Jocko Podcast - 144: We Lie To Ourselves. An Interview with Col. David Hackworth.

Episode Date: September 26, 2018

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:23 - PBS Interview with Col. David Hackworth. 1:31:01 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:36:24 - How to Stay on the Path / Support. 2:20:12 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 144 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. And a few episodes back, I referenced an interview that I had read with Colonel David Hackworth, the author of About Face, my favorite book of all time, check. And it was actually on podcast number 142. And I referenced this interview and I said I would cover it in the future on a podcast. So here we are 144.

The interview is from PBS.org. They had a show called People's Century. And inside that show, inside that series, there was one part of it. I guess maybe it was an episode. It was called The Guerrilla War. So we're going to take a look at that. Also, on top of that, to expand on some of the topics. I'm also going to take a look at a book called Vee.

Vietnam primer and it's it's a pretty cool book. It's very tactical and when I say tactical I'm not talking about I'm talking actual tactical like it shows where you should put your security elements while you're in Vietnam what's the best way to maneuver through the jungle in Vietnam it's very very specific to that kind of jungle fighting but there are definitely some topics in it that I wanted to pull out and that is the book in about face when Hackworth is talking about working with SLA Marshall, which we covered his book on 142. He's talking about how he worked with him. And they wrote, when they got done with going and interviewing all these people, they wrote the book, Vietnam Primer.

And so I wanted to at least take a look at that. I probably won't cover it any great depth on the podcast because it's so tactical and it's very specific to that time. and maybe I'll cover it someday, but because you never know. Well, anyways, there's definitely some things to get out of it that I want to look at, and we'll pull some of those up today. But the basis is to look at this interview with Hackworth, and I think you're going to see it. It takes a lot of stuff from about face and just really puts it in the clear.

Gotcha. In the clear. So here we go. People's Century. guerrilla wars and this is the interview with David Hackworth from PBS what do you think the Viet Cong learned from Mount Satan and Hackworth says I think the major thing was how a poor man fights a rich man how a war can be fought employing ancient rules first developed by Sun Su the need for patience the need for political motivation the need to fight a war

of economy and how to employ all the rules of warfare. So there you go. That's a little way to start this thing off. The need for patience. The need for political motivation. He gets into this. And he talks a lot about the economy because that's something that you can lose track of as a front line person, but you need to think about it.

Next, this is very interesting. What lessons should the Americans have learned from the French defeat. So the French got beaten Vietnam and here's what Hackworth says. Well, I think the major lesson they should have learned was that that war

didn't involve the security of France and the security of the United States wasn't at issue either. On a tactical level, they didn't have an objective. They didn't have an objective on a tactical level. So clearly the point is you have to have an objective.

He goes on. The Americans should have studied the lessons of the French very closely and taken something from them. A correspondent once asked General Westmoreland, the American commanding general and architect of the war, what he thought of how the French fought the war, and was he studying the lessons of the French? He said, why should I study the lessons of the French? They haven't won a war since Napoleon.

This was the attitude of American total arrogance. We didn't learn from the past. We didn't learn from our own experience by going back to when we beat Britain in 1776. At that time, the British had argued that we didn't fight in formations such as theirs, a big block formation. We didn't meet them in the open and fought like, and we fought like the Indians, behind trees, using concealment and cover and so on. And a couple hundred years later, we had the British mentality towards fighting. And we had forgotten the lessons that we had taught the British. That stings, doesn't it?

When that ego gets out of control. Yeah. Can you, think about the, think about that, that quote from Westmoreland is awful. Why should I study the lessons of French? They hadn't won a war since Napoleon. Yeah. That's, that's, that's awful to read.

That is why, that is why the, The seals that when I was running training the seals that would get fired the leader the seals that would get fired For leadership problems or from leadership positions They would be getting fired because of that attitude right there they don't listen to anybody And and what's interesting about this hackworth is actually saying the lose you should actually even listen to the loser Put that ego and check next question Don't you think that the United States' tremendous firepower could have won the war.

Hackworth. The war could never have been won in terms of the employment of firepower. The solution to winning the war was to cause reform in the government, to win the hearts and minds of the people, to make the cause justifiable so that the people of the country were willing to give up their lives. This was not done. You could have used all the firepower in the world, all the technical ability that the,

US had to fight the enemy and you'd have maybe won a temporary tactical respite That's that's important because you know something sometimes you think yourself well if we just if we put enough bombs on them Yeah, we we can shut them down I mean short of nuking them But I think that's important he's saying you could maybe possibly win because I think ourselves yeah I mean if you drop enough bombs on people you know you can you can shut them down but he's saying you can you can win a tactical a temporary tactical respite back to the interview but we'd never won a war strategically unless we had people had the people join our side we'd I'm gonna read that again but we'd never have won the war strategically unless we had the people

on our side the war was about the people and winning over their hearts and their minds and their allegiance to the host country the host country in Vietnam was made up of gangsters next question but you weren't there as a soldier to win hearts and minds you were there strictly for military purposes hackworth if you were a student of warfare if you were a student of warfare as I was you quickly realized that tactically we were not going to win the war and we had to win the people and this is basically the same conclusion you know when I got to Iraq the second time and I saw the Intel reports and

and saw that what we were doing was the capture kill missions and and I saw that they had as many targets You know, I was in Iraq 2003 2004 and they had as many targets up on the wall in 2006 when I got back as they had when I left So that to me said this is just that when is this is this ever gonna stop? It didn't look like it to me We had to do something different and that's when I read the counterinsurgency manual by my Second day on deployment or something like that and and and figured out what he was saying right there He had to you had to take care of the people Next question So were the efforts to resettle whole villages of Vietnamese a good way to fight this war?

Hackworth no because the Americans again tried to impose their values on the country of Vietnam without Understanding the culture and the religion of Vietnam it was a country made a of Buddhists who worshipped ancestors frequently listen to this frequently people who had been moved from their homes would go through minefields to get back to worship at the graves of their ancestors We didn't understand that we didn't understand what the Vietnamese culture was all about So imagine that you think you can just you think you just move people around No, no actually you can't do that that that ground is holy to them that grand is where their family is they have deep rooted ties and we didn't recognize that next question what do you think was so particularly good about the viet Cong's guerrilla

fighters what did you as a military man respect about them most hackworth i respected their dedication the fire in their belly their great strong belief in freedom so that's interesting because of course we're looking at them we're looking at the vietnamese thinking they're communist and they're We think we're fighting for our for for freedom. Right? But and this is other this is A fairly common opinion about Vietnam is Is that they just didn't want outsiders. Like they saw any outsiders were were imposing on their freedom So even if we were going to bring glorious democracy. It wasn't their glorious democracy saying they want it. Yeah,

Back to the interview. Theirs was a mission, a complete dedication to winning independence for their country. So there you have it. So I respected them for where they were coming from. Maybe it was empathy. My ancestors two or three hundred years ago had fought for the British. Or sorry, had fought the British. What about their strategy and tactics?

Hackworth. As fighters, they were very fanatical and very dedicated. They were like my paratroopers, who, extraordinarily fine soldiers a soldier tends to respect a counterpart that's a heavy weight and they were indeed heavy weights because of their devotion to the cause next question a female guerrilla leader said that sometimes when they shot an American soldier his comrades would come up to get the body and then they'd all burst into tears which she said was a wonderful opportunity to shoot them or to

grab their weapons is that a fair comment Hackworth. It's right on the mark. The problem with Americans fighting that war was that as the war went on, they lost leadership. They lost their hardcore professional leaders. A professional soldier does not go after wounded. He leaves that to the medics. But soldiers that are not well trained and not well disciplined by their leaders tend to become more of a group of fraternity buddies who care very much for their fallen comrade and who want to get him out of the line of fire in Vietnam it was known that the standard technique to use was to hit the first guy then take out anybody going after him that was how they'd add to their casualty list I've had my soldiers tell me that a guy might have been hit in the leg in a hot firefight and his opponent only 10 or 15 feet away would be pointing at pointing his weapon at him giving him the finger doing all these things to tease him while he's waiting for someone to come out and pull him away, then they could blow that guy away too.

Prioritize and execute. You've got to know what the most important problem you've got, and it's not the wounded guy. It's the guy that's trying to kill you. And you've got to be able to train your guys to be able to overcome that emotional situation that they're going through because that's going to be the instinct. That's the human instinct. Next question. The Viet Cong hit in the jungle, but in the May Kong Delta, there really isn't any jungle.

So where did the viet Cong hide? I like this answer Hackworth well They were hidden in the jungle that was always alongside the waterways which tended to be very thick and well booby trapped out in front They were hidden by the people they hid in the waterways they would get underwater and take a reed and put it above the water and breathe through that Then surround themselves with a bit of floating Neepa grass They would dig caves under the waterways and then put a bit of river of reed up to the top and breathe through that they were very very cunning fighters yeah that's that's like what you hear about in the movies right the little

read yeah breathing through a read and they're actually doing that he goes into that more here next question did you have any personal experience of finding viet Cong lurking under the water surface hackworth oh commonly if we saw a bit of NEPA floating down a waterway a bit of jungle debris We fired at it in invariably it would turn red. That meant that below was a Viet Cong hanging onto the roots of the debris with a reed going up to get air and we'd killed one enemy. Once we located them, I always took concertina wire

and put it on both sides of the creek so they couldn't float down. They'd run into the wire. I instructed my soldiers to fire at any foliage, and in most cases there would be a Viet Cong hanging on trying to get out. They were simply the most skillful, the most dedicated, the best opponent. I've struck in almost 50 years of being around soldiers. They're the best. Question.

What other problems were unique in the May Kong Delta? The problem in the Delta was not only the terrible conditions that prevailed there, but it was the impact it had on your soldiers. I'm speaking now as an American. We had terrible casualties from what we called immersion foot. immersion foot was the problem in world war one called trench foot after being in the water for a long time the feet would become very soft and the boot rubbing against the foot would become very abrasive suddenly you've had it you'd have a hole in your foot the size of a bullet hole and suddenly you're a lost soldier we had to be you had to be very wary and take care of the feet there was no place to sleep so you were in the water at night your soldiers were in the water and you stayed miserable and wet my rule was that a unit could only stay in the field for five days after five days immersion foot set in so badly that a whole battalion of 800 men could be laid up for weeks

I got immersion foot one time yeah I got legit immersion foot and where so I was doing a training exercise in it was added it was we were doing a training exercise doing a reconnaissance of an airfield that was located around a swamp so I spent five or six days in this swamp and it not the whole five or six days but a good amount of days and plus the days I wasn't in the swamp there was heavy rain so just my feet were wet for an extended period of time and actually on this particular training exercise when we were going into the field it was raining when we got in the field that started sleeping you know like like ice and that turned to snow and so it was right around you know and then in

the daytime it warmed up And it would turn back to rain, but it was a pretty miserable six days. Yeah, but when I got out of the field and and quite frankly, I didn't really understand the threat of immersion foot. And so I just kept my boots on probably almost the whole time. And when I got out, my feet were really jacked up, really jacked up. As a matter of fact, I was looking at some pictures just to see how bad I had it compared to how bad it can get. I just looked at some pictures on, you know, on the interwebs. And my feet were jacked up.

Yeah. Legit. Well, I mean, obviously this is, I mean, I've never heard immersion foot, but that's a common. You've heard a trench foot, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's common knowledge, right? Yeah. Because remember, um, Forrest Gump, when he said that when he's like, uh, Lieutenant Dan, when he met him, he's like, I'm going to tell you two things or whatever.

And one of them was. Keep your socks. Keep your socks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's definitely a common thing. Yeah.

He's, he talks about it a lot. You know, you got to inspect guys' feet and make sure their feet are good to go. Yeah. When guys feet aren't good to go, they're done. You can't walk, you're done. But my feet, from that immersion foot, they were numb. They were numb like dead. Why?

Because it got cold or? It was just, I guess it's just the wetness. Yeah. When it was cold, it only snowed and rain, it only was below freezing that first night. And then it was warmer, but they were wet for a long time. Yeah. Huh.

That was when I was young and really dumb. Take off your shoes. Does it like, does the pain set in then? No, they were actually, they went, they went, they didn't hurt at, no, they did. But they didn't hurt, they could hurt more when I got out of the field. Yeah. That's when they started to hurt. Yeah.

They were actually numb. Yeah, because, I mean, the way I imagined it is like, you know how, I don't know, you're in the pool or the bath or, you know, when you're a kid, you're in the bath for like super, super long. Yeah. And you get the wrinkle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like prunes or whatever.

