gig. It was an I-Kido-Gi. It looked, it felt similar from the external viewpoint to a J-Jitsu-Gi, but it wasn't,

and it damn sure wasn't made in America, made in Maine. You know what's awesome is to know, to literally know the people, because I, I, we've been to the factory. I know the people that, that made those. I know them. Yeah. I like, I say, oh, hey, how are you doing? Oh, I'm over here making a key.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's real. That's what's happening. Yeah. And on top of that, not to mention, the cotton that was loomed right there in the building, by the way. Yeah. It's from America, too. That's something.

And you, so I was talking about Pete about this. The cotton, it's not all cotton. It's, it's, what is it? It's poly. It's poly, it's a poly cotton blend. And, and, you know, it's poly cotton blend. I thought that the two strands were different and it's woven together. No,

they make that, that actual thread is cotton, poly cotton. The thread itself that you weave is, that's why you can put it in the dryer to dry like a normal piece of clothing. Not four hours. You pull it out and yourself to hang it up because it's all cotton and it just holds on to the water. Big-ass cotton.

It gets out of there. Yeah. Made America. All good. So yeah. Good. Dave Burke, boom, origin geese. No history of discomfort in other geese.

No, no stinky area of the house where wet geese are hanging up for four days. Yeah. Now, and I'll say this for all the stuff at origin, everything they make is awesome. On their website to talk about the hoodie, and they call it the most comfortable hoodie ever. Yeah, I grew up. 100% wearing hoodies. If you grew up in Southern California, when it gets really cold out, you put on a hoodie. The origin hoodie is the most comfortable hoodie I've ever owned.

So that stuff is legit, no joke No personal offense to you Dave Because I respect you I do I really respect you as a person But your level of measuring comfort Is not even close to Echo Echo is sort of the quality comfort control guy And he has already made this statement

So you saying it is like Everyone is listening on whatever You're in the Marine Corps You know you've done some you've done some tough stuff in your life They're looking at Echo they're like wait if Echo thinks it's comfortable We're in That actual statement has meaning. Yeah.

Yeah, I will, but I will say, you know, sure. Like, of course, Dave Burke, of course. We all knew that. You know, yeah, I am the gold standard of comfort evaluation for sure, I think. And I will second that. It is the hoodie and the pants, by the way. So, yeah. Get those as well.

All Made in America. The compression gear and rash guards, all that. I'm just saying there's all this stuff on the website. OriginMane.com. You can get all this stuff. The hoodie. The geese. the rash guards,

sweatpants, other stuff. A lot of cool stuff on there. Check it up. If you want something, get something. Also, the immersion camp,

Jiu-Jitsu camp. Boom. Just got a message from someone from Florida, young lady from Florida, saying, saying, I want to go to the immersion camp,

but I won't know anyone there. And I think I'm the only one from Florida. What do you think? Hey, you know me? Kind of, I guess. If you send me the message, sure.

know Jocko too. Well, if you know Echo, you know me, and that means you know Dave Burke. You know three of us. We'll be there. Rolling. And here's the good thing where when you go there, we technically, sure, knew each other, and you knew Pete. That was the first time I met Pete. I met probably, what, like the first 15 minutes we met about 20 people. Yeah. And we hung out with those 20 people plus the other people you meet over the days the whole time.

It wasn't the kind of like, oh, I don't really know that, man, I'm hanging over here and there over there. It wasn't, it's not like that. You ever heard of those like dating sites where you, no, seriously, you put in, like match. Well, you look at, okay, so I grew up before dating sites or I got married before dating sites. So I was just like, do the game back in the day. Like, you've got to go to a place where you can hopefully meet a girl, right? The odds of meeting a girl are not, the girl that you like and that has some sort of remotely similar interests. You go into a bar of the 100 girls in there.

And like you're lucky if there's one of them there that's remotely interested in what you're interested in and you can connect. Then you've got to meet them. You got to go up and talk to them and all this stuff. It's real hard. Then they made the match dating things online where you put in your stuff. And then you meet that one person and you connect with them and you have all these things in common. This situation, you think about it, you're actually just going into a place where everyone's into the same thing that you're into. It's like walking to a bar and everyone likes the same stuff.

