Jocko Podcast - 239: Avoid The Trap. It's Critical to Learn Lessons From Different Angles. With Dave Berke

Episode Date: July 22, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:00 - Combat Lessons: Rank and File in Combat: What They're Doing and How They're Doing It. 1:44:08 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:06:32 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:34:11 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 239 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echoh. Good evening. And also joining us tonight is Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. So last podcast, we went through the WooZ, which you did some research, and we did not come up with the meaning of the word Wu Z other than Room. Okay.

So WooZ by Wu Chi from H. in China, a lot of solid leadership lessons in there. And I was thinking about these leadership principles and how leadership principles are not supposed to change. That's kind of, you know, I say, oh, you know, leadership principles stay the same. And when you read through the woozy, you start to get some supporting evidence to that because he's talking about the fact that you need to be benevolent and you need to treat people well and treat them with respect and take care of your people, which is all things that,

you know, I talk about. We all talk about. But then in the woozy, it also says to execute anyone that disobeys your orders. So, so that leads you to think, well, maybe some principles have changed. And, you know, I used to actually have a rationalization for this or an excuse for this. And what I would say is there's a difference in leadership when you're leading conscripts instead of volunteers. And so as leadership moved away from military leadership, and that, by the way, when you go back in time, it's not just military leadership because what are the people? The people are serfs and peasants and they're being led by these kings with divine power.

So, but as time went by, it's like, okay, so that's why the leadership principle might not really fit. Maybe that's why it changes. But then I started thinking about that. What if you go ahead and actually let those things play out? Right. And actually, that question has been answered, right? That's what history is. And what happens is if you're executing people, if you're not treating people the right way as leaders, what happens?

Eventually, what do you get? You get a revolution. You get people to come after you and take you out of power. And look, just like we talk about, you can get people on board for a little while, right? If I have, you know, 5,000 soldiers and they see me execute two people that didn't follow my orders, they're going to follow my orders for a little while, right? Maybe for a long time. Maybe since that extreme measure, maybe they'll follow my orders for a year.

They'll just live in fear. But when that opportunity arrives for them to step up and take that power away from me, they're going to do it. That's what we see play out. And then the other side, so now we go to the side of, okay, so I'm going to take care of my people. That's what I'm going to do. But just like we say, that doesn't mean we coddle our people. Because if we coddle our people, then they're soft and they destroy themselves. They fall apart.

And we see that play out in the world when a society gets too soft. They can no longer survive. So even in ancient times with conscripts and peasants and serfs and slaves, if you let things play out, the leadership principles still actually apply. And then I started thinking about tactics, which this is another thing that I used to sort of, I used to sort of say, the same thing about tactics, which is, hey, you know, the principles on the battlefield, they don't change until you go before the machine gun, right? Or at least the gun, right? Because that's where you start to talk about covered move, and that's where it really

plays into how you're going to fight. But then if you adjust your perspective a little bit, if we're fighting with speech, and we're in a phalanx, guess what? I've got my shield. I'm holding my shield up. It protects the left part of my body and it protects the right part of the person to my left. And I am being protected, covered by the person on my right.

And what we're going to do is cover for each other as we advance with a phalanx. So we still have to look out for each other. Teamwork still absolutely applies. And then I was thinking about the fact that, you know, here's a, here's a military principle that I was just trying to think of things that don't apply, right? Well, in modern combat, we follow a rule of dispersion, meaning we want to be spread apart. We don't want to be too close together. So that's obviously completely contrary to the idea of being in a phalanx where we're going to get as close as we can.

We're going to keep tight. We're going to move forward. But if you change your perspective just a little bit, You, and this is one of those doctrinal terms that I was able to uncover because of what I used to tell guys is, hey, if you're alone on the battlefield, you're going to die. If you get too far away from your element, the other element, you can't support each other. That's what cover and move is. So if you're too far away, you can't support each other and you will get killed because if we're alone, we die. And that doctrinal term that when I found it, I used to get these beautiful, satisfactory.

actually satisfactory moments in my life where I would have an idea and then I would see that it already existed. And that doctrinal term that I would then walk around as if I knew it, you know, as if it was just, you know. But it's called supporting distance. So you, Dave, shouldn't take your squad beyond where my reign, the range of my weapons. And then when you start to talk about that, that means, you know, communications as well. If I can't get communications with you, then I can't support you. If my weapons can't reach out and touch and give you support, then we're not in supporting distance. And that's too far away.

What does that mean? You just change your perspective a little bit and dispersion, which is positive. But if you get too far apart, it's negative. So these lessons are the same over time. And yet we still have to teach them because we still make mistakes. and when we learn things from a different angle and even reading a document yesterday that's thousands or the last podcast, a document that's thousands of years old, you'd think to yourself that after thousands of years, thousands of years, we would be talking about these leadership principles

in the most commonly known way that everybody just like, you know, I couldn't have written extreme ownership because people would have been just, you know, saying, hey, No kidding, dude. What are you talking about? This is part of the fabric of life. But these things aren't, they're not, they're not the fabric of life. They're, they just seem to need to be rediscovered over and over again, which is, which is horrible. But one thing I think allows us to learn them in a more complete way is seeing them from different angles, from other experiences.

And today we're going to take a look at combat lessons. Which you know when that's the name of the document, you're, you're sitting up in a good spot. The subtitle, it's published in 1944, the subtitle is rank and file in combat, what they're doing, how they are doing it. So you know when I see that, I'm thinking, okay, we are going to learn something. So with that, we will bust into this book, Combat Lessons, number one. I've got number two. I'm sure it'll make appearance in the future. The introduction of this thing,

this is one of those things where you get done reading the introduction, and maybe you don't even have to read anything else because you're just almost there. Introduction. The purpose of combat lessons is to give our officers and enlisted men the benefit of the battle experiences of others, which comes right out of learning, United States Marine Corps.

To be of maximum benefit, these lessons must be disseminated without delay. They do not necessarily represent the carefully considered views of the War Department. They do, however, reflect the actual experiences of combat and therefore merit careful, merit careful reading. For this reason, also, no single issue can cover many of the phases of combat. Lessons will be drawn from the reports as they are received from the theaters of operation and quickly disseminated so that others may apply them. The suggestions which are made or implied are not intended to change the tactical doctrine by which our army has been trained, but rather to elaborate thereon. Much of the subject matter has been covered in training literature, but the comments show that shortcomings continue to manifest themselves on the battlefield. And then it says this.

The paramount combat lesson learned from every operation is the vital importance of leadership. Our equipment, our supply, and above all, our men are splendid. Aggressive and determined leadership is the priceless factor which inspires a command and upon which all success in battle depends. It is responsible for success. Success or failure. I don't know if I have that thing trademarked of leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield I don't I don't know if I but I don't know if I could even get a trademarked right Same exact thing same exact thing

This is a signed by General Marshall Who's the chief of staff in the army during World War II? He was in World War I First Division He was a infantry platoon commander in the Philippine-American War. And he's signed in this thing. So let's jump into it. And you're going to see that this is one of the most straightforward documents that, well, it's as straightforward as you can get.

Because all it is, basically, is quotes from people on the front lines. That's all it is. Just quotes. There's no, there's some little added commentary occasionally. Section 1, infantry. Again and again, reports from the battlefields confirm the importance of leadership in every grade, whether it be corporal or colonel. Hmm.

Other combat lessons are important. The exercise of leadership in battle is vital. Leadership has often been defined in theory. Here are some instances of its application or its absence on the battlefield. These are but a few examples. There are many others. Junior officer in battle. Captain T. Captain William T. Gordon Infantry, Sicily. Since November 8th, I have had 17 officers in my company, and I am the only one who started out with it who is left to fight. In Tunisia, from troops pinned down in the dark, I have heard enlisted men call out such things as, where is an officer to lead us? We don't want to lie here. We want to attack. Where is an officer?

In each case, an officer or officers have risen to the occasion, but this nevertheless shows beyond anything else the demand for battle leadership. You know, it's interesting, Dave, we had a, we just kind of went off yesterday during EF Online talking about the leadership vacuum, right? And knowing when to step up and this is these situations right here. You know, my immediate, my immediate thought is if I don't have enlisted, if I have enlisted people that are calling out, you know, hey, where's an officer? We want to attack. I'm, I'm not happy with my training. I'm not happy with my troops. I'm not happy with the job that I did.

I'm not happy with my performance in preparing them for combat because if they need, if there's a leadership vacuum and no one's stepping up, they need to step up. Totally. We had a conversation. Again, that was on EF online yesterday. where you just because you're in charge doesn't mean you need to talk. In fact, if you don't need to talk, then you shouldn't talk. If I walk into a room, if we're having a meeting at Eschalon Front, and Jamie, our operations director, is, you know,

if she's putting out the word about what's going to happen, and I go in there and I see that she's got the timeline laid out and she's telling us where we need to be at what time and we're getting ready for the muster and she's got everything laid out. What do I need to say? I mean, I'm officially in charge. What do I need to say?

Maybe, maybe looks good, thank you? Like, maybe. So you don't need to step up. And you know, I went into great detail in this in leadership strategy and tactics talking about this leadership vacuum and how it appears sometimes and the real nitty, gritty techniques

that you pay attention to. one of the things that you pay attention to is if there's a leadership vacuum and no one else knows it they're not ready they might not be ready to make an to to follow when no one knows there's when they don't sense it when they're just kind of sitting there oh we're doing okay and you say hey we need to move your immediate response might be why wait what are you talking about they haven't sensed the leadership vacuum they don't know that there's a problem so sometimes you hesitate just a little bit longer let everyone feel that feel that lack of leadership and then when you step in there with a command boom they're waiting for it they're waiting for

it and that is an important thing and that's an important it's an important dichotomy I'm sorry I have to say it's an important dichotomy is that yes there will be many many times when you as a leader don't have to say anything and there will be many, many times where your team is absolutely waiting and begging to be told, hey, this is what we need to do now. Back to the book. A company officer must build a legend about himself. He must take calculated risks.

He must, on the other hand, do what he expects his men to do. He must always dig in, always take cover. His men must know that when he ducks, they must duck. On the other hand, they must not believe that when the officer ducks, they must run away. The officer must come through every barrage and bombing with a sheepish grin and a wry remark. Masterly understatement of hardship and danger endured plus a grin always pays dividends. Yeah. We got ambushed my first deployment to Iraq, and I was in the...

vehicle to and the tail end because we were driving fast at night and everything and they got and I saw I mean I saw us getting ambushed but we were going fast it was on a It was on a high way south of Baghdad and You know I'm looking and at this point we were we were we would face not forward we would face out the sides and so you know I see RPGs going over and exploding and tracer fire To and from and but then you know what we just you know The lead driver's like push through push through which was just kind of what we were going to do keep going and then The shooting stops and we're still driving and then my my chief who is in the the rear vehicle Which is purposely set up that way because that way if you have to reverse you've got you know your You're your your most senior leader enlisted leaders in the back he's going to take and also if something goes wrong

He's going to assess so he's back there and you know he says He's they got they got you know those RPGs were close they're not close to him than they were to me He comes up. He's like hey sir Which you know first of all he rarely would call me sir, you know, but he's like hey sir You know we got ambushed back here and I could hear his voice. He's a little freaked out and I waited a solid you know like 10 seconds and then I came up and said Roger That was it. You know they all once we got down to where we were going. They're all like oh Roger

You know, so yeah, I like this thing of, you know, hey, just a little grin, a rye remark. We'll be good. It's kind of like when your kid falls down. Yes, exactly like when your kid falls down. And then he looks at you. Kind of like, what are we doing here? Are we crying? We whatever.

And then, yeah, you know, no big deal kind of a thing. We're laughing. Yeah. We're laughing. You know, I used to say like, oh, that was awesome. Yeah. Nice. Yeah.

You know, check out this, check out your leg. It's gonna bleed. Yeah. My kid came home yesterday just blood everywhere. He hit the reef. You were so proud. No, it's just, you know, he's just covered in blood. And I'm like, hmm.

Yeah, the reef would get you. Yeah. For sure. The barnacles, what it is out here in California. The reefs are just rock. It's not coral. Like you always hear about the coral reefs with the razors This is just rocks, but they have barnacles on them

And if you go touch a barnacle, they're sharp And if you fall and you scrape against them, you're getting cut open, you're going to be bleeding everywhere. But do not come into the house with the blood Is the main moral of the story. Get the hose, take care of business. Next section, this is an interesting one, and this really shows you

This is one of those things where you think, you know, the world is different. This was a different time. This section says, hate your enemy. Our men do not ordinarily hate. They must hate. They are better soldiers when they hate. They must not frattenize with prisoners,

must not give them cigarettes and food the moment they are taken. Hate can be taught men by meticulous example. The Rangers are so taught. that's a different world. That is not in any modern army publications. And then you think about, you know, World War II. You think about what those guys were going into. You think about what you had to get,

the mindset you had to bring out in people when they were in a landing craft and they were going to go land on Tarawa or Iwojima or Normandy. you got to you got to dig deep it's an interesting it's an interesting comment we are we're at total war just so everyone doesn't freak out this isn't taught anymore and i will say this it's not taught anymore right now but we better remember this because if the world we could get to a place where this is needed again i'm sorry to I hope we don't. I hope we can always be going into wars saying, yep, it's a small element of

people, and they've got some bad feelings, and they've got some reasons for their anger towards us, but we need to go and show them that we're a benevolent group, and we can help them move and that. Those are all, that's great. Hopefully we fight wars like that. Hopefully we don't have to fight any more wars where the doctrine is being adjusted to get us to hate our end. And enemy. Next one. Leaders in front. Staff Sergeant Richard E. Deeland. Infantry, Sicily. We want our captains out front. We don't much care about the position of our battalion commander. That's it. That's the whole note. Keep them moving. Operation report, 7th Army Cicely. During an attack, officers and non-commissioned officers must never allow men to lie prone and passive under enemy fire. They must be

required to move forward if this is at all possible. If movement is absolutely impossible, have the troops at least open fire. The act of firing induces self-confidence in attacking troops. The familiar expression, dig or die, has been greatly overworked. Attacking troops must not be allowed to dig in until they have secured their final objective. If they dig in when they dig in when momentarily stopped by enemy fire it will take dynamite to blast them from their holes and resume the advance this is another thing and we're going to get into some of this there's another element again where you get to total war and and that's what that's what that's what that's what that's what that's what these things are leaning towards we're in a totally different situation you know this is this is an

existential war where if we don't win America's not going to exist freedom will not exist in the world. NCO leadership, staff sergeant Robert J. Kemp, platoon sergeant, infantry, Sicily. NCO leadership is important. Leaders, NCOs, and officers should be taken to an O.P for terrain instruction and study before an attack. This has been possible in my outfit about one-fourth of the time. We have what is called an orders group, which consists of that group of officers and NCOs that must be assembled for instruction before any tactical movement.

