Jocko Podcast - 142: Face The Unforgiving World. "Men Against Fire", by S.L.A. Marshall

Episode Date: September 12, 2018

0:00:00 – Opening 0:27:36 - Men Against Fire, by SLA Marshall 2:50:47 – Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:54:09 – Support. 3:19:08 – Closing gratitudeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 142 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. S. L.A. Marshall could be a braggart of the first order. I could write on toilet paper with a crayon and sell it was a routine boast. But his favorite claim to fame was at first the most puzzling to me and years later the most significant in terms of unraveling the hustler and the phony that he was. and how he was nonetheless able to make such a mark on the U.S. Army. Slam regularly brought up the fact that the army had made him a general

despite his never having attended even one military school and that he was the only general in the army to have this distinction. He neglected to say, and never would have had I not followed up out of sheer curiosity, that he'd gotten his star not in the regular army but in the reserves. Meanwhile, with no reason not to believe him, I accepted Slam's story of World War I. His experiences as an infantryman in all the major campaigns, his battlefield commissioned to become the youngest second lieutenant in the U.S. Army during the war, the romantic tale he spun of Armistice Day when he saw in the end of the war sharing his canteens with his brigade commander

in the trenches. With no reason not to believe him, I accepted Slam's tales of World War II. Two, two. His participation in the fighting in the Pacific as well as his service in Europe, which had him in the front line of the Normandy invasion. It would be many, many, many years in which Slam repeated the stories endlessly, in which his reputation was only further bolstered as one or the other appeared in everything from current biography, 1953, to the obituaries upon his death in 1977. and in his autobiography published two years later before I would discover it was all a lie. Slam had been an enlisted man with the 315th Engineers 90th Infantry Division during World War I and spent his time not fighting as an infantryman but repairing French roads until just before the war's end. He had not been battlefield commissioned and he wasn't anywhere near the trenches on 11 November 1918

in being instead at the Army France-based officer candidate school, then called infantry candidate school, the self-proclaimed youngest lieutenant in World War I, who in fact never served an officer in any outfit, regular or reserve in any capacity ever, was not commissioned until April 1919, long after the last angry shots were fired. According to his service record, Slam saw no infantry combat in World War II. either although he was awarded a C.I.B. for the Marshall Islands campaign while serving on the DA staff and far from being on the ground from the earliest hours of the 6 June 1944 Normandy invasion, Slam didn't even arrive in the European theater until July. And then it was as a staff officer slash historian reconstructing the operation. And while Slam

would speak with pride of being the only American soldier to serve in all four of America's great wars in the 20th century, it was a claim more than a little deceptive. His Korean war experience covered exactly three months, December of 1950 to February 1951, when he was recalled from the reserve to active duty as a historian slash operations analysis for the 8th Army, a stint for his country that produced the river and the gauntlet for himself. And his service in Vietnam was undertaken as a six-year retire reserve general and a 40-year experienced journalist. Slam's job when he wasn't wearing a khaki looking for a story on the Army's tab. A historian as careless with his own history as Slam Marshall was could hardly be a careful historian and Marshall proved the rule.

Veterans of many of the actions he documented in his books have complained bitterly over the years of the inaccuracy or blamperacy. latent bias with it although the truth was that slam was a fallen and irrevocably smashed idle in my eyes he knew I'd grown away from him throughout our time together but it was not something to discuss I cherished my career too much to risk getting on his bad side and I was opportunistic enough to see the value of my staying on the good side but there must have been many like me who silence in the face of Slam's power only added to it and gave credence to his dubious expertise who allowed him to have an observed amount of influence which fed his ego and lined his purse and for years did an incalculable

horrific disservice to the army the thing he professed to love above all not to mention to the nation and to the men who fought and died in Vietnam when general Johnson had warned me take care with slam he's he is the army's powerful friend but he can be a treacherous enemy. I had not understood what he meant. But when I finally did, I understood, too, that the chief of staff had gotten it backwards. The reality was that Slam Marshall was the army's powerful enemy because he was its most treacherous friend. And if he were alive today, perhaps even more than the Vietnam-era generals who determinedly maintain we won the war, we lost in their hands,

Slam Marshall would have plenty to answer for that right there is a section from My favorite book about face by Colonel David Hackworth and he's talking about His experience with a guy by the name of SLA Marshall Otherwise known as slam slam Marshall and that's a pretty devastating opening That's a pretty devastating That's a pretty bad devastating opening you can hear what his career was so there's a lot of negativity around SLA Marshall and for me coming from Hackworth that's basically all I need to hear that's all I need to hear is when when Hackworth you know goes and and so Hackworth worked

with him and did a tour in Vietnam with him they were going around documenting things and he got to know him and at first he kind of idolized him and I'll talk about that a little bit but that that and that's one of the things that hack mentions in about face was that he had this huge impact on the army and and And and hack says that he used to read his books over and over again and and so it's kind of a weird Dicotomy there is that hack got information from some of SLA Marshall's famous books that he wrote about combat But then and but then he turned out to not have told the truth so One of the books that he talks about that he read a bunch is a book called Men Against Fire.

And it's based on his interviews and reporting on World War II. And that book made some claims. And some of the claims that the book made are just patently untrue. Just lie. They're just not true. And the biggest of the lies, is that right to call it a lie? The biggest of the claims, maybe it's a lie. The biggest of the untruths, we'll call it that.

The biggest of the untruths revolves around this notion that SLA Marshall presents, that in combat, only about 15% of the soldiers on the battlefield in combat actually fires a weapons at all, 15%. Now, that's a really strange thing to say. Now, and knowing what I know now, I think he may have done that for a couple of reasons. And I'm not making excuses. I'm saying this is why I think he would do that. Because there's no excuse for doing this. The first is I think he wanted to have a theory or a hypothesis that was like kind of shocking and would gain him some publicity.

Right? That's a shocking thing. When you hear, hey, in combat, only 15% of people fire their weapons. Right? You're going, what are you talking about? That's crazy. So I think he wanted to have something to discuss that would bring him out to the limelight. You know, the shocking claim.

And second, I think he saw that there was an actual problem, right? That maybe not as many people shot their weapons in combat as should. And he wanted to fix that problem. So was it 85% of the people that weren't shooting the weapon? No. But maybe the number was a decent percentage that didn't shoot or could have shot more. Is that possible? Yeah, I could say that that's possible.

Maybe not as many people were. Not as many people were shooting as you would have liked. So that's why I think he got focused on that particular subject. And I think the normal human life things, right? I think he had a big ego, which actually, I don't think he did. He had a big ego. He was insecure. I think he made up some of these other stories, which are horrible to make up stories about your combat experience.

This is a big mistake. I think this is, you know, in many ways this is like one of the first documented cases of stolen valor, right? and obviously I don't like stolen valor so there's a lot of negativity around SLA Marshall and I have to be careful because I it's it's very easy for me to throw the baby out with the bathwater right and when you you know okay so I'm here to learn right and despite these very very significant character shortfalls here's the facts the books that he wrote guided the military and had a significant impact on military leaders for many years including

Hackworth including Hackworth so eventually I had to look and see what is in these books and what if anything I could learn from the books and I think from my perspective okay so so he did massive amounts of interviews with people And he did have you know he was okay, he wasn't Indy day. He was there a month later interviewing people finding out what happened so we talked to a lot of people and I think his perspective and the same thing with World War I he wasn't there but he was close to it and he talked to a lot of people and then he spent his time in the Pacific theater and he spent time and crew so he had perspective it's not the perspective that he claimed to have and if he

would have been smart and just said look I wasn't on the front lines but I talked to a lot of people I have I was in the military I have a good perspective here's what I've learned if you would have said that It would have been fine unfortunately. He didn't say that Do we throw the baby out with the bathwater? The the the My initial like gut reaction is yes Liar right sure right hey no I'm not gonna listen this guy But I had to think about it if this book influenced the military so much and this book in particular the book is is men against fire is the big book that he wrote I I say the big book.

It's the book that he wrote after World War II. I think it came out in 1947. And it's, it had a big influence. And I can tell you that it had a big influence. It had a big influence. And this is what's funny. It had a big influence because despite, so I guess the facts about his career came out after he died.

He died in 1977. And the facts came out some years after that, right? I would hear quotes from SLA Marshall all the time when I was in. This guy is a known liar. Again, maybe that's a harsh word, but he did not tell the truth. And, you know, when it comes to, like, making up

what you did in combat, you kind of earn yourself the name liar. So the guy lied. And yet, I would hear quotes from what he said and what he taught and what he thought. And a lot of it made sense, right? So, okay, is it true that even a broken clock is right twice a day?

That's still a pretty small percentage. But I'd hear quotes from SLA Marshall that were correct, and it wasn't a small number of quotes. And so I think despite his ego, despite his lying, he had a lot of good, he had gathered a lot of good information and talked to enough people that he actually started to make sense. And he saw people in multiple different wars. Again, did he see it to the degree that he claimed to? No, but you know, there's a lot of military historians that were never in any kind of combat whatsoever, that were never even in the military. There's plenty of very respected. I've got books in the queue, and I don't know if I'll ever cover them, but I've got books in the queue that are great books about war and about the military that were written by people that were never in the military. There's military theorists that were never in the military that I have a great deal of respect for. So

Then they say sensible things So is there a question of character? Yes, are we going to throw the baby out with the bathwater? I'm going to try not to I'm going to try and see what we can learn And I think from when I read This book, and I read this book a long time ago And I don't know

Anyways, I got stuff out of it And I think there's actually I'm going to tell you I think there's actually a lot to get out of this book And if nothing else, it reflects and reinforces some lessons and brings some other ones it paints them a little bit more clearly So without further ado and I found myself as I was as I was reviewing this book again Like about halfway through it. I totally forgot that it was this guy that I

Consider a liar right I was I got over that right because I'm thinking to have that makes sense. Yes, that does that and he's pulling in quotes from military leaders and Yeah, yeah, that's are you with me? I mean does it make sense? It makes 100% sense since because remember back in the day remember millie vanilly remember that those that group oh yeah the two guys yeah so everyone they were liars yeah so they were liars in that way yeah so it wasn't them singing and all this stuff as it turns out as it turns out but when they were all you know on the radio and stuff by everyone like that you know like to you know blame it on the rain or whatever did they uh did they recover they did not recover from their situation negative and sLA marshal was dead yeah well one of the guys committed suicide in milly vanilly it was

It's like, you know, it got heavy. But nonetheless, the point is, it's like, yeah, it's not them singing it, you know, their liars or whatever, but the songs were kind of dope. That's the thing. So, you know, same deal. So I get it. So, SLA Marshall, Millie Vanilly. Same thing.

Same situation here. I'm saying if you put on one of the Millie Vanilli songs right now, I don't bring you right back, you know, to the dance or whatever. And, you know, it's still good. It's good. So you kind of lose that part of it. Why wouldn't you take the guys that actually sang it? Or why don't you teach those two guys how to sing?

Is that hard to sing? Yes, so one time not to go too deep into it, but they tried to make a podcast about milly vanilla up in here. They went into it. They were like, hey, we think you get. Because they messed up on stage, right? Oh, that's how they got busted?

The tape skipped, yeah. And well, and so they're like, oh, my gosh, they panicked. They ran off stage all this stuff. They could have just been like, yeah, we were lipsing for that show. But then, I forget how they handled it. But then people were like, hey.

How long did it take the guy to kill himself? Oh, a long time, like years. They got exposed and all this stuff. But he was just, and so they're like, they're like, no, we'll prove it, you know? And then so the people came in and listened to them, like, actually singing the thing. It was like, oh, my God, not even close. These guys can't even sing. You know, it's, you got to tell the truth about what's going on, man.

Yeah, man. And that's the thing. Like, just like how you said, like, why not just get here. The people who were really sang those songs, they were older people. They were, like, old, like 50s or something like that. Like, so they didn't have the part. Pop culture kind of feel so they were less marketable in that way. But did they just hire a couple like vocalists? I mean how bad can those guys sing?

Terrible like the real guys. Oh man. Yeah, you can watch the little documentary thing. What I and he's like good and they have thick German accents too. That's the thing too. Yeah, they're from Germany. Oh, so it's like it's night and day. They're different and but the real people who sang it. They're like like I said like old you know funky like kind of jazz type people from what I remember. They're just less market. Oh, they're just less market. Oh. But just like how you said, sure they're less marketable, but man, they're putting out some pretty cool songs. I mean, yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't know. The marketing, I think that's a big part of it. I don't know, man, but I'm, you are right, though. You know, it's weird. It's also because the stuff that, the stuff that SLA Marshall says in this book, he's making, he's making statements that they stand on their own. You don't need, you know, to be able to say, look, I was here.

So therefore, what I'm saying you should listen to? Like, no, the value of what you're saying should stand on its own. You don't need to be, you don't need to be, have some certain experience. You know, it's like Leif and I talk about, and I would say, you can't, if you're trying to prove a tactic to someone. Like, if I say, hey, when you get in this situation, here's what you should do. I shouldn't say, because this is how we did it when I was in Baghdad or when I was in Ramadi or whatever. Or when I was in Nam, like, no, here's the tactic. And look at how it performs.

Go and do a trial run. Go and do some force on force training. You'll see that the tactic works. And SLA's Marshall, smart guy, great writer, got, you know, could have said, hey, here's these tactics that I learned from these other people that just got out of it. And that wasn't good. That's a little ego thing, isn't it? Just wasn't good enough for him.

Didn't you guys have a name for that? When someone would bust that out. Yeah, yeah. We weave. We weave. Which is when I was in Baghdad. Yeah. When I was in Baghdad, like, hey, when I was in Baghdad, we did.

it like this. And you can't stand. You can't stand on that, right? Is it good to have experience and say, hey, look, when I was in Baghdad, this is how we did it. Perhaps we should try it this way. That's one thing. But to say, when I was in Baghdad, this is how we did it. So that's how is the best way to do it, which is just not true. It's not true. Things evolve. The fundamental principles of combat leadership don't change. But the tactics that you use can definitely, you have to modify your tactics. The enemy's going to modify their tactics, so you have to adjust as well. And so to rely on your personal experience as how you bolster your arguments is wrong.

It's it's a it's an additive right. It's it's good to say hey look I've done this before and this is a good way I remember I had a situation where I was teaching how to go over the beach with boats right and I brought up some things and I said hey look I've done and I happen to have done multiple deployments on a ship and when you're on a ship you go over the beach a lot and going over the beach is a complicated operation I don't care there's no easy way to do it man

you got gear that's gonna flood out you got waves you got tides you got surfed you got sand you got salt water it's a nightmare and that's one of the things that makes the seals good is that we have to do this so when you go when you insert any other way it's freaking easy like you step off a helicopter everything's fine

You see you know you you get dropped out of a vehicle everything's fine you come over the beach everything is a disaster There's salt everywhere there's water everywhere everything's flooded and broken and you're freezing cold It just sucks and that's that's our normal mode of operation is right there so everything else seems easy But I had a guy that was saying don't Don't ever bring the boats in and I totally disagreed with that it was like well Well, you have to think about what you're going to do is basically what I'm saying. You have to think about what you're going to do. If you can avoid, if the boats come in and they flip, it's a real problem, right?

It's a real problem. If there's surf, it's a real problem. And you need to have like elements ready to just handle the boats. Because if something goes wrong, so you can't, you have to really think about what you're doing. And anyways, I almost fell back on like. Look, I've done this I've done over the beach over and over again. I know the deal. It's like, no, no, actually, because the deal is many times when you look at the surf and you go,

you know what, we need to swim in. It's going to suck, but we need to swim in because risking the boats going through. And there's two things that are pulling at you. The waves are big, right? You're thinking, hey, we better get the boats to bring us in. That's actually counterintuitive because the waves are big, man. You flip a boat over and you got, it's a disaster. It's a disaster.

So anyways, I almost relied on the hey, this is the way we did it and I've done this a bunch and it's like no, that's not merit You have to feel explained okay here's what can happen here's the problems and here's and there's problems for both of us There's times where you swim and there's times you don't but you have to understand why you're making that decision. You can't just blanket a decision Because it gets sketchy. All right anyways, this is a big introduction to SLA Marshall Here we go. I gotta say one more thing Bro and and you know Leif and I we've written two books about our experiences. They're not there are the leadership books, but you know we make it Very clear that like hey this is our memory to the best of our ability But there's some things that you just don't you if you don't know something you shouldn't make a claim

But there's something like you know if you were Participating in D-Day you don't mess up that fact like for me to be like hey, I've oh yeah, I was on that mission and someone to be like oh well Actually you weren't me Well, when was it and well I did whatever I was on hundred operations. Oh, I don't know if it's on that one or that well you know you know like it's understood right people make mistakes people your memory it fades with memory. I think Leif and I mean we in both the introses to extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership we spelled out you know this is to the best of our memory this isn't a historical document and we you know at some point I'm sure we'll go back and and actually get the dates and explain every single thing that happened by date and who was there and what experience took place. The Like, yeah, that would be good to have. And especially now, it's probably, it's all unclassified now because it's been a long time. But the kind of errors that he's making in are like I was at D-Day. Or I was in the trenches with my brigade commander on the day that World War I ended.