Yeah, that's what it is. The prunes, pruned up feet. But at the same time. Times five days, six days. Yeah, going like too far kind of yeah because they seem kind of sensitive too when you think about it, you know like oh they're kind of sensitive Nasty. It's like oh man. So Next next next question. Why were you men in the water? Why didn't they walk along the banks or along pathways between paddy fields? Hackworth. You could expect any dry surface was mined and booby trapped and

60% of all casualties we had in Vietnam came from mines and booby traps laid. I might add by those local Gorillas who the generals at the top Westmoreland and assistance didn't count So he's saying the local guerrillas they talk about the the the generals like Westmoreland would say oh, you know There's this many people and they wouldn't count the local populace or these local guerrillas as Insurgents Oh, yeah Continuing they didn't believe that they were the enemy because their mentality was a world war two mentality. They didn't understand the name of the war they were refighting World War II and they thought they could win the war by

applying heavy firepower the outpourings of Detroit and great technological ability they thought they would steamroll this opponent into defeat they found that a war could not be won with bulldozers against somebody fighting with great cause next question but after the TED offensive didn't the heavy bombing raids actually take a very heavy toll on the Viet Cong. Hackworth. Well, General LeMay said, if I had enough bombs, I could win this war

because I'd blast the Vietnamese back to the Stone Age. What he didn't understand was that the Vietnamese were already living in the Stone Age and that firepower wouldn't work under those circumstances. I do think you're correct that at the end of Tet, 1968, February, 1968, We increased the amount of bomb tonnage out of frustration. Vietnam is a country about the size of California in terms of area.

We used three times the amount of bombs in the Vietnam War as we did in all of World War II. Both the Allies and the Axis. How's that for just completely insane? We put enough steel on that California-sized target to sink it. And it did not cause the opponent to give in. Firepower was not the answer. The answer was to win. the hearts and minds of the people.

Question, why didn't firepower work? Hackworth, well, what firepower did using pursuit aircraft, fighter aircraft, fighter bombers, artillery, mortar, and so on, what it did was it galvanized the opponent. It put steel in their back. They could see themselves being struck by a giant and they had no way, no recourse to strike back.

It, as it did historically with the British in World War II, it put fire in their belly. It was absolutely the worst thing we could do in Vietnam. It gave them a tonic to fight harder. So we've covered that on the podcast about how the Brits, when the Brits got bombed psychologically, it made them tougher. Because there's something happening. This massive attack comes.

Well, it seems like a massive attack. It's something you can't control something. You can't fight back. But when you bomb a city, of a million people, there's actually a small number that actually get impacted by it. So everyone else goes, hey, we can survive this. And so that's what happened with the Vietnamese. You drop these giant bombs.

I guess what? I'm still here. You can't do anything to me. America, big America with your big bombs. I'm still right here. What do you got? Now I'll tell you what, if the recent fighting in Iraq against ISIS, there's been a A lot of bombing and the bombing has been,

let's just say it was a very, very productive. Very, very productive. And they killed a lot, a lot, thousands and tens of thousands of ISIS fighters. And even with that being said, there was ground forces that had to move in, but man, they did a lot of devastating, devastating destruction of the Emmy with that stuff. So I think in certain situations, you can have a massive impact with firepower. Yeah. But isn't that like like are you said like isn't that like because of intelligence that they had and stuff like there was more more to it than just hey let's just

Yeah yeah and and and the ISIS were easier targets and not only not only easier targets But better weaponry because man if you look at the number like I remember reading something about a bridge that they were trying to take out in Vietnam Yeah and they launched mission after mission after mission after mission and drop bomb after bomb after It's hard. It was hard back then to actually hit something like a bridge with a bomb. Gotcha. Okay. You know what I'm saying? We'll have to get we'll have to get Dave Burke on here. Good deal, Dave. We'll have to get him on here and and talk about how hard that is with dumb bombs because you know everyone says smart bombs now. Those were dumb bombs. You had to basically you got to eyeball it. Yeah, yeah. You're like eyeballing this thing. Can you imagine how hard that is? Like okay, we get that if you just want to bomb this general, this. city right you can just drop bombs on the city okay I get you can hit that but you're

trying to hit a bridge yeah can you imagine how hard that's got to be yeah I do because I used to play this game called Mario Kart right so it's like a split screen it's the track and you get these weapons right and you're playing your friend who's sitting right next to you because it's a split screen and you can pick up these weapons so two of the weapons were the turtle shell that's a red one and a green one the red one was a smart turtle shell it like seek the other guy out but the green one just went in the exact direction that you should shot it. So imagine you're on a track, you're taking turns, just way harder with a green shell,

you know? So back in Vietnam was a green shell. Nowadays, we've got the red shell. You pretty much fully understand this. It's the same thing. Check. All right, with that, we'll go back to the interview. Next question. When you were active in the May Kong Delta, was it difficult to tell who was Viet Cong and who was civilian? Hackworth. I was in the ninth division and our commander was General Julian Ewell who was called the butcher of the Delta. The policy of the division was that it didn't matter if it moved, shoot it, and then count it.

Theoretically, civilians were supposed to be away from the battle area. They would say this is a free fire zone but without realizing the tradition of the people to go back to their homestead. So regardless of the danger, they would go back to where their ancestors were and then they were considered

Viet Cong and fair game There were an enormous number of casualties who were civilians but all the civilians You have to understand were sympathetic Certainly in my part of the Delta To the Viet Cong effort Most of the people in the rural areas of Vietnam Were sympathetic to the Viet Cong cause

They had won the hearts and minds Of the Vietnamese people They felt that their cause was more just It had a more nationalistic purpose question you were once flying in a helicopter over the delta and you saw some people running along and you fought their civilians their children hackworth yes one day we were doing what's called eagle flies which is a platoon of infantry helicopters five six soldiers per helicopter and i was controlling everything in a command to control helicopter the pilot in the front seat of my helicopter said there are four enemies streaking across the field request permission to fire as commander i would grant that permission. I looked down and I saw four little kids. So I said negative, those are little kids. They're just playing hooky from school or something. Leave them alone. And I went ahead and inserted my

platoon and let them maneuver through the area. Suddenly they took fire from those poor little kids who were probably no more than 12 or 13 years old and had stashed their AK-47s. So I was wrong. My previous experience had been up in the highlands. That was one of my first days in the Delta and I was learning that just about anybody in that battlefield, sadly enough, was a hostile. Question, were they ever helpful to you? Hackworth, again, he hits it here. 60% of all casualties, 60% of all U.S. casualties during that war were from mines and booby

traps that were set out by these local people who had built them and installed them. Ironically enough, the top generals never counted those people as part of the enemy's order of battle, even though they accounted for about 300,000 people. They were conveniently dropped from the rolls. They were only counted when they were found dead. Going into any battle area, if we picked up a civilian, he became our point man against the Geneva Convention. The assumption was that if this cat lived here, he knew how to get through this area

without losing a leg or a life he could lead our forces through. So that's again We've covered this a bunch But the local populace There's they're walking through these Trow down these trails every single day And they're not hitting any booby traps And then you lose a guy today

You lose a guy tomorrow Eventually you realize that they At a minimum they know where these booby traps are And Hackworth saying they're the ones that set him up Made him and set him up Oh yeah So it mentioned against the Geneva Convention Yeah to grab a civilian

So they're they're sort of grabbing them in what Forcing them Yeah, like hey, you're gonna walk. Yeah, like you're gonna walk out in front. You're gonna take us through this trail. Like a hostage of sorts. Yeah, almost like a hostage of source, yeah. Next question.

What was a simple booby trap? Well, the pungy steak was a no-brainer. Normally they were set in a position where they would strike your ankle. It would scratch you, you were in filthy water, you'd get an infection. I had a pungy wound and I didn't know it. I must have got it in the morning and it bled a lot.

I didn't know until I got out of the water and looked at my boot and it was soaking red from blood. There was a wound that looked very much like as if someone had taken a razor and made about a three-inch long slash in my leg. It became infected. That was the problem. It wasn't a long-term wound. It was something that put you down for a few days.

It had to be cleaned out, debrided. Then it would be stitched up and you were fine. The real killer was the coffee can filled with explosives from a dud American round. Everything they used, we gave them. We threw away our C ration cans, we threw away our used batteries, we threw away our coffee cans. If a 500-bound bomb didn't explode, that provided them with the raw materials for their booby traps. So they set up their booby trap factory. They opened up the mine, they took out the explosives, packed it in a can,

wrapped barbed wire and nails and other things around it, got a primer device from a grenade that was left behind, put a trip wire on it, and set it on the side of the road. When the first soldier hit it, he would lose his life, and maybe three or four people behind him would be down. I've seen what we call number 10 cans, the large cans, packed full of C4, and so filled with nails to have a fragment effect, that it could take down 10 or 12 people. The impact on the soldier was a psychological impact, that every time you put your foot down, you didn't know whether you were going to have a leg, a limb, or a life. then this played over and over for 365 days of going down trails, going down waterways. It took the fight out of you. I took over the battalion down at the Delta.

It was called the Hard Luck Battalion in six months before I took it over. It had 600 casualties, killed and wounded, all from mines and booby traps. It had never met the enemy. It was all from these insidious little, devices put down by these people that the generals didn't count because they didn't understand the nature of the war Yeah, and I think I think the numbers for Iraq was 75% of the casualties were from IEDs 75% I'll have to confirm that but it whatever it was it's a huge number It's a huge number

It's it must be an odd feeling to find that you know like dang they made that bomb out of our stuff like especially at first when you used to it it's different like you're like what if you came across the results of a bomb and it's like dang I was just using that coffee can you know like two days ago or something like that well yeah that's why disciplined soldiers wouldn't leave anything behind ever yeah but lack of disciplined soldiers would leave all the stuff here now sometimes you drop bombs and they don't detonate that's so they can't really fault anyone for that but yeah coffee cans and they they they they they they they talk taught us when I when I was going through training

They taught us like we weren't allowed to leave anything behind Yeah couldn't leave anything behind because we didn't want the enemy to use it Yeah, it's the way it was and you know what the you know what the Iraqis the Iraqis did the same thing The insurgents I should say the insurgents in Iraq they used old ordinance now some of the old ordinance that they used Was actually from the old Iraqi army A lot of it but a lot of it was from unexploded ordinance just like what the Vietnam vietong used Yeah, and even To me it kind of seems like

Even if it wasn't stuff to use like I mean man it's a spectrum Like some You know how like when you know in on the movie Where the criminal they're chasing the criminal With the dogs and then the criminal left Part of his shirt or something And then the dog sort of smells it

It's like that feeling like your enemy has like something And yours right So he on one side of the spectrum It's like okay they use it to make bombs right Which is kind of just maybe psychologically Just kind of odd And then just the fact that For example, like what if in Iraq you capture somebody or whatever and he has like a pair of like some old

Army boots or something oh yeah for sure buddy there's the well I'd say yeah that's that's a I see it hitting you and I'm trying to figure out why this is kind of shocking to you Yeah, and it must be the first time you've ever thought about this. Yeah, yeah, yeah it is so for me like for instance This was horrible. So just think about this there was an element of snipers that got overrun in Ramadi. And so think about what the enemy got. Sniper weapons, night vision. That's always like you're horrified,

night vision goggles and sniper weapons. So that takes what you were just talking about and multiplies at times a lot. Yeah. Because now the enemy has legitimate equipment that puts them a little bit higher on the tactical level. So that's definitely scary.

And that's why we're so careful about never leaving anything behind. Next question. What did these sorts of casualties due to the morale of American soldiers? Hackworth, just blew it away. Just like a mind blew away a leg. It just played with your mind.

Months after I left Vietnam, I found myself walking across an open field, and I suddenly said, where am I? And froze. In my mind, I was in a minefield. It took a few minutes for me to work out that I was not in a minefield. I believe that a lot of the so-called Vietnam stress syndrome that has created so many walking wounded across America today is due to the damage caused long ago by what they saw of their mates going down by mines and booby traps

Remember of the 60,000 dead and 300,000 Americans wound in that war 60% were from mines and booby traps he'd driving that point home The great irony was that the infantry soldiers who went to Vietnam received a a total of five hours of training in minds and booby traps that was the curriculum used in world war two we simply didn't learn yeah i can tell you they turned up i mean when i was running training but we we went crazy with iEDs like our our fake iEDs but yeah we would get nuts with them we'd put them all over the place and just you had to you had to figure out what you had to be careful yeah but i'll tell you man it is hard when someone's good at making those iEDs and Amoflaging them scary. Yeah, we'd have to like brief the training cadre over and over again to make sure the training cadre didn't set off the IEDs that we would be building

Next what was the purpose of the Viet Cong tunnels in the sort of Coochee area north of Saigon? Hackworth the purpose of the tunnels is to provide safe areas for supplies for their headquarters and for their soldiers a great casualty producer for them was artillery and air bombing and machine gun strikes from aircraft and helicopters most of the tunnels were located in areas that had great limestone formations it was easy to dig in but still quite strong and easy to shore up they could go down two three four actual floors with pumped in air and brought in water it gave them a secure area that was really behind the American lines and the Americans never really worked out that they were there for example there was a place called the iron triangle There was a great number of such tunnels and a general named Williamson took a brigade in there and said the iron triangle is no more

That was in 1965 at the beginning of the American involvement in the war When the north seized the country and they went when they won the war in 1975 their headquarters was in the iron Triangle in those very caves That's that's like another situation You call this area secure and the enemy is actually has their headquarters there Crazy Next question wasn't it possible to block up the tunnels or gas them or blow them up? Hackworth we tried everything possible to destroy the tunnels including having small soldiers called tunnel rats go down and try and clear them

But they were so cleverly done you could never find where the actual end was there would be a dead end with a hidden door going down to the next level I'm sure that if enough creativity and effort had gone into it then yes they could have been closed up but the top generals were not concerned and An anecdote a cave expert came to me between my tours and Vietnam and my office in the Pentagon He said look I can help you win the war I can tell you where the caves are because this is something I've studied my whole life I took him to my boss a Vietnam veteran who is very excited about it We took him to our general and he didn't want to know about it Who wants to waste money sending this guy over there and have him examined tunnels and caves? What's he gonna tell us again? It was the mentality that firepower will win the

the war these great outpourings of American industrial strength will win this war this arrogance didn't allow us to get beyond a blinkered military mindset good advice for life and this this is something that with Eschlein front working with a lot of businesses sometimes your strategy is wrong and it was it was that's what happened in Iraq with us your strategy was not working and it took us some time to figure that out and start doing a counterinsurgency campaign. But I see this with businesses a lot too.

