Jocko Podcast - 262: The Winning Lessons and How to Apply Them, from The Manual, "Fighting On Guadalcanal"

Episode Date: December 30, 2020

0:00:00 - Opening0:05:05 - "Fighting on Guadalcanal"1:27:48 - Final thoughts and take-aways.1:38:42 - How to stay on THE PATH.1:58:23 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 262 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The president of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Medal of Honor to Colonel Merritt A. Edson, United States Marine Corps, for service as set forth in the following citation. For extraordinary heroism and conspicuous intrepidity above and beyond the call of of duty as commanding officer of the first Marine Raider Battalion with parachute battalion attached during action against enemy Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands on the night of 1314

September, 1942. After the airfield on Guadal Canal had been seized from the enemy on August 8th, Colonel Edson, with a force of 800 men, was assigned to the occupier. and defense of a ridge dominating the jungle on either side of the airport Facing a formidable Japanese attack which augmented by infiltration had crashed through our front lines He by skillful handling of his troops successfully withdrew his forward units to a reserve line with minimum casualties When the enemy in a subsequent series of violent assaults engaged our force in death desperate hand-to-hand combat with bayonets, rifles, pistols, grenades, and knives.

Colonel Edson, although continuously exposed a hostile fire throughout the night, personally directed defense of the reserve position against a fanatical foe of greatly superior numbers. By his astute leadership and gallant devotion to duty, he enabled his men, despite severe losses, to cling to netherly. to their position on the vital ridge, thereby retaining command not only of the Guadalcanal Canal airfield, but also of the First Division's entire offensive installations in the surrounding area. Signed Franklin D. Roosevelt. And that is an example of the level of heroism that was required to achieve victory in the battle of Guadalcanal, which lasted from August

7th, 1942 until February 9th, 1943, six months and two days of just absolutely brutal and savage fighting. And we've covered some of that in several books on the podcast. And we even had Dean Ladd on the podcast who received a battlefield commission on Guadalcanal and went on to fight at Tarawa and Saipan and Tinian. But I recently received a copy of a book from a podcast listener by the name of David. I guess I'm a little cautious about giving out full names because I don't know, you know, don't know the background. So a guy named David. He sent me a book. Well, it's actually not a book, technically.

It's a Fleet Marine Force Reference publication, FMFRP 12, TAC 110. The title is Fighting on Guadal Canal. So thank you, David, for sending that to me. And the book is filled with all kinds of layers. One of them being the Medal of Honor citation that I started with. There's an additional layer. in this, which is that this, that this fleet Marine Force reference publication was put together by a guy named Colonel Red Reeder, who was West Point class of 1926, who led the 12th Infantry

Regiment, who ended the D-Day, and he eventually was wounded, and he received the Distinguished Service Cross and the Silver Star and the Legion of Merit and a bronze star and a Purple Heart, and he retired in 1946 and then he worked as the athletic director back at West Point and eventually became an author and he wrote a bunch of books including a memoir which is called Born at Revely. So I'm sure at some point we will cover that book on this podcast. But for tonight I wanted to I wanted to go to this book which is what I'm guessing is sort of the beginning of Colonel Reader's writing career was to put together this manual fighting on Guadal Canal.

And it's the direct lessons learned and let's get right into it. So here's the forward. To secure the point of view of the fighting men in the Solomon Islands, Lieutenant Colonel Russell P. Reeder Jr., and that's who I just mentioned, of the operations division of the War Department general staff was designated as my personal representative. He reported to Major General Vandigriff, United States Marine Corps, and Major General Patch U.S. Army on Guadalcanal and discussed with many officers and soldiers their experiences in jungle fighting against the Japanese.

The stories of these men, as told the Colonel Reeder, have been printed for your information. The American Marines and Doe Boys show us that the Jap is no Superman. He is a tricky, vicious, and fanatical fighter, but they are beating. him day after day. There's is a priceless record of the gallantry and resourcefulness of the American fighting man at his best. Soldiers and officers alike should read these notes and seek to apply their lessons. We must cash in on the experience which these and other brave men have paid for in blood.

So that's what this book is. There's an opening note from Major General Van der Kvarez. Griff just a very famous commanding general the first marine division he says I desire to thank General Marshall for the message which he has just sent me I pass this message of congratulations on to my men my message to the troops of General Marshalls in training for this type of warfare is to go back to the tactics of the French and Indian days this is not meant facetiously study their tactics and fit in our modern weapons and you have a solution. I refer to the tactics and leadership

of the days of Rogers Rangers. So there you go. Already we're talking about we got to make some things a little bit different. We got to look at the way we used to fight. And if you think about that attitude of fighting with the Rangers, with Rogers Rangers, with the French Indian War, you know, this is the big difference between, you know, the way the British wanted to fight, which was we're all lined up. We're standing in ranks and we're going to shoot and then you shoot and then we shoot back at you. We're not doing that. You know, that's how we won the Revolutionary War because we're going to fight a different way.

The early form of maneuver warfare. So that's what this book is. This is a bunch of just short anecdotal quotes from a bunch of Marines mainly about what their experiences are on Guadalcanal. A bunch of great information. Gunnery Sergeant H. L. Beardsley. Company G. Fifth Marines. I've been in the Marine 16 years, and I've been in three expeditions to China and five engagements since I've been in the Solomons. I will say that this 1942 model recruit we are getting can drink more water than six old timers.

We have to stress water discipline all the time. They don't seem to realize what real water discipline is. We have too many NCOs in the Marines who are Nambi Pambi and beat around the bush. Our NCOs are gradually toughening up and are seeing reasons why they must meet their responsibilities. Respectfully speaking, sir, I think that when officers make an NCO, they should go over in their minds. What kind of NCO will he make in the field? Water discipline. There's something you don't hear very often.

You've got to go deep into the field before you start. talking about water discipline because guess what and I don't know when that when did the word hydrate do you remember pre the word hydrate yes right yeah hydrate was a new thing yeah it's a relatively new thing yeah as far as the expression hydrate rather than I think even the idea because when I was a kid we didn't under we didn't have the word hydrate because hydrate seems like a proactive thing yeah right like like like you're going to get ahead of the curve right you're going to like yeah you need to hydrate you know stay hydrated hydrate our die.