Move. Simple, clear, concise orders. Get people together. Get face to face with them. Look at the terrain. Show them what they're seeing. Show them where they're going to move to. And this seems real obvious.

And yet this guy is saying, hey, you better do it. Keep your mission in mind. Colonel E.B. Thayer, field artillery observer with Fifth Army, Italy. Difficulty was experienced in making patrol leaders realized the important. of bringing back information by a specified hour in time to be of value patrols often returned after encountering resistance without accomplishing their mission Sending them back to accomplish their mission despite their fatigue seemed to be the most effective solution to the training problem involved Although the information required often arrived too late and then this other guy says this is lieutenant Colonel T.F. Bogart Infantry Actually Dave, I know you haven't heard this yet

I went on kind of a massive tangent the other day on the last podcast about seeing some of the seal machine gunners and just how in tuned they were with their weapons and the great lengths that they would go to develop their own personal individual standard operating procedures so that they're working that thing like a painter works a brush. And just I said if I could take videos and there's two guys in particular that that I was actually went through seal training with both of them and then I ended up in platoons with them at SEAL Team 1 back in the day. And if I had videos of them assaulting through targets with their M60 machine guns and the the incredible smoothness which they would handle the weapon and and. Open up the feed tray and slap out extra links and pull out their new belt and slap feet just it would look beautiful I was like if if we could have if you could post those videos no one would want to go to war with America if they know people like that are out there And it's not and obviously it's not just seal machine guys it's like every it's like there is a pocket of every Every sector of the military where there are people that is what they are doing. That's who they are Yeah, there's a version of that in everything for the people that,

that kind of fall in love with what they're doing. You know, when they just fall in love whatever their job is, I was just kind of remarking as you go through these, they're said in a way that I can't think of anything else to say other than, yeah, do that. That's really good. And the way he said it is right. And I'm kind of rocking my brain.

I'm like, how can I create some context around this? Like, no, that's it. That's pretty good. So I think I'm just going to sit here for the next hour. listen to you repeat what these guys have said. But I mean, the thing that's crazy about it is they seem so obvious. And it's like you said earlier is in some ways it's a little bit disheartening and how often they need to be repeated because the way they're saying it isn't really that complex.

Like, man, that's that's as clear as anybody could say it. Do you think you take a statement? And this goes back to what we were talking about as far as, hey, I'm a leader. If I walk into a room and I sit through the brief and nothing needs to be said, I'm not going to say anything. If someone takes something like a fundamental principle of combat, cover move, right? And they say, okay, but I'm going to expand on that a little bit. And then they expand on it.

And then someone else expands on that expansion. And someone else expands on that expansion. And the next thing you know, you don't even, you can't see cover and move anymore, become something else. For sure. The complexity of those things, that's, I think, why these things are so, I was even writing down a little notes to myself of what was my version of what you were just saying. I wrote down like we had the phrase mutual support.

That's what we called it in in airplanes. We had to apply mutual support to each other. It's cover a move. It's just cover a move. It's all it is. And technology is sort of redefined where we would need to be to apply that mutual support. But the principle hasn't changed. But if you're not carefully to get too wrapped up around this piece of technology allows me to get to this range.

over time you lose the idea that all that really matters is that you and I work closely enough together that I can cover you and you can cover me and those roles will go back and forth in some sort of unknown it's not predetermined it's just going to happen and the better we are to the more naturally it happens but all it is is mutual support and I remember sitting in briefs I'm like hang on are you just saying you want me to stay a certain distance away from you so I can help you with the and when we interact with that aircraft hey just say that and if I it's training too because if I get it wrong we can just come back and debrief it's okay but you have spent like nine minutes talking about the nuances of that when there's no way to

predict and i've lost side of what you're really trying to tell me which is don't get too far away man check the that just made me think i was up with an air wing in phallon and i remember i don't even this is definitely one of my early sort of graspings of the idea of cover move was we would put a squad on the ground and when we get extracted, when we put on the ground or we get extracted, I remember briefing the helicopter pilots and I don't know if I learned it from them or I don't know, but I remember saying, hey, and I actually have, I have a book that I wrote. I have a book that I wrote when I was at SEAL team when I was a communicator. It's called communications. And a lot of it, I wrote it with a buddy of mine who is another communicator and he

wrote a lot of this technical stuff about how to operate each individual radio and I just wrote my section I mean I helped him a little bit with that very little because he was smarter than me and so he wrote you know how to do the little things and but I wrote all the stuff about hey when you're calling in a helicopter here's what you need to do and and I'm going to find this because I have this book I have it and and one of the things I said was leave one helicopter at altitude to provide cover fire for the helicopter that's on the ground and here I was a new guy kind of thinking that I had a little something you know had a little something for these guys and that's one of the initial kind of thoughts around or me starting to realize that cover and move wasn't just that it really was the fundamental of

everything that we were doing and and the other thing that I scratched down When I talk about people, you're talking about people being really good at their jobs, I was doing some kind of an exercise at the Camp Pendleton, and somehow we got linked into a mortar, a Marine Corps mortar element. And, bro, these guys were doing iads, immediate action drills with their mortars. And, you know, I just remember watching them. And I don't know what, I don't know how you put words. I don't know how you, but, you know, they were, you know,

They're freaking 18 years old, and they hear, you know, contact right? And then boom, a guy's slapping down the base plate. The guys put sites on. And they're getting rounds out. Like, so fast. I don't know how fast it was, but so fast. Accurate rounds too. And then immediately correcting bracketing.

And they're good. And they're on target. And you just think, you know what? We're good. America's good. All right, Lieutenant Colonel T.F. Bogart. Greater emphasis must be placed on inculcating in junior officers and NCOs the will to accomplish assigned missions despite opposition. A few accounts of patrol actions illustrate this point, and he goes through these.

A reconnaissance patrol consisting of a platoon was sent out about 1900 one evening to determine the strength of any, if any, of Germans in two small towns. The first about two miles away and the second about three miles farther on. The patrol reached the outskirts of the first town and met an Italian who told them there were no Germans in the town and then started to lead patrol into town a few hundred yards further farther a German machine gun opened up the Italian disappeared three of the patrol were killed and the others dispersed they drifted back to our battalion during the night and it was not until nearly daylight that the practically valueless report of action was received not the slightest conception of the strength of the first town was obtained and no information of the

second town it was necessary to send out another patrol with the same mission so So that's number one. And again, I think this is, this is, this just shows you that this is a different time. And they're like, hey, you took some casualties, you got three guys killed. It doesn't matter. You got to, you still got to go figure out what the strength was in there. Obviously, you got some Germans in there. And by the way, there's another town two miles away.

You need to go get on that too. That is not a consistent attitude with current operations, right? Where you go, oh, yeah, we took three casualties, but we're continuing down here on this reconnaissance mission, by the way. Freaking legit. Two, a patrol sent out with the mission of determining the condition of a road, especially bridges, over a three-mile stretch to the front. When this patrol had covered about a mile, it ran into a motorized German patrol. Two of the Americans were killed, and the platoon leader claimed six Germans. The patrol leader forgot his mission, returned to the battalion CP with the remainder of his patrol, and had to be sent out again with a great loss in time getting the information desired.

This dude's out there gets into contact with a motorized German patrol, has two guys killed, killed six Germans. comes back to base. He's probably totally amped and feeling like he did a great job. And they say, hey, did you complete your mission? No. Oh, Roger that. Go back out. These are hard men.

Last one. On several occasions, patrols were sent out on reconnaissance missions with instruction to get certain information by a specific time. The hour would pass and sometimes several others without a word from the patrol. Sometimes it was due to difficulties encountered, sometimes to mistakes and computation of time and space factors. but in all cases there was no good reason why some information didn't get back by the specified time. And here's, I said there was some occasional comments, amplifying information.

So here's the comment. Comment, the failure of patrols in these instances stems from a lack of appreciation on the part of NCOs and junior officers of their missions. In patrol actions, as in the operations of larger units, the mission must be kept up, Most in the minds of all ranks and no action should be undertaken which does not contribute directly to the accomplishment of that mission conversely no incidental or inadvertent contact with the enemy should deter or divert patrols from the complete accomplishment of their missions to include compliance with all instructions given where humanly possible These guys are freaking just legit That's because this is total

war. Yeah. That's because this is an existential war. There's there's so much insulation that we sometimes try to create and I remember feeling it on my deployment to Ramadi which is very different than my deployments in an aircraft and I even remember feeling the sense of wanting to insulate my own family from what I was doing that feeling of just wanting to keep them insulated from the reality when actually all that did to be honest with for my wife has made it made it kind of worse because she had to create something in her mind and she had to try to piece it together, which she simply couldn't do.

But that need to insulate, if that ends up on the inside with your own folks, and it becomes most obvious when you start losing people and the question of, hey, how much time are we going to take? How much downtime we're going to take? And I'm listening to this, and it's like, that's not even,

there's not, we're not even, that conversation isn't even happening. We're not talking about, hey, what are we going to do to acknowledge what has happened here? Which, of course, you want to do. But this is not an option. And the leadership isn't even conflicting that. It's funny, the way he said that my mind immediately went,

I want to write that differently. Instead of the staff and COs and the junior officer is not understanding it, it's the leadership has failed to explain to them the context that they should understand. And we actually aren't doing our jobs. I might have gotten ahead of myself. It looks like you're laughing at something. I'm laughing. Even when he said that, it was like, no, that's not what happened.

Yeah, I'm laughing because you can see my note right there says ownership, question mark. Exact same thing is, you know, when you blame your NCOs and your junior officers because they don't appreciate their mission and they don't understand it. Well, guess what? Whose fault is that all day long? Totally. It's my fault as a leader for letting those junior officers go out there. And I'm not sitting over here trying to pick apart the things they're saying. I'm just picturing every time, every time I placed a demand on.

guys on my team that they understood, it wasn't even hard for them to step up. I mean, it was a challenging situation. But if they understand why we were just stepping up and making things happen when it was hard, no factor. My 18-year-old Marines were gone, no factor. But if I failed to give them that and then something difficult happened that created some friction and some doubt, that was a much harder problem to get past if they didn't understand why they needed to get past it. And that was always, always on me, always. Or it was on the 18-year-old kid, on his very first deployment that one of his closest friends had just gotten killed.

It's either on him or it's on me. It was not even hard. But if you gave him that context, what they could overcome and endure, I don't mean to say that it wasn't hard. Maybe that's the wrong way to describe it, but boy, they did it every single time without hesitation. Yeah, and that's the whole US military,

even though, you know, as I read this, I'm like, man, these guys were hard, but that's what we do in the military. You know, you take casualties, and then you go, you go, do your job. That's what you do. Next one, team up. Captain William T. Gordon, infantry, Sicily. I have found that men in position must fight in pairs. And order that 50% stay awake is thus easily enforced. It bolsters morale and nerves. Rally point. In every company attack order,

a reserve force must be prescribed. I always do, even though sometimes this force consists only of myself and my first sergeant. Often a soldier who a moment before is runaway is converted to a fighter by leadership. A reserve force gives him a rallying point. That's brilliant. Just having a fallback point, even if it's two people. Hey, if you got to run away, run to here.

And then who's there? The platoon commander and the first sergeant. Like, all right, buddy. Here, take some ammo. Get ready. Because we're going to rock and roll. Fear is normal. Colonel George Taylor, Infantry, Cicely.

Fear of being afraid. is the greatest obstacle for the new man in battle to overcome. There is no reason for shame in being afraid. Men who have had excellent battle records freely admit they are scared stiff in battle. The important thing is that every soldier must be taught all he needs to know so well that battlefield thinking is reduced to a minimum. Automatic, disciplined reactions to battlefield problems must be the rule. in battle the worst element is mental and nervous exhaustion there is no real rest under fire the ability to withstand fire is more important than all the knowledge in the world what are you writing down

nervous exhaustion yeah the idea that you will exhaust yourself and render yourself incapable just by creating the fear in your mind by when you don't react to what's going you just you and you've seen where people get overwhelmed by the moment and they end up doing nothing. And they literally exhaust themselves in their own minds by being afraid of what's out there rather than just facing what's out there,

which is extremely hard to do. But just the way he wrote that, that nervous exhaustion is such an awesome way to describe what sometimes people do when they're just freaking out of what's happening. They exhaust themselves into doing nothing. I got mortared a couple times and actually,

my platoon of my first deployment, we went to this outstation. It was a special forces outstation. It was in a rough neighborhood in Baghdad. And we got mortared a decent amount that night. And like the next day, let me rephrase that. We probably got hit with an RPG or two, maybe a rifle-fired grenade, and then, I don't know, Some number of mortars more than three or four. Like, this is decent, right?