They're using some strategy and it's not working. But maybe they used it 12 years ago. Maybe they used it two years ago. And it worked and they were celebrated and now they're just going to do it harder. Yeah. Do the same strategy more. Seems like that's the case with marketing. You know, marketing just changes so much.

You know, like when you're marketed to the new strategies that it's not as obvious, but the old strategies, you know, like door to it. Oh yeah door-to-door salesman comes to your house now bro. You don't want to hear it But why did you even come to my house well that's like wouldn't that be considered just a complete waste? Because you got to pay some kid For whatever 12 bucks an hour to go door-to-door whereas you can pay 12 bucks and send out a I don't know email or something Yeah, but even emails wait wait old yeah that's so that's the new deal I don't know Facebook ads I don't know even that's kind of old now but the No door-to-door there was a time where door-to-door was dope you know it's funny is I

I still talk to people that will go out and make stuff happen door to door. So now it's old school again, right? No. The old school's coming back. Here's the thing. Usually door to door seems like a hard sell. So sure, they'll make things happen, but it's not as efficient as other ways, like newer ways of marketing.

Yeah, these people come to my house, door to door people. They want to sell me stuff. Yeah, yeah. How many times have you bought? Zero. Yeah, so that's the point. I can just see you doing it. I'm like running through my mind to see if that was a solid answer.

I'm actually, I'm actually pretty sure that in the last. 20 years I've bought zero from door-to-door salesmen right but and what I'm and that's probably common where yeah I mean consider the feeling you have when someone comes to your but no there's there's some people that make money obviously yeah yeah and I'm not saying no one's money I've worked with some companies where they did do door-to-door sales yeah but they got some good sales kids they're selling a good product you're like okay we're gonna get this out there right so and knock on doors I dig it but there was the time back in the day when door-to-door

was kind of the dope thing. It's like, hey. And when you think about it, it would make sense because door to door, like back a long time, we remember people used to come over, they just knock on the door.

There wasn't cell phone or nothing like that. If they were super courteous, they'd call before they came, but if that's your neighbor, your friend or whatever, people would knock on your door all the time. Now people don't just show up at your door. Yeah, that's true.

Go all day, because they're lazy also. Yeah, I'm just going to text. Hey, Echo, you home? Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So, but back in the day, door-to-door salesman, They were put it this way they weren't as unwelcome as they are now Right, because there was more random people showing up at your house

Yeah, for there's a bunch of reasons is what I'm saying but the point is back in the day That marketing technique or that sales technique or whatever was was more effective than it is now I'm not saying it's a zero effective now I'm saying it's way more you know because things change So if you're a company and you're like hey, I think door to door is the way to go because back in you know 75 we were killing you know kind of thing well that was what's interesting so going back to Iraq and going away from door to door sales here for a moment the uh the uh that was what's interesting about the surge what was the surge was not just more people it was new strategy it was a more counterinsurgency focused strategy and luckily that we shifted that strategy because it wasn't going well up until that

point next question but these tunnels were militarily significant weren't they hackworth they were a running sore from the beginning to the end and they were a very powerful ally of the viet con question you were in the states at the time it happened but do you remember hearing about the ted offensive in 1968 hackworth when the ted offensive occurred in 1968 i was in the pentagon a dear friend of mine was an aide to a very senior general so he was privy to a lot of that we Indians didn't have meaning the lower ranking guys as opposed to the chiefs Indians He came and whispered in my ear and he told me about the attack long before hours before anyone in the press or public knew anything about it I was quite frankly shocked and heartbroken

I had been convinced for two years that the Viet Cong were going to win the war that the Americans simply didn't understand the nature of the war It was very much epitomized when Walter Cronkite asked the American people What the hell is going on here? I thought we were winning the war. That was the kind of shock it was to the American people. Everyone had been fed these glowing after-action reports by the president, Lyndon Johnson, by General Westmoreland, that there was light at the end of the tunnel, that we were prevailing, that it would only be a matter of months. The American public was still oriented towards World War II.

They were believing that as long as we grabbed this, real estate, we would eventually find the light at the end of the tunnel. But the light at the end of the tunnel was a Viet Cong freight train coming on full bore. That's what we discovered in Tet of 1968, and that was the turning point of the war. Question, why was it the turning point? Hackworth, Tet was a turning point because it destroyed the will of the American people to support the war. Those soldiers who were in the know realized that this was just the beginning of the end. We saw that the American people switched off if the support of the people is not there you are going to be cut off at the legs and that's exactly what happened in Vietnam and this is when I was on that

show on the history channel the Warriors show and I talked about how you had to have the will to kill and the will to die and to show about Mark Lee and that's that's where that quote that I that I made is rooted in what I learned from Hackworth that is you have to have this will You have to have the will and the people the nation has to have the will it's not just the military has to have the will Yeah, it's the people because what is what is the military the military is the people Back to the interview there had been a fair amount of support for the war until Tet of 1968 People thought it would be unpatriotic not to hang in there and wait until we grab Hanoi When we when the people saw viet Kong climbing

on the top of the American embassy they knew that they'd been lied to then they knew that this war was not winnable all they had to do is ask their sons by that time of probably a million Americans had served in Vietnam and had come back home and told their parents and loved ones the truth about the war the government couldn't just provide it with a Madison Avenue snow job anymore question could the war have been won could the viet Kong have been beaten hackworth the war could not have been won unless the host country the Saigon government the South Vietnamese changed their very repressive form of government and won the hearts and minds of the people There the northern government had employed this technique and they created the promise of this utopian dream as soon as they kicked out the invader this repressive South Vietnamese government The South Vietnamese government never understood what what never understood that they had to make those changes They were led by greedy people who were into making money. They had no contact with the people in the Maine. They were mainly Catholics and they were trying to rule a country that was 90% Buddhist.

Question, why was body count so important? Or was it? Hackworth. McNamara was a number cruncher and he wanted to have something to crunch a number. The overall strategy was attrition to wear out the enemy by counting body. We would know the impact of the war its success or failure That became the standard measurement of success. It was the score and everyone wanted to know the score What really happened was the body count counting completely eroded the honor code of the military

Specifically among the officer corps it taught people to lie The young fresh lie tenants out of the military academies were taught to lie the generals who were pretty proficient liars anyway Pushed the body count A high body count meant great success. So, in every battle, enemy bodies were counted several times. If there were 200 bodies, suddenly the figure became 650, and it became, to quote, Westmoreland, another great American victory. It corrupted the officer corps and appalled the soldiers who by that time were mostly draftees. They were scurrying around the jungle, counting bodies, which was a pretty awesome and terrible thing to do.

It had a real boomerang effect on the military because it was a real boomerang effect on the military, because it was a skirting. it was like a cancer it destroyed its soul what was the military strategy of the war hackworth westmoreland's idea was to destroy the enemy's large battle formations as in world war two when you've worn the enemy down you've won on the field of battle that tells you that we simply didn't understand the nature of the war because the gorilla was not going to fight in that way the gorilla's manner of fighting was to hit and run so he could be alive to fight another day he wasn't into these huge stand-up battles

Big operations required a great number of resources, a great amount of logistics, a great amount of aircraft, and a great amount of artillery fire. Moshe Dian, who is the chief of staff of the Israeli army, came to Vietnam, and I interviewed him right after he had spent two weeks with an American rifle company of about 100 men. He said that in one battle, with a North Vietnamese force of a couple hundred men, they fired more artillery over 25,000 rounds than he had fired in a whole campaign. That was the American way of fighting a war. It was also terribly expensive. Each round was $100. If you fired 10,000 rounds, you've probably gone through a million dollars in one 15-minute fight, and you've killed seven enemy.

When you look at it from a cost basis, we were paying an enormous amount to kill the enemy, and we couldn't sustain that kind of momentum and that kind of expenditure for a long time. It was a failed tactic that never should have been used. We should have used the same rules that Mao was teaching, that Sun Su taught before to break up in small elements and fight fire with fire. You know, you think about that economic. You pay a million dollars to kill seven enemy soldiers. That's your, it's not going to work out well in the long run. No.

Question, had you been in charge, how would you have done things differently? Hackworth, during my second year in Vietnam, I come. commanded a battalion made up of conscripts down in the Delta it was a battalion with very bad leadership It sustained 600 casualties in the six months before I took over morale was low They called themselves the heartbreak battalion Within 30 days they turned around of course we've covered this on steel my soldiers hearts written by Hackworth about this experience and we also covered it in about face Which he covers that as well about this experience So I'm moving a little bit quicker here we fought like guerrillas. We didn't fight in these huge formations we

broke up and fought in small units of five or seven people. We fought at night. We stole the night from the enemy. We ambushed. We didn't march in large formations and expect to meet an opponent marching in large formations. We fought him using his very tactics, his very skills. We tore a page out of Mao's book. The proof of the pudding was six months later that the battalion had only lost 25 American soldiers. It had killed over 2,600 enemy soldiers, and there were no Viet Cong in the area of operation. Those soldiers proudly called themselves the hardcore battalion.

And they were hardcore, but they were simple draftees who didn't want to be there. Question, are you sure that was an accurate body count? Hackworth. Yeah, I think that was an accurate body count considering the inflated body count

techniques employed by the U.S. military at the time. Question, wasn't the fight, because it's a little ironic that he talks about how bad the body count is, And then he uses it. Yeah, yeah. So he's kind of getting called out on that a little bit. He should have just stuck to the fact that there was no more Viet Cong operations in that area.

There used to be X amount of enemy attacks today and now there was zero. Sorry, Hack, come on. Don't worry, I got you. Wasn't the fighting from 72 to 75 more like conventional warfare? Hackworth. It was conventional warfare. A guerrilla campaign starts with a few people who are dissatisfied. They throw rocks at the enemy.

