Jocko Podcast - 191: w/ BTF Tony Eafrati. Sometimes You Just Gotta BTF THROUGH.

Episode Date: August 21, 2019

0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:41 - BTF Tony Eafrati. 1:59:24 - Questions For Tony. 2:26:28 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:52:19 - Closing Gratitude.  Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 191 with Echo Charles and me Jocker Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Some nights I wake up drenched in sweat. I have dreams and some people might call them nightmares, but that would not be accurate because I'm not scared and I'm not anxious. I'm actually amped and I'm ready. And the dream is usually about some bad situation unfolding really quickly.

Some operation gone sideways. And I'm in a building somewhere or in a bunker or a ravine of some kind. And the enemy is maneuvering. And they're bringing it. And I'm with a small group, a squad, maybe six or eight guys. and we're low on ammo and I'm about out and one of the guys is hit and he's hit bad and we can't move and we can't leave and this is it and the enemy is pressing closer and I'm prepping grenades and as I'm prepping grenades I got my head down because they're laying down fire and the enemy is advancing and we're killing some of them but others are getting through and the enemy fire increases and if I'm in a building I I hear the door open up and I can hear them entering the building and I do a quick assessment I got three grenades and I got a half a mag left and I got my K bar

then I'm ready to get it on and I pulled a pin on one of the grenades and I roll it down the hallway toward the stairs and it explodes then I hear RPGs launch and one explodes a little distance away but then the next one explodes on the wall right near me and it knocks me out and then and then I come to and I check for my rifle I'm grabbing for my rifle but it's not there and so I reach for my pistol but my pistol's gone too and then I feel for the rest of my gear I feel for my knife I feel for grenades and there's nothing there all my gear is gone I feel for wounds and there's nothing and then I realize that I'm okay that I'm just sweating a lot that there's no gear there's no guns and I realized that I was asleep and that this was just a dream and now I'm laying there in a pool of sweat in my bed

and I'm awake and I'm I'm actually mad because I left my boys hanging there in my dream and I'm also mad because I don't get that final confrontation with the enemy and I'll sit there and close my eyes and I'll try and fall back asleep I'll try and force myself back in there so I can finish the fight But I can't force myself to fall back asleep so I lie there in bed And I start thinking about what I would have done I start thinking if there's any mistakes that I made I start thinking about if how I could have defended that position where I would have maneuvered to How I could have maximized damaged to the enemy and then I think about the rest of the guys on the team and I think if I was in that situation who would I want with me

and this was this was a common topic in the teams if you were in a desperate scenario with the odds stacked against you if it was time for the last stand for victory or death who would you want with you I have a list of those names those men a list of the guys I want with me in that most critical of moments and when I think about that list there's always one guy that comes to mind first a guy that I've seen perform on the battlefield not for an hour not for a day or not for a week but for months on end this guy would go out on a three-day operation in a 120-degree heat with two liters of water, three cans of Copenhagen,

and twice as many bullets as anyone else, and as soon as the mission was over, he'd want to go back out again. This is a guy that can lead and that can follow, a guy that can plan and execute, a guy that never put himself above the good of the mission or above the good of his teammates. And I know, without a shred of doubt,

that he would have rather himself be killed or wounded then watch me be killed or wounded. He would step into the line of fire, take a bullet or jump on a grenade to protect me or any of our brothers in arms. That's the guy I'm talking about. And the other thing is, I know what he's thinking.

And he knows what I'm thinking. There's no need to even talk. We were raised at the same team by the same people. We don't have to debate or discuss whether we should do this or do that. We look at each other. give a little nod and we know what we need to do. So if I have to assault a beach or attack a bunker

or storm the gates of hell, I want my brother Tony Afradi by my side. BTF Tony, big, tough frogman. And that's what he is through and through. And that's what he did for his entire career through eight overseas deployments. He was one of the first guests I had on the podcast, podcast number 41. If you haven't listened to that podcast, stop and go back and listen to it.

But if you have listened to it, well, then here we go again with BTF Tony. Tony, welcome back. Yeah, let's just. Eight deployments or ten? Ten deployments. No, but let's just get back because. I didn't want you to get wounded because you're so, you're such a monster. I'd have to carry you.

It'd be a little better if like I got wounded. It'd be easier. I could put you in my cargo pocket and be like, all we're good. Yeah, BTF's great, big tough, I'm not big. I'm not really tired. Wackadoo, you know. So last time you were on, we kind of just jumped right into like going into the teams and everything. And which meant we skipped over a bunch of stuff.

like, I mean, not a bunch, but, I mean, because, like, I know you're going to put it. Well, how did you grow up? Well, I grew up, and then I went in the Navy, and then that was in the Navy, and then that's it. Like, yeah, yeah. So, so you grew up. You grew up in New England. Yeah, New Hampshire. And did you play sports?

Yeah, I played hockey in baseball. Did they issue you a hockey stick when you were born in New Hampshire? Yeah, it's pretty much, uh, you get one. in kindergarten. And then you play street hockey and then you learn how to, you know, like rough up your buddies and then get your ass kicked

and then you just keep playing. Did you play organized hockey? Oh yeah. Yeah, I played rec hockey. I played youth hockey all the way up until I was like 17. No kidding. Yep. Played all my life.

Three years old until I think 17. You kept all your teeth? Yeah, pretty much. I played mites, squirts, bannams, and midgets. There's four categories, these wise. But yeah, I played a lot of hockey. Until I got a little bit older, and then, you know, had to work. Yeah.

So school, work. It wasn't a lot of time for it. And then I realized I wasn't going to be, like, wicked good, so it was fun. Yeah. I was like, yeah, okay, chapter my life, and that's it. But I still love hockey. I love it. You know, big fan.

And, like, when I was a kid, we would play, like, out on lakes because I didn't play organized hockey. We did that, too. Yeah. Yeah. We would tape magazines to our shins because we didn't have, like, the actual gear. So we would just do that. That way when you get schwacked with a puck or a stick, you're not just done. No, but even the summer is, like, people my age, your age, everybody knows what I'm talking about.

Like, Saturday morning. when you're a little, your mother would give you breakfast, like get the hell out, come back at lunch. It's not like I went in my room and went in my little computer, we didn't have any of that.

So we went and we threw rocks at each other or played baseball in the field. Yeah, you see, your mom would say come home for lunch. My mom would just, like, say, get out. But then the funny thing is, when it was like, oh, it's time to eat, it'd be like, oh, cool, I'm going to get a Snickers bar

and a can of Coke. that's what we ate. Yeah, that's fine. That's what we ate. It wasn't like, well, you need to watch your content. Yeah, what the fuck is gluten? It was gluten, like some stuff that floats around in the sky.

Like, I don't know what that is. You know, apparently people are allergic to it. I don't fucking know. You know, I always knew about the peanuts and the shellfish and all that shit, but not really, you know. You know, maybe, you know, it's on the table. Eat or that's it. Don't eat.

I don't give a shit. Yeah. I just, the things, and even I'll catch myself, you know, with my kids going, you know, you don't want to drink that soda. And I'm thinking about when I was a kid, just that's, that's all we drank. We didn't drink. First of all, there's no such thing as bottled water. No, no. Still back home, you drink it out of the tap.

Yeah. It's better than Avion or whatever the fuck it is, you know. It's like the best. It's like so good. I fill up right in the sink, and it's still the best. Yeah. So you played hockey and then when you went to high school, did you guys have a hockey team at your high school?

No, the next town did, but we didn't have a high school team. They had youth hockey. So then did you play anything? Did you play any sports in high school? Just baseball. Just baseball? Yeah, and then I sucked at it. I played little league and I played into my junior high.

I bet I sucked at baseball more than you, which was a bummer. That was pretty coordinated. My dad was like a fanatic about baseball, and I was out. They're going this is the most boring thing I've ever done in my whole life ever like this is I could you know I was whatever seven years old but I like I still in there I like it because now I watch baseball and I know I get the appeal now But what I'm saying is when I was seven year old freaking hyperactive youth and my dad's like you know this is a great game and you got to understand the tactics and the and the and the and the strategy behind what's going on you care about and I'm like Because the funnest thing, like the funnest sport that I remember playing that I said, oh, this is cool, was dodge ball. Yeah, because it's violent.

Yeah, you're like, oh, huck the balls at the other people. That was fun. It's like highly active. Yeah. So we played rec league hockey, though, when I was a kid too. And that was all on outdoor rinks. That's awesome. The wooden boards.

And it'd be like 10 boys there and they'd flood it. and then like my uncle was the coach of one of the weeks and he was terrible like he didn't even not escape but and he had no idea about how to play hockey you just kill him we'd have checking practice for an hour just go out there and check each other like really you know I didn't I was like I mean I know how to play I know the rules I know and this is what we're doing I'm like all right just go out there and kill each other yeah yeah it's interesting you You and I were talking about the fact that hockey players are getting smaller again now. Yeah.

There was a, there was, I guess. Because this is, this is, I went and talked to the goals, the San Diego goals. And their coach was explaining to me, because I said, man, the guys are smaller than I expected. Some of them. Right. Some of them, yeah. And he said, I said, I thought everyone was huge now. And he said, no, because now what they figured out is these smaller, faster, quicker guys have a, have an advantage that they can

exploit maneuverability. Just like on the battlefield, you can exploit being able to maneuver. And these smaller, quicker guys can actually maneuver faster than the bigger lumbering guys. Now, there's position for the bigger guys, too. Yeah, you got to have a mix. Yeah, so that's what they're figuring out. Yeah.

That's what they're figured out. So if you were to go back in time, you might be able to, you might be able to hack it now. Yeah. I played sports, but my real thing was like hunting and fishing and trapping. You know, I did all that shit. So that kind of took a higher step. Like, that's what I like.

That's what I like. The priority for you. I like being out in the woods hunting. Was your dad in the military? Yes. My dad was in the Army in 60s. Dropped. He wasn't in Vietnam.

He went to Germany. He was a helicopter mechanic. He had a blast in the Army, you know. He's over in Germany, like the coolest guy ever. Yeah. Yeah. Coolest and richest guy ever. Right.

Because, you know, you're like, drink beer and, you know, go to work every day. And did he talk to you about the military at all? What made you want to join the Navy? Because did you join right out of high school? Yeah, I enlisted when I was, see, six days after I turned 17. Dang. So I was in delayed entry for a year. And then I left six days after I turned 18.

What made you want to join the Navy? Because this is the thing. This is the thing that I tried to warn people about. the Navy. If you want to go in the Navy and be in the SEAL teams, that's cool and everything. If you don't make it in the SEAL teams, your job is not going to be that cool. I mean, unless you're into that kind of thing, because there's some people that want to work with technology, that's cool. You'll be an ITman in the Navy. Or you want to work with engines and you'll be an engineman. Or you want to be a gunner. Like, that's cool if that's what

you want to do. But those are industrial-type jobs. Yeah, they're 9-5. They're industrial jobs. They're not really. They're not 95, but they're industrial jobs. They're trades. Right. In the Army, like if you don't make it to special forces or you don't make it to Rangers or in the Marine Corps, if you don't make it to Marsok, you can still be an infantryman, which means you still get to do the machine gun thing, which is pretty much what I think most people when they join the military, well, I shouldn't say most people.

If you're even thinking about special operations, then you want to be using a machine gun, basically. I mean, you want to have a machine gun in everyday life, for fuck sakes. I mean, it would come in so handy to eliminate a lot of, Bringin hoss shit. Like, hey, you know what? And you're waiting in traffic. Just get out.

Excuse me, folks. Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah. Just shoot the light down. Okay, go. It would be so much easier. It would be a lot of. I mean, it's legal, but, you know. So you, but you, what did you join the Navy to be?

Or did you just be like, I'm getting out of this town? I wanted to be a frog, man. But it took me a while. It took me a couple years to go to Buds. How did you know about the, what year was this? Like 86? Yeah. I knew about the SEAL team.

I wanted to do it, but the thing that helped me the most was actually doing like two years in the fleet. And yeah, it's two years I could have been a team guy, but for me, I wasn't ready. I wasn't mature enough. So I needed that structure, and I learned how the Navy works. And for all you people out there and all that, I was stationed in the Philippines for two years.

It's not like I wasn't on a boat. I was just drinking. and, you know, just being a madman. And, of course, the SEAL teams were over there, you know, the West Coast guys, I'm like, yeah, I mean, I might as well just do that. That's, like, the best. So I had a- That's ridiculous.

You're 17 years old and you get, you get-18, but- 18 stationed in Subic? In Sub-Bit. As a what? Mine men. Oh, my God. It's like shore duty, you know? But it's like overseas duty.

That was the best. That's insane. It was the best. Did they give you? Did they give you any kind of briefing as this 18-year-old kid? Like, okay, you're in the Philippines now. This is what's about happened. Yeah, they just tell you because it's all about, there's all kinds of hookers,

and that's like the main thing back then was hookers and drinking. There was like 250 bars in like a city block. And, you know, I made like $200 every two weeks. And I always had money. Yeah. Because it was like, we'd go to like happy hour or whatever. in the morning, like Saturday morning at Teas Tavern

or whatever it was on Gordon Avenue. It was like nickel for a beer. So I really like weren't I polished my drinking skills like big time over there. And of course it's a thousand degrees out and it's just like

so much fun. Yeah. When I, my first. After two years you're just like, okay. I mean, come on. So you actually had enough of it. Well, I wanted to get on. with, you know, I got, you know, I took my screen test, got orders to buds, and was like, all right.

And back then, now they got this big fucking pipeline and all this. I flew in the Coronado on a Friday, Sunday we had a class up party, which is you shave your head, there's a keg of beer, you get liquored up, and then be idiots, and then Monday morning you start. It's day one. So you checked in on Friday, you shaved your head on Sunday. day one classed up on Monday that's it yep here we go did you get rolled I got rolled in the second phase which nobody does I didn't get hurt I just wouldn't leave my slim buddy what happens my swim buddy I wouldn't leave him on a swim on like a time on like a

well you can't leave your swim buddy right so what do you do yeah you fail yeah and you just take it in the shitter and then and then like the next Well, you know, next class, like I was, me and bring the cheese man. He's dead now. Yeah. We're like in the top three swim pairs. So I'm like, my, my, uh, swim buddy. You can't leave your swim buddy.

I failed to swim. Yeah, but you can't leave. So I go, they, they bring us to the first phase office. And I'm standing there with my swim buddy. And they're like, all right. And there was a, you know, 10 or 12 or 15 pairs failed to swim. So they're asking everyone, like they're calling us in the office, the first phase office, by the bell. So me and my swim buddy get called.

in where like number seven to get called and I couldn't hear what everyone else was saying but I didn't know what the hell was going on I was just like scared I wanted wanted to make it through this training so we go in there and so there's something called guiding which is like the person that when you're swimming in the open ocean you have to it's basically steering but you call it guiding for some reason you know you guide so you make sure you're swimming the right direction so they go you know you two next pair get in here so we walk in I'm standing in attention he's like what the hell happen to you two and my swim buddy points at me and goes willink doesn't know how to guide oh my god and i was like and the guy was a slow swimmer like that was the problem and he was one that was the

problem yeah yeah but and so i'm standing there just going damn i just got just got dined out for something i didn't even do so i just kept my mouth shut and i was like i'll do better right and then what they did was they split us up and they put us with good swimmers and then the same thing Like me and my new swim buddy on the next swim came in like fifth or seventh or something I wouldn't gonna come in first or second because I wasn't No not that no because you got some of those fuckers in there that are swimming like 17 knots Yeah, I know yeah, but this guy failed again, you know and it was like oh maybe it wasn't a willing Guiding yeah really screwed you over but it was all right you know I just had to wait Four weeks five weeks and got back and it was fine and then and then

And then you graduated Buds. Were you good in the water when you showed up at Buds? Oh, yeah. Did you grow up swimming in lakes in New Hampshire? No, it's just something you got to do. Like, how many times was I in the woods with people in the teams who were from, you know, New York or Jacksonville, Florida or New York City or Chicago? They're like, what the fuck?

What, man, it's dark. Like, who would say that? It's dark. It's dark. It's night. What do you think we're going to do like just lunch? We're going to go on lunch and beach and now. So it's that's just one of those things you had to do. There's some people that don't do that very well. I know.