Sure. I'd never heard that. Hydrate or die. That was the camelback. Remember camelback? That was their expression. Hydrate or die. Like the camelbacks,

the things with a little hose coming over. Yeah, yeah. Oh, that was the, oh, Camelback, the brand. The Camelback the brand had the expression, hydrate or die. That's cool. So, but let's face it,

what we're saying here, and you never hear this. He's saying, don't hydrate. If you hydrate too much, you're going to die, actually going to run out of water. You need to have water discipline. That's a totally different mind

Now I will tell you when you're going out on a long like a desert patrol where you're not going to get a water resupply You got to have some water discipline That makes sense You know these guys fought when they needed to have water discipline big time, but It's interesting to hear that attitude you don't hear you don't hear that anymore Everyone's all about hydrate hydrate It's a different mindset. I'm sure maybe there's some doctors that will approach us and kind of give us the real deal on that.

Yeah, well, it makes sense because you have two different scenarios. Like, yeah, if you have the luxury to be able to just hydrate at will, then oh, yeah, hydrate or die for sure. But, you know, water discipline, that idea kind of seems like it would be under maybe two specific circumstances where you don't have a lot of water just to go. Have you ever not had water? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

Where you were almost going to go down? Straight up dehydrated. What would happen? Well, it was heat exhaustion. Okay. So the thing is I had water, but I didn't get enough water. Okay. What was the scenario?

Football. Br, so there was like a gatorade thing on the side. Oh, yeah. Automatic. Yeah, yeah. Yes, sir. I was not out of water. Okay.

My body was, like, low on water. Can you get heat, whatever heat, yeah, you can. You can get a heat casually while you're drinking water. Yes, sir. So you were saying you were kind of close to that. I guess that's different from just straight up dehydration. Well, dehydration is like levels, right? Like you're, they say you're 2% dehydrated if you're even thirsty for water.

That's what they say. But so, yeah, you know, it depends on what you're trying to say. You know, I guess we're going to get some feedback on this one. I can tell you right now. Yeah, makes sense. But, you know, in the field, you're talking about a situation where there's two elements where limited water, you don't have unlimited water because you can't carry unlimited water. And then you still have to function in the event. of unlimited water or not unlimited water.

And let's face it. So there's been a lot of times where I was thirsty, right, in the field. There's one time where I was in like a little bit of a bad situation where I could start feeling like, oh, this could be a problem. And we were out, we were out in the Ozarks in Arkansas doing this big land warfare problem. and we were expecting, you know, we had planned that, you know, there were streams you could see on the map when there was a couple. So we, you know, okay, we'll be able to go this far and we'll be able to get water from the streams and purify it. And then we'll go another distance and we'll get some more. Well, the first like two or three streams that we came across were empty.

They were dried up. And so I was running danger close on water. And I'll tell you, not having water to me is this. second the second worst feeling in the world the worst feeling the world is don't don't have air but the thing is with don't have air that's only a bad feeling for like 30 seconds and then you're passed out then you're done yeah not have water is it takes a while yeah so it's and when you try when you go too deep in the red zone there it's not like you can just drink water and get out like air a lot of times like when you're like let's say you're in

the red zone air but you can still recover you just take a huge breath and you're on the road to recovery but water you get like a for real heat exhaustion or a heat stroke is death but like heat exhaustion like a for real one uh and you drink water you'll just throw it up yeah because your body can't really take in that kind of water yet you got to do the IV thing you got to do this big process you know so oh yeah no water is so i'm sure someone will contact us and tell us like what the there's got to be some minimum protocol because that's the thing that i have you know you you got have some kind of minimum protocol like what What's the minimum amount of water you need?

Yeah. I hate being thirsty. I would carry a lot of water. Really? Yeah, I would carry a lot of water. But you know, you know what you just made me think of? You know when you're caught in a triangle or something or you're caught in a guillotine and you get out? Yeah.

And like how good it feels too. Oh, it feels so good. Feels so good. I guess it's really triangle. Triangles are hard to breathe, but like a guillotine. And a geot choke. You're like having a hard time breathing. Yeah.

Because it's like a good rear naked, you know, you're not, it's a different, you don't, you don't feel all panicky. Right. Because you're still taking breaths. Yeah. You're still like, oh, good, I'm good. Good night. You're right about the guillotine there. Because I think there's two elements in the guillotine defense that makes you not breathe.

So like one, it's pressing against your windpipe. So you can't hardly breathe. But another one, you're trying to tense your neck to resist like that, that torque. So when you tense your neck, it's like harder to actually take a deep breath, you know? So it's like those double things. I've been training with Dean Lisch. Sure. Dean Lister for a long time, 25 years.

He showed me some guillotine defense the other day. And I was like, bro, you waited 25 years to show me this guillotine defense? I couldn't guillotine him. And then he couldn't guillotine me. He showed these events. I'm like, well, what, why wouldn't you show me that? Why would you not show me that, bro? Yeah, that's probably like he has so many.

Yep. And you know what? He has so many things. But he also, he just thinks that everybody knows everything. kind of you know so if you don't ask him about it and the only reason he was showing someone else and I'm like what's that defense he goes oh you just do this here and put this hand here and I was like you never show me that yeah and he goes oh oh yeah it's real obvious you feel like an idiot all right so there you go water discipline next I have just been promoted from first sergeant this is

sergeant major B medsker fifth marines I have just been promoted from first sergeant in the firefighting, the Marine First Sergeant helps the company commander. He checks up on the company as a whole, even down to checking on the evacuation of the wounded. I was able, I was available to the company commander for any emergency orders during the firefight. Teach your soldiers, sir, that when a man is hit in the assault to leave him there, too many of our men suddenly become first aid men. Your men will have to be rugged and rough. And to win, they must. They must. must learn to disregard politeness and must kill. So a couple things there.

First of all, I'm going deep on this. So first of all, this is what I used to, when I used to teach the young seals about leadership, I would teach roles and responsibility for every individual person inside of a platoon from a leadership perspective, fire team leader, squad leader, platoon leader, task unit leader, a company commander level.

and the senior enlisted guy, which is what he's, he's the company first sergeant. And what you want to do, and the way I used to explain it to guys, and it's the exact same thing that he's saying, you want to be the action arm for the leader, for the commander, right?