Right. from there, likes jujitsu, and wants to train and wants to hang out, and that's what makes it cool. Yeah. Yeah. No dating typically, but hey, yeah, it's a good point. Everyone kind of, you kind of converge on the topic of jujitsu and then kind of everything else spawns from there.

That's what it really seemed like to me too. And then everything spins back to jujitsu. Yeah. Yeah. It's good fun. So my input is to go. That's what I think. I think go.

When in doubt, go. Dave's going. I'm going. Leif is going, confirmed. J.P.'s considering. He'll go. He'll probably end up going. Yeah, so it'll be a little EF reunion tour of the Jujitsu boy.

Yep. Agree. And when you go there knowing zero people, you'll leave there not only knowing more people, but they'll be kind of your friends. I will guarantee you'll have more actual friends after you leave. Guarantee. This is to the lady that. email me.

That's what I think. Right on that. That's cool. And even if you will know some people there, I say go too because you can immerse yourself in Jiu-Jitsu. Best Way to Learn. And, you know, let's face it, you're in Maine. There's a bunch of lobster. They serve lobster.

Yeah. That was one of the highlights in my opinion. Anyway, yeah. So it is on August 26th through September 2nd. Two sessions. Go to both if you want. But yeah, two sessions. There you go.

All levels. Also, for fitness. this gear going to on it.com slash jaco they got kettlebells battle ropes jump ropes all kinds of stuff good stuff vary up your workout get some new gear it'll actually get you more in the mood to do a workout when you when that gear comes in i guarantee that well i don't know if i can't guarantee that but that's how it was for me when i got the jump rope then all of a sudden i'm a jump roper you see what i'm saying it's good anyway a lot of cool stuff on there a lot of good information on there too by the way if you're beginning like kettlebells or you're beginning other

out movements and you want to know some tips and you know even some nutrition stuff really good anyway go there on it.com slash jaco good way to support also when you get the books that jaco reviews on this podcast i organize them on joccopodcast.com on the top you click on books from episodes and it takes you to the page and it has that's right you guessed it the books buy the episode for on episodes buy episodes you see what I'm saying anyway click on there takes you to Amazon you can shop get your books

get whatever else you want from Amazon your batteries or duct tape whatever keep shopping do you also good way to support is to subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already Stitcher iTunes Google Play Spotify do you subscribe on Spotify or is it just there?

I don't know I've been to Spotify there's a lot more apps for podcast now. Yeah, I think I'm going to explore some of them too. Daily. Yeah. I'm going to explore some of them. Comes out daily. Yeah. Well, either way, the point there is. Apple changed their thing. What do you mean? They're, their, their

layout or something. So now it pops up different. Everything's different now. Frustrating. I know, it's like, you ever realize when the layout of something? So this was a big thing on Facebook. When do you get on Facebook Day, do you remember? 2014.

14. Dang, that's That's pretty early. There's requirement for school. Okay. There you go. So were you in on Facebook when they kind of changed the layout of Facebook from something to something to like news feed? Negative. Jaku.

Oh, Jaka doesn't know anything about it. You don't know what I'm talking about at all, huh? No, I didn't get on Facebook until probably like 2000. I might have been on, but I didn't actively do anything on it to like maybe a year ago. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe a year and a half. So the layout of Facebook was like, you know, you had your profile picture.

And I'm even, I'm just trying to remember what it was. It was like, I don't even remember what it was. But it was like, I think like your wall or something like that where it's like you're just your, your own stuff. And then they all of a sudden switched it to this news feed situation. You know how like now it's like everyone's stuff that you're basically how it is now. They just switched it. And people were mad. It was like changed their life.

You know, they were pissed. That's what you sounded like when you just talked about the apples. You know, you had that same effect. on your brain. Anyway, subscribe to the podcast is what I'm saying. Regardless of the layout of any iTunes or any other applications that the layout has or has not changed, good way to support.

Also, we have a YouTube channel, so subscribe to that if you want, and if you're interested in the video version of this podcast, if you want to see what Jock looks like. Or Dave Burke, in this case, what he looks like, pretty handsome. I think, as far as handsome goes. Or Colonel Tom Fife. Yes. See what he

looks like. Yeah, typically those are the the ones that people want to see, you know, they want to see the guests. They want to see what they look like. They know what we look like. Yeah, they kind of already know. Except me. I guess they don't really know what I look like because I still do get, hey, you don't look like how you sound. Right.