They finally kill an enemy soldier and get a rifle. They get more rifles and they raid an armory and they get more weapons and they build and build up. Phase one of a guerrilla campaign is individual sniping, laying booby traps, and low-scale conflict-type fighting. The final goal in phase four or five is to move in brigades and divisions and cores in a conventional formation. And that's the culmination of the war. Which is interesting to think about when It's like one of those situations where what made you strong you leave behind right? It happens with companies all the time You know this company starts off they're small, they're nimble they can adapt to the market and then over time they get so big they can't change anymore and then some other company that was a startup is now a small and nimble and can take advantage of the the changes in the market same thing happens

Unless you pay attention unless you keep yourself mobile unless you enact decentralized command and You can prevent it. You can keep if you if you start to centralize everything, which you have to get somewhat more centralized when you grow like that Like one thing is in the military you say well we've got decentralized command Well part of that part of the reason we have that we can we can let people have decentralized command is because we have the discipline training up front right? So once a company as a company grows If you put discipline on them you can allow them to still have decentralized command and act very quickly You got to have trust in your subordinate.

leadership for sure to to be able to employ that next question but the actual defeat of the southern government was by the north Vietnamese regular army that was hardly a viet Cong victory was it hackworth oh i think that the architect of that general trey was a vietnam a southerner he was the one that planned it there were a number of viet Cong divisions for example the ninth viet Cong division and the delta fought in the final battles as a regular unit sure the majority were regular forces from the North, but they fought in hit and run type operations. They always fought on the offensive. That is interesting to note is that of 100% of all contacts, when one guy attacks another,

85% were enemy initiated. That means that throughout the war, the Americans were on the defensive 85% of the time. And the enemy, the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese was on the offensive. You can't win a war by being on the defense. You have to have the offensive power. We didn't have the initiative throughout the war from beginning to end the initiative rested in the hands of the opponent, the Viet Cong, and the North Vietnamese. That's like in Jiu-Jitsu, when someone's just attacking and attacking and attacking and you're defending the whole time, you're going down eventually. You're going down eventually. And that was something that we definitely changed up in for, my last appointment when we were in Ramadi with tasking a bruiser whenever you're on patrol you're on defensive you're on the defensive but once you set up a little overwatch position and you're waiting for the enemy patrol well now you're ambushing them so now you're on the offense so I mean

we weren't on offense 85% of the time but we were on offense a lot of the time the boys were getting out on offense and surprising the enemy on a regular basis I mean probably more than half the Because we were also doing things where we definitely we were on the defensive I mean it's offensive and defensive at the same time when you're pushing through a when you're doing a clearance operation You're on offense but you're on defense because you're the enemy's waiting for you yeah you know so there's a little Dicotomy and doing that type of mission But like doing a direct action mission where you're gonna go and take down a building where you think there's a bad guy You're offensive when you get to that target

But while you're going to the target you're waiting to get ambushed you're waiting to get ambushed you're waiting to get ambushed you're waiting to get ambushed That's what you're doing even though you're scanning even though you're looking for threats you're still waiting to get ambush You're waiting to roll over an ID so even though you feel like you're on offense and we train our guys to be an offense The reality is the first shot in those situations is absolutely going to be fired by the enemy The ID is going to be initiated by the enemy once you do the raid the raid itself That's us being on offense right they're in there sleeping or they're They're not expecting you to come and boom you blow their door off and you enter their house you're on offense Yeah

but that's like four minutes So you're saying before that Before that while you're going to the target Because they like protected themselves with whatever measures Unrelated like let's say you're going for a bad guy Bad guy X and he lives in the house You know you're going to get him And when you get there you're gonna surprise him and he's not gonna be expecting you

But on the way there Bad Guy Z bad guy M and bad guy F have all set up ambushes on this road Not maybe completely disconnected with Back Guy X Okay got you but you You are gonna have to go through the ambushes that they've set and and they don't care They'll set up that ambush tonight. No one comes okay cool. We'll set up tomorrow night. No one comes we'll set up tomorrow night You only got to go down that one road one time to get ambushed

So you're on so when you're going when you're when you're moving through enemy territory you are on defense Yeah again that's not the mindset we teach the mindset is like we're on offense where we're gonna go get some The reality is the first shot is gonna be most likely most likely most likely likely fired by the enemy. Most likely. That's the way it is. And we did, I mean, these big clearance, these big sector clearance that we were doing,

the Army was doing the Marine Corps. I mean, like I said, you're on offensive. It's an offensive push. You're making the initiative. You're taking the initiative and getting in there. On a operational level, on a tactical level, most likely the enemy's going to see you first. They're hidden.

They're hiding. They're two rooms deep in a building. They're waiting. and they've got an ID buried in the road. Yeah. So offensive is kind of when you think about it, it's just like a mindset kind of mainly to begin with. So it's like a forward-leaning mindset.

I think an offense means offense is you strike first. Yeah. You have the initiative. That's offense. When you have the initiative, that's offense. When you're reacting, that's defense. Yeah. So like in your situation that you're like.

So if I punch you, I was on offense. Right? Yeah. If you punch me, I just, I was on defense. So yours was like a punch. You weren't punching. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, it's, it's hard to, I guess, really get the capture the actual, how you would explain that.

I think the best I could do is what I just said, operationally, you're on offense. Right. Meaning we're pushing into your neighborhood. Yeah. So that's essentially like this. So it's like this. Like this. If you had a bar, you were the bouncer at a bar and I had a beef with you, I showed up.

At your bar right right right but once I get there and get in your face boom you crack me you just went on offense Right or even better while I'm going to your bar one of your boys steps out of the alleyway because he was waiting for me It cracks me with a bottle in the back of the head right So I want to be ready for people like you could yeah yeah so now you got a whole other thing you got to contend with so there's different orders Because they better kill me They better kill me you went deep into our scenario I'm just saying that all right cool there it is I better kill you Try and be on offense

Yeah That if you if you if you at least the lesson to be learned there for me If you're at least think about it At least think about it That you want to be on offense And that was what was nice about these you know a lot of the missions that that we did in Iraq is like we were Surprising the enemy yeah and if you can surprise the enemy you're on offense Yeah, so yeah

So like even like you're you're back to your example your your missions Just the fact that you even initiated that capture kill mission that's your offensive move offensive movement Yeah, but just like when I'm coming to the bar I got to get to the bar Right, right I'm on defense when I'm getting there because I don't know I'm gonna get hit right so it's like throwing a punch with that with that other hand up And it's important to note that we would teach our guys to have an offensive mindset Meaning when we we saw one of our patrols on one of our vehicle patrols or a foot patrol

You'd see every guy ready to engage the enemy yeah, yeah Most likely the first shot's gonna come from Did that happen all the time? No. There's sometimes, you know, on a patrol, guys would engage first or that could happen, but most likely that's luck. That's luck.

Because most likely the enemy is a little bit smarter. They're hiding in a, you know, when you're walking, think about when you walk down the street. Think of how many windows there are, how many doors there are. So now you just walk down a street and how many windows can you see? 200, 300?

Right? I mean, if you're walking down to city street, you can see 100 windows, let's say. One of those windows could have a bad guy in it and you can't you're not going to see him. Yeah, he's going to see you first. Yeah. So Check. Next question in April of 1975 during the fall of Saigon, there were some memorable images of American helicopters taking off from the roof of the American embassy and dozens of South Vietnamese trying to escape. What were your feelings when you saw those pictures? Hackworth, I was heartbroken when I saw the end come and the helicopters airlifted. I was. I was heartbroken when I saw the end come and the helicopters airlift. people off the embassy but at the same time in 1971 when I left Vietnam I said four

years from now the North Vietnamese will fly a flag over this capital the reason I said that and I was dead on to the month was that I had been like a doctor feeling the pulse of a dying patient and it was obvious to me that this patient the South Vietnamese government was on its way down question was the April 1975 victory of the people's style of War. Hackworth. I think that the victory in Vietnam introduced a new phase of warfare where low-intensity conflict can eventually win. Question. What does the concept of a people's war mean to you? Hackworth. It's the same thing that my forefathers employed in 1776. We wanted independence

and we were willing to pay with our lives. All people want to be free and if they have that anger inside them and the ability to arm themselves and somebody comes to. comes along and says hey I'm your leader and I'm gonna show you how to do this Then the one guy who's trying to suppress them is in trouble question What are the key lessons to be learned from the Viet Kong success? And actually before we go into that question if you think about Think about this from a leadership perspective we all wanted independence we all want to be free And if somebody comes along and tries to dictate to you how things are gonna be

That person's in trouble right so as a leader if you try and impose your will on people look can you get away with it yes yes does it work if you're the you know if you can fire someone or yes but to be actually lead someone you can't just try and impose your will on top of them you need to get them in the game too next question how important was mass mobilization to the success of the Viet Cong hackworth if you're going to fight a war today you're going to need your whole nation behind you

either as fighters or supporters or carriers. It's no longer the act of a few soldiers fighting on a sunny hill, waving swords at one another. Warfare is now the employment of the complete population. The Viet Cong took on two superpowers, France and then the United States, and they couldn't have done it on a shoestring. They needed to mobilize everything within their nation, and they needed to get as much outside support as possible. At the end, the war became almost a conventional war.

of the things that bothers me is that the Americans who are now trying to rewrite history of what actually happened say we won all the battles but we lost the war but we didn't win all the battles we lost most of the battles this is really this is really critical and this is a very important thing to think about the reason they've come up with this very bad rationale is because of the american way of keeping score in the old american way of conventional warfare if you're king of the mountain at the end of the day you've won the battle but to the vehicle Kong, it wasn't who held the ground. It was what kind of punishment you inflicted on your enemy. The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese were willing to pay an easy ratio of 10 to 1.

If you fought him and you lost one soldier and he lost 10, he walked away saying I was the winner. There's the mentality that you have to understand. And that's why you have to be willing to kill and you have to be willing to die if you're going to go to war. That's why right there. Question. Can parallels be drawn between Afghanistan and Vietnam? Between the Viet Cong war against the Americans and the Mujahideen war success against the Soviets. Hacquith, absolutely. There's no question that there are sharp parallels between the Afghan war and the war in Vietnam. The fighters there were freedom fighters. They were trying to rid themselves of communism. They were supported by an outside country. This time the U.S. say who poured billions of dollars into that war. They tried to win by using an enormous amount of firepower, they being the Russians. The Russians tried to win by using an enormous amount of firepower, conventional tactics against the search and destroy operation,

a high degree of technology, all the mistakes that the Soviets made in Afghanistan, the Americans made in Vietnam, and the French made in Indochina. No one looked back on the lessons learned. Did the Soviets learn anything from America's experience? in Vietnam. Hackworth, from my analysis of the war, I'd say very

little. They tried to win the war by using firepower, by bombing them back to the Stone Age, through the use of American provided Stinger missiles, and by mounting machine guns in high mountains and firing down on aircraft, they made the price so heavy for the Soviets in terms of costs that they blinked first

and got out. Again, they used an incredible number of mines in booby traps, creating a great number of Soviet casualties. The Soviet units did that did well there were special units led by people who understood that form of wealth warfare but their conventional infantry was exactly the same as the American conventional infantry in Vietnam or the French conventional infantry in Indochina

question why did the Soviets fail to learn from the American and French mistakes Hackworth I think it is a military mindset we don't want to go back and look at the past we're in such a hurry to get where we're going there's a certain amount of military arrogance the older I get the more I realize how we never study the past and try to learn from it we just stumble along and make the same mistakes we're doomed to do that until people wake up and with the military mind I'm not sure we'll ever wake up got to keep your ego in check got to learn from the past 100% correct question is there anything about guerrilla warfare which is new to this century

hackworth well a number of things are new the amount of firepower that the insurgent employs and uses the use of booby traps and minds the ability to communicate via electronic communications one of the problems that's always hampered the gorilla is getting the word out in the days of old it was done by messengers which took days and hours today a general has very sharp communications. Out in Somalia, General Adide had little portable radios to talk to his soldiers very low frequency. The American CIA's intercept devices are all high frequency. They couldn't listen to what the man was saying.

They didn't learn a thing. Question. How frightened was the average American conscript faced with all these obstacles and the skill of the enemy? Hackworth. The average American soldier going into battle in Vietnam carried a whole pack. of fear mainly because he wasn't trained properly back in the states the training base was just off They were preparing for World War II not for insurgency warfare

So the lad received 16 weeks of training was flung into Vietnam generally in a unit that was never kept together But it was always filled up by the individual replacement system as a result there was no real strong cohesion no teamwork in the unit and this is something that SLA Marshall talked about in Men Against Fire the soldier was like an orphan thrown into a family But a family that was not solidly put together as a result his fear level would be high because of the uncertainty of what he was going into The typical the typical kid who went to Vietnam was black 21% of all soldiers were black and the Hispanics and the whites were from others the other side of the railroad tracks If you went to a good university like Brown University or something, you didn't find yourself carrying an M-16 rifle in Vietnam. You did a Clinton. You got out of the war.

It was very unfair. The poor working classes were the ones that carried out the war effort. But they're made of tough stuff because their whole life required tough stuff. Once they were provided with the leadership, the proper leadership, that raw material did a hell of a job. But it didn't make the fear go away. When you're playing in that kind of a lethal Super Bowl, the possibility of dying and coming home in a rubber bag is always lingering in the back of your head.

Regardless of how courageous you are, you will still have fear. But if you have competent leadership that you have confidence in, and if you're well-trained, you can get the job done. It's my theory that the better trained you are, the more natural courage you have because you have a belief in yourself. That's all important stuff.

The better trained you are, the more natural courage you have. Keep that in mind. Also, the raw material, just give me some good leadership and we'll make something happen. Continuing, our soldiers weren't well trained, and in the main, they weren't well-led. But the longer the soldiers stayed there, the more experienced he became,

and the more confident he became. The uncertainty was dispelled. He knew what to his. expect but the fear would never go away you know you can never go near a battlefield without having those butterflies in your stomach question what frightened your soldiers most hackworth I think it was the uncertainty once they got into a unit and knew they were well led knew that their commander loved them and cared for them and would not throw them into harm's way unless absolutely necessary their main fear was just

that uncertainty that came from the minds and booby traps and it's a psychological thing I've walked down trails and I've said to myself a sniper has me in his sights you play those mind games with yourself I've had that kind of experience where I saw a guy where I saw a guy looking through his rifle looking at me perfectly at what we call a six o'clock site picture and he's going to squeeze and you spot yourself going down good leadership dispels all those kinds of mind games There are all these images of American soldiers walking around, smoking pot, beads around their neck, singing rock songs.