So basically you're the guy with all this experience, but if something's going wrong, like you got a problem, you got to be the guy that the company commander can look at and go, says, go solve that problem. and you have the capacity to do it because you're not assigned any specific role. So you should actually do your best to keep your company first sergeant like free from

direct responsibility so that he can be your action arm to go make things happen. That's that's number one. Number two is prioritize and execute, right? Everyone wants to help out the wounded guy. You can't. You got to win first. You can't. You can't do that.

And then, I mean, let's face it, this is total war. And these guys are just in a different level. You've got to disregard politeness and you've got to just kill people. That's where we're at. That's what's so interesting about with the old breed by Eugene Sledge. And in the HBO series, the Pacific, they portray Eugene Sledge. He's kind of like this very nice, very polite guy. That's how they portray him.

And then you see videos of the real guy, the real Eugene Sledge, and that's exactly what he's like. You know, he's kind of like a southern gentleman, young, very nice, very kind. And, you know, those guys were getting thrown into this savagery. And that's what this, that's who this message is for. You got to disregard politeness and kill. Now, Eugene Sledge, we should probably, we should probably do that book again. But Eugene Sledge, you know, he had to, he had to, he had to. put some things in check and himself and he watched guys ripping Japanese soldiers teeth out

that were gold and like you know pissing on the and and he saw crazy stuff and he had like a line that he didn't cross over but he also understood it so even a guy that says nice and and a good of a person which Eugene Sledge apparently was even he realized like this is this is next level This is another situation. This isn't normal. Platoon Sergeant H.R. Strong. Company A. Fifth Marines. Some of my men thought their hand grenades were too heavy.

They tossed them aside when no one was looking. Later, they would have given six months pay for one hand grenade. There you go. Short term versus long term. Got to carry that little extra weight of the hand grenade. Platoon Sergeant F.T. O'Ferra. Company B. Fifth Marines. After the Japs had been located.

My platoon has gained the element of surprise by moving in fast with bayonets and hand grenades In turn they have surprised us by being in a defensive position on the reverse slope of a ridge I think the snipers look for bar B a R men and then Colonel Edson Said no doubt about this in one engagement in one platoon every BAR gunner was hit So this idea that you could locate them this is sort of like in Jiu Jitsu when you get Let's say you get the mount position you immediately go for the arm lock sometimes that's enough to do it right Whereas if you get mount and you're like okay. I got the mount that person's going into a defensive position now they're going to set up for it And so what he's saying is if they locate the Japanese

Immediately they they they go at them with grenades and bayonets Which the good thing about grenades and bayonets is now you're they can't really locate you because of your Because of your muzzle flashes and where you're shooting you're just getting in there with grenades and bayonets which is, you know, you think about modern warfare. You don't think of the tactic of, hey, when we make contact, we're going to immediately attack with bayonets and grenades. That's what kind of war this was. Platoon Sergeant R.A. Zolo, Company C. Fifth Marines.

Sir, I would like to tell you that a man's keenness or dullness of I may determine whether or not he will live. Ten men in my platoon were killed because they walked up on a Jap 37 millimeter gun. I went up later after the gun had been put out by our mortars to help bring back the dead. The Japanese gun was so well camouflaged that I got within four feet of the gun before I saw it. Corporal W.A. McCluskey, Company D. Fifth Marines. Sir, the other day on Bloody Ridge, riflemen protecting our light machine guns pulled out and left us. We were doing okay at the time, but their... pulling out caused our whole outfit to withdraw. I think the men in these rifle companies should

receive some training in the work and in the mission of the machine gun company. They should be able to act more intelligently. What does that mean? You should have your team cross-trained. No matter what business you're in. No matter what kind of team you have, you should cross-train. And the interesting thing about that, we've read about this before. When people see other people running away, you've got a pretty good chance that those people are going to run away too. This is just mob mentality. Second Lieutenant Andrew Chisick, Fifth Marines. I think that in the regimental supply, there should be extra canteen.

So when an outfit gets in a place like the table plateau where there is no water, an extra canteen of water can be issued. Sir, this would be really, this would really help our men stay in there. And what's interesting, this is all like done like an interview. That's why they keep saying things like, sir, they're talking directly to this guy, and he's just putting the quotes in there. They're talking to Colonel Reeder. Marine Gunner, ES Rust, Fifth Marines. I hate to admit it, but it's the truth.

When we got here, a lot of our young men were confused at night. They were not used to the jungle at night. They could not use their compasses at night, and we did not have enough compasses. We have learned that when we get off the beaten trails, it seems to confuse the Japs, and we have better success. So what does that mean you've got to train at night? platoon sergeant J.C. L. Hollingsworth, company H. 5th Marines. When we moved around on these jungle trails, we have learned to have men at the rear of each platoon who carry light load so they can quickly, so they can get their weapons into action quickly to help overcome ambush fire from the rear. So what you want to do as a human, as a human that's strategizing in the world is you want to have an element.

That's flexible and can move quickly to help you overcome situations. So whether you're in business, whatever situation you're in, you want to have a specific element that is designed to move quickly and give support where it's needed. Could go left, could go right. Could go north, could go south. Could go east, could go west. Why do you need that?

Because you can't predict the future. so you should design your plans so that the design of the plans is inherently flexible put the big rugged men into the heavy weapons company I'm just throwing that out there for all the young men going in the military they're going to saddle you up with that big gun and you're going to carry it good some some some of our new men were so scared of our hand grenades when they first when they were first issued that they jammed the down the cotter pin later in action they could not pull the pin I noticed as I get and I pointed out pointed this out to my platoon that when a man gets hit the men close by get to yell in Corman Corman Corman

they get so excited sometimes that they actually forget to use their own first aid packets in first aid training teach correct use of injecting morphine and procedure of tagging because what are you going to do when the Corman gets hit? I'd give $75 for a pair of tennis shoes to rest my feet and for use in night work. Classic. I have only been in the Marine Corps four years, but I have learned that you've got to develop a sense of responsibility in the men wearing chevrons. Right? You've got to develop that responsibility.