Like, that's not a small, like your memory is not going to forget that, right? It's just not going to happen. So tell the truth and What sucks is this is what sucks if you don't tell the truth You discredit everything that you've said that actually is truthful That's the problem with this book That's the problem with this book everything that is basically you could take this book and throw it in the garbage can and no one could really argue with you Oh that guy lied about a bunch of stuff. Okay, well throw it in the garbage can. I get it

Yeah And if it wasn't for the fact that a hack actually had learned a ton from this book I would be like well, well, I would be like well, Well, we're throwing the garbage. But if he learned from it and then used what he learned from it to implement in the Korean War and the Vietnam War, it's like, okay, you know what? I'm going to pay attention to it. That's a rough time. This is a rough time. It took me a long time to decide to cover this book, actually.

Yeah, yeah. Isn't that crazy? Makes sense, though. Totally makes sense. Wait, it makes sense that it took a long time, and it makes sense that we're here right now with book in hand. Both. Okay. I mean, more the long time thing.

Of course. Yeah, you got to consider. Just like that one, there's like a reporter, like a news. reporter who like said he was in a helicopter and it got took fire and all kind of that was uh Hillary Clinton yeah yeah yeah she took sniper fire coming right so there's a reporter yeah and it was like a legit reporter yeah yeah and then he said like he did took all this stuff and they was like well I was in the helicopter yeah two two helicopters behind and I saw it you know it's ah you know meanwhile yes some good stuff yeah you shouldn't

have said that you know just like are you saying you should you don't have to say all that you know there's something else that happens this catches people when it comes to storytelling okay I'm gonna explain this if I'm telling you a story about something taking place and I'm not a great storyteller I want you to feel how I felt So if I say to you like let's say I got a mortar that exploded 50 yards from me 50 yards I'm pretty safe could I get fragged sure I could get fragged but I'm pretty safe it's still pretty shocking and Boom, it's blowered, boom. And when that first mortar hits, you're like, oh, wait, is another mortar going to hit me?

What's going on? Well, when I tell you, hey, a mortar hit and it hit 50 meters from me, I'm thinking, well, that doesn't really convey how I felt at that moment. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to cut that down a little bit. I had this mortar hit 10 meters from me. And now you're thinking, oh, dang, like even you, I can see it on your face. You get it now. So in order for me to try and convey the emotions that I actually felt people start to adjust and

You got to be careful that there I don't think they're doing it intentionally You know I always I just put myself in check like okay. I need to tell a good story But I need to keep the facts straight. Yeah, right? Sketchy Yeah, that's the thing the facts so there's a difference between saying a this was the biggest explosion you'd ever seen in your life You know like saying that is different than like the This explosion was literally, you know, 200 feet in the air or something like this. Well, you could say, oh, this was a 400 pounds worth of TNT.

Yeah, you can't make those factual. You can't make those factual. But, hey, something hits 50 meters from you and you've never been mortared before. That will, that is a scary thing. Yeah. It's a scary thing. Do a metaphor, though. Yes.

You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But here's what's, here's what you need to, here's what I always need to remember. When I tell you, I got a mortar that landed 50 meters, most people are like, Damn that's scary enough I don't need to make it more scary. Oh yeah, let's just keep it real. Yeah, you even mention the smoke trail behind the mortar when you see it going up to me that's scary. That's scary? Yeah, I don't care how many meters away It's not really smoke. It's like little sparks like a sparkler. Oh, like a trail. Yeah, yeah, shing That's what it sounds like too. That even sounds scary by the way

So here we end up we end up with SLA Marshall's book lots to learn from it and Yeah, so let's get into it. We'll We'll try and take it For what it's worth Yes, sir And I believe you're gonna find As I was a review in this book

I'm like, yeah, there's so much good information in here Here we go to the book In the early years of World War II It was the common practice of public spokesmen In the United States To magnify the role of the machine in war While minimizing the importance Of large forces of well-trained foot soldiers

Hey World War II. We're just gonna win this thing with all these big machines we're we're We're creating once the total contest between national societies is predicated It becomes impossible to write off the ultimate clash between the masses of men who fight on foot They are the body of the national defense there is no other way out the society which looks for an easier way is building its hope on Sand see I'm already getting kind of fired up because that's real Improvisation is the natural order of warfare The perfect formulas will continue to be found only on charts That's good. What's the quote that you clipped out of Dave Burke saying good deal

Yeah, good deal Dave saying he said it at the muster. It's not a spreadsheet. Oh yeah, this isn't a spreadsheet Yeah, this isn't a spreadsheet anymore and that that's kind of what I that that made me think of that That because leadership is not a spreadsheet It's not a spreadsheet. It's not a perfect thing that you can just put out on a spreadsheet. Okay, here's the decision we're gonna make It doesn't work that way All right, here we go getting back to the book since more than a century ago when the rifle bullet began its rain over the battlefield And soldiers slowly became aware that the day of close order formations in combat was forever gone All military thinkers have pondered the need of a new discipline

It has been generally realized that fashioning the machine to man's use in battle was but half of the problem. The other half was conditioning man to the machine. The mechanisms of the new warfare do not set their own efficiency rate in battle. They are ever at the mercy of training methods which will stimulate the soldier to express his intelligence and spirit. The philosophy of discipline has adjusted to changing conditions. So think about this talking about discipline the philosophy of discipline has adjusted to changing conditions as more and more impact has gone into the hitting power of weapons Necessitating ever widening deployments of the forces of battle Key part the quality of the initiative in the individual has become the most praised of the military virtues

So as we got these weapons that can shoot and kill more people at greater distances people got more spread out the more spread out people got the more it becomes important that you have initiative back to the book it has been readily seen that the prevailing tactical conditions increase the problem of unit coherence in combat this the only offset so people are more spread out the only offset for this difficulty was to train for a higher degree of individual courage comprehension of the situation and self-starting character in the soldier so the more spread out people get the more you have to rely on these individual soldiers to make the right decisions out there show initiative that becomes the new discipline

This is decentralized command that's by the way From this realization have come new concepts of discipline which have altered nearly all the major aspects of life and of human Association within Western armies we've continued to grapple with the problem of how to free the mind of man how to enlarge his appreciation of his personal worth as a unit in the battle how to stimulate him to express his individual power within limits which are good which are for the good of all how do we free the mind how do we and notice this is a little dichotomy here free the mind to express individual power but here's the dichotomy within limits which are for the good of all so you can't just be doing what's good

for you you can't just express your bit free your mind and do whatever you think is right for your own purpose you need to do it for everyone the good for all back to the book it is universally recognized that as the means of war change so must the intelligence of man be quickened to keep pace with the changes our weakness lies in this that we have never got down to an exact definition of what we are seeking failing that we fall short in our attempt to formulate in training how best to obtain it and our philosophy of discipline falters at the vital point of its practical tactical application. I say that it is a simple thing. What we need in battle is more and better fire. What we need to seek in training are any and all means by which we can increase the ratio of effective fire when we have to go to war. The discipline, training methods, and the personal policies of our forces should all be regulated

to conform with this one fundamental need. Now, you can see what he's getting at here. This is his big statement. This is his big hypotheses. So it's actually, he says, I say it's a simple thing. What we need in battle is more and better fire. That's his big statement. I don't agree with that.

There's other things. There's a lot of other things going on. Leadership. I think actually the things that he talked about prior to this are more important than fire. Decentralized command and making people take initiative and having people step up and do the right thing for the entire team. But with a free mind making these things happen. And for some reason he just bypasses all that super important stuff. It says, hey, no, the most important thing we need is more and better fire.

Fire is important. Hell yes. Fire is important. That's why I love machine gunners. It's all my machine gunners out there. God bless you. You lay down the fire to all the supporting fire elements out there. Artillery, close air.

Love you. Thank you. We need more fire. I agree with that. But that's not the, it's not the thing. that we narrow everything down to which is his hypothesis so a lot of good information there he narrows it down to a different direction don't agree with it and actually I'll go ahead and say not true it's all these factors that we need to improve fire

is not the sole thing fire is absolutely fire wins fire fights absolutely fire maneuver cover and move wins fire fights it helps so fire helps win fire It doesn't win it on its own. Next chapter is called on future war. He says the battlefield is the epitome of war. All else in war when war is perfectly conducted exists but to serve the forces of the battlefield and to assure final success on the field. It is on the battlefield that the issues of war are decided. Check.

Conquer. It should be noted that all military power is dependent on civil will. It is the nation and not the army which makes war so I've talked about that Before the will you got to have the will if you don't have the will as a nation You're not gonna win and I've talked about it before the wills you got to have to are the wills to the will to kill and the will to die because that's what war is It's killing and dying and if you don't have those if you don't have the will to do those two things You should not be entering war because the outcome is not gonna be good Every improvement in weapon power is aimed at lessening the danger on one side by increasing it on the other

Consequently every improvement in weapons is eventually met by a counter improvement That's jihitsu right you got the counter Come up with a new move guess what somebody's gonna come up with a move to counter it That's always happening with weapons I like this little line right here decision in war is a clenching act It is the action which finally delivers the victory surely into one's hands. Decision, decisiveness, making the call. That's what you need to do.

Next chapter, man on the battlefield. On the battlefield, the real enemy is fear and not the bayonet or bullet. All means of union of power, demand union of knowledge. That's a quote from Robert Jackson. And he continues here. It is of the battlefield that I speak in saying that the mind of the infantry soldier should be conditioned to an understanding of its reality through all stages of his training and and that's one of the reasons why I heard so many quotes about SLA Marshall is while we were getting trained people would refer back to SLA Marshall and when I ran training I knew I had to bring it up sometimes because I'd say look here's what's going on we need to think about this and I'll get to some of those points later but training his is methodology when he wrote this book part of the focus is like hey we need to train people differently and and what he says about training is a hundred percent valid a hundred

percent valid back to the book he needs to be taught the nature of the field as it is in war and as he may experience it someday for if he does not acquire a soldier's view of the field his image of it will be formed from the reading of novels or the romance written by war correspondence of which he was won by the way or from the viewing of or or from viewing the battlefield as it is imagined to be by Hollywood one of the purposes of training should be to remove these false ideas of battle from his mind totally agree absolutely to give the soldier a correct concept of battle is a far different thing from encouraging him to think about war this is it so think about what I just said to give

the soldier a correct concept of battle is a far different thing from encouraging him to think about war the latter is too vast the canvas it includes too much detail which is confusing to his mind and immaterial to his personal problem He's like don't think about this big picture you do think about what's happening We have surpassed all other armies and outstripped common sense in our effort to teach man something about war He's counseled about wars causes which is a good thing on which those rare occasions when he is when the instruction is in qualified hands He's told about how the soldiers and sailors of other nations observe courtesy and foster tradition he is even bored

by lectures on the strategy and logistics of high command but he does not get what he requires most the simple details of common human experience on the field of battle as a result he goes to the supremely testing experience of his lifetime as it almost a total stranger so you learn all the you know what actually when Laif took over the junior officers course coming out of buds it was very focused on the big picture stuff and it wasn't helping these guys being prepared to be in a seal platoon and Laif was like no I gotta change this

you can still talk about the stuff and it's important to you don't throw it out but you gotta teach people what the human experience on the battlefield is and that's what Laif tried to do and that's what I tried to do when I took over training and my training was further along when I took it over we were already moving in that direction

or it already reflected that but a lot of the stuff that Laif was being Taught in Laif's course was not the human experience on the field of battle. Lave tried to get that in there and he did a good job of it Back to the book the price for failure So the so he's talking about to train these people correctly the price for failure is paid all up and down the line Men go into action the first time Haltingly and gropingly as if they were lost at night in the deep woods lives are wasted unnecessarily time is lost ground that might be taken is overlooked

It is not necessary that these misfortunes befall organizations simply because they are new to battle It is possible that the infantry soldier can be trained to anticipate fully the true conditions of the battlefield It is possible that units can be schooled to take full and prompt action against Disunifying effect of these conditions Fear is ever presence but the but is the uncontrolled fear that is the enemy of successful operation and the control of fear depends upon the extent to which all dangers and distractions may be correctly anticipated and therefore understood you got to simulate battle That's what you got to do and they did a great job when I was going through my workups They did a great job of doing that when I took over and was running training we brought it even to the next level

It was freaking mayhem out there and I had many people and we're gonna have some guys that are retiring in the future that are coming on the podcast that went through my workups They will tell you being an actual combat was easier it was easier and that's And that's what my goal was. We want this training to be so chaotic and what you think about this right here When you think about law enforcement training should be the same way you want these guys completely tested You want it to be harder than anybody they ever have to deal with you want the situation to be more stressful than they're gonna deal with in real life and that's how you get them prepared Next the heart of the matter is to relate to man is to relate the man to his fellow soldier as he will find him on the field of combat to condition him to human nature as he will learn to depend on it when the ground offers him no comfort and weapons fail He talks a lot about human nature. I talk a lot about human nature

When you were when you'd hear about this This guy or this you know this did you know that he was a faker back then? It was Yes, but it was You know how there's two sides to every story? Yeah, it seemed like to me until I read about failure? I said that And I was like okay, there's the actual side. There's the actual side is because you know Hackworth said look this is what he actually did here's his military records Yeah so but up until I read about face it was kind of like oh Leslie oh there's some weird stuff about his career but you know Yeah, yeah kind of what is it gray area. Yeah, yeah, but not everyone some people would talk about him like he was the man Without any demerits against him yeah without any question against him right which kind of adds to the little hodgepodge opinion

Yeah, well, that was a crazy thing. I mean, when Hackworth was just talking about opening that I read, this is something that is just, when you read it, you go, oh, God. So he's saying that, Hackworth is saying that basically he didn't want to bring up the fact. He stayed on his good side, right? Hey, he valued his career. Slam had a lot of power, so he's just going to stay on his good side. And then he's saying how many other guys were doing that?

How many guys were just staying on SLA Marshall's good side because they wanted to continue their career and in order to do that they're like, oh, you know, I'm not going to say anything about it. Yeah. And that actually bolsters his power because Hackworth at this time, right? If you get a blessing from Hackworth, it's like, that's real problem. Remember what, remember what Mook, Jim Mukiyama said about Hackworth? He's like, everybody knew Hackworth. Everybody knew him. He was Mr. Infantry.

Coolest nickname ever, by the way. Yeah. Sure. If I come back in another world, I'm going to do whatever it takes to earn the nickname, Mr. Infantry. That's just as legit as it gets. So, but when you got Hackworth going, oh, yeah, I work with Slam, good guy, right? That's a little, oh, that's Hackworth saying that. So it's like, and now there's other generals are saying this because everybody just wants to protect their little career.

And he's saying he was opportunistic. This is Hackworth coming out, straight up, calling himself guilty. Yeah. So do you think that- This happens all the time though, right? That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So do you think that it's kind of in a way your duty to kind of to call it out?

Okay, there's two ways to answer that question. If you call it out and it doesn't work and you get blacklisted by SLA Marshall and now you don't make rank and now you're not in charge and they shove you off to some bill it over and wherever and now you have no more influence. Did you do a good job? Did you make a right call? No. Yeah. If you play the game and you just go along with it and you try and get yourself to a position of power where you can actually have more influence than you would have had and you had to bite your tongue Was that the good move?

Mm-hmm. But what if you didn't really get to where you wanted to be and now you accelerated him and he turned it again? You know what I mean there's that's a very tough decision to make and that's why That's why you got to be tactful. You got to think about what's going on. You got to think about the long-term consequences of what you're about to do. That's why leadership is challenging and that's why playing these little political Which you have to play in every different organization.

People don't think there's political games in the military. It's a big political game. It's a big giant political game And same thing in companies corporations. Yeah, right? That's the way the world works. You got to play the game Yeah, so like even socially, you know where let's say you know a person and I've been in the situation before not even necessarily in it I'm not saying that not saying not saying not saying not saying not saying not saying not saying not saying Plausible Deniability just came out. Good job back our Charles. I'm not even But, you know, you know of somebody who, um, they're, they're like a complete, like, faker, a liar and, you know, they, I don't know, and, you know, just I'm saying, you know, social scenario where, you know, they have a nice car, but then they owe like 10 people, like tens of

thousands of dollars because of how they screwed them over in something, like their friends and all this stuff, right? Yeah. Meanwhile, there's a small group of people who know all about that stuff. And we see, you know, we'll see, or you'll see this person as this huge faker going on town as this huge faker. But everyone else who's not in it sees them as this great person who's like, you know, whatever. Is it your duty on a social level?