Clearly the morale of the American troops broke down. Hackworth, the morale of the American army disintegrated, the longer the war went on. We went there with a professional army that was well led by very fine combat leaders, most of whom were World War II or Korea experienced. I'm talking about senior NCOs and officers. They had a lot of battle experience and were high quality people. And they were badly used from the beginning. They were traded out.

So we lost the non-commissioned officer corps almost straight away within the first 18 months of the war. After that, there was no unit cohesion. Every 365 days you had a new unit. You had no institutional memory. I know this might seem obvious, but you gotta keep people together. When you get a good team, you gotta keep them together. to keep them working together no one remembered what happened last month and they kept

repeating the same mistakes again and again and again the Americans were in Vietnam for eight years and there were no leaders at the top willing to raise hell and demand that the training be hard and demand that the standards be high no one wanted to shake things up in a very very unpopular war now the finest thing you can do for any young soldier is be mean as hell with him and whack him in the head when he doesn't do something correctly. Make certain that he knows his job and knows how to do it right because if he does it right, he'll do it right on the battlefield. But the whole training and leadership system were asking, how can we resolve this disintegrating

morale problem? We can resolve it by getting them R&R, delivering cold beer and Coke and ice cream at night and hot food. This is what the general's mentality was instead of kicking them in the ass and making them do things right Screw on their steel pot carry their weapon and clean up their ammo get rid of their love beads and not smoke dope When I took over my battalion in a Delta there was grass all over the place Before I'd go out with my battalion I'd shake everybody down I'd boot people in the butt who even smoked cigarettes because you could smell tobacco a mile away You could see the light from a cigarette a couple miles away in my

unit you didn't smoke anything and you certainly didn't smoke grass it was just a question of discipline if you had good leadership and provided discipline designed not to harass but to keep people alive the soldiers would react so critical distinction there not talking about discipline just just designed to harass people and do things for no good reason but discipline that's actually there to keep people alive continuing If they didn't have that, they would react the other way. What we saw between 1965 and 1973 when the last U.S. forces went out was a total disintegration.

It was an organization that didn't have proper boundaries and didn't have people insisting on those boundaries. They were an army of hippies and they didn't have discipline. Had the war continued for a few more years, we were seeing at the end by 1973 units refusing to fight. Well, we'd have seen a whole army that refused to fight because it was a most unpopular war and soldiers were saying what am I doing here? My politicians want me out. My family wants me out and there's no purpose in being here. This does not affect my country's security. All I am is upon is stupid war.

They were an army of hippies and didn't have discipline. Had the war continued for a few more years, we're seeing at the end by 19th, by 19th, In 1973, units refusing to fight. Well, we'd seen a whole, we'd see, we'd have seen a whole army that refused to fight because it was a most unpopular war. And the soldiers were saying, what am I doing here? My politicians want me out. My family wants me out. And there's no purpose in me being here.

This does not affect my country security. All I am is a pawn in a stupid war. I mean, okay, first of all, obviously we're not talking about every, every soldier, every Marine, every service. member in Vietnam that was acting that way. Clearly, there was people still doing heroic things and serving to the best of their ability. But he's making a broad general statement that if we saw in 1973 some units that were saying, hey, we don't want to fight, then if you would have continued down that trajectory, you eventually been saying, hey, wait a second, there'd be a lot more units that would be saying that. Next, how did your soldiers, particularly your fresh recruits,

with not knowing who the enemy was. Hackworth. When a soldier would arrive in Vietnam, badly trained from the USA, not prepared for the war, my procedure was that each unit formed their own training program at division level. The young recruit would go through this training

up to two weeks in his particular area of operations. For example, looking after your feet in the May Kong Delta, keeping your ammo dry, and things of this nature. After they finished that division level, training they would come to a unit normally I would talk to my soldiers welcome them to the unit assign them to a rifle company my standard operating procedure was to assign a young recruit to an old soldier in the same foxhole that soldier would be his buddy a veteran

would get a green recruit or fresh meat as they called them and he would take that new guy and pass his knowledge to him question were your soldiers ever reluctant to fight hackworth I had the ability to motivate people even though a guy might be a pacifist in a few days He was hunting for Charlie I never had a problem in terms of getting soldiers to fight Question were you ever frightened can you remember a moment when you were frightened Hackworth I spent eight years on battlefields as a soldier and I'm sure that there were that there aren't very many minutes of those eight years that I wasn't frightened It's something that lives in your stomach. It's just churning all the time.

As the bullets start snapping and the intensity of combat increases, that churning increases. But it's always there. As long as you're in a dangerous situation, you've got it and you're carrying it with you on your back. Question. Did your soldiers have any compunction about shooting civilians on the chance that they were Viet Cong? Hackworth. I think the average American soldier perceived the enemy as but for the great. of God, their go-eye. And they were reluctant to shoot somebody unless they knew they were the

enemy. But if the guy were coming at him at night, if the guy were walking in an area he shouldn't be in and had weapons or something like that, the way I trained my soldiers was to react automatically. Don't get the thinking process going. When you see a right cross come at you, block it with your left hand and go with the right hook. I never had problems with soldiers being reluctant to fight. Of course this is this is different than you know the SLA Marshall report of people not wanting to fight and it's also you know I say this and sometimes people freak out about it when I say don't think right stop thinking hey your alarm clock goes off the morning don't think you just get up and you do

what you're supposed to do oh you're you're you're supposed to work out don't think about it just go do it and that's what he's saying for a more important situation. Oh, there's an enemy threat. Don't think about it. Do what you're supposed to do. Would it surprise you to know that the chief concierge at the continental hotel, Saigon's top hotel, was in fact working for the Viet Cong? Hackworth, it wouldn't surprise me. At Tet of 68, the secretary to the commanding general of the U.S. forces in Vietnam, General Westmoreland, was found holding an AK-47. With the whole Vietnamese apparatus, I never once trusted a Vietnamese. I never trusted a Vietnamese general. I never allowed a Vietnamese inside my camp, my firebase.

If I were going to meet a Vietnamese colonel, I would meet him outside my firebase because I didn't trust him. I assumed everybody was Viet Cong. Question. And these are the people you were meant to be fighting for. Hackworth, that's right. And that was my attitude. The soldiers from the 9th Division hated the South Vietnamese. soldiers more than they did the viet con so what he's saying right there is i'm going to read that

again my soldiers from the ninth division hated the south vietnamese soldiers more than they did the vietnam that's a horrible situation they saw them coming and going out they saw them going out on operations and not beating the enemy but avoiding the enemy they called it search and avoid where it was supposed to be search and destroy my battalion could go all the way through the same area and come back bloodied and battered that really got to my guys i was walking the perimeter one night I used the British system of stand two in the evening where everybody was at their post with a weapon ready to go just as the sun was going down one of my snipers said sir how's the body count today and I said not so good

we only had eight or nine for the day for the battalion and he said well I'll get you two more before I could stop him he took out a sniper rifle I looked down at the end of the weapon to see you where it was pointed and it was pointed at two South Vietnamese soldiers guarding a bridge about 40 meters from my perimeter. I knocked the weapon up before he had a chance to squeeze off around. This was the attitude of a lot of soldiers. They didn't like the South Vietnamese because they didn't pull their weight. Question, why did massacres occur in Vietnam? Hackworth. Well, the big massacre was Milai. Lieutenant William Callie and Captain Medina were the principal characters involved in that act why did

they have that occur it occurred for a number of reasons the soldiers were frustrated they were mainly frustrated because of mines and booby traps and because they could never find the enemy they were just tripping through minefields and seeing their mates blown away never grabbing hold of the enemy and getting into a real fight then there's a lot of people in a village and then insanity takes over and they just start blowing human beings away. It's also about bad leadership. Lieutenant Callie had gone through officer candidate school.

He'd gone through three separate courses, was found wanting in leadership in two of them, and had been recycled instead of being booted out. The military was into a numbers game and didn't want to have a high attrition rate for their officers. They kept recycling someone until they graduated. So here's a guy who never should have been trusted more than an, Army PFC ends up a lieutenant. He's with a platoon of soldiers who are extremely frustrated because of minds and booby traps and he doesn't have the leadership ability to control them to say stop that fire.

I think massacres occur when you don't have strong leadership, when you don't have soldiers who are extremely well trained and well disciplined and well controlled by their leaders. That's what happened. All those components fell apart. And I think the book that we covered on the Milai Masker actually gave even better details. I mean, obviously it gave better details because it's a full book. But I really was one of the key things I remember is I remember how the intelligence escalated. It escalated.

And I'll tell you something else. He's saying that, you know, that Lieutenant Callie couldn't stop them. Lieutenant Callie led that massacre. He led the massacre. It wasn't him saying, oh, I can't get control of the guys. No, he was actually doing the massacre, and they were actually following him. And that wraps up that. That wraps up the interview.

It's kind of abrupt ending. I don't know why it's so abrupt. I looked around to see if there was anything that was missing, but that's how the interview ends. But I wanted to go to from there. I wanted to just grab a couple sections out of the Vietnam Primer. Again, this is the book that that Hackworth wrote with SLA Marshall, When they got back for when they got back from this tour in Vietnam It was a few months long and they went and talked debriefed all kinds of people and again

There's all kinds of tactical level lessons in here I mean like real tactical Doubling security contending with the jungle security on the trail the company and movement field intelligence I mean there's the defensive perimeter it's just very it's also a very short book It's not even a hundred pages long And like I said if you want to get this if you you're in the military you might be able to use this if you're leading up if you're a platoon leader you probably get some decent lessons learned out of this but this isn't one of those books that translates directly to business because it's actually not

it's not about leadership it's about the tactics of an infantry platoon and infantry company so but that being said of course there are some there are some lessons and What's interesting to me is also as I found these leadership lessons they're not just leadership lessons beyond being leadership lessons There's a lot of Lessons here for You as a person for me as a person and you start taking The leadership lessons from Vietnam Primer and applying them to yourself. I think you could see a lot of crossover Starting from a leadership perspective though here we go and

Vietnam Primer. Back to the book. Our mistakes in Vietnam are neither new nor startling. They are not something we can blame on the mysteries of warfare. They are the same problems that have been haunting small unit commanders since before Gideon. In peace or war, these errors spell the difference between professionalism and mediocrity. Many young leaders, enchanted by the Hollywood image of war, approach combat with the good guy versus the bad guy attitude but there is no similarity between what John Wayne gets away with on

the screen and the hot hard facts of a firefight a small unit leader in combat cannot afford to have a film hero's devil-may-care attitude torn training discipline and basic soldiering in the recipe for battle victory well-led and disciplined soldiers are the main ingredient soldiers who have been conditioned through training to react by habit when confronted with the searing realities of engagement. The habits learned in training, good or bad, are the same habits that move the soldier in combat. A leader then must ensure that each of his soldiers is well trained and has developed good habits, habits so deeply ingrained through correct teaching and intensive practice that even under the pressure of fear and sudden danger,

each soldier automatically will do the right thing. Check. Continuing. There is no magic formula or sweatless solution by which one can achieve this goal. There's no, there's no hack. Leaders may approach training for combat only with intense dedication, accepting as gospel, the timeless truth that better trained men live longer on the battlefield. No military unit is ever completely trained.

There will always be a weak area that requires additional time and effort. The wise commander uses all available time to train his unit. He never says good enough. Leaders must accept the old but absolute maxim. The more sweat on the training field, the less blood on the battlefield. Combat is too serious a business to permit easy excuse of even one mistake. Never quit checking.

Check everything all the time. Weapons for cleanliness, aid men for supplies, centuries for alertness, and the camp for field sanitation. Another weakness among junior leaders is the inaccurate report of the estimate of the situation. Estimates are many times either so greatly exaggerated or so watered down that they are not meaningful to the next higher commander who must make

critical decisions as to troop employment and allocation of combat power. The confusion and noise of the battlefield are two reasons why faulty estimates are made. Over-emotionalism and the sense of the drama are others. These factors coupled with the judgment of an impulsive commander who feels that he must say something on the radio even if it is wrong are the crux of the problem commanders must report the facts as they see them on the battlefield if they don't know the situation they must just say that and again those are just a couple little lessons learned out of vietnam primer and you know i think one of the things like i said there's a lot of things that you can take from what has

Hackworth talks about and when he talks about leadership and you can actually apply it to yourself You can apply it to your personal life and some of the things that he just said think about some of these Our mistakes are nothing new or startling Think about that Most of the time most of the time Think about this most of the time when you make a mistake It's something that you already knew you actually know you're making the mistake when you're making it Here's another

thing he says errors spell the difference between professionalism and mediocrity it's the little things it's the little mistakes that you make next thing he thinks says discipline soldiers are the main ingredient in victory well guess what the main ingredient in victory in your life is discipline yeah all day he says there's no magic formula or sweatless solution by which one can achieve their goals. I think he just said there is no shortcut. There is no hack.