In action, we have had unauthorized persons yelling cease firing or commence firing. This caused confusion. platoon sergeant George E. Aho. Aho. Company fifth Marines. I put five years in the U.S. Army before joining the Marine Corps. Sir, I like the Marines better than the Army because the average Marine officer is closer to his men than the average Army officer whom I observed.

We have comradeship in the Marine Corps. Also, the Marine enlisted men are more Spartan-like. I believe, sir, we baby our soldiers too much in peacetime. I hope we are not doing this now. And then here's a comment from, from Colonel Reeder here. I asked Colonel Edson, and Edson is the guy that we read the Medal of Honor citation from.

I asked Colonel Edson what kind of a sergeant, Aho was, and he told me that he was one of the outstanding men in his regiment, and that he was a very rugged individual. I heard that. I was like, hmm, I can picture this dude. You know, he gets described as you're in Guadalcanal with Marines. And you, in that environment with the toughest bastards in the world, you get, you get described as a, quote, very rugged individual.

You know, George E. Ajo, platoon sergeant, Company F. Fifth Marines, doesn't play around. He continues on. In our training for this jungle warfare, we had a great deal of work in hand-to-hand, individual combat, use of knife. Jiu-Jitsu, et cetera. Let's face it. When I read that, I got Mary, Barry. You know, we were feeling good about it. Wait, what's the year on that?

1943. Yeah, that's the tradition, Jiu-Jitsu. It's not the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Okay. Well, maybe it is, actually, because 1925, that's when it... Yeah, but this is pre-Judo. No, it's not pre-Judo. So it's jiu-jitsu.

Let's take it for what it's worth. Anyways, your excitement's going to go down, just like mine did, because he says this. With the exception of bayonet fighting, We have not used this work. I have been in many battles since I hit the island and I've never seen anyone use it. Okay, so did some hand-to-hand training Well, I think maybe just out of sort of GP I would have

Found a way to get my hand to get my get my bring the Jits Every man should have a watch That's a good one just to kind of let you know I mean think about you're going to war and you don't have a watch Our battalion commander, Major Walt, wants every last man in our battalion to know as much as he does about the situation. It pays. Think about that. You're in a leadership position.

You should try and get every last man in your team to know as much as you do about the situation. It will pay off. He also says this, get rid of gold bricks. It's better to be short-handed having good men around than having a lot of undependables. Are you familiar with the term gold brick? No. Not in this context, anyway. What context are you familiar with it in?

A regular gold brick. Which is? Like a gold bar. Okay, got it, got it, got it. So that's the difference. A gold bar is made of gold. A gold brick is a brick painted like gold. Gotcha.

Have you ever seen the Big Lobowski? Yeah, but like once a long time ago. The term is heavily used in there. Gold bricker. Yeah, so a gold brick is It looks like good Yeah, you just hear for show, okay Looks good, no utility

Yeah, all show, no goal All that kind of. Exactly. Man, I got a book I just read For this podcast that will be coming in the future But there's a guy that shows up in the Korean War And he's all squared away And he's all, he's all like right and tight

Everything's good to go And the older combat vets are like, I don't think so And the one younger guy that's kind of That's a badass that's actually writing the book He says, oh yeah, this guy's gonna be good to go and sure enough the older veterans that were looking at him he was suspect he was they were suspect because he was like everything was kind of perfect kind of like

that conversation we had the other day about you know music and everything being perfect and if it's too perfect it's not real right well that's kind of the impression these guys got oh this guy's totally perfect well guess what happened when the bullet started flying he had a he had a trick knee and all of a sudden he couldn't get after it So to me, that right there, gold brick. Gotcha. Corporal J.S. Stankus, company E. Fifth Marines. Unnecessary firing gives your position away.

And when you give your position away, here you have to pay for it. Man, I went on like the crazy, I've gone on crazy tendons about giving away your position, unnecessary firing. And I'm not talking about combat. I'm talking about in conversations, in leadership situations, where you get. Give away your position. You take shots at Echo. Echo says, you know, I'd like to use this plan over here.

And I go, that plan doesn't make any sense. And now all of a sudden, you know where I stand. Why would you do that? Why wouldn't I say, well, explain to me more about your plan? And then ask you a question about it. Because if I give my position away, all of a sudden, you're not even, you're already, like, defensive. I'm causing problems. Why do that?

And by the way, you might now attack me because I just gave me. my position away now you might start throwing shots at me so when you say here's my plan and I say your plan doesn't make any sense I just gave my position away I don't think your plan makes sense there's my position whereas if you say here's my plan and I say why do you want to put guys over here or why do you want to move this over here and you start answering my questions I haven't given my position away you're not defensive you're trying to explain it to me maybe your plan makes sense but I just didn't understand it so don't give your position away not in guadalcanal and not in the meeting with your with your team

The men in my squad fire low at the base of trees. There's too much high firing going on. I have observed Japs often get short of ammunition. They cut bamboo and crack it together to simulate rifle fire to draw our fire. They ain't Superman. They're just tricky bastards. Second Lieutenant H.M. Davis, Fifth Marines, in parentheses, promoted on the field of battle. Do you understand what that means?

I think so Okay, so you understand that there's enlisted guys in the military And there's officers yeah So basically the enlisted guys have not gone to college The officers Well, I guess the enlisted guys may have gone to college Especially nowadays there's a lot of enlisted guys that have gone to college But the in these days most likely the enlisted guy hadn't gone to college

So they went through a regular training pipeline and you're sort of the workforce of the military Then the officers They've been to college and they've been through some kind of a training program to make put them into a leader leadership position. Is that kind of like at a company the difference between a guy who has a great resume degree, blah, blah comes in at a certain high position versus the guy who worked his way up through like the mail room? So a little bit, but let's say a construction site, you've got a guy that went to college for civil engineering and he's overseeing the whole project, right? And he's got his degree three years ago. But then you've got a guy that's been working construction since

he was 14 years old and now he's been doing it for 28 years and he's the foreman or he's any of those people in between that's that's kind of the breakout so to get promoted on the field about a battlefield promotion to be get commissioned is it's pretty powerful that means that when all this mayhem was going on they skipped you through like entire an entire spectrum of promotions to the next completely different level it's hackworth actually in career got got battlefield promoted like you're so good we're gonna take you we're gonna put you in charge yeah so it'd be like if it'd be like if you showed up as the the brick carrier and you did such a good job and then they said well you can start putting you did that

and you did something else and then next thing they promoted you to the to the guy that was the civil engineer put you in charge the whole project so that's so when you hear about second lieutenant H.M. Davis fifth Marine promoted on the field of battle. We're talking about full, legit. He says travel light. For example, the hell with all the mess equipment. We used our mess cup and spoon for the first 15 days here and enjoyed our chow.