See what I'm saying? Like to be like, hey, because, you know, I guess it could be said like, hey, you're kind of protecting other people from getting screwed in that same way. Yeah, for sure. But at the same time, it's like, yeah, do you, especially if you don't have a dog in the fight. I have to look at what the, what is this person doing that's benefiting anyone? If all they're doing is screwing people over, I'm going to say something for sure.

Yeah. If this person, if this individual is somehow, you know, running a big charity organization, right? Right? Like,

that's a legit thing, right? That could happen. He's donate money or getting people to donate or whatever. Maybe I'd try and mitigate it more. But, you know, in a social situation,

this person just sounds like they're going to screw people over. I think I'm going to, I think I'm going to drop dime. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. you're kind of like, yeah, let me, let me, and not the kind, you're not going to go on the radio or something and broadcast it. Well, you don't have to go on the radio of these days, right? You can go on the social media. No, that's what I mean. But you're not going to go on and announce these things. It's just like if it ever comes up.

Here's a situation that could unfold. If you call this person out, now that no one, now they stop whatever form of income they have, now no one that they owes money to is actually going to ever get paid back. Right. So that could be problematic. Yeah, or now you have like a little conflict with this person. Now you got to deal with whatever it comes of that. Yeah.

You know, it's kind of like don't like, what do you call it? You know, muddy the waters or whatever. Like don't disturb the waters kind of thing. And then hopefully, which usually actually is the case, especially in social situations, where they're going to play themselves anyway. So, you know, that gets out. You can't like. But I don't like people taking people's money.

Yeah. So I'm going to have a problem with this person. Yeah. That's the bottom line. Yeah, fully. And I think most people, that's how it is. You know, they don't like that. And I think the weird thing is social people, they don't, they don't, they don't be coming around me.

If they, I kind of give off the vibe of like, hey, you don't want to be acting that way around me. Yeah. So I don't have a lot of people like that hanging around. Yeah. There it is. Going back to the book. Only when human rather than material aspects of operation are put uppermost, can tactical bodies be conditioned to make. the most of their potential unity so the human being he's saying the human beings are more

important it is beyond question that the most serious and repeated breakdowns on the field of combat are caused by failure of controls over human nature I'm going to read that again it is beyond question that the most serious and repeated breakdowns on the field of combat are caused by failure of the controls over human nature not tactics not weapons not machinery not physical strength but human nature and guess what I agree with that I agree with that we all grant that the soldier must be trained for initiative and encouraged to think about what is problem while in combat so again he talks about a lot about initiative and that's one of the things that that I think was very positive this one of the things that influenced me

Knowing that it was important for people to have initiative and knowing that you can't control it everyone on the battlefield and understanding decentralized command Back to the book our training methods are conditioned by the ideal of automatic response So he's saying like we Think that the best thing the best ideal is just automatic response. That's what we want At the same time our observation of the battlefield's reality makes it clear to us that we need men who can think through their situation and steal themselves for action a to the situation so we don't want automatic response we want people that can think the thinking soldier the man who's trained for self-starting cannot be matured in a school which holds to the vestiges of the belief that automatic action is the

ideal thing in the soldier again you this is undeniable undeniable we want people that are their think for themselves I hold it to be one of the simplest truths of war that the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade it happened too frequently in our army that a line company was careless about the manner in which it received a new replacement the stranger was not introduced to his superiors nor was their time for him to feel the friendly interest of his immediate associates before he was ordered forward with the attack the result was the man's total failure in battle and has returned to the rear as a mental case.

So it is far more than a question of the soldiers need of physical support from other men. He must have at least some feeling of spiritual unity with them if he is to do an efficient job of moving and fighting. This is very important. I work with companies all the time. So you take an army unit and you throw a random guy in there, a random replacement and no one meets him and no one talks to him and all of a sudden they're going on an attack, he's going fail yeah that's the statement because he doesn't under he doesn't know anyone else and

he goes more into detail in this in the in the book but that happens with companies where they have some new new person check on board they get hired they check on board no one meets them no one greets them no one becomes friends with them they're in their own isolated little world the pressure starts to come and they bail or they break yeah he talks more about this in chapter 4 which is called combat isolation and there's a quote that it starts off from major general Charles W. O. Daniel and it says the finest theories and most minute plans often crumble complex systems fall by the

wayside parade ground formations disappear our splendidly trained leaders vanish the good men which we had at the beginning are gone the raw truth is before us that's good Yeah, and obviously Law of Combat number two, keep things simple That's exactly what he's talking about you got to keep things simple But he's also saying that everything that you come up with these complex things they're gonna fall apart in combat That's what happens And now we talk about the name of the chapter's combat isolation and he starts talking about

What it's like when these soldiers get on the battlefield. He's talking about the battlefields cold and the and it's harsh and it's empty and there's it chills a man's soul is what he's saying and then when the fire starts here we go back to look he finds himself suddenly almost alone in his hour of greatest danger and he can feel the danger but there is nothing out there nothing to contend against it is from the mixture of mystification and fear that there comes the feeling of helplessness which in turn produces greater fear that is what green troops are up against time and again I have heard them say after their first try at combat by God there was never a situation like it we saw no one we were fighting phantoms

and as frequently they have and as frequently they have added this though their convictions about the matter were wholly at odds with the fact of the situation we had to do it all alone we got no support on either flank so he's talking about the fact that will you feel alone on the battlefield And the fact that guys would come back and say even though they were fully supported it didn't matter They thought they were alone out there and that that's what he's talking about He goes on the enemy now he's talking about a firefight situation the enemy fire builds up its aim becomes truer the man spread the men spread further and further from each other moving individually to whatever cover is nearest or affords the best protection a few of them fire their pieces at first they do so almost timidly as if fearing a rebuke for wasting ammunition when they do not see the enemy.

Others do nothing. Some fail to act mainly because they are puzzled what to do and their leaders do not tell them. Others are wholly unnerved and can neither think nor move in sensible relation to the situation. Such response as the men make of two enemy fire tends mainly to produce greater separation in the elements of the company, thereby intensifying the feeling of isolation and the insecurity of the enemy. of its individuals the junior leaders are affected as much as the rifle files So when chaos starts people start to be alone Again this can apply the battlefield this can apply to the business world when chaos starts people start to focus on their own little world And the more you focus on your own little world the more separation there is

the less unity there is in the in your unit to make something happen now he goes on back to the book could one clear commanding voice be raised even though it be the voice of an individual without titular authority they would obey or at least the stronger characters would do would do so and the weaker would begin to take heart because something is being done I got to see this over when I was running training got to see this over and over and over and over again as a matter of fact we lay for a chapter about it in the dichotomy of leadership of situations where one situation in particular where there's no voice no one's taking charge finally someone steps up and take charge and it's like boom everything changes But clear commanding voices are all too rare on the battle on the field of battle so they wait Doing nothing and inaction takes further toll on their resolve More grievous losses will no doubt come to this band of men in time But as a company this is the worst hour that they will ever know so it's a downward spiral if no one steps up and starts making calls you start taking casualties now if people panic even more they get more

in their own little world they become more detached from each other less unity of what you're trying to make happen back to the book it would serve no purpose to dwell on the discouraging detail of this ordeal if it were not for the belief that much of it is unnecessary and that the infantry soldier can find a better way one must not come to rest on klaus vitt's gloomy warning that quote in war the novice is met only by pitch black night on beyond that there are words to be read it is of the first importance that the soldier higher low should not have to encounter in war things which seen for the first time set him in terror or perplexity so that's klaus fit

it's talking about training you got to get people ready for this chaos and mayhem you've got to get it get them ready for it you've got to get them ready you've got to get them ready You got to show them that when people panic and people are getting separated that one commanding voice one leader Stepping up and leading will have a massive impact on the situation and failure to do that will also have a massive But impact but it'll be a massive negative impact now he talks chapter five is called ratio of fire And here we get into his little hypotheses not gonna waste a lot of time on it but I'm gonna bring it up Back to the book now I do not think I've seen it stated in the military manuals of this age or in any of the writing meant for the instruction of those who lead troops that a commander of infantry will be well advised to believe that when he engages the enemy not more than one quarter of his men will ever strike a real blow unless they are compelled by almost overpowering circumstances or unless all junior leaders constantly ride herd on troops with specific mission of increasing their fire the 25% estimate stands for even for well-trained and camels

campaign seasoned troops I mean that 75% will not fire or will not persist in firing against the enemy and his works These men may face danger but will not fight So that's his hypothesis and actually the beginning of this book has a forward in it that I'm just gonna touch on The forwards is written by a guy named Russell Glenn and he he points out some of the disputes against this about this this low ratio of fire. So here we go back to the book. This is the introduction. So this isn't SLA Marshall. This is from the introduction from Russell Glenn. Marshall's ratio of fire values did not go unchallenged even when they first appeared in 1947. General James M. Gavin

World War II commander of the 82nd Airborne Division discounted the low estimates. As did Harry W.O. Kennard, who served in 101st Airborne Division in every one of its combat actions during World War II and later commanded the first cavalry division in Vietnam. The legendary General Bruce Clark, commander of the U.S. forces that defended St. Bith during the Battle of the Bulge, flatly discounted Marshall, finding his values, ridiculous and dangerous assertions, absolute nonsense. Another combat veteran, British author George MacDonald Frazier, instead questioned Marshall's Explanations for why soldiers failed to engage the enemy

Frazier had served so one of the things that Marshall says is that People aren't aren't are taught not to kill and you know it's against the Commandments of God and it's bad to kill and so that's one of the things we have a moral an inherent moral objection to killing and so so this guy Donald Frazier Fraser had served in Burma as an infantryman Though he recognized that moral upbringing might influence men's behavior, his firsthand experience failed to support Marshall's rationale. Frazier wrote that, we all have kindly impulses fostered by 2,000 years of Christian teaching, gentle Jesus, and love thy neighbor. But we have the killer instinct, too, the murderous impulse of the hunter.

And so the introduction of the book goes on and talks about many vets that just outright deny this. and I do too and I never saw I never saw or felt any hesitation or saw anyone that I was with hesitate in any way to engage in fact quite the opposite most guys were more than ready to get after it and I'm not just talking about seals I'm talking about army infantry men I'm talking about Marines the guys are guys are not hesitating I mean I mean broadly you could never make a statement like this could you make a statement that some people hesitate Yes, you could make that statement but to broadly say that only 15 to 25% of people are gonna actively engage the enemy from everything I saw that's patently untrue Now the advantage and in what we had for an advantage and Marshall kind of claims this too is that once World War II is over and they started training us to shoot at

One of the big objections he has that that guys were getting trained to shoot bull's-eye targets, right? So you're training to shoot a bullseye when you first see a man. You're like, oh, no, that's a man. We, my whole career, I barely ever shot a bull's-eye target. We did that when we had to qualify with a rifle or a pistol. Every single other time we shot, we were shooting a man-shaped target. I mean, we would shoot little round targets. What were they called?

Head plates. We're shooting at heads. We're shooting body shots. We're shooting that's what we do all the time and we'd shoot so we shoot targets with pictures on them with faces on them that look like people and then on top of that we did force on force training where we're actually shooting paint balls or some munition at other human beings and we're gunning them down So there's a lot of conditioning that we had that maybe that's why we were so much more apt and able and willing to shoot But Yeah, it's from you know you can see from what these other vets said and these other leaders said and my personal experience

And you'll find that I think SLA Marshall like I said I think he just had a hypothesis he wanted to talk about and Threw it out there without really good facts behind it So I'm not gonna waste a bunch of time talking about that and I'm going to go into the next chapter fire is the cure finally it is the volume of fire that counts you win if you kill more of the enemy than he can kill of you if you cannot you're defeated that's secretary of war robert p patterson and again i'll go back to this fire counts for sure it's important but you got a maneuver it's cover and move it's not just covering fire it's like you got to cover and move that's that's to me they go hand in hand which actually he says back to the book fun

Fundamentally fire must always be beaten by fire fundamentally movement is the means of increasing the efficiency of one's own fire until the last strength of the enemy's fire is reduced to a vanishing point okay I mean okay if you want to say that you're maneuvering so that you can maneuver so you can fire even better that's that's technically true or you're maneuvering so you can break contact But you could say that here's another quote let us not think of mobility in an army general Charles P summer once said unless we think of mobility accompanied by violence that's cover move that's fire and maneuver that's what we're talking about combat can cannot ever approximate the conditions of field maneuvers fears of varying sort afflict the soldier in battle the unit commander soon comes to realize that one of his difficulties to get men to leave cover because of enemy bullets and the fear they

instill in training they're being no real bullet danger, even on the courses which employ live ammunition, every advance under a supposed enemy fire is unrealistic. Two, in training, the soldier does not have a man as his target. He is not shooting with the idea of killing. There is a third vast difference in the two conditions. The rifleman in training is usually under close observation, and the chief pressure upon him is to give satisfaction to his superior, whereas the rifleman engaging the enemy is of necessity

pretty much on his own and the chief pressure on him is to remain alive if possible When the infantry men mind when the infantry men's mind is gripped by fear his body is captured by inertia which is Fear's cymesse twin in an attack Half of the men on a firing line are in terror and the other half are unnerved So wrote major general J F. Fuler when he was a young captain so again this is what I kind of I already talked about the idea that in training you're shooting it you're not shooting with this intent to kill and we that's what we did all the time I mean that's just how we rolled in fact they make targets where like blood comes out You shoot and balloon blows up and like you see blood so they're trying to condition you and they talk about this with video games too right that these young kids come up

Killing all the time in these video games which are very very realistic and therefore they get conditioned to killing and they Don't think it's a big deal anymore which clearly that you could That's a lot of people tie that into school shootings and say hey these kids were playing these video games They're just killing people all the time and that conditioned them to be able to kill these innocent people in a school So there is Like I said for me the all I ever shot at basically was human targets things that look like people and Again, I've seen video games that they are so realistic. It's unbelievable and so that's another good form of conditioning To get you over the if you have any moral objection to killing now the the

The counter statement to that is it good for people to get over the moral condition of killing Some people know if you're not a soldier that's probably a bad thing I would say Yeah, yeah, yeah even the the video game thing it seems like there's like a step before that To for someone to get conditioned to killing because I don't know obviously my last in intense video game experiences like PlayStation 2, which seems like a long time ago. But so yeah, video games are realistic. But it seems like that they have to get past a certain step to consider the video games as being training. So you guys like when you guys were, you know, in the SEAL teams, you guys were specifically training for that specific thing.

That was on your mind. So you're past the point of the moral objection part of it. So let's say you weren't past the moral objection part of it and you were just shooting whether it be video games or shooting at the range or shooting at these other things and you were like hey I know this is I'm not training for anything specifically I'm just sort of doing it whether it be for fun or to get better at shooting or or better at this game or whatever if you're not past the moral objection part is it really training you to be less more morally Well I'd say if you're a kid that's like got some major issues and you're thinking about doing a school shooting And then you're sitting there playing these video games and you're killing people over and over again It's conditioning

Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean you put anyone in a you know you get someone that works in a slaughterhouse They don't think twice about killing a pig or killing a cow or whatever that's what they do They don't think a millisecond about it Whereas you take someone that's never seen an animal killed before and it'll be disturbing to them Right, so that right there is their conditioning is a thing right and if you watch a bunch of You know a bunch of videos of something being killed you would become conditioned to it and if you play a game where you kill people all the time You will become conditioned to it and I'm I don't think this is even debatable

Yeah, but I feel yeah, I agree But I feel like there's this one kind of crucial step before that like if you consider a slaughterhouse person Like there's a difference between working a slaughterhouse and being conditioned to the site and the smell and the experience of doing it But not having the barrier that's like okay. I'm gonna make a decision to do Do this under a different circumstance something that's more morally tied well yeah I mean and let's face the fact there's millions and there's hundreds of millions of people that play video games all day long and they're not going out there and have no intention of going out there But okay so yeah I see what you're saying if if you start thinking that way and that becomes your intent

Then it is conditioning because you can even consider someone on the opposite where let's say they're morally What do we call the moral barrier has been crossed in their head or they're weird they're a psychopath I don't know you know in their brain and then they've never killed anyone or anything like that so I heard us actually read this thing on Saddam Hussein's son sons yeah yeah and so the first time how they'd quote unquote condition them they'd be like hey you know here's some prisoners shoot them kill them right so the first time now the first time not can these kids not conditioned in this way to you know to have the experience

of killing somebody and watch them dying, whatever. So the first time, they give him the gun, the kid shoots them up, empties the clip, right? The kid was past that moral barrier a long time ago. But first time, unconditioned as far as the experience goes, he turns to the guard and goes, hey, can I have another magazine to do it?

So he really liked it. He didn't need necessarily conditioning because he was past that moral part. So I'm saying? Yeah. So, yeah, it feels like they are two separate things. But once you kind of cross that initial moral barrier, Oh yeah, the more conditioned you are the, you know, the more effect.