There's no sweatless solution. You're gonna have to work. Then he says this. No military unit is ever completely trained. Guess what? Neither are you. Neither am I. There is always weakness to work on.

Always. A lot of them. He says this in Vietnam Primer. Combat is too serious a business to permit easy excuse of even one mistake now think about this okay comment's too serious a business why is that it's because you can die but guess what we're all gonna die we're all gonna die so why would we why would we allow ourselves to make easy easy excuses why would you

allow that comeats life and death so is life so you shouldn't allow yourself these easy excuses and then the last section that he talks about that I read, it can absolutely be applied. It can absolutely, absolutely be applied. He says, another weakness common among junior leaders is the inaccurate reporting

of the estimate of the situation. They are either so exaggerated or so watered down that they are not meaningful. Now again, if you apply this to yourself, what you realize is that you got these Junior leaders that they're lying to the chain of command. I mean they're exaggerating or they're watering things down, but they're basically lying to the chain of command and how does that translate to us? We lie to ourselves That's how it translate to us. We lie to ourselves. We don't tell ourselves the way things really are and when we do that then we can't fix our problems

If we can't fix our problems, we're not going to improve. So we have to be truthful to ourselves I have to be truthful to myself you have to be truthful to yourself you have to stop rationalizing stop making excuses stop telling yourself little water down assessments of where you're really at tell yourself the truth so that you can get where you want to go you can be who you want to be you could be who you should be who you should be when you do what you know you should do when you pay attention to the little things, when you implement discipline, true and unflinching and unmitigated discipline in your life,

when you stop trying to find a sweatless solution, when you look for weaknesses to work on, when you allow no easy excuses. And all that starts when you stop lying to yourself. When you stop lying to yourself, that's when you can become who you know you should be. When you tell yourself the truth about where you are so you can make sure you are in the right place and if you're not in the right place then you can get yourself on the path to get there Path of discipline the path of hard work and the path of all I've got for

tonight So Charles speaking of the path the path of truth open to any suggestions you may or may not have on how we can get on that path and then go ahead and stay on that path. Stay on the path. Yeah. I feel like more and more of us are on the path. That's what I feel like.

You know, at the roll call. Roll call that we just got done, which was an event, if you don't know, for military first responders, law enforcement, paramedics, firefighters. There was a lot of people there that are straight up on the path. Straight up. Legitimately on the path. Yep. Yeah, and it's one of those deals where, you know how like when you hear a certain story and then you're about someone and you're like, oh, like, dang, that's impressive.

And then you hear it again and again and then again and then you're like, okay, you know, I'm kind of used to it. I don't feel like I've gotten used to this at all because everyone's story is kind of different, you know, so it kind of exposes this element of like, like just immense individuality of a person, you know. So it's kind of like, I don't know. It's like, I don't know, maybe like your kid's birthday or something. Something that happens over and over again but never gets old, you know, kind of that kind of situation. There was a guy he was like, and he just told me this while we were listening to you guys do jujitsu. And he was just right in the middle of it, just kind of in my ear. And he's like, dude, I lost 70 pounds.

Yeah. Just because I'm on the path. Jeez. Guys were just guys and girls, females, boys and girls. boys and girls men and women were walking up to me and like showing me pictures

hey this is what I looked like 13 months ago yeah I've lost 38 pounds or whatever yeah awesome I got promoted yeah it's it's awesome

so yes you are correct there's a lot of people on the path kids everything kids oh yeah oh yeah people I made little videos for kids yeah I was looking at you look You can get videos kids kids doing pull-ups kids doing jujitsu little warrior kids Straight up on the path knowing the knowing the gettysburg address

Hey look at this kid look at my son he knows the gettysburg address he's six Look at my daughter that's six pull-ups right there. You know how many she could do last year zero Yeah, you see what I'm saying? Yes sir I do you think it's gonna get crowded on the path No It'll get wider Maybe the path gets wider It gets wider Because everyone's kind of on their own path

But there's just a unified Yeah Oh there's there's common ground on the path Yeah there's definitely common ground on the path Yeah there's On a fundamental level actually There's there's immense commonality Down there

But the path is big enough to maintain There's not gonna be a traffic jam on the path No In fact it's the opposite It's the opposite yeah The more people have the path The faster it goes Yeah more momentum

Yeah. Shoot. So, all right. Isn't that weird how you can take leadership principles and apply them to yourself? Yeah. Yeah. So it's almost like that. Don't lie to yourself.

Think about that. Because you think about the little lies you tell yourself. Oh, yeah. Little lies you tell yourself. So long time ago, my mom was like overweight. I didn't know. I mean, I guess I knew that. I don't know.

When you're a little kid, you don't know. You just, that's just a mom. That's just how. And then so she got on the path back in the day. And she lost a bunch of weight. And my dad said, hey, you know what, I'm going to get your mom for her birthday? I was like, what? He's like, a mirror.

A full-sized mirror. Because she lost a bunch of weight. She looks good, you know, whatever now. And I was like, cool. You know, that's some adult stuff. Whatever furniture. Was that furniture? Good.

You know, whatever. Good job. Dad, whatever. You know, kind of. And then I kind of thought about it. And I'm thinking about it more now. It's like, man, you know what that says? That says that, like, you know, she was like,

like overweight and she was a sit for my dad to know that you know and to take action like that means that he knew that she was in a way in one way or another avoiding the mirror yeah and well i would say yeah straight up avoiding it but she just didn't want to see herself in the mirror yeah i mean you said the same thing i said i guess i said it a little bit of a different way but she didn't want to see herself in the mirror right like if if you have a and you kind of think about it sure you have a mirror in the bathroom and it's sort of it but like i don't know where else do we have mirrors right like i don't know in the bed room or something you know what girls get ready I don't know I'm comparing it to my

current situation I have like the mirror in the bathroom medicine cabinet that's it yeah yeah I guess I guess my daughter you know what you're right because both my daughters my older daughters had mirrors in their room yeah all up so they can get ready yeah right right get the outfit I'm assuming I don't know mirror but for a girl I don't know again I'm just totally like thinking of my situation so and yeah so I kind of thinking back I'm like dang we only had the mirror in the bathroom anyway so for that to be the case for a mirror to be a good gift Where your dad's gonna tell you like hey

How's this as a cool gift? It kind of indicates that you know like cool it's like oh yeah, so anyway the point is like yeah We do kind of lie to ourselves even if we don't think we're necessarily lying to ourselves it's like you don't want to admit certain things It's the omission. Yeah, yeah Yeah, yeah. Mition lying by omission like I'm not even a look at myself before I don't have to address that one Yeah, yeah, therefore it's not even a problem. It's not even my life or whatever It's like a yeah, it's like a lie by omission Like if you don't do Jiu Jitsu Yeah

Like like no if you don't do Jiu Jitsu no You know one day if you don't do Jiu Jitsu Let's say there's let's say there's in a month there's four days that you didn't do Jiu Jitsu Three of those could have been legitimate days where you legitimately for whatever reason couldn't do Jitsu One of those days might have been predicated on a lie that you told yourself right? Yeah, right like I just don't have time today Yeah, when what you really did was you extended someone work yeah an extra because as a there's a weird time there's a word time thing that happens with jiu jit-to like hey class starts at start class starts at 430 or class

starts at like hey I'm gonna roll at 530 the guys are everyone's training at six right hey we're doing no gey at six well if I get caught up in something mysteriously and all of a sudden it's 604 at my house oh you know what I won't even get there until six 20 or 615 by the time it get changed You know the guys will probably be done Yeah, you just told yourself a bunch of lies Well, there I would say it because there's not that's not nothing though This at my house it's called the jiu jitsu window

So okay like there because there is it's not like the gym Well the like it then I should have said this then the lie came earlier the lie came earlier Which was like I should really get this done right now Yeah, yeah yeah yeah no you could get that done when you get home later, but you just you just extended that window because you wanted to shut the Jiu-Jit-2 window on yourself. Right. Right. That's what happens.

And that window is like, that's a weird psychological area to be in because it's cool. I call it at home, I call it the Jiu-Jitsu window. That's why it's kind of like when my wife will be like, hey, can you just go later? I was like, no, you can't go later. There's a window. There's a window and it's super, super narrow. Just like I said, when it's 604 and you're supposed to be there at six, is like because here's the factors.

One, everyone will be either finishing up or late in the round. Yeah, yeah. You'll get one role. So kind of the later you show up. the less training you're gonna get so the less training you get the less worth it it is to to get dressed and get all your stuff together and go I'm not saying it's gonna be not worth it Yeah, but it becomes less and less worth it right so there's that and then there's like the social things like oh you're the guy that shows up on the last round What are you're tired? What are you doing dude? You know there's kind of like a stigma with that thing?

When some when somebody says that to me I'm like I live I just got done working I came here as quickly as I could Yeah, and I'll tell you what I'll do 35 burpees right now and Yeah, and then we can train you. Yeah, and that's of course that's not because because that's not always the case. I mean with you I can't even really never actually done that before. Yeah, that's that in just your answer there kind of indicated like that's never happened to you. Like kind of thing. No, there's there's one you know big Eric? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, big Eric will be like oh, you're showing up. I'm like bro. He always says that and he also did like one round. Come on Eric. Eric. Eric, come on. care I and another thing he'll say is if he's done anything else that day he'll tell you about it like like like hey I went and ran stairs this morning I'm like that's cool I squatted did sprints went surfing and now I'm here to train what yeah yeah but nonetheless jihisi window it's real you know because you'll you'll let me ask you this and I don't mean this

you know in a hostile way how come sometimes when the jiu jitzu class starts let's say it let's say we're gonna train at 11 how come sometimes you show up at like 11 48 damn it's sometimes it seems like your window is way just off alignment sometimes yeah seriously i don't know let's call it a sunday right we all know what time we start training right yeah and then sometimes you come rolling in i mean you want to talk about you you like hey we you know you're 15 minutes late these guys can be done i'm i'm an hour and a half yeah rounds well okay You're rolling in like bowing up to me. Well, I'm gonna ball up regardless.

And of course, I'm not gonna be saying, hey, you know, you're showing up late and I'm kind of tired. No, I'm gonna say, okay, well, you showing up, we'll do what we gotta do. Yeah, you know what it is, okay, because you- No, I have no idea. I have no idea how someone could be knowing

that all of his training partners that wanna train with him are there at 10 o'clock or at 11 o'clock. And that individual decides, hey, I'll just show up at 1148 and call it good. This is what happened on Sunday the normal routine has always been at come at noon for Greg trains No gee training okay okay and every time for two three four years you've shown up at that time see me in a ball of sweat yeah 12 rounds deep yeah no if you if you remember correctly there

there are times that all come it'll be me you and andy just going around robin there will be those times but here's the amount of times that Andy and I have done this time that and I have done Well, yeah. It's a very large number. Yeah, I know. But here, this is why, though. So it has to do with, like, my whole overall life scheduling. See what I'm saying?

So noon is the best time. And I get to train with Greg and, you know, all this stuff. And then you'll text me like the day before saying, hey, we're going to freaking tent. Oh, that's because you got the hardcore crazy schedule. And I need to call your assistant. You're going to put in your calendar? The day before. Anyway.

I call. I'll text. and be like hey I'm heading to the gym in 15 minutes he's like I'm on my way look hey look what Tuesday night Thursday Sunday morning whatever bro what if okay what if you and Andy had plans to train at 10 and I text you hey let's train at 130 yeah I'd say no be here at 10 why not 1 30 because because we're not training then we're training at 10 yeah but I still understand why not 130 hey you train because that's what time we train well what about 1 30 what's the difference 1 30 we got other things to do oh there you go we have other

things to do so I had like obligations okay this is the normal this is not like a random thing that happens this is the steady state for years yeah 11 48 you're probably counting yourself as being early for yeah I do I do I do and I'm 40 it is early when you come in and you see sweat yeah are you a little bit bummed out yes why would you not adjust your schedule why when you calendar yourself well because I it's weird it's like I'm on this it's on I'm on this like psychological You're lying to yourself. No, no, no.

You're lying to yourself. You're lying to yourself. Hackworth says no. All right, look. I'm going to go ahead and assume that I am lying to myself because you said so. So I'm going to find it and admit it to myself. But this is what it feels like. Here comes the lie.

No, no, no. Because this is what it feels like. It could be a lie. This could be funny. Like all week I do whatever, whatever, whatever, right? And I train at a certain time, blah, blah, blah. So on Sunday, my normal, like, had, habitual kind of routine on Sunday is a noon training.

So everything before noon that I do and have to do or whatever, that's just sort of in place. It doesn't take much mental work. But then if you're like texting me the night before saying, hey, 10, I'm like, oh, man, kind of in my mind, I'm already kind of committed to the noon. To myself, though. Brought.