You don't have to live like a gentleman in jungle warfare. Our mess equipment is too bulky for this type of warfare. Makes noise. There you go. And then he says this. Not every man can lead a battalion. Find out who can lead your battalions before you go into combat areas. And then Colonel Edson, in parentheses, remark by Colonel Edson says, I would like to concur in that statement.

So the Medal of Honor recipient, the commander of that battalion, he says, I'd like to concur with that. There's something that's so pure and just unmercifully beautiful about combat. When it comes to like hey we can we don't we can't afford to play around it's kind of cool when I was in in Sri Lanka Which we covered on like podcast three or something working with those soldiers that were fighting against the Temeel Tigers and if they had someone that was good They'd be like you're promoted You're gonna be in charge if they had someone that bad like you're not in charge anymore They didn't care about anything there was no HR department

There was no hey we're gonna document what mistakes you made and we're gonna counsel you they're like no, you made like five bad calls in a row, you're done. Yeah. And you, young recruit that's been doing great, you're in the game. You will put you in charge. It was very cool. And that's what happens in war. Doesn't so much happen in peacetime.

In an advance in the jungle, it's hard for a platoon leader to keep control of his men. Corporals and their men must be taught to act individually. It's a little something that we like to call decentralized command. You are not going to be with everyone. You can't control them. It doesn't work. Platoon Sergeant C. M. Fagan, Company, I, Fifth Marines.

I haven't been fired at many times by snipers, and I haven't seen one yet. I threw that and there's a lot. I skipped over some of these, but there's a lot of people complaining about snipers. The sabers, which the Japanese officers carry, have proved to be worthless. I killed two Japs who came at me. with sabers and I got them first by shooting them. You remember that scene in Indiana Jones? Yes, I remember all scenes.

What is it? Which one? Some guy comes out and he's swinging a sword around like kind of a real skilled. Like, hey, I got the sword and we're going to fight. And Indiana Jones kind of like shrugs his shoulder and just pulls a pistol out and shoots. That's what I heard this. I was like, well, yeah, if you got a gun, he's making a statement, hey, a gun. This is better than a saber.

Yeah. Well, thank you. We agree, but this isn't news. That's kind of obvious on that. That scene, Indiana Jones? Yeah. Yeah, you asked for it. So here you go.

That scene in real life, they were going to have, or the original script or whatever, they were going to have this epic kind of battle, sword battle. But Indiana, or Harrison Ford had to use a bathroom real bad. So he pulled that out as a little improv. They just kept it. Cool. Good to know. Never mind the bottle of Guadalcanal.

Let's hear about the bathroom battles on the set of Indiana Jones. It's different. You know, I have a seat. Then he says this, but I wished I had, in reserve, a good jungle knife. I don't mean a bolo, which we should have for cutting trails, but a knife with a 12-inch blade, a good steel. We could use this against these japs as well as cutting vines that catch us at night. And then says, note, many men expressed their wish for a jungle knife such as described here. This desire is being omitted in further remarks to avoid repetition.

So everybody was like, give us a big ass knife. Corporal Fred Carter, Company, I, Fifth Marines. On the river, we got to firing at each other because of careless leadership by the junior officers. So we had a little blue-on-blue situation. We are curing ourselves of promiscuous firing, but I should think new units would get training to make the men careful. There you go. These guys had a little blue-on-blue situation, and he's saying, I should think new units would get training to make the men more careful. Yeah, that's what I did.

When I had a blue-on-blue-friendly fire situation came back and said, I'm going to train people so this doesn't happen to him. we learned not to fire unless we had something to shoot at doing otherwise discloses your position and waste ammunition he says i've been charged twice by the japs in bayonet charge our marines can out bayonut fight them and i know our army men will do the same and then note by colonel edson incidentally in the last push we executed we executed three bayonet charges sergeant o j marion Company L, Fifth Marines, a platoon guide. You crawl in the advance unless you are to charge and make it. The reason for this is that all men hit are hit from the knees up except for ricochets. We have crawled up to within 25 yards of a machine gun firing over our backs. The Japs don't depress their machine gun.

Men get killed rushing to help a wounded man. If the wounded man would crawl about 10 yards to his flank, he can generally be aided in safety as the Japs seem to fire down lanes in the jungle. Colonel Etzen said, we have taught our men that the best way to aid a wounded man is to push ahead so that the wounded man can be cared for by the corpsman. The men have been, the men have to be trained individually for when the fire starts, the corporal can't see all of his men. And further, when the order for an attack is given any number of men are unable to see the man on his right or left. You so you see sir it takes guts for the men to get up and move forward when the signal is given the men have to depend on On one another and have confidence in each other So again you can see these guys if you ever been triple I guess you have triple canopy jungle like real thick jungle

Yeah, yeah obviously It's really you can take five steps and you can't see that another person you know and that's what these guys are seeing for the first time Well not for the first time but they're seeing Hey, somebody gets five feet away from me. I can't see him anymore. They have to know how to act on their own. They have to be ready to utilize decentralized command. He says, I was in one advance when the Japs let us come through

and then rose up out of covered foxholes and shot us in the back. The best cure for that is rear guard looking towards the rear. Corporal F.R. McAllen, Company L. Fifth Marines. Sometimes the information, doesn't get down to us, and then we are really in the dark. When we get the orders and information, we can get in there and pitch better. Again, make sure you keep your people informed. My platoon is the best one in the company because we are all like a baseball team.

Our lieutenant is like the captain of the team. He is close with us, and we like him and yet respect him. We have a wonderful platoon. I'm not bragging. That's a fact. And then here's the note in parentheses. When I read this to Colonel Edson at the end of the day, he was so delighted that he sent a runner to find out who Corporal McAllen's platoon leader was.