I mean, I hate to use the word effective, but the more into it you are, or the less impact it'll have, like, on your brain or whatever. Yeah, and again, we would get, this is one of the things we'd get quoted on SLA Marshall, was this stuff about how, as the targets got more realistic, it encouraged people and it made them more comfortable with shooting and killing. Yeah. That's the point. And I believe yeah, that's true. It's true. It's the way it is. Going back to the book, as another experiment, unwilling rifleman may have maybe switched to heavier and more decisive one-man weapons. This sounds like a paradox to expect greater response to come from increased responsibility. This is good. This is good. So he's saying you've got a rifleman that doesn't want to shoot. Give him a bigger, more effective weapon.

He says this sounds like a paradox to expect greater response to come from an increased responsibility but it works I've seen many cases where men who had funked it badly with a rifle responded heroically when give it a flamethrower or a bar self-pride and the ego are the touchstone of most these remarkable conversions a man may fail with the rifle because he feels anonymous and believes that nothing important is being asked of him. So that's pretty cool because I talk about this all the time. Why? Because everyone has a rifle. Everyone's got a rifle and he's like okay, listen, not really, I'm not really that important. Yeah, yeah. But then you give him like a heavy weapon or a heavy machine

gun or a flame thrower and all of a sudden he's like, oh yeah, I'm the man. I'm going to step up and make this happen. Which, if I've talked about this many times on the podcast, if you get someone that's not doing their job or they need to do a better job or what have you, if you can give them more responsibility, they have a good chance of actually stepping up and making things happen rudolph the red nose reindeer uh i'm not familiar with the what yeah don't i'm familiar with rudolph the red nose okay so rudolph was the only one with the red nose and before they were like they used to tease them and all this stuff you know so he thought he was interior but when sanna was like hey your nose is so bright won't you guide my sleigh to

tonight i get to guide the sleigh hell yeah steps up does the job there you know see check yeah you can edit that out if you want no red's the same thing conceptually conceptually all right next back to the book and last if we are to strengthen sound training principles and establish mental attitudes which are essential to the understanding of the decisive importance of fire in tactics we will be well advised to cease talking about fire and movement as if the latter were separate and apart from the former in tactical fact there and there did not exist an automatic and unbreakable connection between them.

So now he's saying the same thing that I was saying earlier is fire is not more important. They're the same thing. Fire maneuver, cover move have to happen together. That's what he's saying. Fire is the key to mobility. To fire is to move. So it goes on. Now this next section, again, this is great because next section is called multiples

of information the multiples of information and what's great about this is he's no longer talking about he's no longer talking about tactics of fire maneuver and this percentage of fire and all that because he's out of his element there to be quite honest with you this one he's going to get into his element which is well I'll go to it I consider to be of utmost importance the keeping informed of our men as to current situation so that each man may perform his duty with understanding of its importance and that's sergeant David Teebolt in a letter written from the African theater so you got to keep your people informed

having started to call this chapter communications I decided against it for fear that use of that rather formidable word might interfere with my communicating to the reader what I regard as a vital but frequently overlooked principle of minor tactics if a word comes to mean too many things it frequently misses fire at the critical point that has been the fate of the word communications it has become another military catch-all and because it means so many things it is quite frequently means nothing to illustrate a regimental commander asks a company commander how are your communications and the latter replies

excellent because his telephone line is working and his supply is coming forward and at the same time he is at the point of despair because he hasn't had anything worthwhile any worthwhile intelligence from his flanks for hours So there's a difference between communication like I can talk to you and actual communication You're telling you what I need to know One would think that it would become almost second nature to the commander to reach eagerly towards supporting forces One would imagine that whenever on the field of battle he made contact with a friendly element that fact would flash a red light in his brain causing him automatically to raise the question have I aestead

full communications do I know the strength and intentions of the force now helping me do they know my strength and intentions but indeed such is not the case indications information is the soul of morale and combat and the balancing force in successful tactics and now he talks a little bit about communication he gives some guidelines about them and and what the problems are so information is super important here's some of the problems there is a lacking there is lacking a general recognition of the supreme importance of the lateral flow of information to command at the lower levels is too often neglectful of

the principle that it is not a channel of information only but a distribution point so you got to pass the word three commanders at the lower levels tend to be arbitrary judges of what information deriving from a source lower would be highly useful to the other elements lower down instead of abiding by the rule when in doubt pass it along So when in doubt pass long now I do have to throw out That there can be a dichot there's a dichotomy there because you can communicate things too much you can send too many emails You can send too many messages you can do that that can be a problem And he actually talks about that dichotomy a little bit so he's just talking about how much you should communicate and then he gets to this point back to the book in the Pacific fighting I found company commander

joining a platoon in the line just to isolate themselves from their telephones. They were literally tired to death of having the battalion commander insist on having a fresh progress report every 15 or 20 minutes. And the battalion commander, poor devil, was only passing on the pressure which he had, in turn received from a regimental commander who is trying to placate division. Yet one would observe that unless a battalion commander is wholly lacking in judgment or intestinal Fortitude he should be strong enough to take this on his aching back and not pass it down to the headquarters Which is at grips with the enemy this happens all the time in in the military for sure

The senior commander's going I want to know what's going on and tells that to the next junior guy says all right I'm I'll find out. Hey, what's going on? And that guy says I'll find out what's going on and the people in the front line They can't even fight because they're too busy trying to answer the damn questions from up the chain of command. So don't let that happen Back to the book, In the Burden Island fight during the invasion of the marshals, one of these prodding demands for more progress raced from division right through lower headquarters to a platoon which had been stopped cold by Japfire coming from spider holes arranged in great depth along the beach. The lieutenant got the message and crawling forward to his most advanced rifleman told him to get up and go on. the boy screamed so the whole goddamn army wants me to want to kill me does it okay lieutenant here I go but watch what happens he was shot dead almost before he had gotten out of his tracks that incident seared deep into the brain of every man who witnessed it it was final judgment on

the futility of that kind of leading decentralized command who's going to make a better call somebody back in the rear or this lieutenant that's there on the beach back to the book The all too frequent consequences of such pressure are lying, exaggeration, and distortion of the situation at lower levels, resulting in a false concept of the situation at the higher. The average company commander can stand only a limited amount of this heat, and then he will knock over a couple of outhouses and report that he has captured a village. It also, this effect also makes a wishful thinker of the most objective soldier. He reasons to himself I'll have that position in another hour so I'll tell him that I have it now and get them off my back So lots about communication being important next is the riddle of command Many headquarters people become strangers to the front and cannot speak its language or understand its tribulations

Okay, you don't know what's going on the front lines if you don't have any idea if you can't even speak their language anymore You need to get down there you need to find out what's going on on the front lines businesses that means you too the diabolical effect of even such a relatively simple instrument as the field telephone is that it may come to command the commander the phone actually gets control of you it chains him to a system of remote control at first he sees it only as a successful as a useful channel for quick communication in combat then he fears to leave it lest it should require his presence and headquarters the moment after he leaves to go forward this state of mind in turn creates its own illusion fostering that

fostering the conclusion that under the new system of war all matters can be settled at a distance all problems arising within the zone of fire can be fully understood without ever going there and all moral values which once attended the commander's effort to impress his men with his personality and character are somehow sundered by the new technology of operations out of sedentary generalship arises evil of troops which while obeying mechanically have no organic thinking response to the commander's will so I mean how how poignant is this for what we live in today right everyone thinks they can just send a text message and the problem solved make a quick

phone call and the problem solved and actually the reality is sometimes you need to get down there you also the whole thing about it controlling you know I mean do you ever forget your phone. Do you have that at all? Like when you leave your phone at home or in the car or something like that where you don't have it for like. Yeah, you know, I don't forget things a lot. Yeah. So I don't that doesn't really happen to me a lot. But yeah, I would say if I left my phone somewhere, I would be like, oh dang, I wonder who's trying to call me right now. I wonder if there's an emergency going on. Yeah. What's, but you know, back in the day when we're, you know, whatever, teenagers or whatever. Pre-cell phones.

Pre-cell phones. Were you a teenage pre-cell phone? I was right on the deal yeah there was no there was no internet I was telling my kids the other day that when I was a kid there was no internet that did was not a thing yeah that's like saying there's no roads yeah yeah for them that it's the same thing yeah for my kids they're like what they were looking at me like what what did you how did you even live I didn't you not just because you had to go to the library no to look something up get an encyclopedia I remember thinking encyclopedias were Or like holy

You know what I mean? There was so many dictionaries. I thought that was like a holy book filled with my mom had a had an OED Oxford English dictionary Not the full one is a volumes the full one is 26 volumes or something crazy like that But my mom had one that was big I mean it was big it was six inches thick Yeah, it was like six maybe six inches thick and big and it had little tabs little in red For your finger your finger put it in there But to me that thing seemed like

Some kind of Bible Yeah, some kind of just seems so filled with knowledge And if you didn't know what a word was You just had to go look it up in that thing You didn't know what a thing was you look it up in the encyclopedias You go to the library and look it up in the encyclopedias Nowadays, you're three seconds away you got that Google Yeah, you want to look in the dictionary.com

Dictionary.com, boom You need those fingers unless you got that OED app OED app, boom even better because you got I want to get that etymology of the word too you want to know where it comes from all that stuff yeah then you got um what what's the the street language one what is that one

urban dictionary yeah yeah that was kind of fun that one's hilarious but here's the thing it's weird it's like it is fun and it's funny but it's very useful because you know when people they'll say stuff and you'd be like wait wait I've had to look some things up on urban dictionary a couple times I'm trying to think of a good example right now but I can't think of one next time I will I will I will note that, because, you know, I got teenage kids.

Yes, sir. So sometimes they got some words. Yeah, you got to know that. They were saying something a couple years ago. Haifi. Remember? No, I don't remember that. Well, that's not old.

That's new. What does it mean? Well, I don't know if I can define it specifically, but it means, like, get fired up. Like, it's like dope. Oh, okay. Hifi. Oh, 50 cent or somebody. I don't know.

Anyway. But yeah. But yeah. That's the thing, though. You lose or you forget your cell phone. You go to the store. I don't know. You go to Vons.

And you leave by accident and whatever, your phone at home. It's like, oh, yeah. And just like how you said, you got those thoughts. Like, oh, what if there's an emergency? What if someone's calling me kind of thing? All you got to do is flashback. Yeah. It might be the president.

Or this is the one day that there's like an emergency. Not to say that you can't have an emergency. You totally can. But it's like of literally the 99.99% of the time you have accident. to that phone, that one teeny teeny tiny sliver of time that you don't, oh, now all the emergency is going to come. So you'm saying? And you think back to when you, when there was no cell phones, it's like, how did you ever

get along? No, I'm doing that right now. I'm going without my cell phone. But everyone around, here's the thing, though, with that. Everyone around you kind of feels the same thing. So, like, for example, if you go to the store or if I go to the store, people know I go to the store or people know I went to the store. My wife knows, you know, maybe if I'm like hanging out with friends,

I'm going to store real quick, right? We're having a barbecue. I don't know. They expect me to have my phone and I expect to have a phone. So it's like that communication, now communication, the standard of communication is way higher now. Yeah. So you're saying like your access to someone else is higher.

I'll tell you one thing that is kind of a bummer. And I, you know, for a long time I responded to like everybody that reached out to me. and and I just can't I mean I can't do it I just it's physical I would be doing nothing but sitting around doing that yeah and it's really cool man I get letters and emails and Facebook and DMs on you know and I just don't have time and I feel bad you know I read most everything yeah but it's been getting crazy and here's the thing and I think this is important to understand overall for kind of for you for sure me for everyone when someone you know how like someone will text you or someone will send you like a message yeah a long message and some it's easy to

think like hey you could have responded with like just something you know rather than nothing but here's the thing it that's not true because if someone sends you a text message or especially something long and meaningful like you don't want to just reply back yeah okay yeah or okay I'll text you later more about this message that that makes way less sense you want to have something kind of thought out. Yeah. So it's not just a small little response or who doesn't have time to send one text? Well, the thing is, yeah, physically sending the text, it doesn't take any time. But to consider your valid or appropriate response to most texts, especially in your case,

where you get messages, legit messages, you can't just be like cool and then move on to the next thing. You can't do that. No, I know, man. So you got to like consider all these things and then all that consideration. That's what takes the time. Yeah. And. And. mental energy by the way like like like like like you can't go in one direction mentally and just pivot real quick and be like yeah let me just mentally accommodate this you know it's like man it takes more thought than that so it's hard to fit it all in especially for you know it is man I feel bad when I can't get back to people but I appreciate them reaching out and let me know that they're

getting good information right whether it's work related whether it's individual person related their kids whatever warrior I mean all kinds of good stuff and I'm so stoked but like you said it's like I can't literally just cannot see I tried yeah yeah yeah I try so I posted today I was like hey it's Monday sometimes life gets upper hand you got to go you got to attack and that's why I was feeling this weekend I was like because I've been on the road we went to Maine didn't get a lot of work done to Because we were working in Maine We were rolling and then we were working and recording podcasts and interviewing and all this other stuff

So didn't have a lot of time up there got a little bit behind Life got the upper hand on me and so I was kind of feeling it on when I got home And then what I said was oh you know what I'm gonna do so Sunday? I just I'm just gonna work all day Just get just get busy get the up yeah because people were talking about the kids podcast Yeah What up podcast? Oh Where's the other you know hey Hey my kids love listening to it we're listening to it for the we're listening to the first 16 episodes for the ninth time now

Can you make another one? Or are you giving up on that? I'm like Ooh, those are straight up fighting words from you are so So I got after that recorded some of that today, but But that's what I did go on the attack like and that really does really like by the end by By the end of Sunday. I was like oh I got and I thought I thought it's gonna be a late night on Sunday I thought midnight night which you know I don't want to go to bed of midnight on the Sunday night got to got done it's like 945 at night I was like oh yeah and I was ahead I was back

ahead but I had to get aggressive I had to dig deep I had to go like okay this is what's going on so if you start feeling that little life's getting the upper hand if you if you let it continue to maneuver on you it's gonna get worse if you go oh oh you think you're gonna get the upper hand of me watch this I'm gonna get aggressive I'm gonna knock out so much stuff in the next 24 hours you're not even know what just happened son yeah huh so that's how I went at you win it is actually I made the video on Monday technically it was a Sunday evolution but by the time Monday rolled around I was back in the game yeah that's true huh like if you get the or some someone else something else gets the upper hand it's like dang

you got to work double time just so it doesn't have the upper hand anymore once you get the upper hand okay you can boom you can find your rhythm by the way when when you get the upper hand it's like when you're playing a sport and the team starts to get the little upper hand and then they just they can start taking a little bit more risks they get a little bit more confident yeah and they get the momentch yeah they get the momentum and they start going and that's productive right that they widen that score run up the score boy yeah and so that's same thing I'm thinking but I had me on the ropes a little bit you know it was on the ropes I was on the ropes over here and I had to get a I woke up early and I was just boom I'm gonna start

hammering and that's what you got to do finished reading a book wrote another book edited a book I had a stack of stuff come get some be aggressive oh okay so the communication things here's the other thing that happens with modern communications text messaging emails you start losing that little personal touch which is important here we go back to the book with his characteristically warm humor general Eisenhower has commented on the value of the personal factor in the commander's relation to his men under the conditions of modern war I found that it did a great deal of good to get down to my troops in the combat area my presence relaxed them and

made them feel more comfortable about the situation but I was not deceived as to the reason I knew what was running through their minds they were saying to themselves There must be less danger than we thought or the old man wouldn't be here. Yeah, get down, talk the troops. Here we talk about this is a part of the nature of the combat soldier. Once he loses that faith, it becomes very difficult to resolve it. He will lose it very quickly when he sees that casualties are wasted on useless operations or when he begins to feel that he is in any respect the victim of bad planning or faulty concepts.

That's important. Then he responds to that principle, which was once well stated by General James Harbord. Discipline and moral influence, the inarticulate vote that is constantly taken by masses of men when the order comes to move forward. When the order comes to move forward. A variant of the crowd psychology that inclines it to follow a leader. But the army does not move forward until the motion is carried Unanimous consent only follows cooperation between the individual men in ranks That's a bold statement like hey you can give that order but until everybody kind of knows that it's a good plan

We're not going Here's another good statement by rough approximation 60% of the art of command is the ability to anticipate 40% of the art of command is the ability to improvise to reject the preconceived idea that has been tested and proved wrong in the crucible of operations and to rule by action instead of acting by rules That's a good one by the way. That's the entire art of command right that's that's a hundred percent Anticipation and ability to improvise obviously there's some more factors in there Those are some important ones there's and I don't think I pulled it out but there's also one part in the book where it says and

Anticipation is important, but it's, but it's you can't just say someone, hey, anticipate harder. Yeah, right? Like, hey, anticipate more. Like, it's hard to say to that someone. Someone's got to have experience. Someone's got to have the mindset for it. They got to, they got to free their mind and open their mind so that they can be aware of little nuances that are happening and changes that are occurring. Yeah.