Which, by the way, when you compare it to this, is just nothing. It's just nothing. And the reason I bring it up, because even that, one night, you know, one night of receiving some pretty consistent mortar fire was enough that you could see the next day, guys were on edge. Guys were legitimately on edge. after one night of light mortar attacks. And that's just crazy.

And you could see that over time, and it's what we see in World War I, you know, those awful videos of World War I of guys that had shell shock, legit shell shock. And when we covered shot at dawn on here, you break down. People break down.

And it doesn't matter what you say, what you do. You're telling them you're going to shoot them if they desert and they do it anyways. So the ability to withstand fire is more important than all the knowledge in the world. I'll tell you something else. I think the ability to withstand fire is related to an acceptance of death. I mean, if you are scared of dying, this is going to drive you insane.

Yeah. I think that's the nervous exhaustion right there. You're going to go insane if that's what you think. Think about. Look, man, when I got to Ramadi, I was afraid of dying for a very brief period of time. But I was. I got there and I remember, I wrote about it. And I remember realizing as I probably was there for, you know, a little bit. I had in some ways the benefit of knowing people that had been there, knowing, knowing what I was going to get myself into. But when I got there, I'm like, oh, man, I'm here now. And I remember thinking for a little while like, oh, this, maybe, maybe this is a bad idea

for the day break. Maybe this was a mistake. And there was a little bit of fear of dying. And the time that I spent thinking about that was, it was exhausting. And then I, you know what? I said, you know what? That, yes, that might happen. I literally considered to myself, yep, that might happen.

And I got past it. And that was the end of it. I never lost the idea that it could happen. And I fully understood that, but I sort of just stopped thinking about it. I didn't stop thinking about it because I didn't think it would happen. I'd just stop thinking about it because it was kind of a useless thing to think about anymore. But if you get trapped in that, and I remember a small period of time of that feeling of the paranoia that starts to build up of what you can end up creating is that you're going to die. There's no way to get out of it.

And that becomes the obsession that you think about. If you're going to go to combat, you have to accept that that might happen. And then you have to get past that and then go do whatever it is you're going to go do. Knowing that's a case without letting it control you at all. But again, what I was going to face in my brush with war compared to any of this other stuff is kind of crazy. Yeah, there's another end of the spectrum too. And I think I kind of went back and forth between two mindsets of one is, you know what? I can die.

That could happen tonight. And you know what? I'm not going to die. It's not going to happen. You know, whatever. Watch this. I'll stand out here in the street. It doesn't matter.

They can't kill me. I mean, my first deployment to Iraq. What did I write? On my Humvee door, once we got the, we welded steel on there. I think I wrote, I cannot be killed on it. And my guys made me take it all. They were so freaked out. They're like, oh, don't do that, man.

the total jakes don't do it don't do it so and you know even talking to Dean Ladd Dean Ladd you know going into Tarawa it's like oh did you think you were gonna get killed he's like no of course not what are you think of a week yeah and that might be the greatest story of all time when his buddy went he pretended like he was dying his buddy pretended like he was dying and had his his friend the the chaplain come over and was reading him his last rights and then he starts laughing. All right. Next section is about Sicily, Italy, and Atu night attacks.

And they get into Attu, which is the battle up on the Aleutian island, the island of a two. 2,900 Japanese soldiers, 2,872 of them killed, 28-captured. Surprise saves lives. Major John R. Patterson, infantry, Sicily. The mission of our battalion after landing at south of Gala

in Sicily was to capture the airport at Biscari. The battalion used the silent night attack. Three rifle companies were in line with heavy weapons company in reserve. To reach its line of departure, the battalion crossed two

ridges using two control lines, then climbed the cliff at the airport to the line of departure. All this was done silently under the cover of darkness. The attack was started with a hand grenade. We didn't fire until the Germans counterattacked. When we went in with bayonets and hand grenades and caught some of the Germans undressing and dressing,

the tanks fired their guns but wouldn't close on us. The enemy knew their men were all about, so they fired their machine guns and rifles mainly into the air. Our attack lasted about 30 minutes. we had no casualties during the attack. Two were killed during the counterattacks. So that silent option, we were doing training.

I was at Team 2. I was an assistant platoon commander. They captured one of our seals. They had him up in, this is an urban combat training. They had him up in the third floor of this building. And they're telling him, you know, yell and scream. And so he's up there, and they're going to kill me and all this.

And they're waiting for us. and they're waiting for us to do what we do, which is, you know, and on the first floor, clear the first floor, moved to the second floor, clear the second floor, move to the third floor, and we clear the third floor, get to the room where he is.

And I'm like, you know, silence. We patrolled out. We took the fire escape up directly to the third floor, didn't clear any of the other rooms and went right into where, because we could see where he was. We could hear where he was. So we knew he was in like one of one or two or three rooms.

And we caught those, those op-for guys completely off guard. They're literally looking out the windows trying to see where we were, and we walked in and shot them all in the back, rescued our guy. But what's important here is, and he goes into like a little bit of a little bit more detail, but you, because we're being quiet, you have to have good control lines of where you're going to let people get to. Hand-to-hand fighting. Captain Gerald, infantry. At Biscari Airport, I used my trench knife twice. One of my men got three with his bayonet.

He shot one, then another tried to grab his bayonet. He got this one with his bayonet. That got him started. So he got three in before it was all over. Small arms against arm. We found that the 30 caliber AP pierces enemy armored half tracks at close ranges. That's something that everybody should know. Platoon action, Lieutenant Hallrich.

Infantry. When the enemy machine guns opened up, we threw grenades. The machine guns pulled back out of grenade fire. Then NCOs and Browning Automatic Rifleman went up over the embankment through and beyond the initial enemy positions. Eventually we had a base of fire about 20 men, including the bars, the BARs. During the enemy counterattacks, we did pretty well with other fire too. Lead was flying fast and furiously at 20 to 30 yards. We fire at flashes. In this kind of firing, you learn. to fire and roll to one side or they will soon get you I read that whole thing just to get that last little part if you're a trooper out there if you're in the military you shoot and then you move because if you pop your head up again in that same spot you're getting you're gonna take one comment in all these accounts of a successful night attack by a small unit the application of the following principles is worthy of note close control during the approach by the use of control lines adjusted to difficult terrain features. Designation of a line of departure as close to the objective as possible and after all major

terrain obstacles have been passed. This is essential to assure proper organization of the unit immediately prior to the so. You can apply that right there. There's so many business things right there. Like you get everything ready to go. You get past all the main obstacles. Once everyone's past the main obstacles, then you execute. Attainment of the vital surprise. Use of the bayonet and hand grenades with no weapon firing permitted. It may often be advisable to prohibit the loading of rifles. And for anyone that doesn't understand why these guys are talking about using grenades so much, grenades do not give away your position.

Neither do bayonets. So you can huck grenades and no one knows where it just came from. There's no one to shoot at. There's no muzzle flash. And so it's a great weapon when you are attacking from like a clandestine situation where you don't want the enemy to know where you are. use of frontal attack only any attempt at envelopment

tends to cause disorder and confusion note that one platoon which had advanced ahead of the general lines was pulled back to conform so they're saying frontal attack only and what they're saying is don't try and surround because if you try and surround people at night and you're going to end up on opposite sides

and you're going to end up in a blue-on-blue situation I don't think that they mean don't set up flank situations. A definite and limited objective capture of an airfield in this case in which the entire front could be covered by manpower rather than firepower. Oh, that's good. These are the major elements of successful night attack brought out in the foregoing account.

Others not mentioned but which were undoubtedly contributing, contributing factors of the operations are careful planning in minute detail, precise specific orders, careful arrangement for maintenance of direction, thorough daylight reconnaissance by as many of the leaders as possible, use of compact columns in the approach. So the reason that they're saying precise, specific orders, that's different.

That's different than what we normally talk about. The reason is because you are attempting to make this happen without having the enemy get a vote. So once the enemy gets a vote, if you're too specific, things change. Now we don't know what to do. But we are setting this thing up.

to be very specific and we should be able to get to our last points of concealment. We should be in our positions. Everything should be good. Once that attack starts, you know, you still want to keep them constrained because it's nighttime. Yeah. And the context of the night piece is also, I think, really important because it seems what they're saying is that there's a lot more close control under a night attack. It requires a whole lot of other things. Because when the chaos ensues under a night attack, you are denied something that you usually rely on so heavily. And when you were reading that, and again, it's under the context of a night assault. It's different.

It's different at night. You told a story long time ago that I've used a bunch and there's a version of it I have from flying, which was when we started using NVGs. The way we described the use of NVGs, why we would use NVGs in an airplane is the most simplest way to describe it is it allows us to to use daytime tactics at night, which before you just couldn't do. You actually, you want the least amount of close control as possible. You need to have some, but in the day, you don't need it as much because you can rely on being able to see each other. And when you started to see people, like, reject the idea of things that allowed you

to maneuver in different ways using technology, because why would I do it like that? The night creates an environment that's really hard to operate. in and if you're going to be successful at night, you have to do a lot more things than you would normally do during the day, which is why some of the technology pieces are so nice to allow to do it. But even with that, you can't pretend like the two are the same. And the detail is going through. I'm all thinking like, yeah, you wouldn't do that during the day. You have to do that at night. Yeah. Yeah. And now that we're talking about it, when you're talking about this size element, because I'm saying, hey, you could still set up flanks. But if it's nighttime and you got a big

element I actually wouldn't I would set up a complete online assault we would all be together we would all be within you know communication distance and we're gonna not make those mistakes and we're gonna know where everyone is because when you're online you've got free fire in 8 in 180 degrees ahead of you it's an awesome thing that's gonna that's gonna that's gonna overwhelm or or make the idea of having another element on the flank obsolete because you because you're Firepower is so unrestricted when you're online. And that's, you know, it's like you can either sell online or you can set up a

now, that's it. And then there's these little other variations where you can start to envelop, but development is very, very dangerous. And you better have some serious control measures in place if you're going to try that. Very serious control measures, including up to and including pieces of terrain that actually prevent you from having a blue on blue because there's a freaking mountain or a ravine or whatever that prevents you from getting shot by your own guys. All right, this little section here starts to jump into really specific stuff,

knocking out pill boxes, and then it gets into individual initiative. The following cases of individual initiative and heroism during the Salerno landing were reported by the infantry. Sergeant Manuel Gonzalez upon landing discovered the position of a German 88 in the sand dunes near the beach This gun was firing on the assault boats as they landed the sergeant crept around the position under machine gun fire Which set his pack on fire And despite the hand grenades being thrown at him

He then calmly tossed several hand grenades into a gun emplacement killing the crew and blowing up their ammunition Yeah, you're gonna see each one of these these these are talking to about individual initiative what they are is just just pure heroics sergeant john y mcgill jumped on an enemy tank and dropped the hand grenade into the open turret killing the crew private clayton i talman on hill 424 observed that the enemy was attempting an envelopment of the left flank of his company taking up a better position he killed an enemy machine gun crew with three carefully aimed shots. In a few minutes, he repeated the same action when another enemy machine gun crew appeared. He alone protected the left flank of the company until the rest of the platoon arrived.

Private B. Reich discovered that he and a group of five men had been cut off from his company. He immediately organized them into a defensive position on a small knoll. They repulsed three rushes by the enemy who were attempting to establish machine gun positions on the flank. Private Reich was completely in command of the situation, giving orders and shouting in curses. Yeah, I was going off on that last podcast about having team members that are going to step up and just make things happen Staff Sergeant Quillan H. McMitchin was shot in the chest and shoulder and shoulder before his assault boat reached the shore I say that again shot in the chest and shoulder before he reaches the shore Have you read a shoulder injury?

Echo Charles? Yes. Yeah, where you're like, ah, you know, I really can't do anything Right. Right. Or you hurt your, you know, you get somebody with that pulls their pack muscle or whatever. Yeah. Well, what do they do for the next six months? They, they sit around and drink warm milk. What does McMission do?

Well, when the boat reached the beach, the landing ramp stuck and would not drop. The sergeant, despite his wounds, kicked the ramp loose and then led his section ashore, continuing to direct their operations until he received a fatal shot from enemy gunfire. Pre-assault, you get shot in the chest and shoulder. When you get shot in the shoulder, you're not using that arm. And then you get shot in the chest as well. Our men moved ahead in the face of the intense fire and cleared the beach as soon as possible. Lieutenant Kerry, soon after reaching the shore, was fired upon by three Germans armed with machine pistols.

He returned fire, but his car being jammed after killing one of his adversaries. He then grasped his weapon as a club, and advancing in the face of their fire, clubbed the second. then he physically tackled, subdued, and disarmed the third German, taking him prisoner. The ability of the individual soldier to grasp the implications of the situation and take the necessary action should be fully exploited. The results of combat are the fruits of combined efforts of individuals. Every soldier should be indoctrinated with the idea that his individual action may be the decisive factor. in the final result. Leadership strategy and tactic.

Every guy in the platoon is the most important guy. True statement. True statement. That comment is so, I mean, it is so powerful. That they understand that what they do individually can change the entire outcome of the entire operation. And what's crazy when I'm listening to these stories of just like you described, just total acts.

of heroism. They called it initiative and hero. What's crazy about that is for the ones that have ended up Medal of Honor awardees, the ones that end up telling their stories, they all say the exact same thing. And I'm paraphrasing, but they all say, I don't feel like a hero, I just doing my job. That's what they all say. They just have this simple way of describing, I wasn't doing it to be a hero.