Give that guy a promotion. And here's the interview with Colonel Merritt Edson himself. And again, this is the guy who received the Medal of Honor that I read at the beginning of this podcast. He says, If I had to train my regimen over again, I would stress small group training and the training of the individual even more than we did when we were in training. So there you go. Everyone is stressing that people need to be able to think for themselves and make things happen. There must be training in difficult observation, which is needed for the offense.

It is my observation that only 5% of the men can really see while observe. Yeah What's crazy about that is They do drills especially do them in sniper school where they put like stuff out in a field Like a canteen and a knife and a notebook. They put all this stuff in a field and then They give you then they then they then they bring you out to the field and you get to sit in position You got to look and you got to see you got to have it kind of hidden partially hidden So they'll put ten items out there and you got to sit there and you got to sit there and you got to sit there

there with your notebook and you kind of got to write down all the items that you can see in what their location is and somebody that's really and there's different people have different levels of skill at actually observing things so some some people get oh they get nine they get eight they get 10 some people see like three or four things so to actually train for that is important the other crazy thing about this is I was talking about this on a EF online the other day it's hard it's hard to see and sometimes things that you think are so obvious other people aren't seeing and sometimes if you think what you're doing no one can see they can all see it's if you think you're making some little tactical move that no one's saying you're wrong you're making if

you're making some little maneuver to get the promotion or whatever and you think that it's all good no one can see it yeah you're wrong everybody can see it yeah everybody can see it you know who can't see it you can't see it you can't see it you You can't see that they can see. Yeah. The offensive is the most difficult to support, as you cannot tell exactly where your troops are. So scary. Whether the Japs will continue to fight as they do now, I don't know.

They defend on the low ground in the jungle. They dig standing trenches extremely well camouflaged. And then he goes into some really, like, tactical level stuff, talking about the need for a rifle grenade, the need for a knee mortar. why that would be good because it gives the platoon commander kind of at-hand weapons. He says this, I suggest that you have maneuvers with ball ammunition, which is basically do maneuvers with real bullets. And then he says, even if you get a few casualties,

I was like, dang. Now, in the SEAL teams, we do live fire training all the time. And not only that, we do. incredibly complex maneuvers with live fire. And it's so beneficial that you're just used to it. You know, you're used to it. You really learn about paying attention and safety and how to keep your distance and all those really important things.

But if you, the other thing, I will say we got, when I first came in the teams, that's all we did was live fire. And it was sort of like a the thing. you know it's sort of like that's as good as it gets like we're doing live fire it was one of those things and it was you know you'd go well it's live fire and you do so much of it that it became

so it wasn't really it was just normal right live fire was just totally normal it's how you operate but once we got some munition and like the the high speed laser tag systems that's when you got you have to do both but that's when you got good

at actually combat because when you're going live fire You're not going against anyone but paper targets. So they don't move. But you have to do it. Yeah, so he goes into more details about the kind of boots that they have. And he says the same thing that everyone's been saying in your training. Put your time and emphasis on the squad and platoon rather than on the company battalion regiment.

So train at the lowest levels. Your principle of the command post up and to the front is certainly true here. in your scouting and patrolling and your training in patience, which you should have, have the men work against each other. So he's saying the same thing. You have to do something where you're actually going against other humans, not just against paper targets.

Same thing for squads and platoons in their problems. Develop better snipers. He goes on to a bunch of things. Smoking lamp, once the smoking lamp goes out and it gets dark, you have to be quiet. Yeah. He goes into this example. In the Raiders, we adopted the custom of dropping all rank and titles.

We use nicknames for officers. All ranks use these nicknames for us. We did this because the nips caught on to the names of the officers and would yell or speak at night. This is Captain Joe Smith talking, A company, withdraw to the next hill. So we adopted nicknames with code words. Captain Walt became Silent Lou. My nickname was Red Mike. An example of the use of these nicknames as code words is one night the Japs put down smoke and they yelled gas.

We were too green at the time and two of our companies withdrew leaving a company exposed on two flanks. He says a value of night training is that it lets men learn the normal noises of the woods and night. Woods are not silent at night. He says the Japanese is no Superman. He has the same limitations that we have. They have the advantage of experience with proper training. Our Americans are better as our people can think better as individuals. Encourage your individuals and bring them out.

So this is any team, right? You either train your team to think or you train them to obey. And certainly the Japanese leaned toward what they wanted was obedience. Both our riflemen and machine gunners must be taught to shoot low. Well, I can tell you that's what I got taught too. Shoot low. This leadership business resolves itself down to being hard-boiled. By that, I mean getting rid of the poor leader, even if you like him personally, because this is a life and death affair.

This goes right on down to the non-coms. You can see they just, there's no, you could allow no slack for poor leadership. Like, you know, it's peacetime. I can tell you when I first got to the to the days, back in the day. The amount of seal officers that got fired when they were in a seal platoon was very, very small, very small number of seal officers that would get fired. And then after the war started, it would happen.

It would happen. It was not like it happened often, but it happened a lot more. Happened a lot more because you'd be looking going, this isn't just a, a deployment over to, you know, train someone or, you know, this is going to be, we're going to war. So that was, that was Colonel Edson. Now we get to Major Lou Walt, commanding officer, second battalion, fifth Marine. And there's a note from Colonel Edson.

Colonel Edson told me that Major Walt was one of his best leaders and one of the best men he has ever seen in action. Major Walt is a young man of about 35 years of age. He's extremely rugged and looks like a fullback on a football team. I talked to him over 20 minutes before I was able to make a single original note as his ideas seem to echo Colonel Edson's So that's pretty cool You got the the battalion commander saying all the same stuff that the regimental commander was saying Here's a little report that Major Lou Walt gives at 6.30 p.m. They smoked our two right companies and when the smoke had enveloped

of these two companies they broke out they came out in mass formation 20 abreast yelling bayonets fixed automatic weapons working rear ranks throwing hand grenades they were trying to escape to the sand pit at the mouth of the river in order to cross the river to get back our right front company had just completed a double apron barbed wire fence when the Japanese hit the left flank of the right company they killed nine out of the first 10 men Nine of the first 11 men they hit. Then they hit the barbed wire. Two of our heavy machine guns opened up,

shooting down along this barbed wire fence, and dispersed their attack. It got dark quickly like it does here. There was smoke. Japs and Marines all mixed up. Three Jap officers were swinging their two-hand swords. There was hand-to-hand fighting all night long. We mopped them up at daybreak.