I had a guy in my class like a super stud wrestler from Iowa, but he never went in the water. And dude, he was my swim buddy in like the pool phase where they're doing like the stuff in the pool with you. Yeah, I love. You actually like that. We're doing buddy breathing stuff on your, so we're doing buddy breathing. And this dude is taking the regulator and breathing 47 breasts in row, giving it back to me,

I'd take like a breath and a half of his crap. Yeah, yeah, you're like, dude, relax, chum. And he still popped to the surface. And yeah, he didn't make it. He didn't make it because he would just freak out in the water. So, yeah, man, I was lucky, you know, up in Maine as a little kid, went in the water all the time. The water never freaked me out.

It freaks some people out, man. But that's the whole thing. You have to be competent in the water. Like when you're underneath the ship and you're derrigging and all that, then everybody's like right next to each other and you can't see anything. There's just like cords floating around. Oh my God. People think like it's all you watch the movies.

They go, they show them diving. Then all of a sudden they show them climbing the ship like, well, what about all the shit in between? You're missing like the biggest fucking portion that's terrible. You're under there, and it's like, lines everywhere, and the guy's kicking you in the mask, and then you've got to deal with that, and it's just fucking terrible.

There's some other dude that's like sinking to the bottom, dragging you down. And it's like, why is the line? What is all this pressure going this way for? That wasn't the plan. You rehearse this like 40 times. And you can't communicate anything. Nothing. It's all just,

yeah, it's just like, and you just, after a while, it's like survival. Like, you just got to not die. And then somehow it usually works out. Next thing you know, you're on the surface and everything is easy. And then you've got to go back. I think that's what makes the team's good. I think what makes the team's good is when you have to deal with all that crap of whether it's going over the beach just to do a land warfare up, but you come over the beach or, you know,

derigging underwater or a combat swimmer op or rigging the boats or whatever, when you add the water and it just makes it. It's all a real world up. So much freaking hard. Even in training, it's the real world. Yeah, because you can drown down. Yeah, you can. I mean, but the buds thing, like, yeah, I didn't grow up syrup or any of that stuff.

But the other thing is I didn't have a plan B. That was easy for me. I never even thought about quitting anything. No. I mean, it was like, why? There's nothing else to do. Yeah. I mean, everything else is just garbage and junk and like, I'm not, no, I have to do this.

This is what I have to do. have to do because it's like the best. Yeah, I'd never thought about quitting at all. And it was weird. A guy in my class that was from the fleet. And he was like, man, you don't want to go to the fleet, dude. It's, you don't, you not want to go to the fleet. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he quit again. Yeah. Well. And I just was like, man, really? We had these serial quitters that had come back and come back. And I was like, after a while, you know, give up. Like You know what's that

The first you don't succeed Try try again How many tries to quit No sense to be in a damn pool about it You know But I just didn't have a plan B You know I was like

Mm Did you do any of the water stuff When you were in Subic Bay Did you did any of the team guys show you Like not tying or any of that? No Not at all I did

I did dive though I got my life Oh, okay, there you go. That's good. Because diving, like when you, I've never done that. But when you go through like the basic, do they do some kind of? Yeah, you do like potty breathing. But it's like the big.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the big beautiful regulation. Yeah. And you're like, oh, okay. And then take your mask off and then blow it through. Yeah, okay, clear your mask. And like, yeah, whatever. But that's definitely helpful. But it was fun.

I mean, it was something to do besides drinking all the time. So I did that like one weekend. And then I was like, yeah. Is that how long it takes to get one of those qualifications? Yeah, you go through some classes, some pool, and then they take you in Subic out to Flipflop Island. Oh. It's actually really nice, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Man, when I got the little card, remember you going through buds and you get, well, I don't know if they had this for you. Yeah, they did. Yeah, so I got a little card that said I was a qualified. Like I could go rent gear. Diver.

Yeah. And I don't know where that is. I lost it. Yeah. But when I had that thing, that thing I got that and I thought I was the kind of the man you know I was like you know I would look at it from you know be my wallet look at it like oh yeah you feel like you're James Bond yeah it's like I felt like I was James Bond's like who cares no whatever not even a

thing anymore no not nothing kind of like when I got issued my first floppy hat oh yeah I thought yeah well here we've arrived yeah I'm ready to go to nom I know I know I know. Like you said last time, I thought I was going to Vietnam, like that day. Yeah. I know. Yeah. I still have my first floppy hat.

Oh, of course you do. Yeah. Just keep everything. I don't, I didn't keep anything. You go, you might need it one day. No, I kept my floppy hat. I don't have a shadow box. I have a shadow box that someone made me, like the good friends of mine who used to do that for living, like make coins.

Made it for me. It's perfect. It's like in my room. It's like not I don't know where any of my medals are. I just don't care Yeah, I'm like just such a loser when it comes to that shit one time I was in my son's room when he was like Maybe seven or no he's probably nine or ten years old and I'm like looking for something I figured he took it I'm walking around immediately who stole mine. Yeah exactly. Oh yeah it ever did It's like I step on something and it's like sharp and I'm like oh it's underneath a pile of my kids clothes

And I like pull it out and it's like a bunch of a bunch of my medals and You know, the little rack of them. I'm like, oh, cool. Whatever. Yeah. Leif, Leif's like, Leif said to me, man, we never got you anything for T.U.

Brouser, I'm going to get you something. He's been saying that for like 10 years. He's busy. He just had another. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's why I don't have any kind of nothing. The guys when I retired gave me a big giant trident. That's like seven feet tall.

Oh, really? Yeah. I just have it in the course. corner with all my weightlifting bars, I have it in there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Every once in a while. If I, I feel like if I, if someone breaks into my house and I wound them, I'm going to

finish them off with that. Well, yeah. I want to go get it and just run it, put one of those things right through their neck. Well, that, yeah, that'd be good. You should also spear them though, like through the midsection. Yeah. And then like get the water, you know, and then you both can lift up like, That'd be cool.

Be a good picture. All right, so you get done with buds, no fact or whatever. And you show up at Team 1. And did you get put into a platoon immediately? Yeah. And it's now, what, 1989, 1990? Yep. So is the Gulf War on the horizon yet or not really?

So Kuwait has not been invaded yet or it has been invaded, but we're not sure we're going to do that. That happened August 6th. And when did you get to the team? like December. Okay. So it took about nine months. So you showed up at the team. There's no war going on.

But we had to go through SBI. Okay. I didn't have SQT back then at SBI. I still basic and dock. And they just grabbed a bunch of guys and it was actually really scored away at team one. Yeah. You did land warfare. You did demo all your weapons and shit.

Petrolling tactics. You did maritime air, you know, rubber ducks, limp ducks, all that shit. Yeah. You did photo intel, like all kinds of stuff. Infield developing. Yeah, yeah. I was just talking to this camera guy up in Wyoming. I told him I used to do that, and he goes, wow.

Now it's all like digital camera. You ain't got to do any of that. No, you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course, spent hours and hours doing that. And then a lot of shooting, basic shooting, you know, shot M14 until your friggin' fingers go. Because you were not a man if you, didn't carry an M-14.

Well, yeah, because it was like the best gun ever. My bicep would get bruised from shooting the M-14. I am. Because, and I know people would say, because it would be like move, like you can't just keep it there the whole time. No, it's like gigantic. And that's why the M-14, God bless its soul, such a great weapon.

Remember how many malfunctions you had with it? Yes. Oh, yeah, none. None. Yeah, ever in the history of ever. No, actually, I did. I had one somebody else's shell from an M-4th, from an M16 went and like went lodged somehow into my ejector port well yeah in the middle of

whatever yeah it could happen yeah so that's one yeah but yeah those things are freaking accurate but they didn't they didn't survive the uh how do I put it the rail system you once once everything started becoming attachments and shit they tried to do it and then the gun was like 360 pounds yeah So it just, it never really, but back then the M16 was basically a piece of shit. Yeah. Even the NR727, the Car 15s, that whole evolution leading up to the M4, they get better and better and better than more reliable. And, you know, it just makes sense on the battlefield.

If you've got an M4, you got a, you know, 5x6, you're working with the Marines, the Army, you can always go anywhere and get some more ammo. it's like who has strip clip friggin 308 ammo you know 7662

nobody you know de wink it up to 60 that got to be a wicked pain in the ass and you're like but it was a great gun I mean I still love the thing

you put that front side on there I missed it yeah but as far as optics and night vision it didn't make the cut just yeah my take about it you know

yeah I still have one that's still like my primary battle rifle Oh it's great Always gonna work Yeah 100% it's gonna work I mean if shit goes down

Chaos in the streets And you're like on a cul-de-zac You could come out with that I mean I'd have a fucking Tommy gun Is what I'd have My fedora on You're whacking everybody But

You know you fantasize about stuff You know I mean it's just Hey it's a Tuesday afternoon What are you gonna do? I mean, yeah. Tommy gun and fedora hat. I mean, come on. Hey, you want to go to the bar and get liquored up?

Yeah, yeah, let me just grab my Tommy gun real quick. What? Yeah. So, SBI, you go through, you learn a bunch of stuff. I had STT, is what they called it when I went through. Yeah, and then. Good dudes teaching us that stuff. Oh, it was great because you still get kind of treated like shit,

but you were at, you know, you weren't a new guy. You were in a Bud's student. Yeah, you were getting treated like a little bit better than the Bud's guy. Then did you get, then you got assigned to a platoon? Yes, sir. I got assigned to Alpha Patoons, Siltim 1. And so in the old days, Alpha Patoon meant you were riding a boat. Yes, sir.

Arg Alpha. Arg Alpha. I didn't care. Did you know anything? You were just like, wow. Yeah, whatever. I'm in a platoon. Cool.

How many new guys were in your first platoon? We had a few. We had like a half dozen. Because sometimes they used to stack the arc platoons with more new guys. Because they just wanted to fill that thing up Because no one wanted to do an ARG float Wow, we, you know, a new guy, I have a new choice No, that's what I'm saying

So it'd be like, oh, okay, there's, just put all the new guys in there Yeah And let them float but you got You had a badass LPO I did, I did I had an LPO leading patty officer Who was one of my buds instructors

What was he like as a buds instructor? Quiet and like Mean looking like Kind of like, if you don't do this, you're just a big pussy. You know, or you guys aren't putting out and just like... Because he was good at everything. Oh, he was wicked good at everything. Once he became my LPO, like he was good at shooting.

He was good at all water stuff. He grew up like somewhere in California. Coyack. He could kayak. He was really good skydiver. Yeah. He was just good. everything.

Everything, mountaineering. So respected. Yeah. And it's freaking nice, man. Yeah, he's a great guy. I'm going to actually see him here. By the time this podcast airs, probably. I'm going to visit him somewhere in the country here.

But he did, I think, 20 years after that as a state trooper. Damn. Yeah. I think it was Alaska. I'm pretty sure. But he's just, he thrived in that environment. And he was a good teacher. Like he'd take us and go, okay, guys, here's how you do this.

You're like 80% correct. This is the 20% that you suck at. And then here's how to get better at it. You know, like, Roger that. I mean, he was just a good dude. The reason I know him is because when he got back from that deployment, he took over CQC or CQB at team one. He was the CQB instructor. So he put me in my first workup through CQB.

And he was the first guy that I was looking at Maybe not the first guy, but he might have been. He was the first guy I was looking at going, he's, there's a lot of going on here. There's a lot like, this isn't just a mechanical thing of you're going through in your clearing rooms. Like there's, there's thought happening here.

There's, there's intentional decisions being made. Like I could see, I could see that the way he would explain things, I'd be thinking, oh, he knows like some more, a lot more than a lot of us other guys do. Yeah. And he explains some little detail. And you'd say, oh, and it would make sense to me. You know, I'd be thinking, wow, that makes a lot of sense. And yeah, he'd say stuff like in, you know, room combat shit.

He'd say, like, well, why are you doing that? I'm like, well, we're done here. We're going to go there. Well, what about deconfliction? I'm like, well, what do you mean? Well, you're not the only group within your group assaulting this building or the ship. You're going to make sure that the other guys

are like, all right. You know, the first one who actually... That's exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. When the blinders come off in the teams, everything's like from Land Warfare, you know, CQC, whatever you want to call it now, skydiving, diving, once the blinders come off. And the good people in your life and the team,

will make the blinders come off. And then that's when you start growing as a frog man. Because it's easy just go, yeah, yeah, okay, blah, blah, blah, you know. But you have to do the basic shit so well and never forget it, but then open your mind up to all. It's like shooting. Like front site, front side, front side. Then you get exposed to both eyes open. And your front side is blurry because your target's clear.

Because guess well, when you're shooting paper, front side. site, front site, front site, that's great. But when you're shooting people, you have to make sure you can shoot them. You have to look at their hands. You can't do that if the target's blurry. So when you transition, I mean, that really opens your eyes. You do years and years of front sight, and then you start opening your eyes because you have to. And then it all goes away because you're on nods and you've got a laser.

And then you have to transition because you might be noon, you may have to go assault this building. I remember we were doing shipboard movement on the Mirate the piercide ship that we used to use all the time. So we were on that ship we were doing just moving. It was nasty. It was just nasty. Seagull shit all over the

place. But we were doing we were like moving we'd come up the stern of the ship and then just move as a big group a big train like a big and he just asked a question you know like well

what if someone's you know shooting at you and everyone was kind of stumped like the older guys in my platoon were kind of you know we'd shoot back or just some dumb answer you know like well yeah we'd shoot back but meanwhile we all die because we're all

in the open on a metal ship and then he taught us you know how to do the little bump yeah and and then I realized oh oh so there's this isn't this isn't a recipe It's not like a recipe.

Oh, this is what you do every time. Yeah, you can't. No. That was probably the guy that made me start thinking, oh, there's different ways to do this. He is a guy who made me start thinking. Yeah, there's different ways to do this. There's things that I need to actually think about. I can't just follow the thing that you've been taught one time and that's how you do it.

It's like, no, you actually need to think. And that was the first guy that I said that I started to realize there's a lot more going on than I was aware of. Absolutely. There's a lot more. Oh, a lot more. Yeah. It's not just, I mean, he would sit down at the range and shoot head plates at 50 yards like on timer, you know, with his pistol. Yeah.

Beep, phing. Yeah. Over it. While we were eating lunch, he's just down there. When he had that 45? Yes That wicked nice Yes

Yeah that was When no one had like really nice Weapons like that It was a good one So yeah So that's an awesome LPO to have For your first time around Damn

Your old run inmate Told me a story You guys were on a bus somewhere On like Liberty And some guy was running his mouth Some fleet guy was running his mouth And making a much noise He was all drunk

And whatever getting crazy And all of a sudden Your LPO Just like put him in a choke Hold and put him to sleep. Yeah, I was like, here you go, buddy. Just get a little nap in there. You'd be all set.

And what's crazy about that is no one knew what a choke hold. No one knew what a sleeper hold was, really. He did. Yeah. And he knew how to do it. Yeah. And he'll put people to sleep up. And then does it.

Yeah. He was a bass man. Yeah. Still is. He's a fucking great guy. Yeah. Freaking awesome. Anything else that he.

So what was that first a platoon like? Did you guys, isn't that platoon, the war kicked off while you're in that platoon in? Yeah. So August 1st or August 2nd of 1990, Saddam invaded Kuwait and everything, blah, blah, blah. So they sent platoons from the Strand, even though they had four deployed patoons, which guys were pissed. Oh, yeah, they were. And so we were on the arc platoon. We didn't leave until April.

And that, like, officially didn't end. But everything was done by the time we get there. We didn't do anything, really. The only real thing I did on that platoon Was like a Shipboarding? No, the big 53 Helicopters one went down Pulled off the ship

Cricked Killed everybody and we dove on the bodies and pulled up But I was with that guy and you know He was like yeah, yeah here's how we'll do it Totally cool But that was it We didn't get any gun fights or nothing Which is unfortunate

And it's like, fuck. Yeah, so we're on a ship most of the time. In the Middle East, we got off and we did training and stuff. Summertime deployment if you left in April. Yeah. So it was 1,000 degrees. Oh, yeah, it was terrible. And then, you know, you can't eat enough.