I needed to take out that machine gun nest. Tom Fife's like, I didn't think of it in like any heroic. I needed to blow up that tank. So I got out of the tank and took care of. And they downplay it so much that when you're listening to it, you're kind of just in awe like, bro. Are you kidding me? You're a total hero. But they never see it like that.

They're just like, I had to do this. My men needed me to do this. So I just did it. The last thing I was thinking about was the write-up that I was going to get if I attacked this position. And they do things that just seem completely superhuman. And the way they're able to do that is they understand that what they do has huge impact on the people around them. Which is crazy you can teach that to a human being. Yeah, imagine if you had a company where every single person inside your company thought that each individual action that they had would have an impact on the entire company as a whole.

What if you could indoctrinate and inculcate that idea into your team? Imagine what that team would be like. Action on, ACHU. Operations Report Regimental Combat Team. To fight the Japs in this country, our troops must stick to. the high ground and not only out flank but out altitude the enemy the high ground continuous movement is necessary to keep the spark in an attack if a machine gun covers one point then a group not at that point must continue to advance when fire is shifted the original group

must move even if the platoon is entirely halted by the fire of enemy guns then the commitment of additional troop results whereas by proper coordination some portion of the platoon can be kept moving and the force committed kept to a minimum that's his number one thing is covered move the tendency of lower commanders to commit reserves too early must be curbed security cannot be over emphasized any movement or group on the battlefield even in a rear areas is subject to enemy action in this connection consideration must be given to the protection of medical installation. At present, these are left unprotected without even individual arms for their personnel.

In the event of enemy penetration through our frontline positions, it is practically certain that these installations will be hit. Why are they given that lessons? Because that's exactly what happened on like a suicide attack from the Japanese. Aggressive patrolling, particularly to maintain active contact, is of vital importance and can mean the difference between defeat and victory. However, mere numbers. of patrols will not solve the problem. Special training in patrolling and organizing patrols

must be initiated. Commanders must plan to have reasonably fresh men available for night contact. It is vital to organize patrol activity carefully to ensure that all lines are familiar with the roots of returning patrols so that the danger of mistaken identity in the darkness will be minimized. Yeah, they got the Japanese on their attack made it. They broke through. And was fighting in the rear. Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner, commanding general, Alaskan Department.

It was apparent that the enemy was particularly vulnerable to attack by units of our infantry, which pushed forward vigorously while the enemy was held down by artillery fire. What do we call that? Recovered move. Those units which had learned to advance closely behind their own artillery supporting fire had the greatest success. The Japs do not like our coordinated artillery fire, nor do they like our attacks with the bayonet.

When under fire from small arms, they stay down in their holes and are easily approached. When attacking small groups of foxholes, our troops were able to keep the Japs down by fire from rifles and the Browning automatic rifle, while some of our men approached and drop hand grenades into their holes. This is our favorite mop-up method, cover and move. When about to be run out of a position,

the Japs seemed to feel it necessary to counterattack. These attacks were not well coordinated and were welcomed by our troops who were able to shoot down the enemy in great numbers. These Jap counterattacks were part of a suicidal character and were pressed home regardless of losses until practically all the counterattacking troops were exterminated. The enemy may believe that in such terrain, he can hold up the advance of an entire battalion with three men and a light machine gun. In fact, however, he is critically vulnerable to intelligent action by officers and men who understand the necessity for immediate maneuver against small parties of the enemy seeking to hold them up. The fact was that a small maneuvering patrols easily disposed of machine gun positions on reverse slopes behind mountain spurs, whereas any tendency to lie down and call for artillery support would have resulted only in tremendous wastage of artillery fire and attempting to seek out targets which, in fact, were in excessively. to artillery fire. That's an important point. So you think, oh, we got a machine gun up there. We need a call for fire and now you think about how hard it's going to be for this artillery to hit this place that's bunkered in or they're on the reverse slope of a mountain or whatever. It's a real problem and yet these guys realized if they just

aggressively maneuvered on that machine gun, they'd be able to take it out. The two action likewise indicated that standard Japanese infiltration tactics can be offset by a system of anti-termite patrols organized behind our lines protecting artillery command post and supply lines wherever troops know that these friendly patrols were behind them fire in our rear will mean simply that our patrols are cleaning people up goes into the South Pacific talking about the jungle jungle notes aggressive action flexible plans report of the 43rd division New Georgia Aggressive action is necessary. Never relax the pressure.

Never relax the pressure. That's a good, that's a good just thing to think about every time you wake up in the morning. Never relax the pressure. Maneuver of small units at risk of temporary loss of communications is important. Plans and orders must be so flexible as to permit prompt maneuver change.

This is another thing where I would feel like I was cheating when I was, you know, going through training and stuff. because we would make these really flexible plans. And of course, the training cadre is going to do things to disrupt your plan. And when your plan gets disrupted and it's super flexible, you're like, oh, whatever, you know, go with plan B. Go with plan C, no factor. Never relax the pressure. It's actually pretty hard to disrupt a plan that's not very rigid, you know?

Yeah, we didn't have like 37 steps that you can interrupt. We had a basic idea and some real good ideas of how we're going to maneuver and disrupting that's much harder. that last one was awesome. Which one? The one we talked about, never relax the pressure. Yeah. But I think the title of that was

aggressive action, flexible plans. Whatever that title was, just that alone, obviously the description makes it even better, but that in and of itself, that will solve just that mindset solves so many problems in your world,

anywhere in your world. There's a couple of things that you need to be aware. of the way that you have flexible plans is you are religious about making sure everyone understands the commander's intent that's if you can do that hey this is what this is the overall thing that we're trying to accomplish here's the couple parameters you got to work within other than that make it happen yeah get aggressive making it happen because if you just make a flexible plan and you think hey you know you guys come in from the west and you guys come in from the south There's all kinds of things that go wrong with that plan. It's super flexible, but no one knows where they can go, where they can't go. There's no deconfliction set up. So you need to think about it.

The other thing that's interesting about aggressive action flexible plans is the more you plan, the more detail you get, the worse your plan becomes. Now, if you come up with a plan in three minutes, you probably need a little bit more time. Although I have executed operations where we planned for 15 minutes. my boss asked me that. My boss said, how much time do you guys need to launch it? This is my first deployment. My second deployment,

no one asked me. They already knew the answer. My first deployment, how much time do you guys need? I was like, 15 minutes. That's how much time. What you're getting at, though,

is the propensity of, how do things usually work out? Do we usually plan too much or not enough? It's pretty rare that we don't plan enough. What typically happens is we overplan and overplan and over plan. And there's an old saying, and I don't know if it's just an aviation, is how long do you have to plan your mission? And the joke is 30 minutes.

How long do you need to plan your mission? And the joke is 30 minutes more than you have. And the reason is we have a propensity to overplan. You guys say that in aviation? Yeah. I thought I made that up. You did not make it up. Unless it was on your trip to Fallon and all of a sudden you're the reason we said.

Now, we've been saying that for years. And the point is kind of what you're getting at is, oh, if you gave me nine hours a plan, guess how long I'm going to plan? Nine hours. Can you underplan? Yes, you absolutely can. You can plan for two minutes when you actually need to spend some more time. But the driver is what you were saying is,

hey, I only need 15 minutes. I need to cover the key points, the highlights. And if you've got a team that's well trained, they might even recognize, hey, you know, listen, we got a little additional risk here because we didn't really have time to dissect this one. So when we get to this place in the mission, we need to be a little more aware

that we're going to be a little more flexible. We're less aware than we like to be. But I know that, as opposed to, hey, let's take three days to plan. And by the time I get to the objective, it's a total waste of time because that mission has come and gone. Most teams that we work with overplan. They overthink, they overcreate. And then when they go out to implement, they're either too late or they're so rigid in what they do.

They can't maneuver around. So if you're looking for the balance there, less is typically more. Not always, not 100% of the time, but that's where your bias should be. It's kind of like packing, right? For a trip. It's kind of the same mindset. Which is? Like overpacking.

People will overpack because they think of all the different scenarios they're going to need this jacket, those socks, this shoe. I need flip-flops too for the, you see what I'm saying? Meanwhile, you got a washer dryer there. You know, you don't need all that stuff. It'll be flexible. See what I'm saying? Check.

Otherwise, you got all these suitcases, you know. It's the same mindset as what I'm saying, no. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Like if you underpack, but you're flexible, it's way better. Yeah. Maneover, you can maneuver, you know.

Yeah, it is weird that. it's such an advantage to come up with a nice flexible plan that everybody knows and it's so easy man that the planning the planning what would I call it like the the evolution of planning inside the seal teams you know at one point it was beyond insanity we wrote about it in in extreme ownership I mean the way Seth and Leif were taught to plan was was mayhem it was it was 150 slide PowerPoints that you know oh and your font's wrong oh you better to this and oh you that and you need to go through this branch plan and this other thing over here man when those guys started working with me i remember when i and it's talked about this in extreme ownership when i was telling

those guys hey just make a plan that the lowest common denominator out get up have people walk through it Look at the map. Use the map. Draw a picture. Draw it up on the whiteboard. Do that. I remember Seth was looking at me like he was going to get fired. Like when he gives this brief, he's going to get fired.

And it's funny because usually I would get that. I would feel a little bit more pushback from Laif on stuff. And Seth would be like, yeah, Roger. And Laif would be like, well, we do it like that. And this time, for whatever reason, I think Lief actually just realized that this was the smartest thing he'd ever heard. I think Leif just said to himself, you know what?

This actually freaking makes sense. And he was so on board with it. He was so stoked. And he had, BTF Tony was his chief. And that's the way, you know, Tony knew how to make shit happen. And I just, but Seth was just freaked out like,

well, I mean, you think he was so freaked out by the fact of thinking that he was going to get fired for, for trying to make his men understand. what was going to happen on this mission. And the cool thing was, the commanding officer,

when they got done, because it was two platoons going out on an SR, you know, on a reconnaissance mission. And they both took their platoons out. When they got done, the, you know, the commanding officer, who had gone around and watched all the platoons, give all their briefs and give all these 150 PowerPoint slides and do all these, you know, what is it called?

Animation in your slides. He'd watched all those things. And he said, these are the best briefs I've seen, which was freaking awesome. It was awesome. Because if the commanding officer can't follow what the hell is going to happen on an operation, how is a new guy E4 machine gunner? He's not following anything.

And the more flexibly you make these plans, when you're not all rigid. What's kind of crazy about that is that commanding officer was probably stoked that the brief took nine minutes, not 49 minutes. He was probably waiting like, here we go. We're going to come in. And he would probably look around it, like, that's, That's it. That's awesome. Yeah.

I mean, it was, you know, isn't it still an hour long, but an hour long of real information as opposed to, you know, an hour and 47 minutes of slides that are of, you know, asset matrix for the, you know. Where he knew represented 30 man hours of PowerPoint work to make the arrow move. The point behind that was, and I saw this in the Pentagon all the time, I wouldn't be surprised if you saw some of this in the EA world. working in you know with admirals and generals is we create this thing where we are hey this is how the boss wants it oh yeah and so we give the boss what he wants and some of the bosses

are pretty they don't want to go down their micromanager people so they kind of tolerate it and we convince ourselves this is what the boss is looking for so i'm going to do what make most of our bosses don't actually want this they just want to make sure they know that you know what you're going to go do to go get it done and the least amount of time it takes to make him comfortable that you know the plan is actually what he wants. And I remember putting these briefs together and I'd get these templates to go brief these generals up in the top floor of the Pentagon.

It was this big thing. You've got 19 minutes. It's a fitness calendar. And we'd go in there. And for the first couple briefs, we'd have 47 pages. And he'd go, hey, can you just skip to the summary slide? Click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click, click.

Summary, he's like, okay, okay. Hey, that may, hey, bullet through, what do you mean by that? Hey, sir, we're talking about this. Okay, cool. Awesome. I hate to do it to you guys. I got to get going.

Thanks. But I'm good at your plan. Go execute. They didn't want any of that garbage. But we followed this template. We were so sure they wanted. Most leaders really just want to know that you understand. Yeah.

And they want to understand the wavtops of what's happening. So they understand. I had this guy who was putting a group through land warfare. And this guy gave a brief. I mean, it was horrible and long and freaking too detailed and covered stuff that didn't matter to anyone in the room. And then he gave another brief. that was you know not enough and you know skipped like basic contingencies and then he was kind of

frustrated and he goes what it what did you even tell me what a good brief is as if that was like a trick question you know I was I thought about it for four seconds and I said a good brief is a brief where your mind understand what is going to happen and what to do during an operation that's a good brief and he was able to dial it in yeah this we're in the jungle you might have forgot that patrolling in the jungle an officer with considerable experience in the jungle patrolling gives this advice patrols are most likely to give away their presence in an area by their footprints shine from the smallest metal surface such as a belt buckle or watch must be avoided a luminous watch constitutes a real danger any noise such as talking

coughing, spitting, et cetera, has to be treated with the greatest of all dangers. A man on patrol must learn to move silently, making every possible use of natural cover. That's just old school stuff. I got to feel some of that when I was hunting. He was like so happy to be moving quietly. Some more patrol tips. Positioning camouflage are more important than I learned in the States. In training, in training bear down on cover and concealment.

Bear down on avoidance of the blundering approach on patrols on fire and maneuver, which are equally important. And I didn't read that well. In training, bear down on cover and concealment. Bear down on the avoidance of blundering approach. On patrols on fired maneuver, which are equally important. Size of patrols. Lieutenant Colonel W.A. Walker Tank Destroyer Battalion Commander Tunisia, which, you know, let's just face it. You're getting a title.