You can't be down in the weeds or else you can't anticipate anything because you're getting knocked around in the dust and the dirt. Yeah. So it's kind of like a pay attention kind of thing. Like it's a way of paying attention. I think really the key is detachment. Yeah. Because if you can't detach, you're not going to be able to anticipate anything because you're in.

And that's why there's an obvious dichotomy here. Yeah, do you want to go down and be with the troops? Absolutely. But can you go down and be with troops so much that you lose track of what's happening at a strategic level and you can't anticipate what's happening? No, you can't do that. Dicotomy and leadership, you've got to balance it. Back to the book.

During war, it oftentimes happens that one company by triage, an error finds the true solution for some acute problem which concerns everyone but when that happens to a company I can assure you that is the exceptional company officer who takes the initiative and passes it passes his unique solution along to his superiors even after he has proved in battle that the idea works a good company idea in tactics is likely to remain confined to one company indefinitely even though it would be a benefit to the whole military establishment and this is just dealing with silos it happens in the military it happens in the

Civilian sector somebody figures something out and they keep it to themselves the fundamental purpose of all training today should be to develop the natural Faculties and to stimulate the brain of the soldier rather than to treat him as a cog which has been fitted into a great machine Gotta keep pointing that out Loyalty in the masses of men waxes strong in the degree that they are made to believe that real importance is attached to their work and to their ability to think about their work so you got to get people engaged and people got to understand and believe that what they're doing is important and they got to have some kind of say they got to have some control over their own fate it weakens at every point where they consider that there is a negative

respect for their intelligence this rule applies whether a man is engaged in digging a ditch or in working up a loading table for an invasion so if you have negative respect for people's intelligent they're not gonna do a good job big chunk a little bit of a big chunk here to square training with the reality of war it becomes a necessary part of the young officer's mental equipment for training to instill in him the full realization that in combat many things can and will go wrong without it being anyone's fault in particular so what did I just say things are gonna happen is no one's fault does that really does that really does that really marry up with the idea of extreme ownership well not

Really right because I'm taking ownership of anything however keep listening War is aimed at destruction the fire and general purpose of the enemy are directed against one's own personnel Materiel and communications with the object of keeping one's own design from coming into play Small plans miscarry because the wrong man happens to be hit at the critical moment or the guns which were counted on are knocked out of action the problem of command in battle is ever to establish a safe margin which will allow for such misadventure there you go so things are going to go wrong but what you have to take ownership of is is figuring out how you're going to have a plan that's going to overcome those problems back to the book but this much is certain there is no system of safeguards known to man which can fully eliminate the consequences of accident and mischance

in battle hence the only final protection is the resiliency and courage of the commander and his subordinates so what does that mean when something goes wrong when something bad happens you adapt you adjust you you alter your plans and you continue forward you own it it therefore follows that the far object of a training system is to prepare the combat officer mentally so that he can cope with the unusual and the unexpected as if it were the altogether normal and give him poise in a situation where all else is in disequilibrium all over and over again and how do you do that how do you do that in the civilian sector right prepare your people you role play with people you give

them hard problems you make them figure things out you put them in tough situations so that they become accustomed to it but how to do it I would say that the beginning lies in a system of schooling which puts the emphasis on teaching soldiers how to think rather than what to think even though such a revolutionary idea would put the army somewhat ahead of our civilian education That's a common thing that gets said in military training is teaching people how to think not what to think And this is a good the test of fitness of command is the ability to think clearly in the face of unexpected contingency or opportunity Improvisation is the essence of initiative in all combat just as initiative is the outward showing of the power of decision Think about this when you're raising your kids too there's a good little something to think about you want your kids to be able to think

Hmm Think get that's what's why you got to have him doing some creative stuff Yeah, right sure Jiu Jitza is creative but you got to got to throw some other stuff at me The book the darkest hour for the novice in war comes with the re-reaching recoil after the unit has been had badly hit it is then that the young commander has greatest need of the friendship and steadiness of his superior or of any other officer whose judgment he respects criticism or tactical counsel are of no value at this time they can be given that later if necessary but in the wrong hour they

add to the hurt let him get out his crying towel when he has told how it happened the important thing is that he be given a pat on the back and insurance and assurance that he did his full duty and some little reminder that while he may feel that his losses are excessive such incidents are unavoidable feature of combat and do not keep one from coming back in the next round in secret in sigfried sassoun's memories of an infantryman the young lieutenant tells of emerging from a bloody trench raid and meeting his colonel this was kent colonel Kinjack I'd never met before and it was the first time I had ever shared any human equality with him he spoke kindly to me in his rough way and in doing so he made me very thankful that I had done what I could so I mean this is a very important especially for folks that are in the military or in services where you can take losses and that is when you're in charge it's the time is not then to provide tactical counsel right that's not the time first you got to let the person get over the emotional hump

help them through that and if you got to go back and debrief them later that's what you do I think I think everybody needs to pay attention to that and I mean you could say the same thing for businesses you know if somebody makes a big mistake and they feel bad about it and it hurts them or they get people fired or they cost a bunch of money or something like you might not want to jump on their back immediately a man remains a man after he puts on a soldier's suit death in the company is like a death in the family. Talk relieves tension.

Okay, talk relieves tension. This is a tough one because guess what? Some people, when something bad happens, you know what they want to do? They want to be left alone. And yet, it's talk that relieves tension and getting that out of them, which I agree with. But again, you've got to be tactful. There's a dichotomy. You just can't go, hey, man, I really want to talk to you about what happened.

It's like, hey, maybe that person needs a little time. Maybe that person needs a little space, but you can't give them too much time because they're going to sit there and dwell on it. So pay attention the unit which fights successful action but is without knowledge of its success May even ensure a great victory for some larger body and still emerge from the battlefield with a feeling of inferiority It's a complex sentence, but what he's saying is like well you make sure when your people do something good You tell them because there's a lot of times where people don't people don't understand what they did and how big of an impact it had and that's bad Here's a good one in combat nothing succeeds like success the knowledge of victory is the beginning of a conviction of superiority.

Just as truly the savor of one small triumph will wholly drive out the bitter taste of any number of demoralizing defeats. Nothing succeeds like success. Now we get in this section, tactical cohesion. Important. We're going to think about that. You know, there's a story in extreme ownership about the boat crews and the boat are doing well and sometimes people will say what you know what did the guy that do do

do different what the new leader do and I always say well what he got the team to do is get everyone in the boat rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time like if you can do that you're winning if you can do that as a leader if you can get everybody in the boat rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time you're gonna win and you'd be surprised how often I see companies I see business I see military units where people are not rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time. So that's what tactical cohesion is. Tactical cohesion is how can we get people to be working together? And here we go. Getting the troops to that cohesiveness back to the book, it may be

done through one bold individual standing erect and saying to a few others, follow me, we are going on. If a few rise and follow, the entire line is apt to get in motion. On the other hand, if this same individual advances alone but says nothing it is unlikely that he will have any followers one word come makes his action tenfold as effective as if he plunges gallantly ahead in silence the act of moving is initiative the act of coupling motion with speech is thinking initiative important very important here's talk about getting a gunfight the first thing you do is you hit the ground is reestablished contact with your men determine where they are and let them know where you are this this happens in

business to some bad happens and we all go into panic mode and start focusing on our little world as a leader you need to say okay guys here's what's going on here's where I am here's what we're gonna do leadership leadership leadership the majority of small unit leaders do not take any steps toward restoring control from which alone can come unity of action some try to contact their men by voice or by relay of voice during an action while the men are prone the voice will rarely carry more than 25 feet this means that unless there is a relay of all hands under and and all hands understand what is being attempted the voice method is ineffective

in the seal teams when somebody yells out of command everybody says it and it's the best it's the coolest thing it's not the coolest thing but it's pretty it's pretty cool when you hear that word getting passed and you hear the criticalness of an important command coming out and everybody says it and it's just Just that's what you have to do and we're so well trained at that. That's one of the few tactical things that you learn in basic underwater demolition seal training is you better pass the word Pass the word man. It's one of those things It's one of those things you learn to pass the word

This is this is a great point The company coming under fire literally begins its engagement by falling apart So when you start getting shot at guess what you do you get down you can't see anyone else And you don't know what's happening So your first thing that happens when you get engaged is you fall apart Thereafter so long as it continues to engage the overriding problem of the commander is the reunification of his elements This is a great way to think about so are you tactical leaders out there Military police firefighters this is important

Think about this after the thing after the engagement starts the overriding problem of the commander is the reu reunification of his elements Proper fire support and direction are coming are among the tools which he uses is the overriding problem and bringing about cohesion but the fundamental means is communication getting his men to link up by talking to one another and sending a long word of what they are doing and what they have seen now this is a very simple thing it is so simple that it recalls the warning from colonel g f r henderson in war the simple things are the most difficult that's the word we say that we see that we see initiative in our men that is the American way of fighting we say that we want men who can think and act we are just as steadfast however in per in proclaiming

that the supreme object in training is to produce unity of action these two aims are not mutually exclusive in fact they are complimentary halves of an enlightened battle discipline so did you catch that we want our people to act we want our people to act for themselves we want them to think and act and at the same time we want unified unity of command we want them to be working together so we want them to act alone we want them to work together there's obviously a dichotomy there those are the complimentary halves of an enlightened battle testament here we go this is beautiful but the various curious part of it is that is that training

largely ignores the sole principle which makes these two basic ideas fully and finally reconcilable we do not teach our men from the day they first put on the uniform that speech in combat is as vital as fire in combat in combat is as vital as fire in combat we do not say to them that for a man to be able to think straight about his tactical situation is not enough he must communicate his thoughts to others before they can begin to produce unity of action out of speech or from the written word which is its substitute comes all you of strength on the battle field and from the latter comes decisive action this

applies to two men serving together on an outpost it applies equally to the battalion or the regiment right there right there if you can't communicate with the other people and people don't spread the word and your team doesn't communicate well with each other you're not gonna be able to join these two halves which is acting and being decisive and being using initiative and cohesiveness of your unit the question still remains what kind of initiative is beneficial and what kind is harmful and how may troops be might might be taught to distinguish between the two right so could a person on your in your platoon take so much initiative that it hurts oh yes

they can I've seen it many times before many times before I've seen that so the question is how do we know how much there's a dichotomy right we want people of action but we don't don't want them to take too much action I'm glad I wrote the book that got him yeah and here's here's his way of trying to define that is the soldier acting on his own to advise others of his tactical situation or conveying any other information which may be of general benefit in furthering the tactical situation of the company or in enlisting the aid of others in carrying out any action which will benefit the tactical situation of the company so you you're you need to take

action you need to take initiative as long as it's benefiting the company as long as you're and you know what we talk about as commander's intent like you can do whatever you want as long as it's in supportive commander's intent if it's not in support of commander's intent we got a problem in the army of the United States we act towards speech as if it were mortally as if we were mortally afraid of it we tell our men to think yet we never tell them that if in They remain dumb. It is slow suicide. Slow suicide the period between wars was an age of rapid advancement and communications technique radio was born the telephone was vastly improved the teleprinter appeared in television waited just around the corner it all came so fast that we were struck dumb by our own magic how brilliant is that we were struck dumb by our own magic how many people these days are are not becoming good communicators

because they're not interacting with people enough. Because instead of talking to them, they're sending them in text. Instead of talking to them, they're saying in an email. How is that affecting us? Pretty much everybody. Pretty much everybody.

I'm one of those people, by the way. You've got emojis coming out, right? We've got issues. I don't know. That might be a step in the right direction, right? The additional emojis, additional communication.

You know what? It is. It does add some clarity to your statements. Yeah, yeah. I'll give you credit. Maybe I need to get in the emoji game. Maybe.

Not happening. But, you know, that's a great thing. Talk about raising kids to make sure you talk to your kids. I worked with someone once that had a kid that had like a speech impediment. And this kid would just sit down and talk your ear off with speech impediment. And I talked to the parent and said, hey, you got one confident kid, you know, with speech impediment. How did you get him to overcome, you know, this? this speech impediment

Or the, it's not so much the speech impediment Because he didn't overcome and still had it But guess what? Was gonna talk your ear off And was gonna sit down and act professional And convey his message And the response was Got him to talk to people all the time

And made him talk to people And so that's what you do Get, have conversations with your kids, how's that? Yeah Have conversations with your people on your team. How's that? Yeah. Is that one of the reasons why podcast

are popular because you get to hear conversations between people because you're not hearing them otherwise Yeah, yeah, maybe here's he's saying this is just good advice for this is for all you folks that are thinking about joining the military here we go when you prepare to fight you must prepare to talk You must learn that speech will help you save your situation You must be alert at all times to let others know what is happening to you You must use your brain and your voice anytime that any word of yours will help You or others you are a tactical unit and you must think of yourself that way Don't try to win a war or capture a hill all by yourself your action alone means nothing or at best very little It is when you talk to others and they join with you that your action becomes important

Gotta communicate You know this is Leif tells a story about me telling him to use verbal commands and we've got that story over and over again because I've done it with so many different people like You need to you need to use your man voice right now like you're not being loud enough and That was a classic example of that you know lay for trying to communicate over the radio and people aren't really listening because it's noise in your ears There's all these things happening you know you hear a little voice And in the SEAL teams like I said we're so trained to repeat those commands And I'm like lay if you got to try using verbal commands bro you got to try it and he kind of looked at me like man. I'm giving the perfect brief over the radio right now My men will respond and

So finally you know he's you know angry life came out He said oh I didn't eat everyone he yelled and everyone repeated and everything happened and it was one of those things and it's I mean this is what ten years ago? Fifty twelve years ago But it was definitely we all had radios on everybody every single person had a nice radio The same radio that's being used today with a with a noise cancelling headset. Do you know what that is? Yes, sir, I do okay. Yeah, so a noise cancelling it so you'd think well could be better than that what could be better than this brand new modern technology with a noise canceling headset you know it's better than that your voice yeah it's saying a lot

with the voice cancelling head set and even the even then the voice is better yeah well when you got the noise canceling headset it it shuts off the sound so when you're shooting your gun there's no sound coming in now you don't hear whatever's being told to you yeah check all right one final statement on that men govern by words speech galvanizes the desire to work together is the beginning of the urge to get something done so learn how to communicate read study English learn how to write it's gonna make you better communicator all right now we go to why men fight when a retrograde movement becomes necessary in combat is an invitation to

disaster to move before the men are told why they are removing if the pressure has made the fact that that fact obvious then they still must be told how far to go and the liner point to which they are withdrawing must be made clear and unmistakable otherwise they will keep moving and all control will be lost the spoken word is the greatest of steadying forces in any time of crisis think about that the spoken word is the greatest of steadying forces in any time of crisis and excited lieutenant shouting get the hell out of here and follow me to that tree if all me that tree line on the far side of the creek will succeed though a perfectly calm captain trying to bring off the same

movement but keeping his voice calm for keeping his voice down with the result that the men do not hear him will fail that's obvious formal language under these circumstances is almost unknown in the army of the United States in fact get the hell out of here has virtually established itself in our jargon as the customer order said general dragon dragon draw a strong moral education is the best safeguard to solidarity of troops under fire even so the soldier will forget or discount much that training has taught him as the danger mounts and fear takes hold it is then the it is then that the voice

of the leader must cut through fear to remind him of what is required The reasoned explanation of why this is true has never been more clearly stated than by Staff Sergeant Pete F. Dine of the 17th Infantry Regiment after he had won the Silver Star for taking over the leading of a demoralized platoon during the Burton Island fight. And here's Staff Sergeant Pete Dine. I knew that the men were afraid and careless at the same time. Though some were being killed, the others would not take even average precautions in going after the enemy installations as we passed through them. I knew they were afraid because I was aware of my own fear. Then I asked myself why it was that we felt fear in each other, and I realized it was because

all of the leaders had quit talking. I knew then that the only way to get confidence back into the platoon was to talk it up, as a man might do in a football game. I continued my own attack on the enemy shelters and spider holes, but there was a difference that now began yelling to others. Watch me. This is what you're supposed to do. Get at it.