And all you did was like lift weights and then wait to get back. So you get back from that deployment, you go rolling to it right into your next pool too? Yeah, but I got a story about that first one. Oh. I'm going to work up. Talk about, like, attitude adjustments and stuff. I kind of fucked up some infraction somewhere. I wasn't late.

I just... I didn't have something ready. I don't know what it was, but my chief at the time, he's like, oh, yeah, okay. You fucked up and went, oh, Roger's Chief. I didn't really know I fucked up. I'm okay. So it's like 1,600, you know, I don't know if it was Friday.

No, it was a weekday. And he goes out to the grinder with me and like, what's he going to do? Like punch me? Because that, in the teams, that's kind of like a, you know, still. It's a thing. You know, I wouldn't go crying to HR or whatever that is. We don't have that. It's just like fucking figure it out, hit each other and be done with it and go back to work.

So he's got this bag, big. construction garbage bag, you know. And it's filled with a tangled up flutterboard line. Oh, Jesus. So for those of you don't know, a flutterboard line is this, without getting into the whole hydrographic reconnaissance thing, it's parachute cord, you know, line, and it's 500 yards worth.

And it's tangled up like a motherfucker. He goes, I want this in the morning back on the flutter board. Jeez. Which is like a big fishing reel. Yeah, it's gigantic board. It's about that big. It's bigger than like a gigantic pizza that you order. That's the diameter.

Whatever that is. I don't know. So I go, well, this is perfect, man. I'll just flake it out like a fishing line, then cut it and splice it. And as he's walking, he goes, I'll know if you cut it and splice it. I'm like, fuck.

So, you know, I did that for a few minutes and realized, man, this is going to take all fucking night. So I went to the country store and I got like a six pack of Budweiser. Actually got like a 12 pack. And I'm sitting there and about five o'clock in the morning I finished it.

Yeah. And I had, I shined the flutter board and I put it all and I put it on the chief's desk. And I sat in the platoon space, you know, with a couple of beers and I kind of like passed out. And about six o'clock,

6.15, the chief comes in And he's like, hey, I'm like, uh. He goes, he's smotting you up. And I go, you bet. All set, chief. He's like, Roger that. Good to go. Good to go.

We got shit to do. Let's go. PT. Roger. I was like, oh, good lesson learned, man. Yeah. I untangled some 550 cord. Like, when it comes off.

When it comes off the spool. Because it does. That cardboard one when one end disintegrates. Whoever made that thing is comming. committed a war crime. Oh, I know. That thing is just awful. It's just terrible.

Check. So you come back from that deployment after being at sea, and now you roll into your second platoon. Did you get any schools when you came back? No. They were already halfway through the workup, so it was just like, I did all the stuff, but I didn't have any time to do anything. Oh, that's right, because the arg platoons were off cycle.

They were off cycle. So you were going to get tossed into some, and you were lucky. then you got tossed into a platoon that was already in their workup. Yeah, yeah. Good platoon. Well, wasn't much going on back then. Like 92, 93, something. Went in 92 came back 93.

Did you deploy to the PI with that platoon? Or did you deploy to Guam? Guam had just started. So that's where you deployed to? Yeah. It was like nothing there. I know. As a matter of fact, it was right in the middle.

We, we, we, They were just exiting. So we couldn't actually deploy there. So we went to Guam. But there was nothing in Guam. Like it was kind of cool. Because my first deployment was to Guam. And we were like the first guys to go to Guam

100% like, oh, you are going to Guam. And the guys that had deployed to the PI before were just moping around the barracks. So mad. Like I said, I was stationed there, so I'm like, yeah, whatever. And then was the workup, standard workup, a bunch of freaking humping around the desert. Yeah.

Like the forward leading edge of battle. We had some good guys in trading that understood more about war than I did. That's for damn shit. Oh, yeah. Yeah. But it was, you know, there was not much to reflect back on for a lot of guys. Guys had to, if the guys were dealing with the Vietnam guys, and now. Well, my first platoon, my LPO they were talking about, he was in Grenada.

Yeah, that's right. With Damnack, with Team 6. And then my second platoon, the chief was in Grenada too with Team 6. So I had some redundancy in that, like warning. But some of it was like, nah, I don't know. Isn't it crazy, though? And that's like, because I had my platoon commander, my second platoon was also in Grenada.

Yeah, I know what you're talking about. And everyone was, you know, that was sort of the, and actually I had my LPO in my second platoon was in the first goal for, and actually did, gotten some fire fights. And so. Yeah. And so those guys, it was like they knew the unknown to us, you know. And that was a, that's crazy.

that there was that little combat experience in the teams back then in the whole military Well you know the 80s Yeah no that's what I'm saying And now you go into a seal Ptoona Every single literally every single guy Unless you are a brand new guy

Every single guy has been On a combat deployment or seven You're right or 15 Or 15 Yeah or whatever Yeah they're just There's tons of them that are numb to it They're like

We're gonna do this deployment now That's like we're gonna go somewhere Where there's nothing going on They're like yeah Because we always used to have a saying, like, if you're in a deployment and you're totally at war, that's great. But if you're in a deployment where you're just drinking beer and working out and doing exercises, drink beer, work out, do exercises. Do that for the boys who can't do that. Because guess what?

It's going to come full fucking circle. It always does, you know. but we're fortunate. We had a, I'm just fortunate like the time frame I was born. Totally. I mean, from,

I know, everything that happened in the 80s and the world. I went in the service and it was still old school and then the Y2K. Like, actually, let's, you know,

I learned about the industrial revolution in school. I mean, who really gives a fuck? But the, the, the technology. The technology revolution, cell phones, computers. I mean, it's changed the world.

Yeah. Not just the teams, everyday life. Yeah. And I mean, that was weird too because we got to see. And 9-11. Do you remember, I mean, when we got to the teams, there was no email. Of course not. I mean, there was no email.

There was no computers. There was no computers. There's no email. So, copy machines. Yeah. Yeah. So my first deployment, my platoon commander and the assistant platoon commander had each had a computer. Yeah.

And like, no one knew what they were doing. Like, cool, they weren't even. They weren't even doing anything on it, right? It was just complete, no, there was no use for him whatsoever. And then, you know, you fast forward. I remember Microsoft Word or not. It wasn't even Microsoft. It was like some other word processing program.

And people started doing what you're talking about. Print a gear list. Oh, I had floppy disks. A drive, you know, and all that stuff. I thought I was, but here's a funny thing about that, right? Like, when I was. went in the training like after my seventh

platoon they're like oh yeah you're gonna be the LPO of this platoon over at team five and fast forward in a little bit but no no no no you've done enough you're going into training went fuck so then it became

trade at and I was like pint going there so I had to put all the land warfare stuff on PowerPoint you know and didn't like do it right you know professional old and I just blah. I never had one minute of formal computer training.

The Navy never gave me any. I never asked. I just, I didn't know how to turn on the PC. Like, I had no idea. I'm like, oh,

on the side. Yeah. And then I had to, I taught myself how to do it. Yeah. And PowerPoint, okay, can you put PowerPoint on this?

The guy comes over and does it. And then I'm like, I asked a few questions and figured it out. What are you going to do? Yeah. You've got to figure it out. And it was like fucking terrible. I had a lot of, you know, past midnight nights starting at zero six, just going, you know.

And I could get up, go to work, do the two-mile swim, go run six miles, whatever the fucking PT was. Throw my body arm, I run through the house 800 times, and go drink a thousand beers and go to bed at midnight, sleep four hours, and I'd be good to go. Eight-hour day on the computer. I can barely make it home. I'm like, it kills me. It's terrible. I don't know how these, one of these fuckers who sit in cubicles

like blow their brains out. After like 10 years, you know, the business suit and they're all like overweight and high blood pressure. I totally can see it. That's no way for a human being to. You have to get out of the cubicle, man. Oh my God.

I'm like headbuttoned mirror. That was, yeah. Being in the teams where you're at a minimum, you worked out in the morning, and at lunchtime, you're going to go, like, for a run on the beach, or you're going to go do jihitsu, or you're going to go freaking do rope climbs, or something at lunch. And that's just the way. Yeah.

Like, think about the fact that when you're in the teams, you work out every day. Every day. Like, that's just awesome. Right. And if you're not working out, you're doing everything we do in the teams is working out. Yeah. Yeah. So, like, okay, well, I'm not going to PT.

Oh, you're not going to. the fucking PT. I'm climbing the ships all day. Yeah. You know, if that ain't working out, I don't know what the fuck is, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

If you're in one of those jobs where you are staring at a computer all day long or you're sitting inside all time, you've got to get up and move. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So back to your second platoon. Or going, what are we, forward to your second? Second platoon.

Yeah. Was there any major leadership lessons that you learned in your second platoon? And I didn't really ask you. that question about your first platoon when you because I imagine your LPO must have left such like not like a hey here's four points on how to lead but you just watched that guy well I just yeah that that was emulate him that's well the cat you're talking about uh I don't know how he was like you're all I see yeah we know what we're talking about he's like just do what that guy does

and you're and you're all set I I spent my whole career trying to emulate that guy yeah Everything about him. And I did a crappy job, but I did the best I could. I did the best I could too, you know. But my second platoon, I don't know. We didn't like, there was no major, like, conflicts, not even close to, and we did some exercise. We had a good time. Thailand, Australia, gotten a lot of, like, bar fights.

And, you know, I mean, we didn't really, kind of went. by. Yeah. And I had a lot of fun. Yeah. And I learned, I learned, I don't know, I improved on my, my shooting skills. In your second platoon. In my second platoon.

Not a ton, but a little bit. And I'll get more into that as we go along, but it was all right. Doing a platoonist, that period of time period of platoons, which I did one deployment to Guam in that time period. But you could see what was happening And what was happening was It was a pretty cookie cutter thing Like you're gonna do your workup

You're gonna go on to Guam You're gonna do some exercises You're gonna come home and you're gonna do that again That's actually why I went and did a couple of args Because it seemed like they had Yeah they had a little better chance It seemed of doing something real And that's why I did a couple args

With a couple other guys But yeah it seemed like it's kind of cookie cutter Hey you're gonna do your workup And you're learning stuff you're getting better at it, but that's about it. That is exactly about it. And now that I look back at it, some of the people who were in charge of me, you know, whether they were OICs, LPO's or chiefs, hindsight's 20, but they didn't really do me any favors.

They didn't have a lot of forward thinking. And I hate to say it, but some of them are like, well, let's just get through this deployment. And I'm like, get through it. This is like my whole life. Like, I don't care if I ever go home, you know. This is what I do. This is our profession, you know. And I would hold some animosity towards them and piss me off, basically.

Did it seem to you, like, it seemed to me, well, from what you just said, I think that there were some guys in the teams at that time period that worth not thinking at all. that we were going to war ever again. No, no, no, no, no. Like it was just not going to happen. They wanted to do this so they could punch that ticket to make rank. Yeah. But they were, they were not thinking, hey, there's a war on the horizon. No.

Hey, we need to be ready for combat. We need to improve our skills. There was definitely guys in the teams in the 90s that were just, you know, there were some great guys too, obviously. But there was plenty of guys that were, hey, yep, we're going to go on this deployment, this is what I have to do. Hey, stay out of trouble. Right.

Are we going to set up any extra training? No. No. We'll just train. We don't have to train. We won't. It's like, well, yeah. Because if you don't make us train, we're going to go train out in the bars.

Yeah. We're getting big fist fights and break chairs over people's head and get in trouble. Which I don't know why you get in trouble. I still think like, oh, yeah, yeah, okay. Oh, Barpa, yeah, don't do it again. I never got anybody trouble for that. Like that would be like, yeah, cool. Don't, no, don't be disrespectful to the cops.

But, you know, come on. Lock guys up on an island for six months. Yeah. And then go, oh, you know, go home and, you know, give a lot. No, we're not jobs. That's what taxpayers pay us for to be wild and crazy. So when all that happens, we're like right at home. That's what we do.

So that platoon, you do its cookie cutter. And then your next platoon after that, were you the LPO of your next platoon after that? You did another platoon. Well, the second platoon, I gave up the machine gun. And we did that one platoon. And then I became a point man. That's kind of what I want is one. That kind of takes the blinders off.

And I became a point man. Was I the best point, man? No. Was I the best at anything in the team? No, ever in the history of ever, nothing. But I was decent point, man. I'd say it was average. And I did that for the next five platoons.

Unless I was in a leadership position. So I did my third platoon was a point man. Wait, your second platoon was point man or second platoon? Okay, so you gave up machine gun after your first platoon. And now your second platoon, point man, third platoon point man. Yeah, which means you're getting really good at Land Nav. Yeah, and we didn't have GPS. No GPSs.

And your pace count is on. Yeah, 7,000 yards in my head. Not a like count or nothing just. Yeah, Roger. Mm-hmm. And I got real good. I was pretty good at Land Ave anyway. When did you go to sniper school?

My third platoon. So in your third platoon workup, you go to sniper school. Which sniper school? Was it an NSW sniper school at the time? Yeah. It must have been in one of the early ones. Yeah, it was. Not the earliest one.

So it was squared away. It was awesome, man. We did, like, a couple days of classes. And then we went up to Kalinga, California. And that's when my shooting, my long gun shooting just became insane. Oh, yeah, for sure. So, all right, you know, sniper school. You know, where's my cool sniper weapons?

No. Iron Sight, M-14, for, like, two. weeks straight at a thousand inches. So after a while, this is your group. The size of a quarter. 20 rounds. This is your group. And then you start shooting for distance, calling wind, still with iron sights, iron sights, iron sights. Finally, they break you into the scope when they start teaching how to, you know, mills, how to range targets. You didn't have laser range fines. And so when you finally get all that stuff, I mean, you're such a good shooter. I got out of sniper school at my platoon, we did a pistol shoot.

Me and my shooting buddy, you know, Z, there, not Z, but that's his initial, ZJ. We smoked everybody just because we could shoot. And they just got back from like Rogers. Like, yeah, yeah, but. And that really, really, like, I became a really good long gun shooter. Like awesome. Yeah, I've been shooting archery. And man, the laser rangefinder, they're freaking crazy.

Oh, my God, they're the best. They compensate for angle. They're crazy. Yeah. I mean, I bought one. I was like, well, I'm just going to buy one. The guy, like, I'm like, which one's the best one? This one.

And I was like, okay, cool. It's compensating for angle. And just real quick, I was two weeks ago, two and a half weeks ago, I was an RO range officer, they call it, but it's a range safety officer at the Wyoming rifle tactical championship up in Wyoming. Some of these range fighters these guys got are like incredible. And a shout out to them guys, they're some of the best shooters I've ever seen in my life, like in the world.

What was the competition? It's called the Wyoming WRTC, Wyoming Rifle Tactical. Championship or WTRC. I can't remember. Excuse me if I fuck it up. That's just who I am. But it's also a fundraiser for special operations, wounded warriors. Some of the best people on the planet, man.

Awesome. But some of the care was like, holy fuck. You know, but I had this back in the day that it saved me like, I don't know, 700 hours of horseshit in my life, you know, but, yeah, time. But yeah, I became a really good shot. This rangefinder I have has a stabilizer on it too. So you're not like shaking. Yeah, the only thing it doesn't do is like,

pull the trigger for you. Give you a blow job and shoot the gun for you. I mean, it's like crazy. Yeah, yeah. So that's when you went to sniper school. And you did that, that sniper school was the NSW with the stocking and all that. Oh, yeah. Yeah, it was hot.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all. How many people graduated that school? I can't remember there was I wasn't like the like the top cat but I think we had a 10

maybe 15 man NSW came out of the gate hardcore on that school yeah yeah they did like that NSW sniper school it's legit freaking legit yeah it's not easy yeah but I like I loved it I mean I thought it was awesome

so then you go on to Plymouth with that. Where'd you go? It was another Guam deployment? Yeah, it was another insignificant. Not that it wasn't great and everything, but it was no... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's what people have to understand. In the 90s, it was like you're going on deployment. We're on standby for whatever, praying every day that a major theater war would break out. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, just hoping, but... But one thing we did do is we... I'm sorry, I got to backtrack one platoon. We were in a... in Australia, working with the SAS, and shooting the shit.