Tank Destroy and Battalion Commander is right up there. Many men were lost in Tunisia by using squad patrols. The Germans used stronger patrols and just gobbled them up. A patrol should be either a sneak patrol small enough to escape detection or a combat patrol large enough to fight its way out of difficulty. Never allow one man to go out alone. You know what's interesting about that? We don't want to be balanced, right? I'm always talking about want to be balanced,

but what he's saying is like, you either want to be small and maneuverable and it's quiet or big enough to fight. Don't, don't try and make the mistake of trying to do both. Hey, we'll just take out a squad plus. Then you're making a bunch of noise. The difference between, you know, six guys and 12 guys is a massive difference.

It is a massive difference on a patrol. It's a totally, like when we'd go out of the squad patrol in the SEAL teams, you know you got eight guys. It's this tiny little thing and you can see everyone. At night with no night vision, you can see everyone. It's there. Quiet. When you take out a platoon patrol, it seems like you've got this just massive thing. And when you take out a task unit patrol, it's just freaking gigantic.

Like, they're going to hear you. Don't make that mistake. So this is one of those things that's like it's not a dichotocons. Either or one of those rare things. Yeah, because normally we're saying, hey, you know, don't go to the extreme one side or the other Right. You want to be balanced. Yeah, this is kind of like a fall into the trap of well, I want them to be small enough to be light and nimble, but big enough where you know they can defend themselves and what you're gonna end up with is not small in light and not able to defend themselves. Right. Like not not big enough to fight yet not small enough to move. Yes. It's kind of like when you surf obviously. It's kind of like when you judge waves, right? You're either. too far for it to crash on you or you just go 100% under the wave. You know what I'm saying? Otherwise it crashes on you.

You either go over it or under it under it or it crashes way before it can hit you. Oh, that's that's a positive thing. Yes. You don't want it to crash on you. On you. Yes, you are correct. You don't want to be in that one, that little middle ground. You don't want to be in the zone of destruction.

Yeah, the red zone. There's a movie called the North Shore. The impact zone. Impact zone. Yeah. So the North Shore, he covered that. Yeah. You're just like, yeah, you're like, you don't want to be actually this guy, Turtle.

Did he ever watch North Shore deeper? No. Rick Kane. Anyway, guy from Arizona wins a tank surfing competition. So he's like, of course, I'm going to the North Shore. So he was kind of a tank destroyer. In a matter of speaking, yes. Nonetheless, tank waves are pretty small and tame.

You know, the artificial waves in Arizona, apparently. So he goes to the North Shore and, you know, he kind of gets wrecked for a little bit. Anyway, he meets this guy Turtle, and Turtle says, if the wave is here, don't be here because you're going to get drilled. Classic line, man. So same deal in this. Maybe we should cover that movie on here

just to get these, make sure we pass on these lessons learned. I'm just saying these concepts are everywhere. That's the thing. Next section is called infantry weapons. It goes through detail M1 rifle, frag grenades, the Thompson submachine gun, the Browning our automatic rifle,

the light machine gun, heavy machine gun, 60 millimeter mortar, 81 millimeter mortar The 37 millimeter A.T gun The 4.2 inch chemical mortar Which was originally called that Because it was originally made for

Firing Chemical Shells but eventually they adjusted it Put HE in there What they still called at the So he goes through like really good Kind of pragmatic details of On how to operate those weapons Talks about Next section is about artillery

Wait, what's chemical mortar? Chemical mortar. Chemical mortars are going to fire. Well, what they disguised it was, was this is a smoke mortar. So we're going to shoot, if we have to use smoke to, you know, cover movement or we want to disrupt the enemy's ability to see, we have a mortar for firing smoke. But that was really, so we could fire chemical weapons if we were going to use them. Like what, like to hear nerve gas or something like this? Yeah. Yeah. Like, oh, damn. Yeah, like you're going to die. But we didn't do that. We ended up making an H.E round. High Exposalcy, which is kind of a normal mortar round for it. And they liked it. Gotcha. A section called Mast Fires, Lieutenant Colonel James Infantry, Cicely.

Our division artillery was never out of support for more than five minutes throughout the whole campaign. We've got a wonderful set of battalions in our division artillery, and we have worked so closely together that there is much part of our outfit as our own battalions. They keep right up on our heels all the time, and that is just what we've got to have. I don't know what we could have done without them. They leapfrogged their batteries continually and went into some of the damnedest positions I had ever seen and delivered the goods. We just can't praise them too much. They were always right there when you needed them. In one place where we couldn't get forward because the heinous were on superior ground and had us pinned down with rifle, machine gun, and mortar fire,

the division artillery masked nine batteries on them and plastered them with 1,500 rounds in less than that. 30 minutes we then walked through that position without a scratch and the German dead were all over the place teamwork infantry tank team captain Putman Putnam infantry Sicily the infantry should be given practical training in cooperation with tanks I don't mean the armored infantry they're part of the armored division and work with them all the time I mean ordinary infantry like us I know our regiment didn't have any training with tanks in preparation for combat we just didn't know how to work with the attached tank unit. When the tanks came up to supporters after we

had broken up the German attack, we did not follow up the tanks properly as they went forward. Had we done so, we could have cleaned out most of the battalion of Germans. We had not been trained to work with the tanks. And when we remained in position, they went, and we remained in position after they went forward. If we would have known how to go forward with them, we could have done a much better job and could have gotten all the German vehicles and material. After this experience, we strongly recommend that all infantry be given practical training and cooperation with tanks in action, get the infantry men used to the tanks and how to fight together with them. For me, that's a comment about training in general.

You can't expect people to do things that they've never trained to do. So don't expect them to do things that they haven't trained to do. If there's something that they need to know how to do or that they might have to do, train them on it. Infantry tank attack, Lieutenant Colonel Perkins, Tank Battalion Commander, Italy. The rush to battle is the wrong idea. Here we creep up. Each tank should overwatch another tank. Each section should overwatch another section.

Each platoon should overwatch another platoon. Ranger training. Buddy system. Lieutenant Colonel William O. Darby. Commanding officer of the Rangers in Italy. And I think everybody kind of knows what I say, what I say. Lieutenant Colonel William Oak Darby. I know they at least think of the Darby Queen,

the Ranger obstacle course. In our work, we always use the buddy system. The men work in pairs. They live in pairs, eat in pairs, do garden pairs, even do KP in pairs. Confidence in each other is developed. They can pick their own buddy from within their platoon. Same thing in the SEAL teams.

Day one, you get a swim buddy and you stick with them. Realism. In our training, we never do anything without battle noises and effects. We always use live ammunition. We use mines, barbed wire, and protective bands of machine gun fire extensively. If the problem is to capture a machine gun nest, there's always a machine gun nest there with a machine gun firing in a fixed direction. The men very quickly get accustomed to having live ammunition flying around them. Captured Italian and German machine guns and machine pistols are used by the enemy in our problems that he's talking about the opt for.

Our men quickly learn to distinguish between the fire of our own weapons and that of enemy weapons. Also the enemy makes constant use of flares. We always carry our normal load of ammunition with weapons loaded. If a man knows his weapon is loaded, he will be more careful in handling it. An accidental discharge of a weapon automatically means a fine and immediate reduction to the grade of private. In our work, we must take drastic measures to guard against accidental discharges of weapons. We learned our lesson in Tunisia where the accidental discharge of a rifle queered a raid, and caused a 24-hour delay in operations.

So all kinds of good stuff in there. And I will say this. So when I got the SEAL teams, it was almost all live fire. We did live fire for everything. And it gave you that kind of pressure and that kind of, you got accustomed to machine guns and hearing them and, you know, round snapping overhead. And you just got used to it.

In fact, there were days where they would put us downrange and just shoot, you know, put you downrange. You'd go behind a berm or whatever. you get in a safe spot and then they just shoot at you. So you start getting used to like, okay, this is what different rounds sound like. And, you know, that happens even being in the butts at, you know, on a normal range. But that kind of realism is important. Here's the drawback.

The drawback is the enemy doesn't maneuver. The enemy doesn't shoot back at you. So when we started using simunition, paintball, laser tag systems, that totally improved our tactical capability. To an incredible amount the accidental discharge that's still a huge deal right? Oh yeah What is it now like that? I mean they're talking about finding people and busing them down to private I mean it I think some of it depends on the circumstances you know if you have an actual discharge in the SEAL teams It's gonna be your careers your careers on the line You know if you if you have something like that happen. It's not necessarily

Going to be over yeah, but you're gonna have a real You know you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're you're have to keep your hopes up that you don't get so even like like a call it a D right or you a D a D a D which is a negligent discharge are those two different things I think they are now I'm not I'm not like totally caught up on the on the terminology of where it's at right now the N D just started coming around when I was sort of in my later years yeah yeah I feel like negligent. That's like careless.

Yeah. So like an accidental discharge, which to your point, you can have a, you can have a round just cook off. Like you're out in the desert in Imperial Valley in California. It's 120 degrees out and you dump six mags on your last run and you're standing there. Your weapon is scorching hot. And if there's a round in the chamber, it can cook off. It can just shoot. That's why you have your weapons pointing it to a safe direction at all times. if that happened, you're not going to get, I mean, you know, you're not really going to get in trouble. I mean, if everyone didn't have their weapon clear and safe,

but when it's hot out, everyone would be like, hey, clear and safe your weapons. But, you know, we also used to have a command safe and let them hang, which is just, you just safe your weapon and you just let it hang there. So we've got a hot round in there, it can cook off. You're probably not, you know, you're not going to get in trouble for that most likely. Occasionally a weapon will have some kind of a malfunction that will cause a problem. what else could happen?

I feel like something like that, like a weapons malfunctioning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like an accidental. Negligent is the kind of like, negligence is I had my finger in the trigger. Yeah. And, you know, somebody called a ceasefire

and all of a sudden, you know, I kind of let my weapon hang and it's resting on my finger and I crack off around. Right. You're getting a lot of trouble for that. Yeah. Interesting.

This is more on Ranger training. Physical conditioning. One of our best means of physical conditioning is speed marching. Finally, reaching a point where we march 10 miles at a rate of 6 miles an hour to keep in condition. We use calisthenics and a daily 5-mile speed march. Disciplineary drills are all important. We have a retreat formation daily conditions permitting. At this formation, the men are inspected and some manual of arms performed followed by retreat.

Every Sunday morning there is a review followed by inspection in the ranks. the inspection of the camp or quarters. We have at least four periods a week of closed order drill and manual of arms and one period every week devoted to military courtesy. In fractions of discipline, military courtesy, and uniform regulations are dealt with quickly and severely. The officers must bear down on these things. The army in general has not stressed strict discipline enough. Without it, you are lost. Yeah, one of those things. Can you go too far with discipline? Dave Burke.

Yes, you can. Absolutely. I mean, I obviously don't know the background of that story, but, you know, the version of the story that he's talking about is the guys that could field strip your weapon in the dark at night on the worst possible situations. We had nine seconds to get that weapon back in action. You need discipline and repeat and wrote and over it. You need that. And then the flip side is exactly what you just started this whole conversation with. If I just, if I, if you do it because you're scared of me and I tell you to do it because if you don't, you're going to get punished, sooner or later, sooner or later, that approach will fail.

And look, I know where the context of this book is. So it's driven by that first scenario, but you absolutely can overdo it. Yeah. And then you could be like John Bazelone. And you'd hear stories from guys that worked with him. And they absolutely. loved doing the right thing, drilling with those weapons. He set the example.

He did it in front of them at night, blindfold, all those things. He did all those things. And he, like they loved doing it. He was inspirational. He didn't impose discipline on them. He showed them and gave them the gift of self-discipline, which is far superior. Dude. And think of the mileage you get is if, as a leader,

the discipline that you demand from your people and the punishment that might come from not doing it if you actually impose it upon yourself as well and hold yourself to the same standard as opposed to get out there and go do that and I'm going to sit in here and I don't know watch TV or something that piece of it when you're talking about that discipline what you get when you hold yourself to the exact same standard is your people BASI Section 2 field artillery. Moral effect, the incessant firing of our artillery during the six-week period produced contrasting effects on the nerves of our own troops and on those the enemy. Our infantry often stated that having those rounds continually landing in front of them

was one of the best morale builders, especially at night. In the Jap, on the other hand, it produced severe cases of war neurosis. He couldn't sleep at night because he never knew when or where the next round was going to land he couldn't sleep in the daytime because when our infantry wasn't attacking him our artillery was giving him hell and this is nice the following statements made by prisoners are interesting so these are Japanese prisoners

of which we know there wasn't a lot between the airport between be below hill and the airport we had many guns of all sizes before this campaign but now many of them are gone knocked out by artillery it is completely demoralized many units reduced many units in strength and has made many men go crazy we were awakened at night by the slightest noise because of the bad state of nerves at night three men stayed in one foxhole two smoked while one slept during the day we also tried to get some sleep by alternating but the continual artillery fire kept us on edge and we got no rest even in the two-story dugouts many men were killed just by concussion a direct hit would kill all the men inside the artillery is the

one thing that is universally feared by all our ground troops it continues over such long periods of time and the rounds come so fast except for the artillery We could continue our defense. That's horror. That's just horror. Section 3, miscellaneous. Booby traps. Seventh Army report Cicely.

A German Luger pistol was booby trapped on a table. A new replacement picked it up. Two were killed and 14 were wounded in the resulting explosion. There's another little second. I wasn't going to read this, but I'm going to read it. A Lugar pistol was found lying on the ground. An American infantry lieutenant carefully tied a long cord to it and then getting into a hole, pulled it to him and put it in his pocket.

Later in the day, while examining the pistol, he attempted to remove the magazine. The explosion killed the lieutenant and two other men with six soldiers wounded. The reason I'm reading that is because that was freaking, they set that thing up. That's a massive explosion from a small piece of, from a small pistol. Timeliness of orders, Major Kinney, Infantry. Our chief difficulty throughout the campaign was the lack of time given for the execution of orders. Frequently, we received operations orders which did not allow enough time for proper preparation and execution. At San Fratello, we received an order after 11 p.m. to attack at 6 a.m. the next morning.