Keep working. Keep your eyes open. Soon the platoon became collected and began to operate methodically. But I kept talking until the end because I had learned something new. leaders must talk if they are to lead action is not enough a silent example will never rally men get some or get at it in battle back to the book in battle the voice of the leader is always needed to call back the men from carelessness it is their chronic attitude in and out of danger even in veteran troops it is not expected It is not the expected presence of the enemy which keeps them alert on a hostile field,

but the force with which they feel pressing them at any given moment. When fire comes against them, they sense danger from every direction. Unless they are informed of the source of the danger, there is apt to occur a swift moral transition in which they become mentally pinned by the mere incidents of fire. I like that term mentally pinned. You just don't know what's going on. from spend down this was interesting on seven occasions has been my part part of my

duty to investigate the sources of panic along the battle line twice in the Pacific and five times in Europe so there was times where people just panicked and left the line and he did had to investigate him and he goes into that was how each of these incidents each of these seven incidents got it start one or two one or two or two or more men made a sudden run to the rear which others in the vicinity did not understand but it was the lack of information rather than the sight of running men which was the crux of the danger for in every case the testimony of all witnesses clearly developed the fact that those who started the run and thereby spread the fear which started the panic

had a legitimate or at least reasonable excuse for the action it was not the sudden motion which of itself did not did the damage but the fact that the others present were not kept informed got it your people got to know what's going on for example a sergeant in the first battalion 500 second infantry was hit through the and artery during the Carrotin causeway fight on June 12th 1944 it happened in a flash one second he was hit and the next he was running for a first aid station without telling his own squad why he was getting out they took out after him and then the line

broke others who hadn't seen the sergeant make his dash saw someone else in flight they ran to someone said the order is to withdraw others picked up the word and cried it along the line withdraw withdraw it happened just as simply as that you can see how that happened all day long right the term control is not in this instance to be considered as synonymous with the voice of authority control is a man-to-man force on the battlefield no matter how lowly his rank any man who controls himself automatically contributes to the control of others That's legit any man who controls himself automatically contributes to the control of others

Fear is contagious but so but courage is not less so To the man who is in terror and verging on panic no influence can be more steadying than that he sees some other man near him who is Retaining self-control and doing his duty It's weird how people are just so influenced by other people. I mean, you see it everywhere. Personal honor is the one thing valued more than life itself by the majority of men. The lips of the dying attest how strongly this force influences individual conduct in battle. A young company runner hit by a shell at Caritan collapsed into the arms of his commander.

And with his life swiftly ebbing, said Captain, This company always called me a screw-up. Tell me that I wasn't. Tell me that I wasn't one this time. The captain replied, no son, you sure weren't. And the board died with a smile on his face. But while an army is a collection of individuals, it is also a crowd under pressure.

And under pressure, it tends to ever to revert to crowd form. The seeds of panic are always present in troops so long as they are in the midst of physical danger. the form of which changes moment to moment in the majority of men the retention of self-discipline under the conditions of the battlefield depends on the maintaining of an appearance of discipline within the unit So obviously with businesses man with businesses you'll get a business that like people are squared away that's how they roll and everyone acts squared away And you get some people that aren't and that's the that's the image that's the culture of the company and no one squared away Should the latter begin to dissolve, so should the discipline within the unit begin to dissolve, only a small minority of the most hearty individuals will retain self-control. The others cannot stand fast if the circumstances appear to justify flight.

When other men flee, the social pressure is lifted, and the average soldier will respond as if he has been given a free release from duty, for he knows that his personal failure is made inconspicuous by the general dissolution. to it is a normal tendency in troops that they will drift rearward from the fire line unless they are being given an active direction but it is just as normal that they will reverse themselves quickly and return to their duty if given a firm order by someone whom they know yeah and have you been a situation where you just like put out word like like like just something stupid like um like you'll be in a store or something and people people will be like not knowing hey they're just someone say hey there's a register over here or like you're waiting in a line at a at a at a public event of some kind you know hey wrap this

thing around wrap the line around yeah yeah like at the yeah like at the i think this is kind of what you're talking about too like at the airport that day i was super late remember to get on the plane i got a Washington dc and went to the wrong airport oh yeah yeah last minute last second by that Anyway, I'm standing in the TSA line. I see super long, by the way. When I see super long, I mean like... Like you ain't going to make your flight. Yeah, this is long, long, like a long line.

Like, there was a crowd. So I'm standing in line, I'm like, you know, when you're in a hurry, you're always looking for little shortcuts, and I'll violate a few rules, you know, to get there quicker. So I'm on the lookout. Everyone else is cruising, just falling in line, literally. So I look and I see a weird sort of line Start a kind of forming

Way shorter too Like the kind like I can literally Literally walk about 15 meters A head To the end of this weird little line for me Everyone sees it It's a little line but it's kind of like one of those things Like oh that's not what we're doing

And I think the lines make it even more psychologically rigid You know where it's like we're in line And to get out of line That's kind of a big deal Yeah, well, it's the social, what is you calling it here? The social, you get the release from social duty, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, so if everyone's staying in line and you're just doing whatever else, there's like a social pressure to stay in line. Yes, exactly right. So, but boom, I, man, I was going to miss that flight. So I ask, oh, how is this? I asked the guy not like in that line because it's way ahead. I asked a guy in the next line who was like maybe two. three people ahead of me, but in a different line.

I was like, is that another line? And you know what he says? He said, yeah, it is. He goes, yeah, it is. I was like, oh, I just go. He already knew it, but then he was, like, standing in. But he didn't do it, probably from that social pressure. So, of course, I go. And then everyone falls.

Bro, I look behind everyone. I fear, like, a commotion behind me. But it's just so many people filling in. That's how freaking. Leading from the flight. And I made the flight by literally, like, what, 10 seconds, probably. close yeah this is a again I kind of covered this but I'm gonna hit it one more time individual straggers had almost no combat value when inducted into a strange

organization the majority of them were unwilling to join any such solid unit which still facing the enemy the minority even after being given food and a little rest took their place in line but the moment the new unit came under enemy pressure the individuals quit their ground and ran rearward or sought cover behind somewhere behind the combat line so this is what I heard talked about you get a new person and they don't know anyone they're not going to do their job on the other hand this is important for businesses on the other hand that was not true of gun crews squad groups or platoon which had been routed from their original ground and

separated from their parent unit but had managed in some way to hold together during a fallback upon being inducted into a strange company they tended to fight as vigorously as any element in the command which they had newly joined and would frequently set an example of initiative and courageous action beyond what had been asked of them think about that Keep your keep your little elements together I used to be real big on that You got your little fire teams Yeah, and I would always try and keep a little fire team integrity keep that fire team integrity

And these would be like in a seal platoon there's four There's four fire teams and in a task unit, you know there's eight fire teams Try and keep these guys still know each other, but they're gonna do a little bit better They just keep that fire team integrity they already know each other they already know what's up yeah in our striving for a system of discipline which recognizes in theory though the theory is offered ignored in practice that the relationships within our army should be based upon intimate understanding between officers and men rather than familiarity between them on self-respect rather than fear and above all on uniting

comradeship self-respect rather than fear the is they have destroyed the name and tradition of old and honored regiments with the stroke of a pen for convenience sake they have uprooted the names and numbers which had identity with a certain soil and move them willy-nilly to another soil they have moved men around as if they were pegs and nothing counted but a specialist classification number they have become fillers of holes rather than architects of human spirit That's bold, isn't it? Yes, it is.

You like that one. I do. So sometimes the Army, and the Army does this more than anyone else, I believe. They'll just like take a unit that's been around for 122 years, fought in all kinds of wars and just disband them. They're done. Just get rid of them. And just, and sometimes they bring them back, thankfully.

But that's not a good idea. There's a certain power in tradition, right? There's a certain power in tradition. there's a when they formed up seal team five they took they they took or sorry

underwater demolition team 11 and they disbanded it and basically reformed it as seal team 5 but if you look at the the symbol of seal team 5 there's a setting sun and on the setting sun is the number 11 you can see it going down little little fact for you

pretty cool but they at least kept that tradition alive right Yeah, fully. Least kept that tradition alive. Yeah. And yes, this idea of fillers of holes rather than an architect's a human spirit, you're going to think about what you're doing with little units when you start breaking them up and moving people around. There's relationships there that you're messing with.

You might not be doing a good thing just because this guy has a certain qualification. Oh, put him over there. Therein lies a great weakness, and we have suffered from it through every war. For it must ever remain that acquisition of a truer knowledge of the nature of man in war will suffice very little if put to work only by the local commander on limited ground So everybody's got to understand that there's human beings Working here that you're dealing with you that you have to be an act our architect of the human spirit That again leaves too much to chance and puts too high a premium on the virtues and talents of the average leader

What is needed primarily if we are to go forward the policy stemming from the top which are based not upon slide rule calculation but on knowledge of the human heart next chapter the the aggressive will I like this little section morale is the thinking of an army it is the whole complex body of an army's thought the way it feels about the soil and about the people from which it springs the way that it feels about their cause and their politics as compared with other causes and other politicians The way that it feels about its friends and allies as well as its enemies about its commanders and gold bricks About food and shelter duty and leisure militarism and civilianism freedom and slavery work and want Weapons and comradeship bunk fatigue and drill Discipline and disorder life and death God and the devil That's a big that's a big that's what he's saying like you've got human beings human beings and

And the morale of the army is all of that stuff combined together. You have to account for it The definition cuts through one of the oldest myths in the military book that morale comes from discipline The process is precisely the reverse true discipline is the product of morale right? I never really thought about that too much How's your morale if you have good morale? If you have good morale You're gonna have better discipline if your morale is weak what happens to your discipline goes out the window The soldier needs a sound and vigorous body if he is to contend in modern war But this itself should be the object rather than the perfecting of him in drills not even remotely related to use of his weapons out of a mistaken and

Obsolescent notion that they somehow improve his discipline there's no such time for method for this method So doing stuff just to do it to like improve your discipline is not what we're talking about here Beyond the basic physical requirement the essential is that he be given the freedom to think with a clear mind Which freedom can be his only when he becomes convinced that the army and particularly the army as represented by his immediate superiors is doing everything Possible for his welfare you got to care about your people that's what that's what MOOC said. That's what General Mukayama said.

You've got to care about your people. 100% agree. Soldiers can endure hardship. Most of their training is directed toward conditioning them for unusual privation and exertion. But no power on earth can reconcile them to what common sense says

is unnecessary hardship, which might have been avoided by greater intelligence in their superiors. That is awesome. If your people do all kinds of, take all kinds of punishment for you. But if they see that there's a way you could have avoiding punishment for them and you didn't do it because you were dumb, they're going to rebel against you. The more intelligent, the more intelligent the soldier, the more likely it is that he will see as a sign, see that as a sign of indiscipline up above and will answer it the same way. So if the upper chain of commands dropping the ball, guess what's going to happen to lower chain?

We're dropping the ball too. Nothing more radical is suggested here than that the leader who would make certain of the fundamental soundness of his operation cannot do better than concentrate his attention on his men That's a bold statement. There's nothing better you can do than concentrate your attention on your men if you want something to be successful Concentrate on your people There is no other worthwhile road the they dupe only themselves who believe that there is a a brand of military efficiency which consists in moving smartly expediting papers and achieving perfection in formations while at the same time sliding or ignoring the human nature of those

whom they command the art of leading in operations large or small is the art of dealing with humanity and working diligently on behalf of men of being sympathetic with them but equally of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems the are the real basis of commanders major calculations that's just a awesome that whole thing the art of leading dealing with humanity working diligently on behalf of your men being sympathetic with them and at the same time dichotomy insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems boom men who have been in battle know from firsthand experience that when the chips are down a

man fights to help the man next to him next to him next to him just as a company fights to keep pace with its flanks. Things have to be that simple. An ideal does not become tangible at the moment of firing a volley or charging a hill. Having already suggested that the thinking bayonets can never be subordinated by the routine methods of a discipline which is based largely in mechanical procedures, I will add that no leader will ever fail his troops, nor will they fail him who leads them in respect for the discipline life between these two things discipline in itself and a personal

faith in the military value of discipline lies all the difference between military maturity and mediocrity a salute from a willing from an unwilling soldier is as meaningless as the moving of a leaf on a tree it is a sign only that the subject has been caught by a gust of wind but a salute from the man who takes pride in the gesture because he feels privileged to wear the uniform having found the service good is an act of the highest military virtue one further fact that needs to be stressed about the character of those officers whose capacity could be measured in the efficiency of their companies while they were scrupulous in the care of their men they were not wet nurses they treated their subordinates as men They did not regard them as adolescents, and they did not employ the classroom manner in dealing with them individually or in the mass.

That was an important part of their hold upon the men. The men pries a commander the more if he looks and acts the part of a soldier. But the characteristic of a fine appearance will but betray him the sooner if he has no real kinship with the men. So this is dichotomy. You got to take care of your men, but you're not a wet nurse. You don't treat them like little kids. The characteristics which are required in the minor commander, if he is to prove capable of preparing men for and leading them through the shock of combat with high credit may therefore be briefly described as one, diligence in the care of men. So here's the characteristics. Number one, diligence in the care of men.

Number two administration of all organizational affairs such as punishments and promotions according to a standard of resolute justice Number three military bearing Number four a basic understanding of the simple fact that soldiers wish to think of themselves as soldiers and that all military information is nourishing to their spirits and their lives number five courage creative intelligence and physical fitness number six innate respect for the dignity of the position and the work of other men I'm gonna tell you those are some good rules some good things to think about if you're in a leadership position here's a little commentary and it was written in 1947 still be true today it is my belief that there is no more hurtful doctrine put before our people

today than that the army should duplicate the arrangements which obtain within the civil society slavishly imitating the latter's comforts social customs and ideas of regulating justice and insisting on no higher standards of personal responsibility for its people so hey guess what the military is not the civilian world And we shouldn't be trying to make it that way the military is the military That's 1947 he's saying that I'm gonna have to say I agree in my opinion and I do not say this lightly the fault in our disciplinary level during world war two Was not primarily that the discipline of the ranks needed to be more relaxed

But that the discipline of a considerable percentage of our officers needed to be tightened for this simple reason insofar as his ability to mold the character of truth is concerned the qualifying test of an officer is the judgment placed upon his soldierly abilities by those who serve under him you can only mold your troops if they judge you worthy of molding them think about that for a minute if they do not deem him fit to command he cannot train them to obey thus where slackness is tolerated in officership it is a direct invitation to Disobedience and as disobedience multiplies all discipline disappears. I love this little section right here No officer can command unless he is certain of himself and confident that his orders are likely to lead to success

On the other hand command does not create its own magic Men who are filled with the spirit of disobedience will break the heart and ruin the character of the finest officer Who ever lived man you're gonna deal with some rabble rousers out there There you're gonna deal with some tough cookies the way in which the loss of moral incentive is reflected in the tactical behavior of troops was thoughtfully expressed many years ago by the British teacher colonel GFR Henderson when troops once realized their inferiority they can go they can no longer be dependent on if attacking they refuse to advance if defending they abandon all hope of resistance it is not the

losses they have suffered but those they expect to suffer that affect them consequently unless discipline in national spirit spirit are of superior quality and unless the soldier is animated by something higher than the habit of mechanical obedience panic shirking and wholesale surrender will be the ordinary features of the campaign pretty harsh warning nothing more unfortunate can happen to the commander than to come to be regarded by his suburb as unapproachable for such a reputation isolates him from the main problems of command as well as its chief rewards So you got to be approachable as a leader

They're saying there's nothing more unfortunate than being regarded as unapproachable It is back to the book is never a waste of time for the commander to talk to his people about their problems Here's good people ask me I get all the junior leaders from the military from the civilian sector from everywhere and they asked me what are I supposed to do To the young officer who's conscious of his own reserve and is anxious to do something about it, I can suggest nothing better than to make a habit of full physical participation. That is, instead of watching the squad or a platoon work out a problem and either directing or criticizing its action, let him pick up a weapon, relieve one man in the group, then let himself be the one commanded until the conclusion of the operation. is this course of contact beneath the dignity of the American officer certainly not so

what says it getting the game get in the game in the United States service we are tending to forget because of the effective motorization that the higher value of discipline of the road march in other days that it was that wasn't that it hardened muscles but that short of combat it was the best method of separating the men from the boys Well, let's get back to a little road march action. Best method for separating the men from the boys is the road march. This is true today. Despite all the new conditions imposed by high-velocity warfare,

hard road march is the most satisfactory training test of the moral strength of the individual man. The great advantage of the gain in moral force through all forms of physical training is that it is an unconscious gain. All forms of physical training are going to give you an un-concious gain. conscious gain of moral force let that propel your workout tomorrow morning willpower determination mental poise and mental control all march hand in hand with the general health and well-being of the man fatigue will beat men down as quickly as any other condition for for fatigue brings fear with it there was no quicker way to lose a battle than to lose it on the road for lack of adequate preliminary hardening in

troops such a condition cannot be redeemed by the resolve of a commander who insists on driving troops an extra mile beyond their general level of physical endurance That's important to remember You if you got people that aren't ready doesn't matter how much you try and make them do something They're not physically capable of doing it. That's the reality Extremes of this sort make men rebellious and hateful of the command and thus strike at the tactical efficiency from two directions at once For when men resent a command or they will not fight as willingly for him and when their bodies are spent their nerves are gone in this state the soldiers every act is mechanical he is reduced to that automatism of mind which destroys physical response his courage is killed his intellect falls asleep truly then it is killing men with kindness not to insist upon physical standards during training which will give them a maximum fitness for the extraordinary stresses

of campaigning in a war killing men truly killing men with kindness not to have them physically ready as the body is hardened so must the mind be steadily informed so that the soldier will take a reasoning view not only of the privations of the field but of that which is being attempted once we depart from the ideal of automatic responses the condition most likely to produce unity of action in battle the only substitute for it lies in the possibility that more and more men in the ranks can be trained to see as And think through the haze of battle in unison with their commanders. You can see, you can see, I mean, when you read about face, there's Hackworth. This is what Hackworth did, man. This is how Hackworth rolled. Fact. Back to the book. Why is the will of the military commander deemed more decisive of success than the will of

leadership in any other calling? Clearly, it is because the inertia, frictions and confusions of the forces of the battlefield make all positive action more difficult and yet the principles which win intelligent man-to-man cooperation apply equally in all circumstances the same rules work on the battlefield as in an office that's why we got a little something called a echelon front the will does not operate in a vacuum it cannot be imposed successfully if it runs counter to reason Things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it They are done it because they are doable. Okay, this is a really important little section