Habitually. See what I'm saying? This isn't just a lie. This is like a whole conspiracy you've run against yourself That you Yeah Oh, that's ridiculous No, it's not ridiculous

It's not ridiculous because I do have other things to do With Eddie Bravo your conspiracy that I don't know No, no, no, no, or consider this like, okay, so let's say I have X, what Or one, two, three, four things I got to do before noon And then when I get back, I'll like three other things I don't know That's the thing, but they are time sensitive in its sense that I do have to do them.

So if I plan to do them before training, now I got to shift all that other stuff for like, you know, and there's other people involved, all this stuff. Anyway, so it's usually the case. But look, if I'm... Bro, no one's going to follow you down the path

with this kind of behavior, man. You're right. That's the thing. And now that... You know what's real funny, man? And here, this is the truth. This is bad. This is good, actually.

At the end of it, it's good. So I'll have a lot of... See, this situation that I'm telling you and you're, like, laughing at me and telling me how I'm lying to myself, that this situation goes on in a lot of ways with me with everyone but yeah but you're gonna confess right I'm confessing this so when I tell you like out loud stuff and some of the stuff is like I just start telling you and just look on your face I'm like I know the answer

already I know already and this is one of those things where before I got into it I was like for real committed to it like this is like true that's how it is and this is the reason and sometimes I'll come train with you guys you know when I do all this work to shift It's just shift it around and be like that's the new schedule like I could do it it's a miracle All right, see you know what I just I just realized is very good of a very a very solid quality and I've talked about I always talk about people like everyone's allergic to criticism like everyone hates getting criticized like you tell you tell me to do something different I'm like what are you talking about yeah you're actually very open to criticism and I think part of it is because Well, maybe it's because when I criticize you, I'm not telling you like, hey, do what I do. I'm just saying like, hey, you tell me what your reason is and we'll figure out if you're like, and you figure out if you'll figure out if you're lying yourself or not. Over on my side of the table over here, we think we suspect. We're suspect of the of the statement. Very suspect.

All right, well, there it is. Anyways, what the thing is, maybe we can adjust that. Maybe we can snuff out that lie. We can find out what the truth is. The truth is you should be training with your training, your normal training partners. Yeah.

On the Sunday. Whenever that, whenever that, that agreed upon time is out there, 10 o'clock's nice. 11 o'clock's night. 10 o'clock's nice. You know what's nice to hold gym? What do you mean? Hold it just empty.

Oh, yeah, and you just cured and just getting after it. Yeah, yeah, that is. Remember, remember when we first opened this gym up? And you were like, hey, we got new, before the mats were all even in, and you were like, there's new mats downstairs. Remember that? Yeah. And then there was still kind of slippery.

Oh, I wanted to test them out. Test the new match, yeah. And we were rolling, we're rolling for, like, pretty long as far as two guys rolling now. And then you're like, isn't it just so awesome when you have your own gym? Dang, bro. But it's true, I was like, dang, man, man, must be. Because it's like you just had the whole deal, you know? Yeah.

It is very nice. That is a nice thing to have. Speaking of... The jujuts. Okay, look, everyone, we're going to do jiu-situ. That's what we're doing. If you're on the path or looking or interested, if the path is right for you, kind of situation.

If someone's geese curious. And it is, yeah, yes. And you're doing jiu-jitsu, you're going to need a ghee. Because you can't just just do no ghee as tempting as that might be. It is. tempting you do some geek it's tempting until you say what do you want to be so good in one thing and just being lost you know with something that's so close yeah and they both compliment each other yes they really do yeah I did a bunch of rounds of ghee in at peak MMA yeah it was good

did some good rounds good jit two players out there yeah some good times but it was all gee sure it was all gee I was like I told jay I'm like hey I'm not bringing a ghee and He's like hey just bring your belt And and I'll get you a key if you need it just for the class then you can roll glee no gie afterwards. I'm like okay cool Then I put the gie on how to get his his geese pants were two's tight couldn't move my legs Was it super ugly? No, it was a it was an origin geese Oh well there you go. It's one of the warrior geese the lightweight ones. Yeah, anyways

So, long story short, got a bunch of good rounds and always fun to roll. So yeah, you're going to need a ghee. If you're on the path and you start Jiu-Jitsu or you've already started, you're going to need a ghee. What kind of ghee do you need? That's the question. That's always the question.

You get an origin ghee. It's not a question. Not anymore? No. There it is. Boom, question answered. Origin ghee. Go to origin, main.com.

That's where you get your ghee. All made in America? All made in America. From beginning to end. There's some rash guards do for no ghee. So boom, get them both. and get your jujitsu established. Did you say rash cards?

Yes. Okay, you got rash cards. And other, what do you call this normal clothes? Normal clothes, that's what I call them. And did I say apparel one day? You like, that's not the thing to say? No, no, no. I said apparel to clear it with you.

You said, cool, no fashion, no. Yeah. Even though Pete, he has one pinky in the fashion situation. Oh, no, he's got more than a pinky. He's got more than a thing going on. Yeah, respect. You know, his father-in-law, Joe. What were you doing?

Oh, yeah, we were taking the picture at the immersion camp. Yeah. And he started like, Pete started getting all, hey, you come over here a little bit, hey, we need to, and was really taking some artistic control of the situation. I said to Joe, I said, here comes the big artist guy

coming out. Joe laughing. Yeah, man. I respect. So he's got more than just a pinky in there. Yeah. Both pinkies at a minimum. Well, good, because not everybody's like you.

Some people, they like that fashion element to what they were. I was going to talk to Pete about this. So Pete, he's listening right now. Sure. It was actually a very accurate statement when I said, when we had this conversation before, my ultimate goal of fashion is to make no impression. Yeah.

And I guess that's completely the wrong thing to do. Yes, sir, it is. But that's my thing. If you, I want my close. To look in such a way that when you look at me you just see you know what you see? What? What about dilly? Normal. Okay, just a normal? Normal like just normal clothes like you wouldn't be able to say I bet that guy now the exception that I have to as I got the Victory MMA t-shirt. That's your thing Yeah, and the reason I have that is because I have a bunch of them and I just wear the same thing every day Yeah, so I have that little thing, but if you see me traveling when I'm not wearing a t-shirt I'm gonna be on something where you you just think oh this is just

just a normal person. This person has no nothing, right? No thing. Yeah. Well, so if you, I don't want to call this a mistake, but here's the thing that makes

that it almost like an antiquated kind of scenario. Okay. Because you're like, I'm, my goal is, you said my goal is to be normal, whatever. If that's your goal, you're, it's not to make a statement, right? You know, you're, that's your,

fashion right there that's your statement so by just by way of your whole discourse you're doing what you're trying not to do it's kind of like well I guess I guess I guess what I should have phrased it differently what I normally would wear is just stuff that looks normal and leaves although I guess yeah no I guess there is there is I guess in this day and age you have to make some kind of an effort so I guess in you know in a horrible way I'm making some kind of a fashion effort. Yeah.

No, you know who you are, though? This is what it feels like, anyway. I did. However you want to explain this, what it feels. Remember Bruce Lee when he was like on the boat? He was going to, I don't know which one it was, another dragon maybe. He's on the boat, right? Going over to wherever.

Yeah. And the guy's like, what's your style? And he's like, my style is fighting without fighting. That's your style right there. It's fashion without fashion. I was looking at old pictures of us. Yeah, like, I don't know, like, oh, nine. Yeah.

Ten or something. Dang, that's almost ten years ago. Yeah. And work is like me, you jade. I think Tim was there. And then, you know, it's like whatever, you being you. Same you, by the way. Same exactly, like, jo-co normal face.

And guess what you're wearing? Victory T-shirt. Yeah. You know, that's your whole uniform already. Got a lot of them, and it's, you know, pretty straightforward. I dig it. Anyways. Fashion without fashion, that's jocco.

Luckily, Pete's got your back. Yeah. And you know what's cool? This is cool. Because Pete also has a sense of that Who else is making a black on black sweatshirt, right? There's no, you can't see the origin I mean you can see it, but you got to you know, you're not you're not drawing attention to yourself

Yeah, I guess that's the thing, right? Right, trying to try attention to yourself Yeah, yeah, just be a little bit more laid back with that stuff I feel it yeah, because cool stuff My guys used to make fun of me at seal team two Because I had that was when I was competing all the time jiu jitsu tournaments So I had like they used to just like the main thing you'd do Get from a jitzy tournament is a little cheesy metal and a t-shirt and a t-shirt I had all these jeez I every I had a different t-shirt I had a different jiu-jitzy t-shirt

So there guess what I was doing what? Just wearing what I was given but that's what it kind of stood out Yes. Yeah, yeah that's even though these all just free t-shirts. Yeah, although I paid for the Hicks and Gracie one I had a Hicks and Gracie t-shirt I paid some money for that one. Amen, that's cool $12. The old Pico Street Academy some old school people remember that right now. Yeah, we're best in the West Best of the West. It was a judic tournament. Yeah, I remember that, but that was a little later. I'm talking old school grappling games.

I'm talking Joe Marrera tournament. I'm talking the Gracie, the Gracie, what was that, Gracie Invitational? Gracie Nationals. Gracie, I think it's, now it's called the Gracie now. Neutral grounds. Ooh, these are going old school. Old school. Anyway.

Oh, yeah, okay, sorry. Hey, man, I could go down memory lane with you. Let's not do it. But anyway, yeah, jujitsu geesee geese get origin get all origin stuff for jujitsu. That's the that's the spot to go even like the joggers and the sweats Sweat stuff Mm-hmm most comfortable in the world boom also supplements You can get some supplements joint warfare getting some rave layfabbin he said he went off joint warfare I think he said four or five days whatever's on a trip

Sure and he said his knee started hurting again came back went back on the joint warfare guess what knee healed up he I mean he I don't know healed but it's no no longer sore better yeah yeah man that's all you know what's you know so funny is like me I'm all like surprised when my experience just like you know obviously like surprised enough to tell you yeah yeah you know and just like me where it's like dang bro I told him I told him we put illegal stuff in joint warfare like I told him I was like hey man don't tell anyone but we put some little we put some little uh steroidal yeah yeah and and he was all looking at me he didn't need he probably believe me for point three seconds because he

didn't really believe me that much but then I was like no I'm just kidding man but anyways yet but nonetheless isn't that supposed isn't that odd though that we're all surprised surprised but it's supposed to do that you know like it's supposed to do these things yeah but I think it the level that it does it to is a little more the what people expect yeah there you go get on the curl oil too yeah now discipline We've got some debates going on on whether Dave you know Dave Burke Good deal, Dave yeah Whether he should be the actual representative

Clearly he's a representative of discipline yes, but for Mulk and the full Mulk train He's looking a little lean yeah, he's lean so he is the lean representative Mulk he's the before-pict That's cold blooded well I I you know Maybe. No, if there's people that are like, wait, I don't want to get all big. Hey, Dave Burke, he's on the Mok train, fully on the Mulk train. Yeah. And he's not huge.

Yeah. Well, let's break it down. So to me, personally, I don't think Dave Burke should be the poster child for Malk. Shouldn't be. Wait, is he treading on your territory? I didn't know this is a sensitive issue. That's classified. Anyway.

I should have, I should have, I should have. I should have read it into this more. Sorry, man. So the idea is, but technically he could be. Technically he could be. So what? Protein, right?

Protein. Additional protein. Because, look, you work out, you lift. You work out. You do, you know, all this extra heart exercise. Boom, protein is part of the recovery process. A big part of the recovery process. I call them building blocks, for lack of a better term, whatever.

And boom, the monk comes in, boom, right? But the milk tastes good, right? So here, and here's the side note. This is why it's important for it to taste good. This may or may not go against your whole thing. Actually, it will. No, it won't. It seems like it would.

But it tastes good. So let's say I'm like, I'm on the fence about working out. I know. You can't relate to that part. But let's say you are. I can relate to it. Then you're like, wait, but when I work out, I can take the milk. So it like fits in, you know, one, there's one with the other.

That's the best scenario. You ever know those guys that just thought just the supplements alone would get them jacked? Yeah, exactly right. Yes. And that's part of the point. Because you don't. Just so everyone knows, you don't have to work out to have milk. You can have milk without work.

But it will taste better if you worked out. Well, if you take milk or any additional protein, for the reason you take protein, I'm saying. And you don't work out, there's no reason to take it. True. So you'm saying? Like any excess calories. Except for the fact that milk tastes good.

So you could actually just take mold. Just like there's no reason to eat ice cream, mint chaggots of ice cream, except for it tastes real good. Yeah, but that's a slippery slope, though. That's not the path. So officially, by the way, and we established this, this was, I think I was talking, Leif. The opposite of the path is a slippery slow.