And we were doing some training and we're doing some shooting. Our guys were doing really well, like shooting-wise. And, of course, with those cats who are awesome, they're like the best guys ever, you know, just like a bunch of special horses around the world, they're best guys ever. Like, oh, yeah, you guys, man, you're shooting a shit out of it, mate. And he goes, well, it's easy. for you and I'm like the fuck you're talking about you guys grow up playing freaking cowboys and army and I'm like I never really thought of it he goes you

know back then they're like we don't have guns here they like don't have guns unless you got a special permit to hunt or you're joining the military or the cops we don't grow up doing that damn you know I'm like I never thought of it you know that Christ BB gun wars when your kids and God You know, just throwing rocks. Let's have a rock fight. What? You know, so anyway.

Yeah, you don't think too much about the fact that many of the people that come into the teams or into the military, they grew up with a rifle. Yeah. It was comfortable around guns. Yeah. I mean, I don't see any reason to be afraid of a gun. No, unless you're an idiot. Yeah. Then you should be afraid of it.

Yeah. Because you shoot yourself. Right. But that, and then my third. Patoon we like said we didn't when overseas did some stop you know just you know like but people don't realize in them years when there was no wars going on we did some like ridiculous training stuff yeah okay we're going to do like this three miles swim and then put your gear on and hump you know walk like I don't know here to Saskatchewan and then and then

you get a five minute break and then you got to shoot like six 17 rounds and two seconds. Like, really? I mean, how skinny do you want me to be? You know, I do like five-mile swim, like 10-mile run, and then two-mile swim. Like, dude, right, it takes all day. Yeah.

Doing the monster mashes on Friday. I mean, they were fun. Yeah, they were fun. Yeah, and that's the other thing is I have occasionally people ask me, they say something along the lines of, I was in the Marine Corps, I was in the Army, I was in the Navy during the 90s,

and didn't do anything. And I feel like I didn't do a good job serving my country. And I always say, look, man, you served your country. You did what your country needed you to do. And when it was 1994 or 1996, and you were in the SEAL teams, and the Navy needed you to deploy to wherever

and go do an exercise with some country, like that's what you did. And we trained, and we did, we did establish and maintain standard operating procedures so all these little things that we do you know like they came count they they they somebody had to carry the thread of being able to do this stuff right for for during these time periods and that's what that's what we were doing you know making sure that this thread making sure that the knowledge at least at a minimum level stayed in

place yeah and a lot of a lot of it it's not even the tactics and stuff. It's the, I don't know. And there's still teams, I think the word, like, phrase old school has to always be there. It has to. Like, just BTF through everything. That's not an old school thing.

Just that attitude. Like, you got to, at least every day in a seal platoon, a troop, assault team, whatever you're talking about, someone's got to be like, don't be a fucking pussy. Just do it and shut the fuck up. Yeah. Because if it ain't like that in the most exclusive man's club ever,

then what do you got? You got nothing. Yeah, there's definitely, you definitely have to maintain that attitude of, hey, we're going to do, we're going to do, we're going to get this done. Oh, yeah. That's what we're going to do.

We're going to get this done. And it's like, cool, man. This is going to really suck. Yes. things that are going to suck real bad. Because if you don't do, even if you're operating, you're in a platoon or whatever you're doing, if you're not doing a gut check,

like a serious gut check every two months or so, something's wrong. It shouldn't be easy. No. It shouldn't, it should be like, fuck, this is going to suck.

But then when you're doing it, it sucks so bad, it's fun. Because you're with your chums. You're like, yeah, whatever. Everything's good.

No one, no one ever says anything about, It's just like mm. Yeah, you just Because you go Because you think about some of these things that you do You get in you jump You jump into the ocean With a zodiac

And then you get in the zodiac and you rig it And it's freezing and you're in a wet suit That's cold and now you drive from over the horizon So it's 15 or 20 miles Of driving in a zodiac against the swells Against the swells you're getting beat up Your ass is chafed Oh yeah

You're the guy next to you is puking. And what you're doing is you're getting to a harbor somewhere. So you can then put on your, do the real work. Take your dive rig out of a kit bag. Yeah. Do like a cursory check on your dive rig to see if it got damaged on the jump. And then you put that thing on.

You're freaking, it's all awkward and huge. And then you roll into the water. And then you're underwater for three and a half hours next to some, idiot who doesn't know where he is and you're freezing when you get in the water you're freezing you're hopefully you're actually happy when you get in the water because then you know you're going to warm up in like two minutes because you're going to be kicking and then you get done with that you come back out you're got you turn on a I or a strobe or an IR strobe sometimes a white strobe because no one's out there no there's no

enemy going to see you because you're in the middle of the ocean yeah and then you get picked up you climb back in you're totally exhausted You have one of those collapsible canteen, like the two-core canteen, is in the bottom of your kit bag. You pull that thing out. You drink some of that. I pull it out. It got punctured. Yeah, I got nothing.

So I just like, I just go, I got nothing. And then you got to drive another 15 miles back over the horizon. Yeah. And about, you have about seven miles left. The sun starts coming up. Yeah. And then you get there. And then you get loaded into some, some L.

see you that was meeting you out there. So that's the kind of thing. Like that just, that just sucks, man. Yeah, I get used to it, though, you know. All right, so that's your, so your third platoon, your fourth platoon. What about your fifth platoon? My fourth, no, my fourth platoon, I was LPO. There you go.

You were a second class LPO. I was a second class pati officer. I was a second class pati officer. LPO's, LPO's are usually supposed to be first classes. And now everyone in a platoon is like a first class. Right. Back in those days, man, there was E3s, E4s, E5s of it. And then you'd have an LPO.

But you were the LPO as an E5. Yep. How was that? I loved it, you know. My chief was a senior chief, and God rest of soul, Mikey Hinkle, died a few years back. but uh he was one of the you talk about nice guys

he was like so much fun he had that Texas draw like so uh what do you think we ought to do this shit Tony he's just funny you know but uh we had a great platoon we uh again we didn't we didn't really do anything

no uh made no war how'd you like being like actually in charge oh I loved it I loved it. I had a pretty good OIC and AOC, and we worked together. We didn't, I wasn't, I'm like, hey, this is how I think we should do it. But, you know, let me know.

And there was a couple of E6s in the platoon, too. They were newer guys, so they didn't. Oh, so you were the E5 LPO ranking, bossing around, whatever, in charge of guys that were senior-de-year-old. you on paper because they'd come from the food or something like that. And no big deal though. No big deal. Team guys, team guys.

We figured it out. But once again, we did a lot of drinking and fighting. Didn't you knock out one of your guys or something? Yeah. That's just stop that happened in a platoon. I mean, I got yelled at by the X-O and I'm like, yeah, whatever. Like, I don't, you know. He was like, don't do that.

And I'm like, yeah, okay. But we didn't we weren't out in town the cops didn't get involved or anything We just kind of like whatever Swept it on the table I was like in the office like I'll do it again right now and he's like no no no no I don't care But you know it was all right then I left team one after that not because I had to But I transferred to seal team five after that And at that time seal team five seemed like a left

It seemed like it had a little less stringent. Oh, my God. It was the Wild West. It was 300 feet down the street. And it was like going, you know, going to the Wild West. And I'll say this about Team 5, man. At that time, in the 90s, they were full of characters. I mean, fucking characters.

I show up recorders the first morning. in my starch camies with my hair cut my you could shave in my jungle boots you know it's team one and because that's the way team one was yep the quarters is like 720 i'm standing there i'm the only guy on the grinder and it's like 716 and then the back gate opens it's like coming out of the drew carry show back in the 80s like guys are on skateboards nobody's wearing a uniform and they're like hey what's going on yeah blah blah blah what do we do with p t today i don't know, who cares, just go run and I don't know, hit the gym. Like, what the fuck is going on here?

Everything was loose. Everybody was wicked cool. So I'm like, but then when I started working with everybody, the square-of-a-ness was there. And the training department and the platoons, they just proved that you don't need to be like so uniform and standards. and still be good operators. I mean, those guys were the best.

I loved being at CL Team 5. I loved being at all my teams, but, you know, that was fun. Yeah, there was a bunch of guys that migrated from Team 1 down to Team 5. Oh, absolutely. So I got in a platoon there and it was another ARG. So this was my fifth platoon and I did an ARG. But we had a great team. And did they make you the LPL?

Oh, no. No, I did three more platoons not be in the LPO after that. Yeah. That's kind of an interesting deal. Yeah, it was perfect. Because you kind of knew how to run shit. I was still an E5. Yeah.

So we did the arg and we went overseas. Again, we did like some watch in Kuwait. They still had that thing where guys are doing ISR or whatever. But nothing major. We didn't do anything. But it sucked. Like I was on another art And I was like, man

This is fucked up I'm like I'm getting I just re-enlisted I went over like 10 years So I'm like okay I'm committed for 20 now You know You know you can only work out so much

And you can only drink so much It's getting stagnant But when I came back They had this The cap The Command Advancement Oh, yeah, yeah. So there's 52 E5s at SEAL Team 5.

And what they'll do is they'll just, instead of taking a test, they'll just make you an E6. And you get paid right away. It's kind of a big thing. So out of 52 E5s, I was ranked number one. So I got the cap. So when TD was the CEO, I walked in there and we were talking, and it was between me and Diamond.

God bless my brother Diamond, he died last year. And I go, fuck you. You give it to Diamond. He's got a wife and kid. I'll get it next year or I won't ever get it. So Diamond got it. And I was like, yeah. And he bought the beer.

So what's the difference? So it was all good to go. But I was like, I don't care about Rank. I never did. So I did that. And I thought it was cool. That is. That's awesome.

What, uh, did you get capped the next year? Yes, sir, I did. They used to tell me that I got capped my whole career because I did. Because I got capped to E5 and then I got capped to Ensign. Yeah, perfect. Right, because you went into a program. Yeah, yeah. But that, that art platoon we did, we had a great platoon, like one, two, three,

four of those guys are not with us anymore. And not one of them is from a combat thing. You know, natural Cosbiz or self-inflicted, you know. But it was a great platoon. We had a lot of fun. We had a lot of terrible times, but, you know. You have terrible times, but they're fun when you're with a bunch of people that just are having fun. So that platoon, my OPO, I don't know if you're still in BH.

I don't know. He was awesome. He was great. I had two chiefs in that platoon. One, like, gave up or got fired or something. And all this time, I had chiefs that gave me some good advice. Like, my third platoon, J.H. was the chief. He was in Buds with me.

He was a higher rank. So he had kind of a tough go at it when he got to the teams. But he turned out to be one of my best platoon chiefs. He was smart, articulate. You know him. He was cool, too, you know. He didn't offer me a lot of advice tactically because we kind of grew up at the same time.

So it was, you know, we're both, same level. But he was good with the Navy. Like, he told me this and that. Taught me shit that I forgot, but it was good to know, you know. But a lot of the examples I used as a platoon chief that I drew on were mostly bad. I'd have to say, you know, 51% of them were what not to do. And you were looking at them at the time saying that's not a good move?

Or were you looking at it? Or did you figure out later that chief wasn't doing a good thing? I remember doing one thing. We're doing this crazy, shit-boarding thing. And I'm like, yeah, let's do it again. You know, we're not there yet. We're not good at it. And my chief was like, well, yeah, the confident guys are going to say that.

I'm like, what the fuck? Now all of a sudden there's two groups like the confident and the non-con, we're fucking frogmen. What do you mean non-confident? What is that? Like, yeah, I'm that way when I look at a fucking computer or something, but like in the teams, who's not confident? Yeah, that is a strange.

Yeah, I was like, yeah, okay, I'm never going to say that ever in the history of ever. Like ever, ever, you know. So then in what point did you go into trading? Oh, I still got a couple of platoons to go here. Damn, bro. So your fifth platoon was the ARG platoon. Yeah. You step down from L.P.

Where you are not the LPO. Right. So now you do your sixth platoon. Yep. And what are you doing in the six platoon? Point man again. Point man, air rep. Point man air rep.

Yep. And that was a spec ops deployment to Guam. Yep. Hammering it out. Get your work out, done. Get your workup done. Yep. land warfare

CQC Yep Long humps in the desert Yeah ORE Oh yeah Big time By then I knew

Nywin so well Like I was like Yeah okay I'm the point man I'm like yeah This is ridiculous You're doing it with your eyes close I'm like hey you know what

Chief Why don't you just let me carry the machine gun He's like why Because let the machine gunner be the point man let's mix it up He's like Dude cool

you know the guys like well that was another uneventful year and a half two years when did you make so then did you what about your seventh platoon well I made E6 in my sixth platoon

damn so I was in E6 in my seventh platoon but I wasn't the OPO again I was I was the ordinance rep I went back to ordinance rep point man you just keep rolling yeah you just keep rolling

yeah you did keep rolling yeah And after that one, another, that was our Bravo, though, we actually... Oh, yeah, yeah. But, yeah, we spent like 30 days on the ship. Uh-huh. Like Korea or something. It was terrible.

I remember that because I watched the subway series on the ship. Back then when the Mets were playing the Yankees. Oh, okay. Like, right... I think we ended in 2000, maybe 99, 2000, something. So you're a first class at this point? Yeah. And then you get sent to trade at?

I get sent to training cell at Team 5. And after like a couple of months. So you did your platoon LPO and then you did four more deployments? Yeah. Before I was at Chief. And then you got signed a training cell. Yep. And then they take training cell and they group it all together and to trade at right.

So I did like a year and training cell at 5. Okay. And then when I got orders to trade. tradeette, it was for three years. I'm like, wait a minute, I already did a year in training. They're like, yeah, we don't give a shit. I'm like, fuck. So we stood up trade at, and I was the LPO of Land Warp there. The whole time I was there. And during that, I did get another school, though. I went to New Zealand to the tracking course.

Oh, damn. So I learned how to attract humans over there. It was an awesome, like, Not easy course. Met a lot of really good cats from around the world and had a lot of fun. How long had you been at trade at when September 11th happened? I'm not sure, maybe six months. Six months. And then what, would you just freak out completely? No, I went to New Zealand.

Everybody else went to Afghanistan. I went to New Zealand. Because I had to go. How long was that course? Seven weeks. So you get done with that And now you're freaking out Oh, of course I am

So I come back from that And All right What am I going Well, okay You're gonna go You're gonna go And then

Like I didn't I just kept working at an island Working, working Working, working And then when Iraq kicked off One of my old mass chiefs Like I need a guy So he took me

And set me overseas And that's when you were there Yeah Yeah. All right. This is when, yeah, you relieved us. Right. So we did like a little turnover or whatever.

Well, I was working with the polls. Yeah. But we were working with the polls. Right. Yeah. So you came in to kind of take over the liaison or whatever position with those guys. And then which was a good job. Oh, it was great.

You must have been stoked. So I was in Baghdad. I was in Al-Assad. I was in Mosul. I was back and forth to Bahrain. I really, I was like the in-theater guy if you wanted something done. I mean, I was walking through these foreign airports with double bags full of machine guns and just going to like the Brits or whatever country had a plane.

Hey, they're like, we can't do that. Like, yeah, here, here's a bottle of scotch. I mean, that's how you got shit done. And then all of a sudden I'd show up in like Basra. And like, okay, I got to do that. this for a while and then I'd be like all right yeah I'm gonna go to Mosul get a flight there from bribing people with stuff and no orders and you know you think it's like well you get your orders and you wait for your plane now it wasn't like that you just got to fend for yourself and

I loved it it was awesome then you did that full and I made chief on that deployment that's when you made chief yeah I squeaked under the thing I had like 19 years in oh damn or 18 and a half whatever it was. And then when did you find out you were going to go to Team 3? Right after I made Chief. Yep. Because the guy we were talking about called me in his ops. He goes, I got you up to tune at Team 3.

I'm like, Roger that. Perfect. Were you ever worried you weren't going to make Chief and you'd get... No, no. You figured it would work out. Yeah, it would always work out. I would make it work out. I'd strangle someone before I.

I didn't. You know, it would just work out. Bodies would disappear, whatever. I don't care. Now, I take this and I'd be like, all right, here's what's going to happen. You know, your signature is going to be on there or your blood, you know, it's one or the other. It's going to fucking happen, and that's it.