And you know, I You know I talk about force of will something you're gonna make something happen force of will But there's a very important I've called a caveat to that and we're about to get into this caveat So to say that again things not done in war things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it they are done because they are doable the limits for the commander in battle are defined by the general circumstance when he asks what he asks of his men must be consistent with the possibilities of the situation that might seem like common sense right hey I can't ask you do anything that cannot be done

back to the book what can be successfully willed must first be clearly seen and understood if amid the confusion of battle the commander sees what is required by the situation if amid the miscarriage of arrangements and other assailing doubts of other men he measures the means of doing it and if he then gives his order and holds his men to their duty this is the ultimate triumph of the will on the battlefield to reflect on this thought is to note that he exercises his will far less upon his men than upon himself Should he on the other hand attempt to will that which his men know cannot be done or feel Unanimously is utterly beyond reason or should he base his order on assumptions which they recognize as false

His will becomes temporarily without power and cannot help the situation This is one of those things where people think I'm just gonna I'm gonna tell him to do it and we'll see what they can get done right like no They're not gonna see that they can't do it and they're just gonna say we're not gonna even try. Yeah. Make your goals realistic. Make them not just realistical. Make them achievable. There is scarcely any commander with any time in combat, but has had his experience of having willing troops become suddenly unresponsive because his facts were not straight.

So sometimes the troops aren't gonna do what you want to do even though you have this strong will, they're not gonna do. Why is that? Here we go. to lieutenant colonel h w o'conard during the night advance of first battalion 5001st parachute infantry against the german-held dutch village in september 1914 the village of shingle which i have praised elsewhere in this book as one of the most brilliant battalion actions of the war the column had advanced only 500 yards beyond its outpost line when it came under machine gun an anti-tank fire canard heard some of the fire clipping the branches of the tree above his head and judged it was all going high

But the lead company had stopped and the men had jumped for the ditches He ran forward shouting to the men keep going keep going that fire is high But his personal advance had no effect not a man stirred So this is an incredibly like seasoned me tough well-trained group and he's telling them and he's personally leading them forward saying go go we got to go Don't worry that fire is high but has no effect not a man stirred back to the book Within a moment he understood why he had failed from one of the ditches a rifleman answered him

If you think the fire is high colonel come over here We've had eight men hitting the legs so you've got to think about what is actually possible The Supreme Trials of the commander in war lies in his ability to overcome the weaknesses of human nature in the face of danger and these are the matters which he cannot know in full unless he has served with men where danger lies check men under fire to those that have known the firing line it would scarcely be necessary to point out that morale and combat is never a steady current force but a rapidly oscillating wave whose variations are both immeasurable and It is in this respect chiefly the rapidity and capriciousness of its variations that the morale that the morale problem in the zone of fire differs from that From that of a rear area soldiering a band of men go may go through a terrible engagement take its losses bravely And then become wholly demoralized in the hour in which it must bury its own dead a regiment fretted to utter objection by a protracted stay in the lines

may find its fighting spirit again in a six hour of spite during which the men are de-laussed and given a change of underwear. A battalion advancing boldly may be brought in check because its commander

did the disservice of going too far forward and getting himself killed within sight of the ranks. A platoon may charge and capture an enemy held hill losing half its numbers in doing so,

then run down. the hill again because one of its own artillery shells landed too close and hit one man so that the morale of the troops is constantly at at risk of going up or going down the near presence of death and the prospect of meeting it at the next moment move men and mere many curious and contrary ways many men many men seem to change character under the guns the life of hardship and of danger gives new strength to the truly strong and greater weakness to the truly weak so combat is going to have an effect on people it's going to amplify their situation what normal man would deny that some of the fullest and fairest days of his life have been spent at the front or that the sky ever seems more blue or the air more bracing than when there is just a a hint of danger in the air. This is an important thing

for leaders to understand. The man who cannot bring himself to trust the judgment and good faith of other men cannot command very long. He will soon break under the unnecessary strain he puts on himself. Sleeplessness, nervous irritation, and loss of self-control will be his lot

until he is at last found totally unfit. The ideal relationship between a commander and his subordinate is nowhere better illustrated than in a passage from the letter of instruction wherein Grant told Sherman to proceed to the destruction of Johnson's army. Quote, I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of campaign, but simply to lay down the work it is desirable to have done and leave you free to execute it in your own way. some decentralized command right there this is another good one when a company is stopped by physical shock restoration of its movement becomes a problem for the battalion when a company is stopped by psychological shock the continuing of the advance remains the problem of the company commander and here's some advances some

examples of that diffusion of the company over two wide a sector a retrograde movement by supporting weapons such as armor the death of a well-loved officer light losses from friendly supporting fire the appearance of some new and unexpected weapon in the enemy sector such are a few of the causes of psychological shock the local treatments are as many and as varied as are the diseases with respect to the effect of friendly fire hitting among troops however it is to be observed that if circumstances leave any room for doubt as to the source the men will jump to the conclusion that they are being victimized by their own guns it is in instances where it is unmistakable that they have been hurt by their own fire, however, the commander is ill-advised to lie to them. They will usually learn the truth later on, and when they do, it strikes a blow to his prestige. The experienced combat soldier knows that such occasional accidents are part of battle,

and he accepts them as such, but he cannot make any good judgment to the realization that his commander is either a fool or a liar. No gain ever comes from being slick with troops, from acting deviously instead of forthrightly, from posing as having superior knowledge or from being secretive or discounting the common sense of the majority. See, a lot of people do that. They discount the common sense. They think they're going to get away with that with trying to bullshit the troops, and it doesn't work. The most common cause of psychological shock, however, is partial victory. The adage that the weakest point follows success is a fundamental truth of minor tactics,

and the danger is always greatest when success is too easily won. Success is disarming. Tension is the normal state of mind and body in combat. When the tension suddenly relaxes through the winning of a first objective, troops are apt to be pervaded by a sense of extreme well-being, and there is apt to ensue laxness in all its forms, and with all its dangers. He hammers this home. It might be well to speak

of the importance of enthusiasm, kindness, courtesy, and justice, which are the safeguards of honor and the tokens of mutual respect between man and man. This last there must be, if they are to go forward together, prosper in one another's company,

and find strength in the bonds of mutual service, and experience a common fallacity in the relationship between the leader and the lead loyalty is the big thing the greatest battle asset of all but no man ever wins the loyalty of troops by preaching loyalty no man ever wins the loyalty of troops by preaching loyalty it is given him by them as he proves his possession of the other virtues the doctrine of a blind loyalty to leadership is a selfish and futile military dogma, except insofar as it is ennobled by a higher loyalty in all ranks to truth and decency. War is too, war is much too brutal a business to have room for

brutal leading. In the end, its only effect can be to corrode the character of men, and when character is lost, all is lost. The bully and the sadist serve only to further encumber an army. Their subordinates must waste precious time clearing away the wreckage that they make. The good company has no place for the officer who would rather be right than be loved. For the time will quickly come when he walks alone. And in battle, no man may succeed in solitude. That's worth repeating. The good company has no place for the officer who would rather be right than be loved.

We talked about that when Jordan was all. You don't need to be right when you're dealing with your significant other. No. That's not important. I have known a few brutes in battle whose talents were so limited that they could try no other means of command than the abuse of men. But I have yet to see one who did a good job of holding his command together when the going became rough. And in the ranks, fear of the enemy began to eclipse fear of the man up top. Now, here comes the dichotomy.

Because he's talking about all these kindness and courtesy and justice. And then he says ruggedness Ruggedness toughness Ah these are quite different things So long as they are only the outer reflection of an inner determination And so long as the inner fire is tempered by a heart Having real compassion for men These are the best hands for the business

They will win the hearts of other men and will stimulate their valor These others will try to be like them For it is a truth not to be denied that the rugged way is the natural way in battle dichotomy right there it tells this quick story there comes to mind one last picture from the same campaign the scene is stone walled Fort Montberry the last obstacle barring entry into breasts a battalion of the 116th Infantry Regiment under major Tom Dallas has had the fort invested for three days but the defenders have withdrawn to

within the inner walls and will not surrender the infantry fire cannot get at them the ports have been flamed but without visible effect finally Dallas acts for three tons of TNT to blow the walls he is given one ton assisted by the infantry the engineers lay the charge in a gallery under the wall the work completed Dallas is ready to give the orders. Then he remembers. On the night before, the battalion had attacked,

and Lieutenant Durwood C. Settles had been killed in the moat. There had been no chance to recover the body. It is still there and will be crushed by the falling masonry. So the demolition is held up, and Dallas asks for a volunteer to go down to the moat, under fire, and bring out the body. A young lieutenant named Kelton responds. In a few minutes,

Kelton returns with his burden. He says to Dallas, we are ready now. Dallas replies, ready? Then blow them all to hell. The charge goes off, the earth shakes. The walls collapse with a roar. There is a stunned silence from within the fort.

Dallas stands there for a few seconds and the tears fall as he looks down at the body of his dead officer and that is loyalty Close us out with a couple more things in every action large or small is decided by what happens up there on the line with where men take the final chance of life or death Though I would not for a moment contend that modern war can be fought in one without vigorous thought and action on the home front, I deny absolutely that these things can vouchsafe military victory any more now than in the days when men fought with spears and crossbows. Any who look at war and think otherwise are citing through the wrong end of the telescope. They have become deceived by the vastness of the national preparation. How differently they would see things if it became their duty to measure the thin margins

between victory and defeat on the field itself. The great victories of the United States have pivoted on the acts of courage and intelligence of a very few individuals. The time always comes in battle when the decisions of statesmen and of generals can no longer affect the issue and when it is not within the power of our national wealth

to change the balance decisively. Victory is never achieved prior to that point, It can only be one after the battle has been delivered into the hands of men who move in imminent danger of death Courage is the real driving force in human affairs and that every worthwhile action comes of some man daring what others fear to attempt the man who is willing to fight for his country is finally the full custodian of its security if there were no willing men no power in government could ever rally the masses of the unwilling to men who have been long in battle and have thought about it deeply there comes at last the awareness of this ultimate responsibility that one man must go ahead so that a nation may live and so the final and greatest reality that national strength lies only in the hearts and spirits of men

The army, navy, and air force are not the guardians of its national security. The tremendous problem of the future is beyond their capacity to solve. The search begins at the cradle, where the mother makes the decision either to tie her child to her apron strings or to rear him as a man. It continues through years of schooling when children are taught either to place personal interests uppermost or to think in terms of their responsibility toward their society their country and all of mankind and there you go strength lies in the hearts and spirits of men and freedom lies in the courage and the discipline of daring to attempt what others fear And I

Think that that reflects not just the strength and freedom of Nations of countries, but also of individuals We are ultimately responsible for ourselves for our own freedom for our own security. It is on us And I think that is one of the one of the most valuable lessons to learn from SLA Marshall and you know Unwillingly he also talked us a lesson about being truthful and honest which he was not and had he listened to some of his own teachings he might not have made that mistake to tarnish his reputation it's not worth it he failed to listen to his own lesson and maybe that's

the last thing we learned is that we just don't just don't talk the talk just don't preach but walk to walk and live the life live correctly and follow the rules that you've set for yourself and then you go and you live with the courage and the strength and the discipline so that you can truly free your mind and I think that's all I've got for tonight echo Charles yes so Speaking of strength and discipline and walking the walk and walking the walk and living the life staying on the path Maybe you've got some things that could help us uphold the personal standards that we set for ourselves Yes, I do I can I will SLA Marshall taught us a lesson he didn't want to teach us about that didn't he Yeah, you know is one of those things where I was kind of getting in to it you know like I'm like yeah dang yeah that's true that's true yeah that's and then like

like how you mentioned before I'm like wait but this guy but then you know it's like it's the dichotomy yeah it's a dichotomy it's an unfortunate dichotomy yeah see that's what man if this guy if this guy if we just knew about his normal military record and you never said he didn't have that stuff this would have so much more impact yeah the fact that he lied just just it it's all there's to it Jammed him up as as echo Charles would say But you know if you can how as it were Not throw the baby out with the bathwater

Yeah, yeah There's some good stuff in there. Yeah, I'll tell you what is possible is for us to stand the path And in that path on that path is Jiu Jitsu of course Right Better be should be should be in my in our opinion you actually said today that that was one quarter of your life it is in your in your in your life one quarter of the things you do is jiu jitzu yep of the total things that I do yeah important things because there's things that aren't on that list like go to the grocery store well going the grocery store does facilitate one of the other things in my life

you know okay it's not one of the things it is not one of the things no that's like saying oh breathing you know well broad breathing's not a party life well yeah but it facilitates other things you know what I'm saying okay so if that's the case does origin facilitate jiu-jitsu yes sir it does big time which is good right yes so eat food and you got to have origin yes check big time and okay so origin okay origin main dot com this is where you can get your ghii for jih Tzu if you haven't got one already go get one there's people out there who don't know any other ghee except for origin key actually someone contacted me was like hey I realize um you know origin is the ghee to get but before I buy one would you

consider donating one to my cause. I think they're like saving up for you know, you know, because sometimes that's how, you know, you save up for your gear or whatever. So I'm thinking, on one hand, the dichotomy, sure, I'm never using these other geese again. I wouldn't. Oh, I see. But on the other hand, why would I want to bestow a substandard gea on someone? Do you onto someone just starting, by the way? So it's like, boom, they got that. But then again, no, I'll get, I probably will. Assuming that the size, you know. All right. Well, that's neither here nor there. The point is, if you want to get a good geek, all made in America, various types, options.

I had, when we were in Maine, so after the camp was over, Pete and I were at the factory, we were just getting stuff done and planning and everything. But he went into depth, unweaving the fabric on the loom and everything. Bro. It's really crazy. I've got full understanding, though.

Yeah. And it's awesome. Yeah. It's awesome to see. It's interesting to see to watch Pete get into it just let him go. Yeah, let him talk. Oh, yeah, for sure. You see, oh, man, this, that's why these things are like so dope when you look at him and that's why that's why that's why the company is where it is. Yes, sir.

Because without that passion for him, for the team, like when you talk to anyone on the team at origin, they're like wanting this stuff to be awesome. Yeah. And so that's why it's that way. Yeah. So it's cool. If you ever get a chance to go to the. Factory up there it's worth checking out yeah because it isn't just like oh a factory It's like a factory you can kind of hang out there is kind of there's like a would you what do you call it like a pro shop? Yeah, you can kind of go in there and then they have it's like kind of open you can talk to the people it's good man that's good yeah So yeah oh yeah I would recommend that too in Farmington Maine by the way That's where it is anyway also on there is joggers and rash guards and clothes Yep for sure

sure the rash guards compression compression gear yeah we got supplements as well so we got for supplements joint warfare which is gonna help your joints for a bunch of different reasons I get awesome compliments about that that I was stoked on that krill oil also gonna help your joints and it's gonna help you're just a whole life and then you got the discipline which I'm on a lot of discipline right now and I didn't even realize we were in a three-hour podcast This moment in time through and we recorded a couple other podcasts today. Yeah shorter podcast but podcast nonetheless you over here getting the upper hand on life. Yeah, that's what's going on plus I did the three scoops of discipline. Yeah, I'm doing it I feel like I understand it. So discipline pre life pre mission pre function. Yeah pre function pre get some pre get some pre get some in any format mental format physical format

Matt my middle daughter took the ACTs on Saturday and she came home she I kind of fueled her up on some discipline before rolling in and she came back fired up yeah she was like yeah no I felt so I was getting off and I was like yeah you're just yeah yeah so it's one of those scoops I gave her and you know she's not as big as me no I still gave my girl three scoops of this way I'm down for the three scoops of discipline, by the way. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, it's kind of a double effect, and I could see how that could be,

especially if you're going into some situation, like a test. Yeah. Or even like a jiu-jitsu situation or whatever. You get it. Yeah, and then even afterwards, when you remember how, like, solid you were, you're like, you kind of gets you fired up. Yeah, it's true. It's like a double-layered.