Now, when I read that, I was like, hey, man, I was kind of thinking, you all of said, I'll come up with a simple, flexible plan. No factor. I got this. What are they whining about? Read on. The six battalions were in assembly areas, some five or six miles from. from the line of departure. So even to get to where they were supposed to leave from,

they had to go six miles. The terrain over which they had to move to get in position in the dark was the roughest, most rugged mountain country you could imagine, and all ammunition weapons and supplies had to be taken by hand and by mule pack. Although it might seem that 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. was sufficient time.

The actual conditions were such that it was less than half than enough because the terrain, darkness, and transport difficulties, also the men had just completed marches over mountain trails, of 9 to 14 miles and we're not fresh for the new movement. Maps 7th Army report Cicely. Instill in all personnel and appreciation of the value of maps. The supply of maps will never be adequate to the demand.

Training in the care and preservation of maps is as important as training in the care and preservation of material. Most important thing you need to know, most important piece of information is where you are. And if your map is destroyed, have you ever seen those old school silk maps? Yeah, those things are legit. Yeah. They print them on silk, Echo Charles. Mm-hmm. Because then they could survive.

I understand. I like this section. This section is called Room for Improvement. The following comments indicating weaknesses, which must be corrected, were made by the commanding general, and they don't give the division. I guess they're keeping it secret. Here we go. Sometimes units failed to dispose themselves properly for all-round defense when halted on an objective or when placed in position for defense.

So when you're going to defense, they're not putting themselves in the right positions. Next, in the attack, riflemen frequently failed to provide fire that would cover the movement of adjacent units merely because they were not able to pinpoint definitely the location of the enemy rifle and machine gun elements firing on our troops. What does that mean? That means you fire where you suspect the enemy will be. And that's something that infantry men and special operations people learn is if you don't know where the enemy is and you're in a gunfight, shoot where you think they might be. This is perhaps one of my favorite things from this book. Some small unit commanders selected positions apparently with cover and concealment for themselves

as the primary objective rather than positions from which effective fire could be brought to bear on the enemy. And the last one, due to the enormous division frontage in the second phase of the landing at Salerno, some commanders attempted to stretch their units successively, and as a result permitted faulty dispositions. They go into some details on the Japanese overall. And, you know, I've been reading the book and saying Japs. I know that's a derogatory term towards Japanese people. I'm not referring to Japanese people.

I'm referring to the Imperial Japanese Army members that were fighting against America and we're being referred to by their sworn enemy, the Americans, as Japs. Superman Myth Exploded. That's the title of this. Operations Report, 43rd Division, Georgia. Our troops here came to regard the Superman stories about the Japanese as ridiculous. The Jap is tricky, but not so tricky as many have been led to believe. He is not nearly so ingenious or adaptable as the average American. And the truth of the matter is he's afraid of

us, of our artillery and of our sea and air power. Our troops must learn this and never forget it. This is the last, I think this is the last, the last note. And this, it gives some stuff about the Japanese as an enemy, and then it gives some stuff about the Germans as an enemy. And this is the last one here, last one from this book, from part one on bat lessons. Minor tactics, staff sergeants, Richard E. Deland, and Robert J. Kemp Infantry, Cicely.

never let an apparently lone machine gun suck you into a trap the Germans will usually not fire on the individual but we'll wait watch where he goes and get a whole flock and that's that's the last point in here and I think it's a it's not the last point in this whole book there's a few more but I think it's a good place to stop and the reason why I think it's a good place to stop is because it's a warning it's a warning it's a warning about a trap it's a warning about a trap that the Germans use which is you know put a lone looking machine gun out there by itself oh that looks exposed and it seems real obvious when you read it you're like hey if I see it but look too good to be true right this is too good to be true this is the situation and so it's real obvious to anyone that's looking at it going no that's too good to be true there's a ripe machine gun that's waiting to be taken out looks real obvious, an obvious trap. And yet the warning is there. Why is the warning still there? Because people still fall for it. You will still fall for it. I will still fall for it. We will all still

fall for that trap, just like we will fall for the trap that we're good to go. That we know everything that we need to know, that we understand everything that we need to understand, that we have reached our highest possible form. And all those little thoughts are a trap because we're not good. And we don't know everything. We don't understand everything. And we have absolutely not reached our highest form. We all have work to do.

So watch out for that trap because it is enticing. It is enticing like a lone machine gun just kind of sitting out there by itself Waiting to be taken out and it's really easy to tell yourself That you're good So here's a little warning for all of us Especially me fall for that trap well that wraps up that any other notes Dave? No we addressed all of it that I wrote down and a whole lot more You know, these lessons, all those statements, the comments, the explanations,

they all come from the same place as that trap. They're all lessons learned the hard way. And as repetitive as they sort of sound, they're all because all of those are the same thing. I'm going to say this over and over and over again, because this keeps happening over and over and over again. And in some ways, it's heartbreaking, but that is the reality. is that even those lessons of the things we were supposed to do come from, we had a saying in aviation, they were written in blood. They all came from a lesson that's already been,

we already know that, but we learned it the hard way. And you repeat yourself all the time. And I don't mean that about it. You repeat yourself, we do it echelon front. We repeat ourselves all the time. We take the same thing and then try to apply the context to whatever world, whatever company, whatever business, whatever problem we're dealing with.

But we're always saying the same thing because these lessons, these lessons get learned over and over and over again. And the biggest, the biggest thing that prevents us from making that lesson stick is what you just said, is ourselves going, oh, no, I got it. I've heard it enough. I understand it. And the minute you are convinced that you've heard it enough and you've got it is when you're going to learn the exact same lesson again. Yeah, it's weird How I mean, this happens to us all the time

At Eschlein Front You go We go into a company The company's in the game They're in the game They're telling me I mean there's definitely people It happens on EF online

Somebody who brings something up And somebody would be like Oh, Jocco podcast number 128 He talks about that I don't know off the top of my head But someone's answering that question In a millisecond Right

People that know the material So we go into companies where they know they've read they know they wrote memorized. I guess no is a strong word, right? But and I talked about this on Daryl Cooper and I got into it a little bit on the unraveling podcast because he was saying to me, well, how do you handle something when you know that the other person's premise is wrong? And, you know, he was pretty dug in. And I said, well, do you actually really know that? Because I'm not going to approach anything. If Dave Burke comes to me and says, hey, Jocko, a UFO just touched down in my backyard, I need support here, ASAP. Right?

Not to split hairs, but you mean extraterrestrial. What did I say? UFO. Okay, yeah UFO is just unidentified. Okay, so he identified. So he calls me up and says, an unidentified extraterrestrial machine just landed in my backyard. What do I say?

Look, I know that's not true. Or do I? Right? You know what I say? I say, well, what does it look like? What sort of weaponry do you see? Do, are they, is the recovering element? Can you extract from the AO until we can assemble a counter force?

to go after these guys, right? I don't just say, hey, Dave, shut up. You know what? I hate bringing them out. Like, that's a dumb example, right? But it's really hard for me to think of something that, I should say it's really hard. It's not, man.

People think that they know stuff all the time. Oh, yeah. And what I say on EF online the other day, I said, don't mistake your opinion for the truth. Don't mistake your opinion for the truth. Don't mistake people's, don't mistake what you've heard and what you've said for the truth. Don't mistake the way you've always done things for the truth.

Don't mistake your perspective for the truth. And that is why when you speak the truth, and you and I talked about this the other day, Dave, when you speak the truth, what you should do is speak the truth humbly. For a place of humility. Speak the truth from a place of humility. That's how you speak the truth.

Because even when you believe something and you, quote, No, it's right. There is a chance and you need to open your mind to this chance that you are actually wrong. And you didn't understand something. You didn't understand a different perspective. And all those things, all those things of, you know, thinking that you know, thinking that you don't make this mistake, all those things, thinking that your opinion is the truth, all those things, those are all traps. Those are all just traps. And they seem so obvious when we're sitting here talking about them.

And yet day after day after day, you see people fall into those traps. And so what's interesting is when we talk about these lessons and where I was starting this little idea is that you and I work with companies all the time. And they know the material. They can recite the material. And yet they're caught up. They're not detached. And they're not executing correctly. And so one of the primary things, and it's great being an echelon front, because when we,

come in we are instantly where we are detached that's that's our function so as soon as we just take them and and we move them over to our position three feet and say look at that meeting look at what how that meeting just went or you know look at this look at this this this task the way you put this out to the troops look at this just look at does that sound like you're micromanaging does that sound like you're micromanaging does that sound like you're not giving any ownership? Like, what does it sound like? If you read this and all of a sudden people go,

so you've got to watch out for these traps in the world. I'm going to say something that's a total contradiction. Because all the things that you, all these quotes, all these lessons, all the things you were just reading about in that, in this book or whatever this is, this compilation of people's lessons that they've learned. I was thinking about how, how often these things get repeated.

And it's this idea of, hey, the minute you think you know these lessons. The minute you think you, I know this, is when you actually have the most amount of risk. And at the same time I'm thinking to myself, I wish I knew all this stuff at the very beginning of my career and to think about what I actually could have done with my time in the Marine Corps, if I knew this stuff.

And like just the ultimate dichotomy of you never know this stuff. You have to learn it over and over again. And if I just knew this stuff, how much better I would have been at what I was doing? The broad understanding of it is what makes it hard for people to understand at a level where it can be utilized

because I know for a fact that you were taught, you know, hey, okay, when you were going through the basics, well, like, okay, you got this element over here, they're going to put down... You were, absolutely taught that. I was absolutely taught that. And yet I ended up having to teach this stuff to seals, guys that had been in for 15 years, 20 years, be like, hey, why aren't you putting

some machine guns out on the flanks while you cross this road? Oh, it's a good old school thing. No, it's actually covered move. This is a basic thing that we do all the time. You know, and I'm not saying every seal, but I'm just saying seals that had been in the in the Navy for a long time. And that's what's so difficult about these things and I was thinking about this the other day You start okay when you do jiu jitsu you're out of jiu jitzu You're out of jiu jitzu academy and you the more people that are at the academy and the better they get it's like a pyramid if you're at the top of the pyramid so Dean Lister is at the top of the pyramid at victory MMA every single time someone shows up new they're a white belt when they show up here and they take their first class that pyramid gets a little bit taller and dean lister gets a little bit better from

one person showing up here because that one person's going to train in a different way and he's going to prop up somebody else and that little movement raises everyone up by the time it gets to me I'm going up a little bit and then dean's going up just getting a little bit better so what happens I think is these ideas. When you first hear them, they're just sort of there and you don't connect them. And then as you start to connect them together, all of a sudden, well, not all of a sudden, as you start to connect them together, they start getting taller and taller and taller and taller. And you start to see more connections.

And really, for me, this is, it does boil down to what made me start to connect these things was Jiu-jitsu, the fact that I could see in Jiu-Jitsu what I saw people supposed to do in the battlefield, those were the first two connections that I made. And it's probably because I heard it somewhere. I'm sure somebody said, you know, martial arts are like combat. I'm like, oh, what does that mean or whatever? But then I started seeing the actual connection between the two. And then at some point, I started seeing that, oh, those same things actually work in

leadership inside of a team, period. And now all of a sudden, everything looks connected. And now all of a sudden, when you start, when you learn a move in jujitsu, when you learn a move in a jiu-tizu and you don't know anything, that move is a solitary thing by itself. It's unsupported in any way. You really can't barely even utilize that move because it's just by itself. You know, you don't even know what position to get into.

You don't know how to get into that position. You don't know how to set it up. You don't know anything. You know that move, but it's, you know, It's so easy to forget because it's not connected to anything else. The better you get, the more knowledge you have, all of a sudden you start putting these things together. And now they become a system. Now they're all interrelated.

And now when you see something here, something, it fits in. You see how it fits into this overall broad view of things, which is why, you know, we constantly are quoting. If you see the way, if you see the way broadly, you'll see it in all things. And that's what this is. but it takes a certain level of understanding before you can see the way broadly. And, you know, I talk to young guys that are going in the SEAL teams

and they just have no, this stuff isn't even on the, it's not even on the radar in any way, shape, or form, right? And part of it is because they don't see the SEAL teams, they see the SEAL teams as like, oh, I'm going to go make it through buds and I'm going to go and, you know, I'm going to go run and,

we're going to shoot machine guns, they don't understand what this profession is. And it's better now than it was. I mean, the guys, when I came in, I didn't freaking understand any of this stuff in any way, shape, or form. I barely even understood what it meant to, okay, you're going to be part of this squad. And this squad has responsibilities to an overall, I barely grasp any of that. But as you start to assemble this information, and so that's what's hard. So going back to working with the client, like until you can start bringing things together for them,

until they start connecting these things in their own head, that's another thing, is I can sit there and with a ball peen hammer hit you with one spot and go cover and move, cover and move, cover and move, until you see that cover and move is connected to these other things, it's very, very difficult to force the knowledge onto that, onto another human. Yeah. And I made the comment earlier, but I wish I knew these things. There's a whole bunch of reasons why you simply can't at the beginning, just like you described.

Like I said, second lieutenant, Dave Burke almost can't know this, no matter how crystal clear these lessons are from World War II and forever back. And the other side of that, though, is that even, you know, you. Even when you can, it's, it still never ends finding more to know. Dude, I, I taught at Top Gun. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the apex of aviation and the pinnacle and all these things that we use to describe Top Gun, this PhD level, graduate level system of combat aviation, top gun. You know what I was teaching there? Cover and Move.