I've not been doing this my whole life, just like, okay, you know, I retire and go sit over in the corner, like, you know, no, I'm not going to do it. And then. So then you showed up a team. I show up in team three and there's task unit bruiser we talked about that on the last one but we got to reiterate

that was so funny like who's this Willink guy and I'm like who oh Jocko they're like no it says John Willink Willink I'm like nah I don't really know

I'm kind of know him and I'm walking away like oh whoa whoa whoa they're like don't worry we're good to go we're all set We're all set, chum. They're like, no, but, you know, the officer's like, well, what's he like? I'm like, he's good to go. That's all you need to know.

Just stand the fuck by. Don't have any fucking, me, I don't care. I don't know you, my whole wife. I'm like, yeah, yeah, whatever. I go, don't have any, like, loose ends. And they're just like, you know, officers are. They're like, I'm like, what do you mean? I mean no fucking loose ends because he's going to, you know, he's like,

a shock in the water, like a smell of blood, he'll go, oh, really? He can't show up with a proper uniform. And they're just like, really? What is he like a uniform Nazi or whatever, you know? And like, no, he's just like, do it right. I go, I go, here's an idea. If you do say, hey, what do you think about this, jaco? And he'd look at you and go, well, I thought about like doing it like good.

not like what you're saying that's just junk and they're like oh fuck well that's you know then you meet everybody yeah yeah yeah that was uh

that was good that was funny yeah that was a good time you could tell almost immediately like that we were gonna have a good time oh yeah I know I know everyone was kind of there

everyone was kind of in the game and yeah you could tell pretty quick we were gonna have a good time and the very first thing we did was land warfare, which is as it should be. There's a little bit of luck involved with training you get to do first. But, you know, we got lucky, you might say. Or someone moved the freaking things on the boards over at trade at to make us have

land warfare first. But we had land warfare first. You know, there's a lot of guys, teen guys, listen to your podcast, the way we shoot the shit here. And I got to think that they're like, yeah, we did this first. So I don't remember if we did that for us. Like, I remember everything. Like, everything.

But not everything. You know what I mean? Like, if you say, like, my chum that lives down there in Florida who wrote a book, he's got a memory. Because I'm like, how the fuck did you remember that? He's like, I used to write stuff down. Now, I had a wheelbook just like you did. And I would write stuff down.

And I go back, I still have. them this they make no sense might make no sense it says I got a grid coordinates then they got a big line through it and it says other fucking grid and then roll over next day get get guns like what yeah why would you have to write that down minor like that too I have from when we were in Ramadi I have three like I forget what size they are but maybe maybe eight by six six or something. They fit in your cargo pocket, right?

And I carried it all the time. And so I've got all these little boxes with words next to them. And I can kind of remember what some of, one thing that's cool is when I would sit through a mission brief, I would write my notes down that I was going to say to everyone. So I have like mission, you know, 134. Right, right.

And it says, you know, tell them to watch. You know, it says, watch that road. This building is a threat. And don't forget to check in with this. ECP, you know, like just like random stuff that was super important at the time. And super emphasized the rules of engagement. Yeah, yeah, of course. You always did that.

I thought that was great. Yeah. But so I have these kind of like random notes. And what sucks is Leif had the whole hard drive of every op that we did. And it was classified secret obviously. And it was classified secret for no good reason. But, you know, when we, we had to turn it in and they took it. and it's destroyed or whatever,

but that had every op-sum, every op, every planning. I mean, everything was on that. And, yeah, that's good. The notebooks I have are like your notebooks. It's like some random grid coordinate, some random execution checklist, four lines, and I'm like, and I'll rearrange this. Yeah, it's like so many that can't remember, like, all the shit, you know.

I'd look at the notebooks. And usually that none of them were like full. Some were like three quarters. Then I lost it in a pair of bag forever. So I just get another one and I'd be like, I'd write this down like, and I'm thinking, why am I writing this down? Like at what point, like in the middle of the night, when I'm on nods and I'm in a gunfight,

I'm going to pull this notebook out and go, oh, yeah, here. No, I'm just going to be T.F to someplace where there's nobody shooting at me. And then I'll, like, figure it out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I would be, I wrote down,

The notes that I wrote down were all notes that I wrote down so that I was going to tell you guys. Yeah. Yeah. Like every note I have is a note to you guys. I mean, very, I guess maybe there's a third of them that are notes to me that say like, hey, tell the CEO, blah, blah, blah. Or tell the brigade commander that, you know, the guys are going to be over here. Like, so there's some notes like that. But I don't have any notes that say, I felt, I felt good about this operation.

And I, you know what I mean? Of course not. I never had any of that shit. Yeah, I don't have any of that. I don't, like, when I actually did sleep, I would, like, all right, my gun's good. Okay, I'd lay down, and I would sleep like a baby for those hours, whatever. I slept so good in a war zone. Number one, you're like wicked tired.

Number two, it's simple. It's not like life. You get up every day, like, okay, here's what we're going to do. It's fine. And go to bed. Like, get up. Yeah, easy. Not like regular life shit.

Terrible. There's definitely the op tempo of there's just you constantly have the next thing that you're like there's no you never finish on a deployment. You like you don't finish the day. The day just rolls into the next day into the next day into the next day. So you're just on this this amped up cycle of what are we going to do next? What's going on? Yeah. And it,

this doesn't stop. So when you, when you, when you, when you, when you have a chance to lay down, you're like,

oh yeah, yeah, you're done. There's a picture of me and Dave Burke that. Good deal, dude. Yeah.

Yeah. Nice reaction time. Uh, but it's me and him. I'm pretty sure it's cop Falcon. And, you know, he's the commander of salt six

and I'm the commander of tasking a bruiser and we're up on this rooftop. And we're both asleep. It's probably about 10 o'clock and the morning and it's funny but I was thinking like by the time I would get into the field I'd be so tired done yeah and and you know and that'd be the first time we're like okay cool everyone's on

security and I'm going to go to sleep right now and that's Dave Burke and me sitting on a rooftop racked out just done and just need three hours of sleep I remember that one deployment that one I was up on this building and I had 300 one mag and I was looking through this thing and for some reason that little section was just me. We didn't have enough people over the whole building, whatever.

So that's fine. I could crawl and meet up with the other guys and then go downstairs. No big deal. It was like August. And I'm like, fuck, I don't have any water. I don't have any shade.

Nothing, but I have to stay on the gun. So I realize this about, nine in the morning. So the sun goes down at like nine at night. And I go, okay. Yeah, I'm breaking my shit down. Kind of. So this is after you've been sitting there for 14 hours.

Yeah. And you have... I crawl back. You have zero fucking water in your system at this point. Like nothing. It's like 120 degrees. So I'm like, I break out my silver ranger. And I look, because I know what's going on.

my lips are as white as this piece of paper, like just like the chunks. So I'm like going, I'm peeling it off. I'm like, you know, I'll be fine, but I literally got like three hours to like die. And I like, eh. So I don't say a fucking thing because

I want to be a pussy, you know. But I know I got some coax or something. and come D. You know, when I finally get that, like, because my throat's like this big. You know, there's like nothing. There's no airway. So I put my rock on,

we're ex-filling out of the building at night, you know, and it's like, you know, I'm like looking down and holding my field of fire, you know, and I'm the chief, so I should be smarter than that. But I'm like, you know, my vision starts to narrow because I like, and I'm like, I can snap out of it. And I'm like, now I'm good to go. I get back and after like an hour back at the camp, I'm like, oh, shit, I got to drink some water.

You know, and I drank like four quarts of water. And then like six hours later, I was pissing like blue, you know, still. I don't think you can really come back from a dehydration like that. But it's all those years of like drinking and that just conditions you. So when it's, you know, niling. So when you get into that spot, it's not so bad. Like, I'm not going to die. I'm wicked close.

No, seriously, like, you start, you know, feeling your dizziness, and then you just go and it goes away for a while, then it comes back because you can't out run your body. You're like, you know what I mean? Yeah, the dehydration will get you. Yeah. It's crazy how the man, you'd see guys at, You'd see guys at the desert training, they'd go tits up.

Pretty much if we were doing, when I was at trade at, if it was summer and we were doing like a eight, six to eight click insert, by the time extract was going down, there's a decent chance someone was going down, like for real. Yeah. And you're talking about completely sober, hydrated, hydrated, hydrated, high cord, dude. Why is it that it was usually on the insert? Because you're just coming out of the damn air conditioning. Because now that I think about it, it was almost always on the insert. Well, one of the things I instituted, and if I'm wrong about this, somebody correct me. But I think I was the first guy to do it was when we were doing immediate action drills,

and we'd walk the guys out. And I did fucking thousands of those. And I would pre-plan a guy. And you kind of could tell, like, we're not going to shoot back towards the canal kind of shit. But a guy who's on that right flank, if it was perpendicular or parallel, whatever it was. With a point, man, they would just fall down with nothing, just fall down and like way there. Guys would be like, contact right, you know, or they start shooting. And they drag the wound of the guy.

And I'm like, okay, and they come back. And usually they did a good job, you know. I'm like, so what happened? And well, you know, we took contact. This guy went down, blah, blah, blah. No, you didn't. The guy just fell down. Well, what do you mean?

I'm like, well, maybe it was a heat casualty. And not to be a ding. Kind of to be a dink. Yeah, a little bit. That's how you teach the lesson. But it's like, you know, so how do you differentiate? Maybe he gets taken out by someone you don't hear the shot. Well, what are you shooting at?

You know, there's no real good answer. that you try to take the blinders off. Yeah, I was going to say that's one of those things what you're actually teaching is like, you actually have to think about what's happening. Oh, absolutely. Even an immediate action drill, like, okay, there's an immediate action drill,

but you better be, you better think about what's actually going on because the answers aren't, what's the word? The answers aren't just a wrote memory. No, there's no answer. It's all a bunch of garbage. You got to decipher and figure out.

The only thing that comes close to it in the civilian world is hunting. You got elk hunt this last past year. I killed this gigantic bull elk. Me and two team guys were. There was five team guys there in Wyoming. And when I kill my big bull, it was like the other two guys couldn't carry gun because they already limited it out.

They tagged out. So we ran it just like an op. and we have a little PLO take off, hand-arm signal comes up. Guys are, my chum crass is like, okay, this big bull elk's going from here to here. It was so intense, and I tell this to my chums, like, I mean, I've actually shot some guy in the war or whatever, you know,

like yawning, like, uh, you know, like, hunting elk, I'm like this. they're so big and majestic and beautiful and like they will kill you in a minute and they don't care about you. They're just like, it's like life on steroids. It's so unbelievable. I highly recommend that if you like hunting, you hunt elk

because they're screaming. And they're in the rut and they're battling each other. You can hear the tines. And then the big bull comes out. It's fucking incredible. I'm going in September. It's unbelievable. With a bow.

I'm never, I'm not a bow hunter. Yeah. But I don't know where you're going. You're going to Idaho? Going to Utah. Utah. Yeah. Yeah.

To a place that. Guy went to high school, Bow hunts in Utah. He's from there. So we'll talk. This, the hunt that I'm going on, I'm going with,

uh, it's like a, it's like the, the best possible hunt. Like Andy, Andy Stumpf, he said that this hunt, he's,

He's like, this hunt is going to spoil you because it's the best possible. No, I love that guy. And even the guy that's taking me, John Dudley, who's, you know, a world famous bow hunter and archer. And he's like, yeah, it's good. This is as good as it gets. Like this, the spot where I'm going is good as it gets. So it should be freaking awesome. It's so badass.

Yeah. You know, and I went home back to New Hampshire because it was, that was an October season, back to New Hampshire, hunted. I hunt with these guys up at a camp. They're just like the best. everybody's like a character. Killed a lot of deal this year, you know. But it's not like that. It's, it's, you know one thing.

Well, so this guy John Dudley was asking me, he's like, it seems like this would be good for guys to get into. Oh my God. It's the best. I'm like, yeah. And for me, so we just did this 3D archery challenge up in Montana. And when we're up there, look, it's an, it's an admin thing basically. Like you're walking through the woods and then they go, okay, there's the target and then you shoot the target.

They're anywhere between 30 and maybe 120 yards with a bow, which is far shots. But for me, I was telling him, I'm like, you know, when I was younger in the teams, we would patrol around the woods. Yeah. And that's what you're doing. You're patrolling around the woods. You're trying to be quiet. And like, that's a skill that. And the wind.

Yeah, the wind. But like even in the desert, it's different than like when I was, when we would go to Fort Lewis, Washington or we'd go to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas, or like we'd go down to Pan. Did you ever go do one of the training trips to Panama? So like patrolling through the woods, patrolling through the jungle. Not Panama City, Panama. No Panama. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So you get that, that skill of walking quietly through the woods and looking at someone else. and doing all hand signals and not. And I was saying this to John, I'm like, and you're not talking. No, no. Which I know I have a podcast, which is what I do is like talk a bunch, but I actually don't love to talk to old people all the time.

No, really, really. So. So. I had some of it, something like J.O. a junior officer would walk. I'm like, Hey,

hey, well, Hey, Jocko, what do you think about this? And you just be like, You just like turn and walk away. And I think I'd be like looking at me. I'm like, what are you looking at me for?

I don't know. He just doesn't want to talk to you. So what? Don't get old butt hurt over it. He's got like stuff on his mind like, I'm hungry. Yeah. So that's kind of cool. I'm looking forward to going out in that hunt in September.

And I'll report back with how it goes. Absolutely. Man, there's a. no pressure shooting a freaking bow and arrow at. Oh, yeah. It's no joke, dude. It's no joke. We'll be, we'll be 30 or 40 yards away.

Yeah. Like, outside of that, like I can loosely hit a target, you know. Well, you've been practiced. Like, you can shoot. Yeah, I practice. I practice, but you don't want to have a bad shot. No, but how are you everything good, like, shooting your, your bow like 50 yards.

I'll hit. All the time. Like you're good to go. I'll hit. Yeah. Like, see, you're a bad example. Like, how can I stand next to you with like a fucking tambourine and make you like shake? Because there's nothing, you'll be like laughing.

And you like that, man. When they're fucking screaming, it's the coolest thing in the fucking world. I swear to God. That's awesome. Well, I don't know. If you want to get a bow and start hunting, I'm sure. One thing at a time. I don't even know what I'm doing after this podcast.

Probably going across the street to Buffalo Wild Wings and get all gooned up. So, Bruiser, I mean, you know, like I said, there's a million things to talk about to you, Bruiser. But when you got done with T.U. Bruiser, what were your, like, looking back on it? Not looking back on it now, because now you just look back and everyone like, oh, that was,

but when you were, like, when we got back, two weeks later, what were you, when you looked back at it from that closer perspective? I, I was kind of lost. Like, it's not going to get any better than that, you know. I was in the next troop. I was the, the ops chief. Then I got fired.

I didn't get fired. I get fired because I made senior chief. And I was like, well, cool. All right. And then I had to go to the Senior Enlist Academy, and I was like, whatever. And, you know, then I went to Team 7, and I pretty much got fired, which was fine. I didn't want to do that anyway. And I was in ranges.

And they're like, we need a guy to go do the Provincial Reconstruction team. I'm like, okay. In Afghanistan. In Afghanistan. So I went to Afghanistan. Well, I did this work out for like two months at Camp A in Indiana. So this is a mission where you be going with, not with like a seal platoon, but you're going with some other kind of ad hoc group of people put together?

Oh, no. Oh, no. What was it? It was, I had a seal lieutenant commander as a CEO. Oh, okay. And I was a seal senior chief. And we were the only seals. And I had about a hundred people from the Navy, the Army, the National Guard,

and the Air Force. So it was ad hoc. Yeah. Got it. It was like leadership challenge because I'm not used to working like with the regular, but I am used to work with the regular military because every frogman has to. So it really wasn't that bad. But I had like very, very minimal combat experience.

I had a couple of guys like these old crusty guys who were in the South Carolina National Guard. Some guys were in the Rangers. They were awesome, man. They were all like cops, sheriffs or... Dude, they must have loved you. Oh, yeah. Or prison guards, you know,

and National Guard cats. They were frigging awesome. You know, once we got through the language barrier, because I'm from New England, you know, they're all from South Carolina. They were badass, man. They were like a platoon. That was just mine, my platoon.

You know, and they were frigging great to a guy. Every one of them was awesome. I had some reserve CBs who took care of the trucks. I had guys with no combat experience, never even driving these trucks. You know, mortars coming in. They performed magnificently. It was cool.