We killed 78. Japs they killed 12 Marines and wounded 26 of us the Jap has a great deal of respect for our hand grenade and it is a valuable weapon to us do you ever practice throwing it in wooded country scary throwing grenades in the woods yeah because you can hit a tree you can hit a branch he says and this is always a common theme about the Japanese the Jap is not an individual fighter he won't fight with a bayonet unless backed up with a dozen other Japs Here's where we get to, just pure leadership. As in the basic field manual, each man should know the objective. I make my platoon leader designate an objective every 100 yards in the jungle and they work to it and reorganize. They don't push off for the next objective until they get word from the company commander. This method we have found ensures control. I control my companies exactly the same way.

I set up objectives for each company when the company. when the companies reach their objective, they report. After the reorganization, we go ahead. I think reserves and the attack should be kept up closely can be committed immediately. Platoon Sergeant C.C. Ardent. And there's a note in here. It says when Colonel Edson sent for his best fighters,

he did not include Platoon Sergeant Ardent. After I got through talking to these men, two of them came up to me and said, sir, you did not see Sergeant Ardent. He has more patrols and does more scouting than any man in the regiment Could we get him for you sir and so here we got C.C. Ardent and he seems like the kind of guy when I was reading this I was like I know this kind of dude So here's this this dude I practice walking quietly over rocks twigs grass leaves through vines etc I practiced this around the Bivouac area

I received instructions in scouting and patrolling in Quantico but I still practice this around here in the Bivouac area I believe because I practice this is the reason I am still alive some of the other NCOs laughed at me because I'm always seeing how quietly I can walk around because I go out and practice on my own but they have stopped laughing because I have been on more patrols than any man in the regiment and I am still alive when I am scouting and come to an opening in the jungle and have to cross it I generally run across it quickly and quietly go Going slow here may cost a scout his life.

Different types of terrain calls for different methods. So I totally know that guy. Just obsessed and I love it. Go ahead. No, you think like the, like Jiu-Jitsu guys do that too, you know? You know, guys. Like they stand up and they do like a technical stand even though, you know, they're just doing. They're keeping it real.

Yeah, yeah. Or when they give you a hug, they like fish for underhooks. Like they're always doing. doing that thing, you know. Yeah, yeah. But I think this is the guy that's like, you know, not just that. This is the guy that's. And, and, you know, I, when I, when I first got in, actually, the whole time I was in,

it was like, okay, I got to do this again. I need to do this better. I get better at this. But I, I did that kind of in a broad way, right? Like I wanted to be good. Like, I kind of wanted to be good at everything, you know. whereas it'd be like someone

whereas there's some guys that would get really into one thing you know it'd be like someone that just works on you know deep half guard they just get obsessed with deep pathguard and that's what they're working on like that's all they're drilling that's all they're doing

this is Colonel a more L-E-R- Sims. Commanding officer, 7th Marines, first Marine division.

And he says, is the army stripping down to essentials in equipment? Teach not to waste ammunition. Learn to make every shot count. Try to get the Japs on the move. Keep them bouncing around. Don't let them get set. When you let them get set,

they're hard to get out. This is such a good philosophy to have when you're ever in a competitive moment against another person or against another business or against another team. Don't let them settle. Don't let them, you know, like we talked about earlier, you get them out and go for the omlock. Look, sometimes you think, well, get there an established position.

I get it. I get that philosophy. But if you can and you can get there and you can go for it, you're going to catch them off guard. Don't let them prepare, go. He says, our battalion commanders in the 7th Marines know that in reporting information at once and if they need help to ask for it and not just try to both things through that they are enabling regiments to act as a team in the right manner and in the right direction. So he's saying, listen, the battalion commanders knew that they needed to get the information, the correct information, up the chain of command as quickly as they could so that

the chain of command, the senior leadership, could support them. And if you needed help, you needed to ask for it. A regimental commander cannot be impatient. Don't push your battalion commanders unless you feel there is reluctancy on their part. Our great leader, General Vandigriff, gives me a job and lets me handle the situation with a regiment in my own way. He is not impatient with me. Impatience would ruin the best plans. A mapped plan may not turn out to be feasible, so we have learned here not to be impatient. And then he says, it has been impressed upon us here that the logistics have to be correctly planned. The science of logistics turns out to be your life. Logistics wins wars. Here's a thought I would like to leave you with the regimental

commanders. Pick your officers for common sense. Basic field manual knowledge is fine, but it is useless without common sense. Common sense is of greater value than all the words in the book. I am too deep. So that's a statement right there, right? Common. Common sense. sense. Isn't that amazing? Promote and put in leadership positions people that have common sense. Then he says, I am too deep in my battalions in regard to battalion commanding officers. That is, each one of my battalion executive officers is a potential battalion commander. The reason for this is if the battalion commander gets killed or sick, I won't be caught out on a limb. He says, I make my staff officers get out of this CP.

not to snoop so they go get out of the command post and go to the front lines and he does that quote not to snoop on the troops but to help the battalions and equate themselves with the general situation insist on night training but don't train day and night if I were training my regiment again working seven days a week I would train three nights and four days our orders to our marines on the perimeter defense are this is this is kind of epic our orders to our Marines I on the perimeter defense are, you stay on your position and do not pull back. If they bust through you, we'll plug up the hole, but you stay there. And then he says, this regiment can out yell the Japs, out fight them, out bayonet them, and out shoot them. This yelling as in hand-to-hand action is important.

It's like a football team that talks it up. The Japs yell at us, Marines, we're going to kill you. More blood for the emperor. The Marines yell back, you blank, blank, blankety, blank, blank, blank. That's what it just has blank, that has little underlines. You blank, blank, blankety blank, blank, we'll kill you Japs. More blood for Franklin. There's just yelling at each other.