Cover and move. And do you know why I was teaching cover and move? because the mistakes that Top Gun made, the students made to go through Top Gun were mistakes. They weren't doing cover and move. Even at that level. The reason I was talking about simple plans at Top Gun,

we didn't use the same words. But I was teaching that same thing is because the plans weren't simple. And nobody really understood them and they go out and missions and come back and hey, why'd they screw them? Well, these guys didn't listen to me. Well, that could be it.

But actually, it's probably not. What probably is is it you didn't explain it very well. The reason I was teaching these same, simple fundamental things at Top Gun is that those are the mistakes that were being made repeatedly by some of the best most experienced pilots in the world. And as I hear myself say, I wish

I knew this stuff and almost now laughing at the phrase, know this stuff. It's crazy how even now that I know it's so much more than I ever knew, what I really know is how little I still really know and how much more there is out there.

And that's why, Every time you break out another book, I'm like, dude, that book was awesome. Even though saying the exact same things, they're all saying. But that's actually, that's actually really good. Because we get to do this again. Yeah, we get to do it over and over again. And get to see it from a different angle and get to understand it a little bit deeper. Like when this example comes in, the pyramid goes off.

just a little bit more and it ties together another little part of your brain and I often wonder you know there's some lessons that you cannot teach to someone like they have to have to experience it right and there's unfortunately a lot of lessons like that let's face it let's face it that is the vast majority of lessons because everyone otherwise everyone would you know get issued a certain book at age 12 and here's what you need to know and they'd be like oh cool got it Okay, save my money. Okay.

Eat healthy. Okay. There's all these fundamental things that a human being could do that if you did all these fundamental things. And by the way, these are not hidden knowledge. These are common knowledge. These are just common knowledge things that everyone kind of knows. And yet we think it's going to be different for us. We think we can, I don't need, I'm going to do it a little bit differently.

And it's, no, that's not going to work. No, it's not going to work. So taking these things, and that's another good thing, is you have to experience them. In some way you have to experience it. And that's one good thing that happens at Eschelon Front, is you are in an environment where you get to use this stuff real world. And that's been interesting.

You know, sort of after the first six weeks of the COVID lockdown, not even six weeks. The feedback we started getting was from many of the companies, we work with was this stuff really works. And the reason that they were saying is because they'd never really been tested in it before. Yeah. You know, they're doing great.

They want to do even better. And now they go and do better. And they go, wow, this stuff really works, doesn't it? So hard to learn. And the thing that makes it hardest to learn is if you fall into the trap of, I know it. I wish it was another. I'm familiar with it, right?

There's got to be a lesser form of I know. Because I know is a, there's a, there's that's a hundred percent. I know is 100 percent. There should be a lesser form of no. Maybe I'm familiar with. I, I understand at a decent level

some of the concepts that we talk about. This is not new to me. Yeah, this is not new to me. That sounds a little bit, is that a little bit kind of. Yeah. No,

and is it a little bit arrogant though? Yeah. Oh, okay. That's why. That's kind of part of the gig. It's not new to me. I'm looking for a word that actually says, I'm very familiar with this,

but I know that I have a lot to learn. Oh, you want the opposite. Yes, I'm the opposite of that. Okay, okay. The word for how I feel. The word for how we should all feel is, which is I am striving to be better. I'm familiar.

I know that these things exist, and I know that I don't know them completely. Like basically saying you're a white belt at this. Yeah. Maybe it's like saying I'm a purple belt at this. Maybe. That I'm just on the path. Yeah.

Yeah. Hoyler back in the day, long time, the guy I did a website for him. And he was at my house. And it was me and Kid Peligro. And Hoyler. What's up, kid? What's up Hoyler?

Yep. And so, me and Kid Beligro, we're looking. He texted me the day after we had Hague zone. He's like, he. So we're looking at it. And he's like, hey, we're trying to integrate his, and we're doing some technical stuff, right? So I'm doing this.

I was like, okay, this is what you got to do. You got to do this, I think. And he's like, maybe if we did this. So we tried it his way. Boom, and it worked. So it, like, you know, it rendered on the screen. And Hoyler's like, it's his website, but he doesn't know this part. He's like, oh, I'm a white belt at this stuff.

And it gave me that feeling that you just mentioned right now. Like, it reminded me of that time. Kind of like, he knows what's going on, but he has no idea how deep it goes, you know, in the back end like that. Yeah. Well, there's that, there's definitely that time period when you start jujitsu. And you, the first cop. It takes a little while to go, wow, I really don't know a lot. Because in the beginning, you think it's finite.

Yeah. That's the big difference. In the beginning, you think it's 13 moves. And then you go, oh, wait, it's actually probably 35 moves. When I started Jiu-Jitsu, I thought it was nine moves. I thought that was the whole thing. I know me my black belt up in here. I know the Americana, I know the guillotine, I know the rear naked choke.

I'm good. What? What? Give me my black belt. And then you get really good at it. And the better you get, the more you realize, I don't know a lot of stuff. There's a lot of stuff out there.

We don't know. And that's the way this is. That's the way this is. And like I said, the biggest thing I'm going to watch out for is that trap. And we got to avoid the trap. And speaking of avoiding the trap. And speaking of staying on the path. Echo Charles.

Yes. We want to avoid the trap of complacency. We want to improve. We want to get better. We want to be better. Recommendations. So complacency and that, well, how do I, you know, where, why does complacency come in as far as working out goes? Because you think you're good. You think you're good to go or maybe you don't need it as much or whatever. Because here's a big one that's going to sound kind of offbeat. Maybe, maybe not. I don't know. But let's say you get married kids. That's an easy one. My favorite thing is when people tell me, oh, man, I was really into jiu-jitsu. I got two kids. Yeah.

And I was just looking at him. I got four kids. What? Ew. Yeah. As if well. Or I'm old. I've had people go, yeah, I'm just all old now.

I'm like, how old are you? They're like, I'm 42. I'm like, bro. But there's two, there's two kind of, kind of reasons or excuses or whatever there when they're like, I got kids. That's either saying I don't have time. Well, okay. So back to the working out thing when you, when you, when you, after you get married.

There's two reasons. kind of like, oh, well, my focus is on something else now, you know, meaning like, I don't really have time to do these extra curricular things, quote unquote. And then the other one is, I don't need to anymore. Because a lot of people, that's kind of whether they have it consciously or not, it's like, well, I don't need to necessarily be in great shape because I already have a girl kind of thing. Because part of their reason is to attract a girl. You see what I'm saying?

And it goes both ways. It's a two-way street, obviously. So that can be one of the reasons for complacency. Like, oh, I don't need to stay in shape that much. Most definitely. Yeah, I don't need to lift heavy anymore. Not to say you should be lifting heavy. Not to say you shouldn't be.

But I'm just saying that that's a potential excuse me'm saying. Anyway, lifting heavy or not, doing jujitsu or not, because some of us are not doing jiu-jitsu. Not recommended, but those are the facts some of the time. Meaning it's not recommended to not do jiu-jitsu. Correct. That's a problem. But those are the facts some of the time.

See what I'm saying? Unless. Do you find it weird that I sit here in San Francisco? that these kind of connections that opened the door to begin to understand some of this stuff came from this weird thing where you roll around on the floor with another person and try and choke them. Yeah. It's kind of weird, right? Yeah. You know, from maybe, yeah, from the outside, I can see that. But the inside, you're like, brother, this thing is just completely explaining jiu jih Tzu. You know what's a weird parallel as well? It's like lifting weights and just your

human body. The human body, how it works is like the same thing. It's like a team of systems. That's true. Doing one thing for the other, you know. And they have to cover and move for each other. They got to adapt. It's like all this stuff.

Anyway, speaking of human body, you need supplements. If you're going hard in the paint on the path, you used to say supplementation. It was kind of one of your go-to words. And now you've gone back, now you're just saying like supplements. Yeah. Yeah. Does that sound more like markety?

I don't know. just was really used to you saying supplementation, which was not a normal thing to say. Right. It seems like maybe you're just sort of falling in with the norm. Maybe you got peer pressured. Maybe. All right. Well, let's go back to supplementation because now that you just said it.

I feel good now. The way, like you just say it. I feel like you're back. I'm back with me. Well, you saying it kind of brought it to light. Like, yeah, I kind of like how supplementation sounds. You see what I'm saying when you're on the path in the game, going hard, which we are. You know?

Unless we're not. I don't know. Did you lift today? I did not lift weights today. I'm going to live out of the words. Not yet. Not yet. Yeah.

Hardcore. Oh, yeah, for sure. Till failure. Anyway, you joint sometimes take a beating, right? Supplementation will help that. As Dave Burke says, no factor. We got supplementation for that joint warfare, super cruel oil, which I took both of today. I'm on the routine.

Of course. I got some help from you, obviously, but, you know, some people out on the inner webs, out in the field, you know, they're demonstrating that they can stick to that routine, leaving it out on the counter. Oh, did you make adjustments? Yes, sir. You got them in your bathroom now? No.

Where? On the counter in the kitchen where always come down. I always come down. See what I'm saying? But you said the bathroom was just a no-go, non-starter. Well, you don't like to be eating stuff in your bathroom. Even it's just a little capsule. Given my current routine.

I said go pills to be little. Brian Littlefield. That was the original thing. And I don't like to take you. So there's, I didn't know this. there's a difference between a capsule which has the little coating that's got stuff inside it

and a pill is like a hard thing and they're a little bit harder to swallow or whatever I've found the capsules are harder oh really I've found yeah well that's too bad you're not in charge of a supplement company because the original go pills that he made

were I said hey make these things I want to have the stuff from Dismaglow but make it make it you know smaller so I the whole story was, hey man, you know this, Dave. You don't want to, you don't want to have to drink a drink before you go and present to a group for two at half hours because you don't have to say, hey, can even hold on a and take a little bio break here.

No. In fact, when people tell me, hey, you know, while you're speaking, we're going to put waters up here. And I say, if I drink, if I have to drink during the next one hour, if I go, hold on a second while I'm presenting, I need to take a drink right now because my voice is dry. If I have to do that, we got a problem. I failed.

You're not, you're not sitting there so you can see me drink. We're not drinking. Now, if I'm up during the muster, I'm on stage for six hours. Yeah, we're up there drinking and chilling and whatever. Plus, you guys are taking turns. Yeah, yeah. But the, so the go pills, I said, hey, man, I can't be drinking a drink, filling my bladder up while I'm, you know, before, because I don't want to have to stop.

Can you make something compact, compressed? There you go. That's the discipline go in a pill format. Get that mind cranking. So just to be clear, the discipline go is a pill or a capsule? It is a capsule. Okay. Yes.

So the original one that B. Little made was a pill because that's what I had requested. I told them the wrong thing. I didn't understand the difference. Got to know the lingo, I guess. Okay. So pill, compressed. Yes. Capsule is a capsule that you can unscrew and take the powder out.

Gel cap. Oh, yes, yes, super cruel oil and D vitamins. Those are gel caps. Yes, they are. It's different. So the three delivery methodologies. Look it to you. Just to be clear.

Yeah. Okay. There you go. So nonetheless, these things will help you on the path big time. Also, again, we mentioned the D3. Boom, that's a daily. Those are small too, so that's kind of like no excuses. You know, some people that are like swallowing pills.

Some people like that for sure. This one, no factor. It's a gel cap, which is arguably... I used to take pills one at a time. Yeah. One, like, so I would take whatever, seven or eight pills. Right. So you...

I would take one, one. Why just... I just didn't like it. Yeah. Kind of like what you're saying. I was one of those people. And then I realized it was inefficient. It is an efficient.

And I had to overcome this, you know, scenario. I'll tell you the technique to swallow pills. You swallow 10 pills at once, if you want. Well, I've never tried it, but I'm saying, given the theory, theoretically. Because I what do I take? And this is all at once. Two D vitamins. Oh, you take two of those?

Yeah. I take. Okay, go ahead. Three, krill oil. Three joint warfare. And every once in all, I'll throw into Cold War. So what is that? Six.

I don't know. I didn't do the math. Nonetheless, it's a lot. Let's say it's six. Yeah, I take all those at once. Yeah. All you got to do is when you drink your water with it. Wait, you drink water with it.

Yep. Yeah, you know, some guys are advanced. They just boom. Yeah. That's a hardcore dude right there. Yeah. But we're not all there, so we're going to drink our water with it. But, brow, all you do, some people, they lean their head back.

Oh. Here's the thing. When you lean your head back like that, the- Narrows the throat chamber? No. Well, I don't know, maybe, maybe not, but that's not what I found as far as feelings go. Those capsules that you talk about, they float in the water. You want it to sink.

Really? The pills sink. Especially if they're coated with something. Got it. Anyway, so if you go straight up straight back boom the gel caps float sometimes they don't go go down Interesting this is what you do you turn your head to the side Okay, so you don't I'm saying though because look it's still floats but since it's to the side it's on the side of your throat not on the top of it So it goes down easier five pills

Pills learn something new every day once there I was thinking I knew how to take capsules Yeah, now I learned the truth I guess technically I shouldn't even say that That's the best way. I'm just saying currently that is the leading way. My little daughter was getting sick. And I said, hey, you need to take some Cold War. And so then she does not like to take pills or capsules. And I said, no problem.

I broke it open, mixed it up in water. You cannot do this. It is, because there's garlic in there, like a lot of garlic, which is an awesome ingredient to have. But man, I mixed it up. And it was nasty. Try it with one just to just kind of just to kind of see that would be a that would be a that would be an exercise and discipline just mix up Cold War pills and just drink them like

shots. Yeah. Man, I think maybe sprinkle them on some eggs or some or some or some bacon or something. That might be something actually interesting interesting concept. But that's the thing though. I'm sure Cold War is not just garlic powder. Yeah, no, no, of course not. I'm sure there's some like actual that's when you mix it with water and smell.

smell it? You're going to be smelling something that is strong. All right. Well, nonetheless, however you choose to take these things, they will help you 100% in the game on the path. 100%. Don't forget about milk. Protein of a dessert. Protein.