But I did a lot. vehicle work with them you know immediate action drills how to deal with down people you know we got some we actually got some pretty good training you know i learned a few things i'm not afraid to admit when i learned something from you know but we're there like a year you know and i broke off for like month month and a half and just went back to my seal buddies and got after i got a bunch of gunfights and you know we'd get mortared all the time i'd be eating a sandwich and rock Chinese 107s come in. Like, whatever.

But, you know, it was cool. What was, what were you guys actually doing? We'd go into areas and, like, we wouldn't build schools. We wouldn't build bridges, but we'd facilitate it. You'd go in there and meet with the village elders. I said, we need this.

Okay. So we'd send up a proposal. And then we'd go back, give them money, you know, or put it out to bid. And, of course, that's all garbage. It's just a big, like, shakedown. All the local politicians, they're just come in and take the money. And they're like, okay, we'll give you, okay, let's say we give him $50,000 to build a bridge. All right.

So the guy wins the bid. His company gets the 50 grand. The politician comes in and takes like 30. And then they build the bridge for $3,000. No, they come back and they go, we don't have enough to finish. We give them the rest of money. I mean, it's like 20% of the 40%, I don't know what it is. Percentages all shake down money that were given to Afghanistan.

It's like crazy. But, you know, people think in this country that every other country is like us. Yeah, no. Yeah. Well, I remember that. I don't know if you remember when we got to Ramadi, one of the things that the guys were concerned about was they were like, hey, the officers in the Iraqi. Army are taking the enlist, they're skimming some of the enlist. Yeah, we're worried about that.

And then it was like, you talk to the Iraqi? Yeah, well, he's the boss. Of course he's going to take some of my money. Like, yeah. That's what it is. That's the way it goes, you know. And we were all thinking like in America. If you heard that, hey, the officer is skimming money off the enlisted guys,

his paychecks. It'd be like, oh, that guy needs to be crucified. Right. Over there. They were like, well, yeah, they were like, well, yeah, of course he's taking a little, that's his, he's the boss. It's not like, it's not like people over there go like this. They see it on the like six o'clock news with, you know,

whatever chick, you know, she's up there going, oh, today the scandal is, don't, don't, there's none of that. It's just whatever. It's all wild west. Just do whatever. You got big guns. You get all the money. Then you spent that, that year, how many like different villages did you guys go

trying? Oh, my God. Like all kinds of them? Yeah. How would you get in there? Were you guys doing patrols in there? Vehicle patrols? Are you flying in? We rarely used air assets. We always had air support, though. At least standby. But most of the time, we drew vehicles. I had somewhere between a dozen and up to like 20 vehicles. And I was usually the vehicle commander. I wasn't overall in charge of the operation. Sometimes I was. But I took, These people who've never really been in a military vehicle that much. And we were okay. We survived a few ambushes, got blown up a few times, had wreckers with us, refueling tankers.

I mean, it was crazy. These were some long transits then. Oh, yeah. A hundred miles, some of them, one way. The IED threat was. It was gigantic. It was gigantic. Like I said, we got blown up a couple times.

But you could tell it was amateur hour. So back then, like I said, back then, we had three big threats. One was your trip wires or your manual, you know. And then you had pressure plates, pressure plates, victim activated. Yeah. So your pressure plates, so the way we countered pressure plates is you get the mine rollers. And they're like an 8,000 pound thing that you put in front. of either a Matt V or a whatever the other one is.

I had my own Bat V. It was awesome. So you'd roll that in front. And of course, I had a driver. But you can't just drive with that. You have to counterbalance the... It's weird. You have to learn how to drive it.

It's like driving a trailer to reverse. Right. You'd have to put 8,000 pounds of pressure, whatever it was, maybe I'm wrong. And it would detonate. And if it does detonate, it's not it'll fuck you up but it's not gonna flip because you know how explosion works goes like this

so we had that for the pressure plates for the so you had some counter measures for the IEDs yeah and you ended up hitting just a couple yeah just a couple yeah but around us guys hit a lot yeah we had to respond and we got pretty good at like going out not really being a

a QRF but going out and providing support and we'd fan out and I'd walk up and talk to who was in charge and like yeah what can we do you know but Afghanistan was kind of cool because I really love the terrain big mountains like

a couple thousand, you know eight that nine thousand feet up you know it was pretty cool it was actually beautiful over there I don't yeah could have ski frigging lodges and you know it's that's northeast Afghanistan

and out west it's like desert but it was cool and then I came back from that and I put my papers in to retire and I was just like went back to Nilean running the boys but I basically had a great crew they pipe hitting

guys they just knew what to do so I kind of like get up in the morning and have my coffee and they hit the gym for bit, maybe go for a run, and then jump in my side by side with my 12 gauge and go shoot rattlesnakes, then eat lunch, and then

do that some more, go out to the range, look around. Everything good, yep. Come back to the camp, like watch hockey and drink beer all night. I did it pretty good. I was like, I got to get out, I got to retire. And that's pretty much it. You know, just terrible get out.

It's just I mean, I did some contract work for a while Yeah That dried up And went back to landscaping And construction type work And that sucks But it was cool

What are you gonna do? Now you're retired now Is that right? Oh yeah I mean no I mean like retire Like Yeah You're not going to work every day right now

No no no I guess that's what I mean retired not not this summer not yet so I'm just kind of like BTF and around yeah it's it's actually kind of cool hey I got some questions yes and this is a great first question to very serious in retrospect what's the dumbest reason you've ever gotten into a bar fight Probably be easier to figure out the smartest reason you ever got into a bar fight. Well, I'd have to say Far East Rock one night, like watching Monday Night Football

and the Patriots were losing or something. And someone said, Oh, you know what? That's cool because, you know, I don't have them in my fantasy football league, and I just went fucking whack, and I fucking smacked the guy. I don't know. I was like, it's just terrible.

Like, I just, I was pissed and drunk and I don't, you know, that was pretty dumb. But there you go. Sounds like a good one. In 20 plus years in the teams, what situation challenged your leadership the most and how did you work through it? I'd probably have to say when, when Mark Lee got killed. I'd have to honestly. Yeah, of course. And, I mean, that's kind of a weird question.

I'll get to that, but I had to, like, shove that fucking shit deep down and not, like, show it and make sure that it was there for the rest of the guys, because the milk's on the floor. Obviously, you've got to find out why it happened, so we don't do it again. What the fuck, you know, sometimes there is no answer, but I had to push that shit way down and focus on the tasks at hand, whatever they were the day. I couldn't just go, hey, Jocko, and like, I'm a bag of shit. I'll see it in two days. You can't do that.

So, I mean, and I pushed shit down before, but that I had to really, really, really push it down. So that was challenging. I mean, other times, like, leadership, I had guys that get DUIs. We intercepted the mail, hide it from the cops, so they never got DUI. Just take care of it on your own out in town. And I can say that because both the guys did it for are dead. So, I mean, I had no problem like fucking cutting through red tape. But, yeah, that was probably the worst.

What was your favorite qualification school that you attended while in the teams? Oh, that's easy. It's a cross between sniper school and the tracking course. Yeah. Yeah, that was fucking great. Yeah. Yeah. Really good.

That must have been, when you were in that, when you were hunting, man, you must have just been like completely. completely overjoyed. Oh my God, yeah. But like tracking elk, if you've never done it, you don't have to go. You look over, especially if there's a little snow. There's like eight billion tracks because they're in a herd.

So it's not like you're like, ooh, look at me. I can see it from like 600 yards away. Like, yeah, look, there's no snow there because it was just. When you listen to these podcasts, when I had this guy, till John Stryker Meyer and his buddy Doug the Frenchman Leterno on They'd be out in

Laoster, Cambodia, and there was trackers. There was NVA trackers with dogs that would be coming after them. They carried, as part of their standard loadout, they carried pepper, like dust, and some other

the damn coughing meta. What is it? What is it? Tear gout. tear gas powder. They had that. So they'd put that on their trail and they'd hear the dogs like,

the dogs would be coming. So then they'd range him. And then all of a sudden they'd start freaking out and then they'd bring up another dog, skip that area. And I said to tilt, I was like, do you, do you, I said, you must hate dogs.

He goes, I hate him. Well, yeah. But we would, we train and how to defeat him and it's like one way. There's several methods, but I mean, I'm not going to say it on here, like how to defeat him. But it's so simple and it's got like nothing to do with the dog. It's like crazy.

It works too. We did exercises, you know, and like, I mean, so I'm asking the cat. Like, hey, mate, you know, are these dogs like they're good at like exercises? Like, oh no, mate, they're real dogs. They're going to bite you. Like, fuck. this is going to suck I better fucking be good at it

and not going over my notes okay what the yeah they were like police dog yeah yeah we're gonna get you thank God I mean I did it right but like holy shit

that's one thing it was a real world op yeah you know I got an M16 blanks yeah you know because there's really nothing in New Zealand

that can hurt you like there's no poisonous snakes there's no New Zealand's freaking awesome Oh man, it's freaking wonderful. The people are awesome. Yeah.

That place is just awesome. Like Mori's, you know, they're like so cool. That's one of the places I went to. They take you in like this. Okay, yeah. That's one of the place I went to where I was like, this is just awesome. Like I could live there.

Oh, in a minute. In a minute I could live there. That place is freaking amazing. Yeah, it is. If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice before joining the teams, what would that be? Well, I don't think nothing. I wouldn't do it any differently.

I liked, I could say I would have did this, but I'm glad I did stuff like as a knucklehead and had some hard knocks. And no, no, no, I wouldn't have done anything differently. Because the good, the bad stuff that I went through made me better on a good side. You know, that kind of shit. But yeah.

That's one of those questions. Questions too. It's great. You know, this is this there's people that ask there's and I there's people that ask these kind of questions They're looking for they're looking for like a one like a one thing answer of like you know if you could tell yourself here's another if you if you go back and tell yourself your 20 year old self. What would you tell yourself? Like it's or oh yeah yeah invest in you know what is it Apple Apple or whatever you know another one is a what's the one leadership lesson you like there's always that kind of thing or and they ask it about everything man I bet people ask it about everything what's the one book you would what's they they ask the same kind of question that there's never an answer yeah I mean it's like what I figured out early on is like okay you know what book cool about face somebody asked me yeah somebody

somebody somebody asked me that in the live podcast And like I talk about I've been talking about about face since I started talking to Packworth. Yeah. Oh, he's awesome. And so this guy at the live podcast in New York, some guys says, if you could recommend one book. And I'm like, is anyone on the answer?

Everyone's like, about face. It was like clearly the guy was not in the game. Right. To be asking that question. Or you could easily say like, remember like cracked magazine? Yeah. I was about the same. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's weird. I'm not trying to, you know, it's like people want to. hear they want the information to be so distilled down but it's kind of like this you gotta do the work yeah it's kind of like being in jiu jitzua and being like what's the one move you should know in jihitsu it's like you know there actually is not one move so asking tony what the one piece of advice it's like man like where what is that where do you

stick to your guns probably is good yeah don't don't give up when you know don't like get away from you're like, and I want to say principles, I hate that word, but, you know, whatever you believe in, like the teams, like, for me, it's always like, no, you know, we, you know, you don't do this, you don't do that, like, if I'm running a crew and everybody wants, like, more time off, and then you kind of give in, and no, no, here's what we're fucking doing, that's it. if you stick to that and you can't blow up disarm a bomb that already went off. So just stick to what you're doing unless it's so fucked up. Of course.

But you know, I had this, my second platoon commander, the real squared away guy. But we did a hydro at Camp Pendleton. And like we went out. Red Beach. It was a freaking nightmare. It was freezing. Terrible. were huge we go out we do it it's frog man it's shit and then we we get everything recovered we

come back we sit there in the zodiac typing up the freaking message with the little codes in it for how the beach is we come back we get in we draw them you know the cartographer guys draw take all that information and draw the maps and blah blah blah blah and we and then the Marines launch we freaking we land the Marines yeah yeah and then the Marines weren't happy with what they did they weren't happy with the landing so they go reload so the next night they're like okay we you guys gonna go do it we're doing the whole thing again room everything again yeah so hydro recon so we go out and all of us boys were like you know we just did the hydro you know nothing's changed yeah nothing

changed and that boss that oh I see he goes that's not the point he goes he goes he goes I remember it clear as day because I'll never forget him saying this because I use this quote about a million times with all my guys. He goes, you're right. He goes, hey, guys, we don't have to do the hydro again. But would that be the right thing to do? Yeah, you got. And I was like, get your lead lines, boys.

I mean, that's how, right? Your biggest critic is the guy in the mirror. That's the one you got to answer to, not anyone else, the guy in the mirror. Yeah. That, that, like, I never forgot that. From then on, from the rest of my life, it's been like, What's the actual right thing to do right now? Yeah.

What's the actual right thing to do right now? It's usually the one that's so fucked up in the hottest way. Yeah. Yeah. It's going to suck. Yeah. It's like everything. Yeah.

Well, I could do this or I could do that. No, which one's harder? Yeah. Well, then that's the one that I probably should do. You know, and nine times out of ten, you're going to be right. Yeah. Yeah. Does this suck?

This way's easy, but this way sucks. Okay. But that's the one I have to do. Yeah. But then if not, you're just like, I should have did this, but I'm just all weak and stupid. And then you just get all mad and you end up doing that anyway. So, might as well just do it and get it over with. As a sniper team leader prepping for deployment, in your opinion, one of the top five things I should drilling my guys to support combat operations.

Limited range time about one range every other month. I wouldn't be so concerned about range time. I'd be concerned about environmental shooting, like nighttime, low light, sundown, sunup, communication between each other. Not so much. Like snipers, spotter, like everyone says, put yourself in a 360-degree, you know, white-side, black side, whatever. and communicate, okay, you got guys all around, how are we doing this? We got too much shit over here. Do we need to shift forces?

Yeah, you don't need a range to do that. You don't need a range to do that. You don't even need to carry weapons to do that. You know, you obviously have to shoot. Yeah, yeah. And then cross-training, all the other guys on the sniper weapon. Because sometimes you have to take a break and you got to give somebody else who's not a sniper.

Doesn't mean you can't shoot a gun. I mean, it's easy, but do more cross-train. There's no reason that a non-sniper and a steel platoon shouldn't have a thousand rounds through whatever weapon system we're using right now. There's no reason. Maybe a thousand's a little bit, but at least a couple hundred.

There's no reason. We're that busy, you know, getting up and going to work and running around and talking about uniform standards. But we can't, I mean, come on. We've got all this time. You have, like, no one's shooting at you back here. So you should maximize that time, you know, and don't get me wrong.

You need time off to drink beer and be frogment, but job is the job. What did you do to keep Jocko in check? You had nothing. It's terrible. I didn't know what that question is. I know, but it's an important question to, like, someone who doesn't know you.

I don't know. Maybe not like destroy everyone in the morning jiu-jitsu sessions. So like when they had to actually do something, I had to yell in their other year because that cauliflower ear from getting fucking torqued.

Yeah. Or basically, hey man, this guy not in our chain. of command who's like working in another department he's limited you don't know him but i do he's not you kind of got to be not a frog man but kind of got to be a little gentle of this guy because he's good at what he does just don't go in there and scare him to death because he's just going to like fade into the the shredder room and you cry so you know maybe that but very limited yeah what you can do with this fucking guy.

I don't know. I think people, and we talked about this last time, it wasn't like, I mean, first of all, you and I were like, if you and I looked at a target,

we would come up with a salute, we'd both have a plan that was like almost the same thing. You know why? Because if this paper is the target, like when I look at it, I look at it. There's nothing in my head but that.

Look at it. So people go, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. No, you look at it. Like, really, really look at it. And envision what this high ground here, what's on top of that high ground? Is there trees? Is it how can I?

Okay, I need to take this section of the map and I need to add the other five because we're coming from here. So I'll add boom, boom, boom, boom, and this. And then egress this way, if this is my any point. And so next thing you know the maps, the size of this fucking room. That's how you look at it, target.

You know, just look at it. Oh, yeah, well, I'd go in here. What? Who says you got to go in? There's 150 ways to do this mission, but you have to look at that target and really, really look at it. And then envision it in 3D as you're walking up to it. That's, I don't know.