Okay, you can step off the path for 10 minutes, for one day, for one week, but keep in mind, the more time you spend off the path, you're going to slay, it's a slippery slope. So, boom. Nonetheless, if your whole mindset is to drink milk just because it tastes good, no exercise, no this, no, bro, you're,

that's the wrong path. You're going in the wrong direction. Yeah. Full speed, by the way, You've got a foot on the slippery slope at that point. Yeah, and you're facing the wrong way. Yeah, that tastes good. Boom, same reason.

But you're not. I'm saying your pizza, you two feet are off. That's true. Molk, one foot's on the path. Mulk and working out, you're on the path. Okay, real quick, because we're getting crazy here. We got mint chocolate chip. We got peanut butter, chocolate.

Dave Burke's favorite. Mint chocolate is my favorite. What's your favorite? Mint chocolate, yeah. But you mix them because you're psycho. Well, you know. Now, two new flavors are out. Vanilla gorilla,

and we got a chocolate, which is called the darkness. When I told Pete, vanilla gorilla, I was like, hey, no, we need to make it vanilla gorilla. And then he,

he, like, paused. We were texting. And he's like, wait, seriously? And I was like, yes. And he made a little crazy-looking

vanilla gorilla, a little white gorilla. So anyways, vanilla gorilla is the name. And the chocolate of course is called darkness and if you don't know there are layers to both those comments if you know about the darkness then know that one and if you know if you know if you know if you know Leif well then you can figure out the vanilla gorilla one yeah yes these are all

impeccable things Kenneth yeah impeccable that might not be the correct word but they are impeccable things to stay on the path 100% indeed 100% indeed also jaco's door called jaco store this is where you can get shirts and hoodies and hats more rash guards different feel different not physical feel but different different there was kind of this is pretty cool at the roll call when we did jiu jitsu there was people in the I've never done jiu jihitsu before area they had rash cards yeah they had jocco store rash cards yeah they had Defcore rash cards yeah and they had origin rash cards Yeah a lot of stuff a lot that's a lot that's a lot of it when you just look at that one room

It was filled a lot of stuff that's made in America Yeah, which is a big deal it was and that says a lot for someone who's never done you just to yet they have the rash card So that's a kind of like in a way. I don't want to say commitment Because this is a quasi-commitment I bet you there was people there that said I'm gonna try the Jiu-jitsu And I'm gonna continue down the path yeah, as people know you got to get on the jiu-jitsu path Yeah, that's just part of the deal. Yeah, I think we I had a guy questioned me

Yeah at the roll call after we got done teaching he's like so is jujitsu the best you know thing to start with As opposed to any I was like Yeah man we did you hear everything I just said come on man Yeah do it Yeah I said what about he said what about what about like striking though and I said well you know start with boxing get get to moitai when you get good at boxing you can start Open it up a little bit. He's like oh should I start with that? I was like no because if I grab you

That's not gonna work anymore right and if some bad guy grabs you that's not gonna work anymore So anyways and I said yeah, I always try put myself in in in like outside of my own brain because you know when like if someone asked me Detach yeah if they're like hey is jihitsa the best martial arm like not even the other options don't even enter you know it's just like yes yes yes Yes thing but I'm like wait you know let me let me Let me consider this, you know? And like try to let go some of my bias. Anyway, back to Jocco store. We got some good stuff on there.

If you wanna represent the path, discipline equals freedom straight up, because it does. It's the uniform for the path. It is? Yes, yeah, that's a good way of putting it, I would say. There's the new Discipline equals freedom shirt. Yeah, sure.

Is it different? No. Is it standing out? No. These things are all kind of, you know. That's just how. These aren't fashion items. Well.

But they do make a sense. They do me. There's a dichotomy to everything, my friend. Yes, sir, there is. Anyway, yeah, if you want to represent, you want to represent in the wild. Brother, there were guys with the shirt that you designed with my head on it.

Yep. I don't think I've ever felt more honored in my life. That was pretty good. It was pretty solid. Multiple people wearing the dang shirt. That you designed. And I designed. Or I guess you called the Gnag shirt?

Yeah. Well, you know, now you're going deep into the layers. Anyway, if you want to represent jocco store.com. Also, if you want to support the message, the word, what do you guys call it? Spreading the word? Or passing the word. Spread the word. Pass the word.

Pass the word. You want to pass the word? Subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and Stitcher and wherever. I mean, it seems obvious, but, you know, if you haven't subscribed, subscribe, subscribe. Tell your friend. Don't forget about that war your kid podcast. Yes. Which is, you're going to learn lessons from it for sure.

Your kids are going to dig it. And it's going to get your kids. Are we just going to talk about the path? It's going to get your kids on the path as well, which is awesome. Also, you've got the warrior kid soap from irisoaks ranch.com. That's Aidan. He's a warrior kid. He's got his own business.

He's making soap. And that's awesome. From goat milk of goats that he raised himself. The whole process, he sent me all these pictures of it, what he actually does. He's got a manufacturing thing going on. In America. Yeah, in America. Yes, by the way.

The goats are American goats. There you go. Yeah, also YouTube. We got the YouTube channel, and that is where Echo's legit videos are. And he's putting them up on a pretty regular basis. And he's got a plan in place to increase that even more. Sure. And as long as that fits his schedule.

And then we got to. psychological warfare that's an album with tracks of me talking and telling you why you should do something instead of not do something or why should not do something instead of do something how to stay on the path on the slippery slope calls there you go so get on that yeah that's available through all the places you get mp3s yeah what about a psychological warfare too it's coming we're working it oh okay we're working on it yes sir also on it dot com slash jaco by the way this is where you can get your other fitness gear. So remember back in the day, we had the, there's actually, back, when you were explaining

the essentials of home gym. Yes. Right. Number one. So look, when you're growing, yeah, number one is rings, which I got from on it,

by the way, which actually my kids enjoy those too. Yeah, they're fun for kids. Nice, quality, quality. Nonetheless, when you're expanding your home gym in the event of you having a home gym,

or even if you don't have a home gym, this is where you can get the stuff to sort of begin that. Really good stuff on there. Cettlebells is my, I would say that's my number one. Number one thing to have. That would be my recommendation. Above rings?

You say rings? You can't do pull-ups on kettlebells, bro. I know, bro. I know, bro. Wait, do you like pull-ups? I like pull-up. Well, I can't really do them now. No, no, no.

But in your game when you're 100%? Yeah, I mean, yes, but not like you like pull-ups. Like, it's, you know how you have the ones you like? Yeah. Like, when I started kettlebells, I really liked them. I thought it was super fun because there's a lot. Anyway, they're fun. I get them from on it and there's a lot of cool other cool stuff on there so yeah go on it dot com slash

Jocko also Jocko white tea you can get the tea bags you can get the can and when you get the tea bags or you get the can either one it doesn't matter because what you get with that you get an 8,000 pound deadlift 100% guaranteed although I did have one guy complain at roll call his deadlift's only 7,400 so probably yeah he's probably I told him to you know get after it harder and And then got some books also, the T is available on Amazon. And the store, and Jocco store. And Jocco store.

There you go. I figure ultimately we will unify. Yeah. Well, I guess the kind of the goal, the short term goes, kind of make it just available. Yeah, yeah. Like if you're gonna grab a shirt, Rashgar, whatever, and you're like, hey, let me grab T2. Good point. I saw an Amazon store when we were in Dallas.

Or not an Amazon store, an Amazon like obvious shipping facility. This thing was Huge And it was surrounded by trucks That were backed up to it You know loading docks Just it was crazy It was totally nuts

And I was like in there somewhere There's a little bin of Jocko White T getting ready to roll out And increase somebody's deadlift That made me happy They also had books in there They also had books in there Jock books

Jock books yes They had Way of the Warrior Kid You think they had that one? Yes, they did. They absolutely do. They had the field manual. So the way of the Warrior Kid and Mark's Mission, I signed so many of those books at Roll Call.

And personal messages to the kids and everything, the kids are getting on the path. This is factual. It's awesome. So get the books for your kids and get them a pull-up bar and get them a jiu-jitsu class. Because that's what they're going to want to do. And those two things are going to help them through their entire life.

Yeah. Through their entire life. Yeah. And that's actually a good heads up. Because if you're like, hey, you already got the pull-up bar and like the jih Tjitsu classes scouted out, you know. And so you're just ready. You're ready for the request, you know. Because your kids are going to be, they're going to want to get on the path.

Yeah. And I think it was you I was telling this too, where I was reading the part where he has to fix up his bike. Yeah. I don't want to spoil or spoil anything. But anyway, he needed money. Okay, you need money. So he's like, hey, to get money, you got to get a job. And, you know, it lays out the whole thing, all the layers.

I was like, dang, this is pretty good. So right after I was done with that chapter, my five-year-old daughter, by the way, she kind of sits back, almost disappointed looking. She goes, I wish I had a job. I was like, oh, dang. I don't think I ever felt like that when I was a kid. Can you imagine it's telling a work ethic into a kid that's five years old about wanting to work and wanting to, Wanting to have a job and wanting to that's just like legit. Yeah So get those books way the work kid Mark's mission

You can also get the discipline equals freedom field manual as I signed a ton of those Yeah again there's there's some people that That book hit them hard yeah hard and they made some significant changes in their lives so everyone that came up to me and told me that thank you and I appreciate that feedback and it's awesome to see that book hitting people the way that it hit me when I wrote it and it's awesome to see in fact that beginning part is what you're reading today there is no hack yep there's no sweatless pursuit yeah sweatless pursuit sweatless direction yeah definitely and then of course there's extreme ownership which was written by me and my brother lay fabin Combat Leadership for use in your business and life

Then we also have this week just released So this this is Live now at this time order it immediately the dichotomy of leadership A couple reviews already up there because some people got some advanced copies Awesome reviews everyone is stoked including including me and Laif you know we wrote it and you know we'd edit each other and it'd be like bro nice chapter be like bro nice chapter after that good like hey you know so yeah we we we critique each other and edit each other so the book is it just takes it to another granular level that's what it does takes it down to another granular level I think and some people are saying that they're more people

are going to get more out of that economy leadership than they did out of extreme ownership they definitely compliment each other but there's a lot of to be learned a lot of the mistakes that people make are going to be corrected through the dichotomy of leadership yeah yeah because you know when people make a change in their whatever you know they make it's like what it could actually you're the first time i heard this over correct over correct yes yes people over correct all the time and they they throw off the balance of the dichotomy of leadership and so when you read the dichotomy of leadership you'll become aware of that you'll see what the signs are and you'll be able to correct them and this is going to this is going to

really help out leaders in in the world so dichotomy leadership available now I haven't been think of that this book's been in the work for a long time and now it's out it's released it's in the wild so get some get some for your people you work with we appreciate that support and then of course we got a leadership company leadership consulting company echelon front we solve we solve problems through leadership that's what we do it's me It's Laif Babin, J. P. Denele, Dave Burke, Flynn, Cochran, Mike Sorrelli. We also got Mike Baham on. Did you, were you there from Mike Baham as part of roll call?

Main gun, Mike. Main gun, Mike. Yeah. I felt like I knew him already. Yeah. So we got another member, Army, retired lieutenant colonel who was with us in the Battleormadi, a company commander then, tanker and badass. If you want, if you need help, leadership at your company,

your team whatever it may be go to echelonfront.com we've also got the muster coming up roll calls done sorry you missed it it was awesome come next time in the meantime muster zero zero six San Francisco October 17th 18th we're danger close right now if you if you hear this podcast and you listen to it on you know in September hopefully maybe I don't know check the website extreme ownership dot com all of them sold out or danger close on one but check it out we can sometimes squeeze in a few more seats and of course we also have eF overwatch eF overwatch.com this is for businesses for businesses

that want leaders tested battle tested special operations leaders from the special operations community or from the combat aviation community you want those people those leaders at your business go to eF overwatch.com that we are we have our friends our colleagues people we know our connections inside the special operations and inside the combat aviation community they're trained they're ready and they will come and help your business through solid leadership again that's eF overwatch dot com and if you want to keep communicating with us then you can do it through the Interwebs through Twitter perhaps through Instagram or on the Feschi boha key boha echo is at Echo

Charles and I am at jocco Willink and thanks to all of you that make this podcast possible and that's not some big corporate sponsor no it's the military personnel around the world that keep our country free it's all the first response out there police law enforcement correctional officers firefighters border patrol paramedics all of you That keep us safe on the home front thanks to all of you for what you do and everyone else that's out there Thank you for listening thank you for spreading the word thank you for supporting what we do But most of all Thanks for telling yourself the truth

Thanks for not looking for that sweatless solution or that eweller easy road because the sweatless solution and the easy road don't exist to get on the path and to stay on the path that gets you to where you want to be there is going to be sweat and there's going to be hard work and there's going to be discipline and you are going to have to look at yourself and tell yourself the truth and then of course you're going to have to get after it And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.