You got fired up because you got fired up. You like that, don't you? Yes, I do. Very much. And, oh, yeah, and the last thing is, and it's the last, but certainly not the least. is something called mulk. If you want to know what mulk is,

it's real simple. Mulk is mulk. It's mulk straight up. Yeah, if you want some additional protein. I made milk pancakes straight out. How did you do it? Okay. Okay, so now you're going down

this rabbit hole. I did. Making mulk everything. Okay, here's the thing. I'm a sketch about the pancakes, right? First of all, I don't even like, I straight up don't even like pancakes at all. Yeah, it's interesting.

So for me to even think about making mulk pancakes, maybe it's something I could try, Maybe I would like it well if you don't like it here's the thing I'm not a moke pancake like expert at all Okay, so I don't even know how to make it well here's the thing is how I made them okay so I get tasked with Wait were they good because they weren't good and let's not talk about it oh they're real good Yeah, so did you put maple syrup on them I did Come on man I will say from origin main Okay, that's a well then again no I can't say that I don't think so not that I know of but I didn't read the bottle or nothing okay good though

Well, okay, on Saturdays or Sundays, depending, I get, I make pancakes. So only one day. And it's for the kids and all this stuff. So here's the thing. Oh, that's cool. Hey, you know what I'm going to do for your kids this weekend? I'm going to give you a bunch of carbohydrates and poison you. Yeah.

Well, in my defense. With maple syrup. I got these, or my wife got these paleo, it's paleo pancake mix. Okay. Check, check, check. Was that almond powder or something? I don't know. Okay.

Paleo pancake mix, check. So, boom, I go in. And, you know, pancake mix is like a, and kind of mix to create like a pancake consistency. I don't know anything like it. But then I'm like, wait, mold mix, milk mix, pancake mix. I could easily jam this whole thing up easily.

And I'm not making it just for me as an experiment. My kids are about to wake up. You see what I'm saying? Yeah, they're about to wake. But I give them milk pancakes. They are not correct. I will hear about it. And the whole thing is a flop.

Yeah. I guess technically I just make regular pancakes later, but it wasn't about that. Right then there, I was trying to deliver big time. So I can't just start throwing random ingredients and a recipe in the back of it. So this is what I did. It called for a cup and a third of pancake mix. I just put like a little less than a cup and then, you know, a third, little bit over a third cup.

Moke. Milk in there, a little bit of water, some MCT oil I put in. It calls for like you can put butter. And I did put butter, like grass fed butter, by the way. And there was, oh, and eggs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you put an egg, boom, mixed it all up, pancakes. Oh, I put chocolate chips in the form of a happy face, too.

We do that from time to time. And yeah, so we did that. Not at my house. Yeah, more like a sad face at your house. But boom, I make them a little bit darker, obviously, because the chocolate, it was the chocolate peanut butter, by the way. It wasn't the mint.

Yeah, well, yeah, there is darker brown. Yeah, not the mint too, by the way. I think that you're risking jamming up pancakes For the mint I think I don't know I didn't do it anyway. Yeah came up good boom maple syrup boom Big hit kids like it kids didn't know but they it had the peanut butter kind of flavor in there It's good yeah yeah so that's the milk it normally goes with milk or you can put it in water But that's like a ham sandwich whereas if you put milk in there it's like a delicious You know what it did too I put it two drops of vanilla in there oh Andy

Andy Burke came home from camp and we were just talking about camp and oh it's cool you know He's like, yeah, it was awesome meeting everyone and training and blah, blah, blah. And he's like, you know what I really like, though? And I was like, oh, what? He said, this is my first time having mold. Yeah, you told me that, too. He's all amped up.

He's like, this is surprisingly good. Like, bro, we already knew that. And I was like, oh, you, you. Do you think people don't believe it? Is your instinct to think, oh, this is some kind of a supplement? It's going to taste bad. I just have to deal with it, but this one may maybe taste okay. And therefore, you know, these guys are talking up.

Yeah. But the real, the real thing. The reality is it's good like a dessert straight up It's like a milkshake yep that's the milk and has is good for you that's the crazy thing all right so cool Then you get all that stuff at origin main dot com yes and also jaco store it's called jaco store and this is where you can get shirts Houdies rash other rash guards more more skewed towards the path the message We'll call it the message anyway there's some cool stuff on there. If you want to represent,

discipline equals freedom, because discipline does equal freedom, by the way. That's one of those things. Like, you can think about that for like 20 days and it'll make more and more sense over the 30 days. And then after two years, and in my case three years, makes even more sense. Even more

sense. You see it everywhere. Discipline goes, yeah, and so it does. And if you want to represent jocco store.com, that's where you can get the stuff. Cool stuff on there. Some new stuff on there, too, by the way. Really? Yes. i.e. Because you're always making stuff I don't even know about decentralized command style.

Well, we got a few novelty items. Noveled. What is even is that? You know, I'm assuming if I have it correctly, it's just something that's pretty cool, you know. You got to go in there and find out. A novelty item? Sure. You think people are going to be, you think people on the path are out spending their hard-earned money on novelty items?

Is that what's going on? Well, there's always layers, so it's not just novelty. You're still representing big time. 100% But some One of the layers is just Quite novel in my opinion Anyway go there

Jocco store.com I actually have no idea What you're talking about Yeah well don't want that's why you gotta go to Jocco store com Yeah Anyway hats on there as well A lot of just cool stuff

Anyway jacco store.com Good way to support Good way to stay on the path It's just good all around Good Yeah did you see What was it What's his name

Not what's the name but the, you know, the Nike commercial, right? You know, the Nike commercial's been in the news, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Whatever. And Theo Vaughn was like, hey, did Nike borrow from Jack? Yeah, Theo, put that out. What's up, Theo?

You know what that is? Maybe, maybe not obviously. You know, when you look at it, it's like, hey, yeah, they did the same thing. Put it that way. I know where they got it from me or not. Okay, whatever. But they did do the same thing. But here's what I really got from that whole.

thing especially his video how he did it he's like watch it yeah what I did it really illustrated that that concept like how we talk about all the time where when you when someone says good like that it really stands out now like you you see that everywhere even if you see the word good written on the on a sign or something you're like hey this to what Chocco said you know see what I'm saying so it sticks out in your mind is way more and again whether that happened or not that's a weird word to pick yeah that's not that's a weird word to pick for the ad for the Nike ad

It's a little bit of a weird word to pat To pick It's a little bit It's not a normal word to pick Yeah in my opinion It's a it's a good word to pick But anyways In a nonetheless

Good That's it's all good man You're the man Also good way to Support Did Theo kind of had my back though Didn't he? Oh big time

Yeah what's up Yeah and it makes sense to yeah just the whole deal I mean you know but yeah I think that when you hear that you I always hear oh jock I just hear you saying it you know even if I see the word good in all caps in a regular sentence like in a different context

it'll remind me of it you know what I'm saying it just sticks out like that anyway good way support also is to subscribe on iTunes and Stitcher if you're enjoyed Google play and you know wherever you listen to your pod your podcast just subscribe and and don't forget that there is the warrior kid podcasts you know of which we recorded a couple more today so we've got some

fresh ones out there I apologize for to everyone for taking so long to get those out life got the upper hand a little bit we back but that's life yeah they had to get default aggressive this weekend and just crush some of those yeah so warrior kid podcast for your kids and for well well really uncle Jake has lessons for everybody Also warrior kid there's a warrior kid at Irish oaks ranch.com aiden He's up there working hard and he's making he's got a business He's making soap jaco soap good soap yeah good soap yeah and you can get that there help help yourself And you help yourself by stay staying clean. That's the idea

Stay clean Yeah the YouTube channel if you want to see Echoes legit video. Did you do? Did you? Did you? Did you post the video that you just made? Forgive. The revenge. I called the revenge video. You called the forgive video. That's interesting.

Yeah, that is interesting. There's something strange there. I have not posted that yet, but yes, yes. That's the YouTube video. YouTube channel, which is called Jocko Podcast. It's a YouTube channel. You can watch all the YouTube videos on there, and then you can leave crazy comments from some anonymous thing

about all kinds of crazy stuff, which is fun. Whatever you like. Also back back to working out I got ring okay on it dot com on it the company on it dope I got rings I told you recently here's the thing about rings I think is on again I said before where you know you're always preaching about the rings right it's like one of the what do you call it the staples it's actually in many ways considered to me to be the first thing you could get if you if you had one thing you could get you could get rings and you could do really well with them yeah and I'm I'm now reaping the the benefit

of the rings. I've got the rings. On it rings. They're like, they're actually pretty dope. They're like wood. Yeah, we got to get wood rings. I always tell everyone get wood rings,

not plastic rings, not metal rings, get wood rings because they absorb the sweat. They, yeah, anything else is slippery. They'll get some, yeah, it's horrible. Yeah, so, and my kids are, you know,

and they're adjustable. You know, I mean, I've only had on it rings. So they're cool. They're adjustable by number and it's all the stuff. So my kids, two years old and five years old, like they'll swing on them. Like, they get real creative with them. Anyway.

No, not. yet but I'll do the all these little functional things anyway there's a lot to be gained with the rings I'm a agree I'm a believer of the rings now and now I would agree with you 100% that that should be kind of the the first thing I think I used to say a pull-up bar

but you might as well get rings because you can do pull-ups and you can do dips and you can do dips and you can do push-ups and you can do like weird kind of squatting planking all kinds of stuff oh yeah ab stuff iron cross and here which I can't do by the way just in case any gets the idea that I can do an iron cross I'm here to tell you I cannot even come close yeah that'd be pretty impressive it's impressive even if a little guy can do yeah but here's the

thing about rings and pull-ups specifically this is why it's better than a pull-up bar because pull-ups pull-up bar is cool and it's good really good I've had a pull-up bar for a long time but the rings is like yeah you can adjust for pull-ups and then you can adjust them down so you can do kind of like a rose situate you can they're all adjustable yeah you can do some rings oh man that's the overall that's the overall It expanded my workout literally by like 30%. Dang. 30.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because there's other, like, I use them every single time. Yeah. Different exercises majorly. Anyway, anyway, those are rings. There's a lot of other cool stuff on on it.com. So yeah, man.

Browse around. See what up. Check. Psychological warfare album. We're working on the next one. I'm thinking that the next one is not going to come out. It's going to come out right around Christmas is my guess. Yeah.

So if you have anything, somebody wants one about, shopping compulsive how do I shop stop compulsive shopping yeah I don't know if I can tackle that one you know why I have no compulsion to shop I don't even like shopping I don't even like going to the store you don't know I don't buy anything what the demons of shopping yeah look like I've seen no I I I will say I've seen it because you see people that buy things that they can't really afford so I guess maybe we could talk about it because yeah no actually now that I think about it I can talk about that yeah we can we can we can put together a little something so

Psychological warfare if you got little moments of Weakness you want to overcome I can talk to you personally about that Through your iPhone Google Play iTunes mp3 through your through your Android I don't want to leave you all out through your Samsung Right sure

Equal Opportunity platform Devices In every scenario I'd say Yeah and also you can get that joccal white day I'm on that train too There's a lot of trains in the joccal situation Supplementation situation. It's been hot. Yeah, and well when it was hot up in Maine at the camp How good did that tea taste legit?

Because it had it chilled on the camera That was ridiculous, man, exactly right. That was just crazy So yeah, you can get that the the dry tea as well if you want to brew your own tea now that winter is coming You need to get the hot tea so you can have a little little warmth on your throat But that was never really your thing, right? No, it wasn't, but it is now. Yeah, yeah, you make the adjustment. You're like, oh, I've been missing out on this.

Yeah, because sometimes, sometimes you just, like, it's a little chilly out. You need a little comfort. Yeah, sure, comfort, man. That's what you need all the time. Jocko, comfort, solid. Okay, so then I also got some books. We got the way of the warrior kid and Mark's mission.

This is for kids between the ages of four and 84 because everybody can get something Yeah you got my five year old Fired up about Getting the job by the way Yeah in the second book Mark who's a young character in the book wants to get

Once get a new bike But he needs money in order to get money Guess what you need you need a job son Yeah, you need a job or sell some stuff Or sell some stuff or a job and sell some stuff Or that's what he has to do So yeah if you want to give your kids a good book that will teach them about discipline, hard work, being kind.

But the dichotomy of being strong, it's all in there. Yeah, man. It's so, and it's all in there. You explain it. Well, you, Uncle Jake, whoever, one of you guys, it's good how you explain it in real simple terms. And then you get this kid Mark, especially in the side. I'm talking about the second corner right now where he's like, he kind of, he over, came some stuff he's super strong right now you know but still a lot to learn so he

understands it and then at first he's like questioning it then he starts to understand any questions it then he understands then he's fired up about doing it you know I mean because he gets but it's really good and that's literally how like the kid whoever you're reading in my case I'm reading to my daughter by the way she's five and I watch her getting just as fired up as Mark when he's like I'm a business owner she's like oh my god yeah she gets fired up really good man really it's interesting to see the little transit yeah I I've get so much good feedback anyways that's that way the warrior kid and Mark's mission also the discipline equals freedom field manual

Which is solid which is solid. It's a good daily Reminders. It's not you don't need to read that whole book every day. You can read one you can read three pages And you can get yourself you know you might have been veering off the path a little bit get yourself right back on the path Yeah, it's a good thing to read you could like read that read it a page two pages three pages every day It will would you I would say this it will absolutely help you if you read three pages a day Yeah that's a bold statement too yeah I'm saying this book a book this isn't a this isn't a this isn't a This isn't a an exercise program this isn't a supplement that you take this isn't a this isn't a Treatment that you get this is a book pages in a book if you read them it's gonna help you

That's that's what my statement is and I believe it to be true why because I read it I wrote the damn thing and I still read it and it's helpful and then we got extreme ownership which is combat leadership eroded with my brother Laif Babin and how to take the principles that we learn in combat and use them in in in your business and life and the follow-on book to that the dichotomy of leadership which I'd mention the word dichotomy quite a bit Dean Lister says it's my favorite word I'm not so sure it's my favorite word I think my favorite word is discipline but I don't know if I have a favorite word anyways I do talk about that I

I mean a lot because the dichotomy is present in everything that we do so if you want to get this book it comes out September 25th if you want to get the first dish you should order it yesterday or right now because Well, you don't want to miss out on the first edition. I got my first copies. I'm all the one right there there it is so Dicotomy Leadership order it now September 25th. It'll come to your door Speaking of leadership we got a leadership consulting company called Echelon Front and we solve problems through leadership It's me it's Leif it's J.P. Denele Dave Burke flin Cochran we also got Mike Sorelli on board we got a couple new members joining the team right now If you want us to come to your company go to a echelonfront.com. That's what we do also the muster in San Francisco

California getting close to sold out. We probably have a little bit left right now and Maybe by the time this podcast comes out it might be sold out if you want to come to the muster leadership event San Francisco California October 17th and 18th all the other ones have sold out This one is going to sell out too if you want to come don't wait till the last minute don't wait until I post on Social media that the muster sold out and then call up and say can we please fit one more people because we can't if we could we wouldn't say it was sold out So just just register now for the muster and for current uniform personnel military law enforcement border patrol firefighters paramedics first first responders we got the roll call September 21st we just opened up a few more seats I think we opened up 50 more seats we done that twice now but it's

gonna be I don't know if we'll be able to do it again because registration's gonna be closing soon that is also registered at extreme ownership dot com and of course now we have EF overwatch where we are connecting spec ops veterans combat aviation veterans with companies that need solid, proficient leaders that understand and can bring

the attitude of extreme ownership into your company. If you want to, on either side, if you're a vet and you want to get in, look for a job, if you're someone that needs a leader in your company, go to EF Overwatch, com to get in the game and if you want to keep cruising with Echo Charles and me and you're not at one of those events or you're not at one of those events yet

Well then you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter on Instagram and on Facebook Epoch ECHO is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and lastly to everyone that is serving and that has served in the US military Thanks to you and your families for shielding us from evil and keeping us free and to police law enforcement correctional officers border patrol firefighters paramedics other first responders here at home Thanks for being vigilant and protecting us and our families and to everyone else out there Keep learning keep striving keep trying to figure out where you can get better and be better and it isn't easy and it takes courage and it takes strength and it takes discipline day after day after day to get up and face the unforgiving world and get after it so until next time this is echo and jocco out