I think that's what we do pretty good. Yeah. I just always remember, like, I'd, you know, some mission, whether it was overseas or no matter what. I'd be like looking at it going, I think it'd probably be good to do it like this. And then you'd be like, why don't we do this? And I'm like, yep. Yeah, I mean, yeah, there may be like one little difference, but that's, that's my new.

I think with BTF, Tony, can you share some stories about team guys that influenced you in good and bad ways during the early days in the teams? Oh, yeah. I mean, we've been talking about that the whole time. I think one of the reasons I picked that question was because it said in good and bad ways. Bad ways. I just think not being totally, totally 100% team guy. I've seen some guys who were in charge of me that, you know,

they just seemed at the time a little more interested and, you know, just getting through what we were doing and not really, you know, It's like, hey, Chief, two weeks ago when we're doing this, can I, I want to bounce my notes off here as he's like, well, I don't have any notes. I'm like, all right, that's terrible. That's terrible. Why don't you have any notes? Like, isn't this like the pinnacle of your fucking career?

Because for me it was. And, you know, yeah, I get it. If there was no war going on. But still, isn't that, like, that's why I say, some of these guys were champions. Like, I utmost respect, fucking awesome cats. Some of them, they kind of put us behind the power curve when the shit really hit the fan after 9-11 because they were just kind of going through the motions.

And they didn't, like, before we got into the mobility world, they never, they're like, oh, yeah, we either get dropped off by a hillo and hump in or come in by boat. Like, what about vehicles? Well, we don't really do this. that. What mean we don't do that? How are you going to get from point A to fucking B, you know?

And once we started doing it, it was a bunch of catch up. It took fucking smart guys like TK there to really ramrod the mobility program and do that kind of shit. I'm like, what do you guys think of this? I mean, yeah, why didn't I think

of it? I mean, I kind of did, but I was a lonely or low guy trying to on the ropes, you know? And I don't think they did any favors. I didn't think about it. I didn't think about mobility. I wasn't thinking to myself like,

oh, cool, why don't we? But other guys that are frog man or tier one cats were doing it. Yeah. What I, what I, like I was still trying to sort out like just. Yeah, my web year. How to be a good team guy. Right.

But yeah, looking at, it seems like those days, there was, there was, it seemed like we needed, we needed as a, a community to look at like what could happen.

One big thing that I was looking at when I was a young team guy was I realized a long fucking time ago that there are no terrorists really. I mean, I'm wrong about some things in Afghanistan, but there are no real bad guys in the middle of fucking nowhere. There's going to be buildings. It's going to be, it's not going to be urban combat and then out in the middle of the middle land warfare in the middle of nowhere. It's going to be a mix.

And as soon as we got rid of the subguns and started carrying long guns for a close quarter battle, that's one of the styles. Yeah. And it was always going to be a mix. Whether you're coming over the beach, you're coming in. Even going on to a ship.

Yeah. Oh yeah. Because people were, some people want to stick with subguns because you're going on a ship. And I love the subguns. Oh, yeah, for sure. They're awesome.

For sure. But at a hundred yard fantail shot. Exactly. Yeah. Or 150. Yeah, you could have some issues. Yeah. Big issues.

Yeah. At what point in your career did you start to feel competent in operating? Killing the enemy and making sure your brothers came home with you. Did you start to feel like you could do it every day and be successful? Yeah, I always felt like. Yeah. How many platoons did it take before you started feeling competent? Like one.

I mean, I always felt like I was good to go. I was good to go. Yeah. I could do this. I can fan- fantasize about, I'll admit it. I couldn't wait

to kill anybody. I loved it because that's your job. Like, yeah. And it was, it was kind of a letdown. Like,

it was, you know, you think like in the movies and all. You train so much. It's like, bang. All right.

On the next one. But, yeah, I felt it right away. It's not that. That was never the issue. The issue's always been confident as a leader.

that took a while. It wasn't immediate. It took me a while. How good were you as an LPO when you were an E5? I thought I was pretty good. When you look back on it? No, I was okay because we didn't have a lot of... I was basically really good at the basics.

Yeah. See, I always felt like once I got done with a job, I would want to go back and do it again and I'd feel like I would do it so awesome and you don't get to do that. Right. You don't. You don't.

I did a platoon commander. I was like, oh, and I, you know, I did fine. Yeah? But like,

as soon as I got done, I was like, I should have done this, I should have done that. As a T. You commander, I got done, I was like,

man, I should have done this, I should have done that. Just wanted to do better. Well, absolutely. I mean, the LPO thing, when you're at peacetime LPO and,

I don't know. I was always mixing it up. And everybody seemed to like me. I mean, they didn't pitch too much. A couple guys did, but it was all good. You can't do everything. All the team guys under your frigging belt,

there's going to be guys. He was a fucking asshole, and he just fucking did this with stupid. Of course, there's going to be that, you know. But I think for the most part, I mean, I did all right. Tried to. I mean, I could have done better,

like telling people how, oh, you know, you're doing good, and, you know, it's all okay. No. I'm glad I was a dick, kind of. Yeah, but when you say that. Not a dick, but a professional dick. No, but even that, you say that, like,

and Laif pointed me this out to me the other day, and Key remembered it, and it's funny because I had just written about it. What I wrote about was, like, if a platoon at land warfare was doing good, I wouldn't say, like, this is when I was in trade at. I wouldn't say,

hey, you guys kicked ass as a task unit. I wouldn't say, hey, you guys, I'd say, hey, Bill. You and your fire team did a good job holding down the black side of that target. And hey, Mike, when you grab that other guy and you flanked those dudes on the hill, that was awesome. Because, but I would never just say collectively everyone did awesome because then what happens is they all fall apart. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's kind of what you did too. You used to, if somebody, if somebody did something good, you would tell them they did good.

Yeah. If, but you wouldn't be like, hey, everyone did great. No, of course not. Because the chances of that happen. That's like false. Like, oh, you know, everything we did was amazing. This is amazing. Everything's amazing.

That's so fucking stupid. I hate that. Like, you did your job. Like, what do you want? A fucking metal. Yeah, here's your metal. Here's an MRE. go over there and be stupid

Go get your shit ready We got another off And besides It's not like I talk down everybody These are my brothers It's like Yeah man that was cool That's about the best team guy

compliment you can get Yeah That one all right Yeah good job Yeah okay Cool That's yeah on the next thing Yeah

Guys like yeah I gotta go to the head Whatever It's like no big deal Last question Do you still smile when you hear standby to get some. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty cool. I mean, come on.

It's like you know it's going to happen. And, you know, and after a while, it's like, fuck yeah. Yeah, bring it. You know, it's like that cat there. When the Ted Williams, Ted Williams, Teddy ball game. I mean, he was hitting 402. and he had two-game series,

and they're like, man, you're hitting over 400. Just don't play. You know, you're the only guy who's ever hit over 400. He's like, fuck that. And he went like three for five, and he went to like 406, 407. And he risked it all because, yeah, I'm playing. And mind you, this is a guy who took time off,

to fly jets in Korea or World War II and Korea. I mean, like, yeah. What are we going to do like, okay, we're going home in a week. We're not going to do this up. Fuck you, we're not going to do this up. You know, then, you know, we go home. I mean, what if you had died right before you? So what?

That's why I'm here. I mean, if that happens, it happens. It gives a fuck. I mean, it's where it is, right? That is what it is. Teams and shit. That trumps everything. It's like teams and shit.

Okay, I'm a team guy. That's it. All right. Done. yes indeed good to see you brother good to see you brother right on man

good place to rap good to see you man freaking awesome to have you back on yeah I'm glad it could man and hopefully I'll see you up in Maine if you can swing by yeah that'd be cool I'm sure a bunch of people are gonna want to meet you up there

I already tell one of my cats back home he's like oh I'll fucking drive the Harley down there I'm all set Echo Yes Speaking of standing by to get some What do you got How can we be

More prepared to get some As they say Many ways All right Well One way as we always say Is Jiu Jitsu Tony

It was a little bit About that as well When you do Jiu Jitsu We need geese Right Unless you're doing no ghee But we recommend Geet and no geese

So when you get a ghee Where do we get them Origin Origin So this is, so Tony's from New England and, you know, Tony and I were talking yesterday. And man, if you grew up in New England, then you saw the economy get just annihilated. Yep. And whether it was the factories that were shutting down, the textile factories that were shutting down, the clothing manufacturers, the shoe manufacturers, all these, the paper manufacturers.

Back home, yeah. Got shut down. And, you know, it's one of those things that. that when I talk to companies and they say, well, you know, you were dealing with, you were dealing with life and death, and we're not. And I say, yeah, but you're dealing with people's livelihoods. And what, as a, as a, as a mom, as a dad,

your livelihood is how, that's your life. That is your life. And so if you grew up in New England, and New England's not the only place, because it's all over America, when you manufacturing got taken away and sent overseas, it's a nightmare. You go up to these towns,

and there's no work. Not that people don't want to work. Believe me, they're New Englanders. They want to work. And I keep saying New Englanders because... But it's everywhere. But it's everywhere. Americans want to work.

And so, you know, with origin and when you come up and see the factory, you know, we got 45 or 50 folks now employed in Farmington, which is awesome. Maine. Yep, Farmington, Maine. And, you know, it's like,

are they employees? Yeah, yeah, they're employees because they're working there. But you know what they are? They're part of what we're doing. Yeah, they're part of something. They're part of something. They're the ones that are actually

making the gear, making the jiu jih Tis, making the jeans. We started making jeans. I'll get you some jeans when we get up there. Boots, we're making boots. I'll get you some boots when we get up there. Perfect. Like, we got folks

that have been out of work for 14 years. You're fucking stoked to be getting after it. to be back. They want nothing more than to come in and get on those machines, make the boots, make the jeans. We just started printing tea. Like, we're doing everything. We're doing everything. So I'll bring you up there if you guys come. And if you can't make it up then, you can come up whenever you want. You've got to open pass to go to the factory in Maine and check it out and see, you know, it's just a beautiful thing to go up there and see a town that's, and this is just the starting point, man yeah and people people can think I'm you know dreaming I'm not like we're gonna build

this thing it is gonna be massive we're gonna bring back manufacturing to America and there's no one's gonna stop us that's what's gonna happen who's gonna stop us no one so if you need a gee if you need a rash guard get it from origin main dot com if you need a pair of jeans go on there and get them somebody said these jeans are expensive And I said, you know what I said? You're right. You're right. They are too expensive.

Right now, they're not at a price point we want to get them down to. But as we build more and grow more, we'll be able to get those expenses down. But we have to start somewhere. Yeah, we can't obviously give them away. No, you got to pay the people. Yeah, we got to pay the workers. So we're getting there. We will build this and there's nothing's going to stop us.

Yeah. I don't think they're that expensive anyway. Well, well, they're cheaper. They're more expensive than a pair of mass-produced jeans from China in a sweatshop where they're paying their employees literally 50 cents a day. So yes, our jeans more expensive than that? They're fucking last. They're forever. They're 100 bucks.

Whatever. You buy two pairs. It's 100 bucks. So anyways, that's the deal. And if you think that's, if you think 100 bucks is too much, hey, man, I get it. Save up. Save up. Get yourself a pair of jeans made in China

that are made in a sweatshop where some, the corporation's going to make all the money and none of it's going to come back here to America. So, all right, sorry, I'm getting a little crazy right now. Don't know, man. Respect. Buy my fucking jeans. Well, if you don't buy jeans, there's other stuff too,

which is also good news. Tons of other stuff. So what? Supplements. So important supplements too. Keep you in the game, Joint Warfare, Crill Oil, which I had an experience and didn't even know it when I went to Hawaii. You went off the... I went off.

Didn't even realize it. You know, the kind you just sort of off the krill oil and joint warfare. And here's the weird thing. My elbow, I always had to get into... It is. You're correct. Yeah, it was amateur. And I didn't even realize it until I got on.

So I go, you know, and I was lifting. I was working out. You're talking about 1090s? Yeah, elbow. I had it so bad this one. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, if you go on the joint warfare and krill oil, okay, if you don't have some, I'll give you some. It's good.

It takes like, I guess it depends on who you are. It took me like six days for it to like really start to go away. That's only a couple days more than a cortisone shot, though. Really? Yeah, huh? Yeah, right? It takes like two and a half days. You will feel it.

Like you go and read the reviews of joint warfare. And there's people that are saying, oh, I couldn't do, I couldn't, I couldn't lift my whatever, you know, I couldn't swing my hammer or whatever. I'm back in the game. Mobility. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's completely true. So I come back and I'm like, okay, let me get, you know, back into life.

I was like, man, I wasn't lifting that heart in Hawaii and not as often either. So I'm like, why is my elbow kind of on me? I'm like, oh, my gosh, totally hit me. I was like, dang, yet another instance of me playing myself. But proof, you see what I'm saying? Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, stay on that. Joint Warfer and the krill oil.

There is also discipline. Good deal, Dave's on the discipline. train big time. I'm with them on that train. Pretty much every day, pretty much daily. Daily discipline. Yeah, yeah.

In all things. And this is yet another one. Yes. Also, Mulk, if you want additional protein. In the form of a dessert, by the way.

One of the best desserts out there. No, I never would have thought what I'll do is make a dessert. Ew. That's got protein. I wouldn't think that because it doesn't seem like it's a possible feasible thing. Yeah.

But then it turns out to be, yes, it is one. That's, yep. I know Jocko a long time and one of his favorite sayings is not actually a saying he's just like talking to you because you're next to him going

fucking starving right now I always starving like every like okay we know we ate like an hour and a half ago he's like fucking so hungry right now like really yeah well now he goes on all these crazy fasts

intermittent fasting and whatnot Yeah, well, you get some milk. Yeah, it tastes good. Get some tea, some jocco white tea, and that'll, and don't forget about the Warrior Kid Mulk. Yeah. Which I think is the game changer. Yeah.

There's going to be guys from back home. A lot of guys watch podcasts, but can you just go over the dot com again, whatever it is? Oh, origin. Origin, Maine. Dot com. Maine as in the state. Right.

M-A-I-N-E. Yep. Yeah. Orjameen.com. So we get all this stuff. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko store. Of course, you know, he's super creative with the names and whatnot.

Put a lot of thought into it. Yeah, man. It's good. Turned out good. Anyway, that's where you can get. That's, shirts. Who was it? It was, I think, Flynn Cochran.

Sure. He was saying that the original Jocko product was, was because I used to give like a brief, the leadership brief to the guys that we're starting. And he's like, they, they called that the jaco brief. And I didn't think about it. I was like, oh yeah, that's like the original.

The original jocco product. And then, so I can't be just blamed on lack of creativity from my part. Well, yeah, you can. I guess I can. Yeah, yeah, full on. Hibro's cat actually, yeah. And also you got asked the question.

Did Flynn come up with that after? No. Jocco podcast? No. It was, it was, and then Mike Sorrelli, same thing. Like, oh, this is, yeah, the Jocko brief. You know what, though, when you kind of think about it, what do you call it, like, phonetically or whatever? I don't know if that's the correct word, but like, when you say Jocko, it's kind of matches, you know, like Jock store, Jock brief.

It's not like, you know, you know. Yeah, the whole reason speaking, you know, that story that you just told about me being hungry. The reason this whole thing started with Jocko is because when I was on Tim Ferriss. his podcast. I fasted that day and he was like, well, you know, we've been talking for a long time. You know, maybe we should go eat something eat. And I went, jaco hungry. Like I was just joking, you know, but then.

But not really. But then like a little while later, it was, oh, we're going to have a podcast. And I was like, oh, okay, Jocko podcast. Almost like I'm a knucklehead, right? Almost, yeah. I actually am enough. So what we're called Jocko podcast. That was the original.

But it sounds good, though. Unless it's like if you're going to name something like that starts with an oh, that's when it wouldn't really work. Like if it was like an ocean, jaco ocean. Even that kind of sounds good, I guess. No, I need to take over an ocean somewhere. Well, you know, hypothetically. You understand what I'm saying. In the last, Jocco stores where you can get shirts, discipline equals freedom.

Boom. More rash cards on there too, by the way. Which are origin rash cards, by the way. Made in America. Jocco and taco. Jocco C. No, no, that works. You think so? Jaco Taco Taco?