Which is an actual thing. You can look like how you sound. Like, you look like how you sound. Check. Dave Burke looks how he sounds. But it's not a one to one. It's not a face to like your voice sounds like this, so your face is going to look like it. It's not like that.

It's like your voice sounds like this. So your face can look like. this kind of real like this group this little variety of face possible faces you see what it works yeah but for you your voice is i'm outside of that group my face is outside of that group apparently so if you're interested in that sort of thing youtube boom also we have excerpts on there if you want you know some of the lessons that jocco talks about you know you want to share them they're they're they're condensed or actually they're not condensed they're just taken out of you know made little videos on there um also enhance excerpts to put some music

on there make them more somebody asked for tracks enhanced excerpt tracks into psychological warfare available on iTunes so mm-hmm does that make sense yeah in the enhanced in the hand for psychological warfare too by the way yeah I agree I really get a lot of requests for things like that I agree but not from a personal interest standpoint because the psychological warfare one is still very effective 100% effective for me now with tracks Yeah, which I will talk about after I talk about the fact that Jocko has a store. It's called Jocco store.

Jocco store.com. This is where you can get the T-shirts that say discipline equals freedom like the one I'm wearing right now. Or the Jocco podcast shirt, basic, but very nice. The one that Dave Burke is wearing right now. Also, this, were you telling me you got called out with a Jocco podcast t-shirt? Where was that? I'm wearing this exact shirt. I'm at Disney World with the family after Orlando two weeks ago.

From across the way, I get a good evening echo. That's the standard bona fides Legit, man The standard bonafetes Is good evening echo Very good Yeah, looks good on you Of course

And even if you want the one That jaco has on now The one that jaco always has on right now The one he has on right now And always has on You see what I'm saying Anyway, if you want that shirt Go in jocco store.com

Or if you want a hoodie Or if you want a hat Or if you want a rash guard Anyway, just go on there You can see if you want to support that way There's a lot of cool stuff on there If you want something Get something

It's called jocco store.com. Also, just like Jocko mentioned, psychological warfare, is an album with tracks. Basically, these tracks are each track. You can get these on iTunes, by the way. So each track is Jocko telling you how to get past certain weaknesses that you might have, might have on your campaign against weakness. So, you know, you're on the path, right? We're working out, we're waking up early, some of us.

And, you know, we're reading more, whatever. doing sometimes you don't want to do that you don't do that every day you just don't feel like it on some days but you still should do it we all know that but sometimes you don't feel like it so you're about to skip the workout boom you listen to a certain track doc will tell you why you shouldn't skip the workout and it's affected you won't skip the workout take it from me i know 100% from experience that's what it is get on iTunes check you know also speaking of subscribing i have another podcast now yeah it's called the warrior kid podcast good one by the way Yeah. Uncle Jake has lessons. The name of the podcast is Warrior Kid. Ask Uncle Jake. Uncle Jake answers questions from little warrior kids around the world. And you can get that. Play it for your kids. There's no foul language. There's no talk about the Milai Massacre. It's totally separate. So your kids won't get stumble upon something that they shouldn't be listening to that they're not ready for yet. So you can check that out. Also, Jock White Tea is available on Amazon. And if you're going to,

order it, well then go ahead and just go ahead and order some more weights for your barbell too because you're going to need them. You need about 8,000 pounds worth and that's the minimum guaranteed deadlift. Also, there's cans of white tea coming soon. They're going to be here in June. They're going to be available on Amazon in June. Victory in a can. Yes, certified organic. Never thought you'd hear me say that now, did you? Yeah, certified organic. There you go. We're going to get rid of all the horrible energy drinks that are out there making people sick. And we're going to place with jock-Jocco-white tea, which is 8,000 pounds of pure power. Let me ask you this about jacquotty. Would you consider making the microdose or a version that doesn't have just a

microdose of caffeine. But, uh, if you drink the, no, probably not. No more caffeine. No, the, the jocco white tea can, I think is two servings and I think it's 30 grams. I'll confirm that. Yeah. I shouldn't have said it. I'm saying, would you ever consider making like another, another version in the future or anything

like that, something with more caffeine? Jocco white tea hype or something. No. I don't know. I don't think so. Okay. I don't think so. Because, um, if you,

want more, you can drink more. Yeah, man. Or go get something, you know, something that's going to make you all jittery. That's fine. Books, Way of the Warrior Kid. Series. It's a series of books. By the way, there's two of them right now.