Additional protein. It's not like you're not eating protein ever. If you weren't, it would be. Boom, now you are. Yeah. There you go. What else? Jocko-White-T.

Yes. We're deadlifting. Not like we're not deadlifting Unless we're not I don't know We should be deadlifting We should be I think so

That's my opinion too Well what does Jack White Have to do with that Because it allows you To deadlift 8000 pounds Is it eight? Yeah Yeah

Yeah Well that's the guarantee Could be more If you go hard I guess And you get all the stuff At the vitamin shop The vitamin shop In your local AO

Area of Operations Yes sir Also at origin mean Dot com If you don't want to go To the vitamin shop You want the delivery system to your door.

And you go, yeah, origin, mane.com. Also at origin, main.com is jujitsu stuff. Geese, rash guards. You know, there's t-shirts and, you know, other clothes or whatever, but more importantly, actually not importantly, but additionally, significantly, jeans and boots. There's something else coming.

You probably don't even know about, because you're not really like, you know. Building good relationships in the circle. Apparently not. So you know the material that the ghee pants are made of? Yes. It's called atomic twill. So, and it's durable enough to be geepants, obviously.

And I was like, Pete, what do you think? I could use just a pair of pants. So he made them and they are freaking legit. Yeah, like work pants kind of thing. Yeah, like work pants, but they're basically just. pants but they're not jeans yeah they'll be coming that'll be working yeah yeah yeah yeah all made in America by the way which is a big deal fabric cotton grown in America all the way to the to the to the deal what about what about like the things that you put together to

make them stay up you know what I mean there's a certain thing there what's that called no I don't know what you're talking about what's it called that that keeps the two pieces of cotton fabric together what's it called? I don't know Not the zipper above the zipper is the The button That's right Yeah

The buttons, yes Even the buttons are made in America Works of art really Function and fashion As it were nonetheless Hordjimae dot com So you get all this good stuff Also speak to speaking of getting good stuff

Wait Dave how'd you like the Jocco Palmer You're gonna go go Cam I liked it Is it the top of your list Or you because you're on a what Dax Savage, what, where we are? No hit on Dax Savage, but I was doing some

Tropic Thunder. But now that Palmer's in a can, that's number one. It just went to the top. Well, dude, Palmer powder is all I had. Yeah. And the thing about Go is like, I get them because I'm going somewhere. I'm on the go.

So I'm time to mix up the powder all the time. The powder was like almost a treat, almost like milk. Yeah. So I'm like, I got time here. I'm going to get crushed. dice. I'm going to get the powder. I'm going to mix it up. I got some time. And I'm going to just now done. Oh, day. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with the Jocco Palmer scenario. Like it's it's kind of surprisingly good. You know, when you think, oh, yeah. Oh, ice tea and lemon. Cool. Nice. Nothing new. Hey, there's nothing new to me.

Boom. Take a hit. The sum is greater than the sun. What is it? The parts. You see what I'm saying. But anyway, it was that sort of situation. It's good. No good. Anyway, speaking of good, Jockwell has a store. It's called Jocco Store. This is where you can get your t-shirts, hoodies, hats.

Other cool stuff on there that represent on the path. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Take the high ground or the high ground will take you. All this stuff. You can find jocco store.com. Really? You know,

we think that it's cool stuff. But, you know, go on there. Check it out. If you like something, get something. In all these ways, by the way,

if you just like the podcast and you want to support it, These are good ways to support the podcast. Because other than that, well, I mean, the podcast, we don't have it behind the firewall. Paywall. Yeah, paywall, right? Firewall. That's what everybody wants me to do.

Yeah. Put it behind the paywall. Yeah. They, they want that because all the podcasts are now the new media stuff. Yeah. So, well. Varing levels of advantage. We don't want to do that.

We just want to do what we're doing. Yeah. And in order to do what we're doing, a little support. Boom. It's nice on that one. Hey, and speaking of this podcast, subscribe to it, check it out. Echo Charles thinks that's important for me to say right now. I don't think it's unimportant.

How about that? We also have another podcast that's out right now. It's called The Unravelling. The Jocko Unravelling Podcast, Daryl Cooper and me talking about things in the world and how things in the world, when you unravel them, you find out, Where they came from why they're happening and it gives you better understanding of the things that are happening right now Used to be called the thread we had to change the name There's also grounded podcast which we haven't recorded a while but we've been right on that

Warrior Kid podcast as well. No forget about the warrior kid soap made by Aiden who's up there in a farm taking goat milk At a young age with a running a business so that the entire world Can stay clean We got a YouTube channel Where Echo Charles is supposed to make videos And he does sometimes We'll say Sure

I'm not gonna argue with that one Some of them have explosions Music sometimes Yeah some have music and other enhancements Yeah skeletons Sure fire Tanks Aircraft

Sometimes yeah Unless some don't Yeah. And everyone that thinks that Echo Charles should put one Easter egg. Easter egg. One pleasant surprise into these three-hour podcasts. Like when Dave Burke says a mortar exploded, there should be a mortar exploding in this room. Oh.

Just momentarily. And then the conversation continues. A lot of people think that's what should happen. So we all have a little bit of fun one where. watching a three-hour. Yeah. We'll keep exploring that as an option for sure. So what else?

Oh, yeah, psychological warfare. Don't forget about that one. Hey, when you don't feel like lifting, I'll admit yesterday, straight up, didn't feel like lifting today, but I did. Yeah, but you already have psychological warfare planning your head on repeat.

You know one of those? Yes, I do. Unfortunately. If you want it in your head, maybe not on repeat. Maybe repeat for a little bit. This is how you get it. Go to like, you know, wherever you can buy MP3s, Amazon, you know, Google play all these places.

Get psychological warfare by Jocko Willink. What it is is Jocko talking in your ear telling you why you shouldn't skip the workout. Why you shouldn't. Eat the donut. Pound that donut or the whole box or whatever. Nutter butter cookies. You know, you get different. Nonetheless, you know, he'll gently, pragmatically, logically, logically bring you past those moments of weakness.

And boom, you get stuff done. It's really good, 100% effective, too, by the way. Flipside canvas, if you want some kind of message to hang on your wall, my brother Dakota Myers making it for you. All kinds of messages, important messages. Check that out, flipsidecanvasat.com. Got some books. One of them was written by this guy right over here, Dave Burke, the code.

Good deal, dude. The code, the evaluation of protocols. What do you got? What do you got, Dave? Dude, still getting a ton of message. from troopers who are still on the path and in the game and it's so legit to hear something as small as this little what it's field guide yeah field guide we weren't really sure what to call no but it's it's been you it's useful yeah uh which has been awesome so keep those messages coming man I love hearing from yeah this is like one of those things where you know I called it like a reminder almost but it it's kind of like okay cool a reminder doesn't make you know that much of an impact maybe on your mind but think about it every day at let's say it the end of the day, right? Most of us don't think, every single day,

most of us don't think, how did I do today? How did I do today in all these, like, critical areas as far as like making an improvement in what you're even doing? Imagine if you were part of anything and you never assessed that thing. Yeah. Doesn't even compute. Imagine if you wanted to make something better.

You would assess that thing and see where you could improve it. Now imagine that the most important thing we have is our lives. And people go through their whole lives without assessing where they are, who they are, what they're doing, where they're going. Most important thing you need to know on the battlefield is where you are. Then you can move forward. Yeah. That's the protocols in this book. It's funny.

Like, you know, when you're a kid and you're trying to, like, I don't know, make the football team, right? And you have, like, tryouts, which, you know, a day or a week or sometimes a week or whatever. And after every little session, you'd like, come home. And you're like, how did I do? How did I do? How did I do? That's just for some intramural football game. We're talking about life.

You would think it'd be more obvious. You would think that that book would just be, hey, this is, hey, what are you guys doing writing this? There's, you know, this already exists. Yeah. What are you doing writing this? It doesn't exist. Now it does.

The code, the evaluation, the protocols. Dave Burke, leadership strategy and tactics. What percentage of questions that you get in your constant leadership, as a leadership instructor, as a leadership coach, as an executive coach, what percentage of questions are answered that you have to answer that you could either answer on the fly and say, hey, here's a good way to look at it. Or you could, if you had an extra 14 seconds, say, hold on a second, go to page 237 in Leadership Strategy and Taxis. What's the percentage? It's a big number. I don't want to do the math.

It's a big number. I don't want to say it's all there because that would be, that'd be a lot to say it's all there, but it's there. And if it's not exactly there, there's a version of it that's there that will fit wherever you are. The other side is just, just read that book. Just read it and it's there. Yeah, I think what's good about that book is the stuff that we're talking about today where you have to pull these other things and you kind of want to start fitting them together.

I think that book is a good step of taking these various principles and starting to see how they play into the world, which I think is a good thing. Yes. Kids, you might have kids, you might know kids, you might as well get them on the path. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, and three. Those are available. Those are helpful. I'm telling you right now, if you could get a kid. These books, you are going to change the trajectory of their lives.

And I know that's an arrogant and a bold statement to make, but I hear it all the time from parents, from teachers, and from kids themselves. It's just, just please, just get it for the kids. Get it for the kids. And then if you've got a smaller kid, think about it when it's like being a small kid, the world. You have to contend with the world.

scary place. We have fears to overcome Mikey and the dragons teach kids how to overcome fear. Discipline goes freedom field manual. How to get after it for adults and extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership, the fundamental principles of combat leadership that we talk about all the time that I wrote with my brother Laif Babin. We have Eschelon Front leadership consultancy. What do we do there, Dave? We teach leadership. Now we help make the connection between all this stuff and the world that these people are living in, and it's the coolest thing in the world because I get to think about this stuff.

We get to think about this stuff all the time. Yeah. Which is just completely awesome. Real world application. Yes. On a daily basis, into a multitude of scenarios, and the outcomes are always the same.

It's like, yes, we actually know what to do there. And we can help you. Go to echelonfront.com for that. And look, you don't have to necessarily have us to come to you or you don't necessarily have to come to us We had to cancel one of our musters that bummed a lot of people out me you all of us we got bummed out But this is this is 2020 we are online EF online all the stuff that we're talking about when you need direct

Contact to help get through things to improve your leadership capability to improve your team's leadership capability to improve your team's leadership capability to get you all aligned. Go to eFonline.com. You might be thinking that, oh, that sounds like something where I'll go on there and watch a video about something. And you will go. You can go and watch videos. But you can also come and ask Dave Burke a question.

You can come and ask me a question. You can argue with me. You can say, actually, Jock, cover move didn't work for me in this situation. I will gladly discuss this with you. That is what we are doing with EF Online. So it's awesome what I missed Dave. Have you talked about E.

Because we have a whole new platform right now for EF online. Good point. Yes. The feedback we're getting on that is how easy it is for people out there to connect with us directly in real time. Not to talk theory, not to talk principle, but to talk. I'm having this actual problem or can you help me? Yes, I can. And then we're getting feedback.

We're getting sit reps. Sit reps. Hey, the thing you told me yesterday, I just did it. It worked. Thanks. And if you haven't, you need to tell people about this because the Eiff on Online Access is so legit. It's growing quickly, but it's growing because one of the other cool things about it is that

we'll get a question. We'll get a question like a little chat box. Dave, got a question. But I'll be answering another question. Before I get to that next question, five other people, other troopers have said, Hey, had the same problem at my job. This is what I did. And by the time I go to answer it,

five other troopers have already engaged and helped them and given them some, so the interaction between the other troopers is just as good as the interaction with us. Yeah, and all that stuff is taking place. We have a forum in there too. So all that stuff, you can go in there and say, hey, my boss just told me to do this.

This is what I think. And, you know, one of us, EF instructors or one of the other troopers, you know, oh, you know what? I'm in HR. I'm the HR chief at my company. Here's what you should think about. So it's just an awesome format. It's an awesome thing and even though we had to cancel one muster We do we are going to do the Phoenix muster September 16th and 17th

Dallas December 3rd and 4th go to extreme ownership dot com for details look it's probably gonna be social distancing We're not gonna have a bunch of seats We're gonna have to give we have to put away a bunch of seats so it's gonna sell out quicker than normal So if you want to come check it out ASAP we got EF overwatch and we are placing some awesome people from the military into executive leadership positions and leadership positions throughout the country in awesome businesses, people that, companies that want to have folks that understand the principles that we talk about here. Go to EF.Overwatch.com. Whether you need leaders or whether you are a leader leaving the military, let us know and we will connect you. And then America's mighty warriors.org,

Mark Lee's mom, Mamma Lee, who has made it her mission to help families, service members, Gold Star families all over the world. If you want to get involved with her,

she is getting after it, and she has been for 14 years. And if you want to help out or get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want some more of my hyped up hypotheses, or you want to hear more of Echo's semi-serious speculations, or maybe you just want to hear one more of Dave's stringent stories,

then you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Dave is at David R. Burke. Echo is at Equich Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. Thank you to all the men and women in uniform throughout history who learned these lessons in blood and passed them on to our modern warriors who put them to use, put these lessons to use to keep peace in the world. And to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service. Thanks to all of you for making sure we have peace.

here at home and to everyone else out there remember these lessons and first and foremost remember how this book started that the paramount combat lesson learned from every operation is the vital importance of leadership aggressive and determined leadership is the priceless factor which inspires command and upon which all success In battle depends. Leadership is responsible for success or failure. So don't fall into the trap. We are not good enough.

Go out there and be better. And until next time, this is Dave, and ECHO and Jocko. Out.