Oh, yeah. There's a place I'm quite called Paco's Tacos. Chal. So I need to start a taco shop. Wow. Why not? Yeah. Might as well.

Obviously. Jeez. We'll have to talk to George. I ain't none around here in San Diego. I have to talk to George Farfan. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I can't find one taco shop around here in San Diego.

When my oldest daughter who's at college now, my oldest daughter comes home and she'll like fly home. and she will stop at a taco shop. Oh, yeah. On the way home from the airport. Best Chinese Sada ever. I'm like, oh, cool, it's looking forward to seeing you. You're going to be home in 10 minutes.

And he's like, no, no, no, I'll be home in a half an hour because I'm going to get a taco. Well, absolutely. Going to get a California burrito. I had like three of them in the last four days. Can you make it? Oh, so good. You just can't change that. All right.

So cool. Jocco Ocean, Jocco tacos and Jocco store, of course, like we were saying. shirts, rash cards, hoodies, hats, you know, all kinds of stuff. You want to represent while you're on the path, boom, good place to do so.

Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. If you're into it. If you're into subscribing, super easy. But yeah, on Google, play, Stitcher, iTunes, you know. Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast for the children.

Stories, not just questions, but stories from Uncle Jake about how Uncle Jake got his values. use in life. What made him say, I should be prepared. You know what to know how? I tell the story. Uncle Jake goes on a little, on a little, there's a little rowboat. And Uncle Jake and his buddy when he's eight years old, go out on the rowboat. And while they're out in the robot, he says, ah, you know, we're not, we don't need life jackets because, you know, we're just going to go,

we're just going to paddle around here. So they're out in the rowboat and they're clowning around or whatever and let go the oars for a second. They both slip out. through the oarlocks and there's a wind blowing so within five seconds they're gone from the and they're in the middle of the lake yeah and they have to drift all the way to the other side and then borrow some but you know there was that moment where things were bad yeah so that's when uncle jake learned you need to always be prepared for things to go down that's an actual story too by the way. That really happened to me. That really happened to me. So there you go. Stories from Uncle Jake on a Warrior Kid podcast. So get some of that. Also speaking of

warrior kids, it's a word kid that I know. He's heard of myth. It's not a myth. It's real. His name is Aden making Warrior Kids. Not worry, Kid Soap, Jocco Soap. He's the Warrior Kid. He's the Warrior Kid. Now we got Jocco soap too. Jocco soap. There's also Trooper Soap by the way. which is like another what do you call flavor, if you will. Soap's not flavors, right? Don't need it. They're just like something else.

Use it to wash up and it will help you stay clean. Yes, very good. It smells like Irish. It smells like war. Actually, it smells pretty good to be honest. Hey, that would be awesome to make. Smells like war. It smelled like cordite or whatever.

Oh, yeah. Gunpowder. Good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. It smells like napalm. Victory in the morning. Well, jaco white tea tastes like victory

Yeah, that's true. Good point. Well, yeah, you know, when you say it, it should smell like war that kind of made me think of how you and Laif, and actually all you guys would tell us how war smells like gunpowder and sewage. Terrible.

That's actually the terrible idea. Yeah, yeah. After further. Can it smell like the range? The range smells good. You know it doesn't smell good? Diesel fumes in the back of a sea fox. No.

Or when you're in a helo and refueling. Like. Yeah. in flight refueling. I don't think I've ever done that. It's effing terrible. There's just diesel everywhere. It's just like, ugh.

It's just like, and I don't like ever get sick with that stuff, but I was like, I've gotten, you get sick. You get high. I got seasick two times. Once was in the back of the C-Fox fell asleep with the diesel fumes. And the next one was in an LCU. I was downstairs in a raging storm, waterproofing the radios in the engine room, just diesel. rocking all over the place I came up and started yacking and the and the BMC that was running the LCU was hanging his head over the side of yaking so I was like all right I'm cleared hot technically is that getting seasick though it's from the diesel fune I don't know yeah I never did it so yeah you got C C C C C C C yeah see there never happened to me there you go there you go nonetheless the the scent aroma of the Troopers soap and the Jocco soap is pretty good.

Okay. And very functional, by the way. You were still talking about that? Yeah, man, it's very important. I mean, we could talk about the diesel fuel fumes,

sea sickness somewhere if you guys want. True. All right. I'll take the hit. No, no. I'm taking. Up to you,

right. Up to you. Doing a good job. Anyway. I'll take the hit. Also, we have a YouTube channel. BTF Tony into YouTube or what? Not really,

but. Yeah, I would be surprised if you were, but you can get addicted to various videos. the last we have a YouTube channel with good videos video version of this podcast excerpts enhanced excerpts enhanced means that echo puts all these effects in them like a oh i got to watch that that i got no explosions yeah things are on fire yeah i'll show you on after this it's

absolutely yeah but yeah youtube channel jaco podcast boom also psychological warfare psychological warfare yeah what is that bro It's an album. You always get mad at me explaining it. You can see what I mean? You don't have the best explanation. Here's what psychological work. If you ask for an alarm clock, which is kind of where this started, if you're, if you're asking for an alarm clock that has me telling you to get up, there's where you get it.

Psychological warfare. It's on iTunes. It's on Google Play. It's on MP3. It actually started when Echo asked me a question about something. And I was like, here's the answer. And then he was like, I'm going to record that. And then we just went that.

One from there. Yeah, that's cool. The question was, you know, like, the original question. The original one and it was with me was with workout. So like when I work out or when I plan a workout and I just really don't feel like it. And, you know, that's a common thing. Like, oh, yeah, you just do it anyway. You don't be a BTF through it, right?

So I'm thinking, man, I wish I was better at BTFing through it. You see what I'm saying? I wish I was too lately. See? It's a real thing. So I'm like, you know, because I can imagine, you know, Jock will just BTF through it. So I'm like, but what do you like say? You know, like what goes on in your mind?

Do you just not think about it at all? And you just sort of automatically do it. Or do you say something or I don't know. Like what is it? You know, what's the message? Like two weeks ago, I turned 51. And I'm like, I actually made it past 50. You're going to fucking be, it's got to do something right.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, especially when you think you're going to not make it to 30. You know, for sure. Oh, yeah. I'm like, hmm. I don't know. There you go.

It doesn't get any. Every day you get older, it gets terrible. You wake up and you're like, oh, what is this now? Oh, yeah. Like here. Like, what's this? I realize, you know how I've said one of the things I've noticed about getting older is, and I don't notice that much, and I don't admit that I don't notice it either.

So even if I was in a ton of pain, I wouldn't tell anyone. Yes. But one of the things that I have admitted is that. my first couple rounds of Jiu-jitsu, I'm, I use a couple rounds to warm up now. Especially if I'm going with Dean and Andy. So Andy didn't used to be in this bracket. He's in there now.

So here's the other thing that I noticed. I, once my, because I couldn't run when I hurt my knee. And so now that my knee is like getting better, I can run again. Not, you know, crazy. But what I noticed is, same thing. If the first, like the first half mile that I run, I just, I must look like a person that's just never run before. And then the longer I run.

What I mean the first half, like you run more than a half a mile? No, man, geez. You know, like, what do you do? When I'm coming home and once I'm warmed up, I'm like, oh, yeah, cool, cool. And that's one thing that sucks is when you were young, You just didn't have to do anything and you showed up to it. You didn't do anything for three months. And then you show up at a team.

They're like, hey, we're doing a nine-mile run today. You'd be like, cool, just go out and do it and fine. Now you're like, the first half mile. You got a flat tell you like, what, run the shit. Chib-boom, chib-boom, chib-boom, chib-boo-ch-boom. Yeah. Terrible. Yeah, if you want a visual version of little things to keep you on the path,

Then go to flipside canvas.com. Dakota Meyer. He's got a company. Again, made in America. Made right in Austin, Texas, making cool artwork. I'm trying to think of a better word for that because I don't like saying artwork.

You don't match saying art work. It is artwork, though. I know, but is it a better word? I don't know. No, I think it's artwork. Visual inspirational. Shit. I don't know.

Inspirational might be worse. Yeah. Inspirational. I mean, as far as John, I was saying it. dig it it's inspirational stuff factually not really my thing for lack of a better so flipside canvas.com for whatever you want to call it you hang it on your walls you yeah you know why he named it that because the last thing he said to uh one of his one of his

teammates in afghanistan was all right man we'll see you on the flip side and everyone on his team died including that guy and so he's like that's what this is that's what the name of the company came from man so support dakota and his company flipside Canvas.com. He's making all kinds of cool graphics. Is that better? Graphics on there. But that's not the end product. Mm-hmm. I'm gonna think of something eventually. Maybe I'll make up a word for it like

Molk. Yeah, maybe. In fact, I think I'm gonna do that. All right, do that. Think about it. Watch this. Jocco Canvas. Yeah. That doesn't match.

No. And the last, also on it. So on it.com slash jaco. This is where you can get workout gear. There's some cool. Do you do sandbags? Yes. Did you watch my little clip I put out?

My edit. The time lapse one? Yeah. I did. I didn't pay Max's attention. So you got sandbags on there. That's what you're saying? Yeah.

Okay. Because I was on. Yeah, yeah. By the way, that band that I clipped out there, it's called Life's Blood. It's an old school hardcore band from upstate New York. That's from an old 7-inch that Elgin James sent me.

Because there was a great band. They're a great band. the lead singer is now a cop somewhere in Atlanta or something but anyways that's life's blood I don't know where you can find it but that's the music on that video that I edited in there yeah yeah I'm gonna take Echo's job from them that's frigging dangerous in there that maybe I'll take over atchial in front maybe do the briefings on that yeah let's see yeah maybe I will check so anyway

what I was trying to say about the sandbags is when I was getting stuff from on it I saw the sandbag that was like I'm gonna get this I don't have a sandbag for those of you that were wondering what I was doing with the sandbag I pick it up throw it over my shoulder turn around pick it up throw my over my shoulder over my shoulder oh yeah over again how big is it or how heavy or whatever just I don't know uh my son when he came home from wrestling camp and he was like you know kind of kind of walking around the house you know he did two weeks wrestling the really good wrestling camp called J. Robb 14 day intensive wrestling camp awesome camp and they they they they put these guys through the ringer it's wake up in

the morning conditioning breakfast wrestling lunch wrestling dinner conditioning and they do that for 14 days straight to graduate you have to the last thing you do is a 12 mile run so like it's and you're all beat down when you're doing that so yeah uh when he came home from that you know he was kind of bowing up a little bit. Oh yeah, that'd been perfect. He was bowing up and I said, oh, you want to do a little workout? Oh, you want to. Handed him this sandbag and I was like, yeah, do this, this, this and this. He didn't like that sandbag too.

Not yet. All right, well, I'm going to take another look at that because I think I am going to get the sandbag. Oh, you should definitely get one. Also, yes, kettlebells on there. That's where all my kettlebells are from. And yeah, a lot of good stuff on there. Go there. Onet.com slash jocco. Hey, I wrote a bunch of books.

Way the Warrior Kid. Warrior Kid 2, Mark's Mission. We're a kid three where there's a will. Mikey and the Dragons and Discipline equals Freedom Field Manual. Extreme ownership and the dichotomy leadership. These are a bunch of books I wrote. If you like what we're talking about here.

If you're an adult, get the adult books. If you're a kid, get the kids' books. If you have kids, get them the kids' books. And you might want to check out the kids' books even if you're an adult. Yes, I agree. So there you go. Eschon front.

That's our leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems. through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. It's what we do all day, every day. EF online, this is leadership training, online, interactive, and put you on the spot, ask you questions. When you become a leader,

or when you're going to become a leader, you're not going to learn everything in one shot. And just like an arm lock, you don't learn it one time and now you're good. you have to practice and that's what EFonline.com will allow you to do. We got the muster, next muster coming up, September 19th and 20th in Denver

and then December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia, extreme ownership.com for details. If you want to come, sign up right now because otherwise it's going to sell out. They've all sold out. And of course we got EF Overwatch where we're taking proven spec ops leaders and combat aviation leaders

and placing them into companies in the civilian sector that need one. thing more than anything else to win and that is they need leaders and if you don't feel like we've talked for long enough and you want to talk to us more you can find us on the interwebs Tony is at Frogman nH 164 do you think you know your password? Yeah I got it somewhere yeah people are gonna want to like ask you questions and then you can be like mm yeah 99

percent of it's going to be that's 99% of my text back and forth with Tony as well it's ridiculous you guys should see it if I if you link up with me and we're talking and you're like Jocko what are you guys talking about I'll be like yeah yeah check this

because I don't really erase anything with that here's Jocco's text MN MN MN M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M M like 70 lines My Jesus crying you What are you on a crapper or something? How do you have all this time? I can do like three lines and he's like, yeah.

And also Echo and I are on Twitter. We're also on Instagram. And we're also on the Frussel Bogan. She Frusenbogne. Echo is at Echo Charles. And I am at Doc Wink. Echo anything else? No, sir, nothing else.

Thanks, BTF, Tony. Tony. Anything else, brother? Pleasure, my brother. No, man. Thank you for having me on. good to see you guys got a nice pad here now

it's good to go never been here yeah awesome like to shout out to all my friends back home you know if I don't anybody and everybody I know and I'm in San Diego right now and all my team guy buddies

and my girlfriend Becky and Marf you know Marf back home and all my chums back there yeah see you guys soon and thanks for having me on always a pleasure guys are called

class act. Awesome, brother. Well, man. And teams and shit. Of course. Thanks for coming back on again, obviously. And hopefully I'll see you. But 150 episodes?

Yeah. It's been 150 episodes since you can. You're on episode 41 and we're now on 191. Wow. It's crazy. It's ridiculous. Yeah, we got to do it next time we do this. We've got to have someone in here.

Like, with me, someone else with me. because this is like one of you know I'm running I'm not that interesting I can't I can't remember any shit half the time no what you should do is next time we'll listen to this one and then go and write down notes of what you want to talk about next time and like like five stories or whatever oh yeah it's like if we could get on like someone we were talking about like my first LPO and someone like that oh you want to get someone like that on yeah with me oh yeah sure just me yeah with you guys yeah no man Um, any, any of the old, oh, awesome.

I want to come on. I'd, if I could have him come on, whew, that'd be sick. Yeah, I'll ask him. Yeah, ask him. And, uh, yeah, man, we'll do it again. And see in Maine. Yeah, we'll see in Maine.

Thanks for coming back. Thanks for, man, thanks for everything you did. Thank you, brother. You know, holding that thread that I was talking about earlier, that thread through the years when there was no war going on. There's plenty of people that, you know, they did their job and they went on their deployments or whatever. You were freaking towing the line, man. You were tolling the line and keeping that knowledge base, improving that knowledge base.

That's what you did. So that when we got to war, we were ready. So thanks for doing that. My pleasure. For the teams. Thanks for everything you did for Bruiser, of course. and as far as I'm concerned you're actually the model of the American fighting man

you're the motherfucker that went up against the Japanese and the Nazis and said you know what we don't care what kind of warrior culture that you have we got something else we're Americans and we're about to fuck you up that's right we got something that none of you other countries have

and I'm going to go what And they're like, fucking John Wayne. If you can produce anyone a quarter as good as that man, then I'll maybe listen to you. We have fucking John Wayne. Best guy ever in the history of ever. You don't mind, you know, if you mother yourself to him in everyday life, then you've got nothing to worry about.

What would John Wayne do? He either go, yes, no, or punch you. Good options. And then he'd have a bunch of whiskey. And then, you know, shoot a bunch of people and get on his, horse and go have a steak and smoke like 200 cigarettes. Good plan. Yep.

Good plan. Awesome. Everyone else, all the other veterans out there that have served, thanks for what you've done, those that are serving right now. Thanks for what you continue to do to our police and law enforcement and firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, BP, Border Patrol, correctional officers, secret service, all the first responders out there. Thank you for your service here at home.

And to everyone else out there, you know, you're going to make mistakes. You're not going to be perfect. Things are going to go wrong. And when things go wrong, it's pretty easy just to say, you know what, I'm going to stand down or I'm going to take a knee or I'm going to give up. And you can do that. Or you can do what Tony would do. which is grab your gear and just grab a knife and get f and btf until you get things back on track and that's what I recommend you do

so until next time this is BTF Tony and Echo and Jocko out