There'll be more. I got a, I got a note on social media. And it was from an eight-year-old warrior kid named Addison. And she wrote this. Dear Mr. Willink, I absolutely love your book, Way of the Warrior Kid.

I think it's the best book ever. You know what I'm saying? It taught me about discipline and commitment. Now, every day I train before school. And trust me, it helps a lot. Your friend Addison. So, there you go. Listen to Addison.

Pick up the way of the warrior kid. And pick up Mark's mission, the second book so your kids can get stronger, smarter, faster, and overall. If you want to support a particular warrior kid, that's on the move. Making things happen, go to Irish Oaks Ranch.com. Get some soap made by Aiden, Warrior Kid. Warrior kid with his own business. He makes Jocko's hope on his farm.

So you can stay. The discipline equals freedom field manual. I met a trooper up in Yosemite. I was up in Yosemite. I guess it was last summer. And, you know, we just started talking. And I'm like, I was like, what you're doing up here? And he was like, I'm up here to get my mind right.

I was like, yeah. I don't know. I got kind of fired up, you know, get my mind right. And that's a thing. That's a thing that you kind of got to do sometimes, get your mind right. Discipline equals freedom field manual. It'll help get your mind right.

It'll help get your mind right. Yeah. And it'll help get your body right too, by the way, if you get some of those deaf core workouts going for sure. If you want to listen to it instead of read it or in addition to reading it, you got to get the audio version not audible books it's not on there it's available on amazon music iTunes google play other mp3 platforms discipline equals freedom field manual meditate on that also for

leadership extreme ownership combat leadership for the battlefield for business and life and now you can order the follow-on book to extreme ownership it's called the dichotomy of leadership it's available for pre-order on amazon barns and noble local bookstore Hit them up. It'll be out September 25th. If you want to get one of those first editions, if you're a book person that's into the books, you like to have that first edition.

Order it. If you need backup with your team from a leadership perspective, whatever business you're in or whatever leadership situation you're in, you need some support. You can contact my leadership and management consulting company.

It's called Eschalon Front. It's me. Laif Babin. JP to know. Dave Burke is in the game. The website is atchelonfront.com. We solve problems through leadership. That's it. That's how problems get solved in any organization.

Not some. Whiz kid looking at a spreadsheet. Sure, we'll assess those. That's not where the problem is going to get solved though. We might identify a problem there. The problem is leadership. The problem in your organization is leadership. We'll fix it.

That's what we do. Of course, we got the muster. We're in D.C. right now for the muster. It sold out, and they all sell out. There's one more muster in 2018. Muster 006 in San Francisco, October 17th, and 18th. You registered Extreme Ownership.com. Like I said, it is going to sell out.

If you want to come, register now. Also for current military law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, other first responders. We got the roll call, zero, zero one. September 21st in Dallas, Texas. It's a one day leadership training seminar that's specific to dynamic and hostile environments. Things like fires, things like combat, things like high speed pursuit chases. That's what it's about. You can register for that as well at Extreme Ownership.com.

And until we see you at the muster or at the roll call or at the immersion camp in Maine, if you want to communicate with us and hang out virtually, you can find us on the interwebs. What's yours, Dave R. Burke. At Dave R. Burke. Dave R. Burke is your Twitter handle. Your Twitter call sign. That's it. I might have snagged a good deal, Dave.

Just to make sure nobody else has it. I might have grabbed that. Yeah, nicely done. Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jock Willink. And to all the military personnel out there, standing the global watch for evil. Thank you. And to the families of those men and women that are also serving and also sacrificing Thank you for what you do to the first responders out there, police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics.

Thanks for standing by to get some at all times. And also thanks to your families as well. And to everyone else that's out there with us facing whatever you're facing, life, challenges, struggles, pain, suffering, uncertainty. Look at the past. Look at a guy like Tom Fife, look what he's been through, see what men and women have gone through, what they've been subjected to, and how over and over and over again,

we see human beings that rise against and they overcome. To keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep fighting to move forward and keep getting after it. And until next time, this is Dave and Echo. And Jocko. Out.