You know, that was like when we had cowboy on. And cowboy could hear the North Vietnamese Army commander yelling, Hey, get ready to get ready to assault and he's telling Telling Lynn Black here they come He just gave the order to assault Sometimes that's how right like if you're close I think it was Leif who said when they were like in a gunfight and they were so close They were they were yelling at each other

Well you could definitely hear people talking Yeah, yeah I saw I'll have to ask Leif like what particular instance that was Yeah he I saw a video It was online of some fight, some army guys, I think in Afghanistan, it looked like kind of a jungle. There's parts of Afghanistan that look like that. Yeah, like not a thick, you know, but like it was like trees in there. And they were in a gunfight and they were, you could hear them yelling at it.

And I think it was in a different language and stuff. And they were just the same deal, blankety blank. And it's crazy because in football, yeah, that's how to. You know, it's like it's all talking trash the whole time. Yeah. Even the referee is saying, hey, be quiet, be quiet. No, the referee is no factor because you can't do nothing for you. He's talking and everyone's yelling at each other, right?

And depends. Certain teams are more hostile than others or whatever. Just depends on the personality of the team. But yeah, that goes on. But it's all like, it's all within like sportsmen like, you know, some of it's funny. Some of it's like kind of me, you know, so there's a certain, it's kind of the culture, you know. But it's crazy to understand that like this guy is trying to straight up kill you.

And you're trying to kill them. So that blankety, blank, blank is like the real deal, you know. Damn. This next section is about the commanding officer of the first battalion seventh regiment, U.S. Marines, first Marine division. You might know who that is. It's Lieutenant Colonel Lewis B. Puller from podcast 121. We went through his book, which is called Marine.

In podcast 122, we talked about his son. Lewis Puller Jr. So if you want to check out those podcasts, there is a podcast that's a podcast that will stay with you. I'll put it to you that way. So what he says, this is one of the most, yeah, this is the most iconic Marina ball time. Chesty Puller.

And he says, and this was kind of cool because, like, this is, it's cool because the way. this is written you can tell that this guy was taking notes like there was someone there sitting there writing down word for word what these guys were saying so this is chesty puller talking and he says in handling my companies I take the company commander's word for what is going on you have to do this to get anywhere in order to get a true picture of what is going on in this heavy country I take my staff I make my staff get up to where the fighting is this command post business will ruin the American army and Marines if it isn't watched

Hell, our platoons and squads would like a command post in the attack if they are not watched. As soon as you set up a command post, all forward movement stops. That's a good one. It's a good one to think about mentally for you, for us, for me. As soon as you set up a command post, like, okay, I'm good. I'm good in this spot. Forward progress stops. Don't do it.

He says the walkie-talkie, the Japs, have operates. Why can't we have a similar one? And then he says this, to hell with the telephone wire advancing with the troops. We can't carry enough wire. We received an order. This advance, the advance will stop until the wire gets in. This is backwards. So, you know, because they didn't have good radio communications, they would run a wire, an actual wire so they could talk to each other on these little field telephones. Well, obviously, it's not easy to run that wire out there. And you'd see, you ever seen, you know, movies of guys, they got the little wire

and a reel, they're running out, avoiding getting shot? I mean, it's a total nightmare. But then you get these commanders saying, hey, don't advance anymore until you get the wire position. And Chester's like, look, we know where we're going. Let us go. He said the staffs are twice as large as they should be. The regimental staff is too large.

I have five staff officers in the battalion, and I could get along with less. The officers have to dress and look like the men. One time the commandant of the Marine Corps asked me why our patrols failed in Haiti. I replied because of the officer's betting role. In Haiti at that time, the officer had to have a pack mule, and the enlisted men saw the officers lying around in luxury. The patrols were actually held up for this pack mule. Your leaders have to be up front. those that won't get up there and are not in physical shape to keep up with the men will cause

plans to fail. It's okay to say that an outfit cannot be surprised, but it is bound to happen in this type of warfare. So, therefore, your outfits must know what to do when ambushed. So he's saying like, hey, look, you can say, hey, we're not going to get surprised, but guess what? You are. So you better know what to do.

Then he says, calling back commanding officers to battalion and regimental. CPs to say How are things going? Is awful. That's a statement. That's a complete statement. If you call me back from the front line to say, how's I going?

It's awful. Each company is responsible for its flank. This is a time tested and proven formation which worked. If attacked from the flank, face and adjust. Good little good little thing to think about. In marching or in camp,

I just noticed, like, now that I'm reading chesty puller, I'm getting more fired up. up. I'm channeling chesty. In marching or in camp, I think I'm doing what I think he sounded like. In marching or in camp, we've learned here that you must have an all-around defense. There you go. He's just making statements.

He's not even, he's just rattling things off. We need more entrenching shovels. Give shovels to the men who have wire cutters. You need both the wire cutter and shovels. I wish we had had the M1 rifle and when we get relieved from Guadalcanal, I'm going to make every effort to get it. I consider it my imperative that the Army and Marines be equipped with knee mortars and only carry one type grenade. Have the hand grenade fit in the knee mortar and be of use as a hand grenade and also as a rifle grenade. You need a rifle grenadier in each squad for use against enemy machine gun nests.

I didn't in some of the other guys I kind of skip through some of their when it starts getting real granular but I wasn't going to skip chesty Puller because Chesty Puller the following is the result

and so that's it that's what we get from Chesty but then the following is the result of a conference with five of the best NCOs in the First Battalion to the 7th Marines these NCOs were selected by Lieutenant Colonel Puller

here's some comments from them The Japanese fire is not always aimed. It is harassing fire and scares recruits. Get the recruits so they are used to overhead fire. Japs who have infiltrated signal to each other with their rifles by the number of shots. We get these birds by constantly patrolling. He says if one of the guys say, if you shoot their officers, they mill around. Talking about the Japanese.

If you shoot their officers, they mill around. Their NCOs are poor. You can tell they are officers by their sabers. and their leather, leather, pletees, which is like some kind of legging. I had to look that word up. Pletees, P-U-T-T-E-E-S. It's like a legging.

But this is, again, this is something that you hear a lot about the Japanese is that once their officers are dead, because they're very centralized command, micromanaged. So if you killed their officers, all of a sudden the rest of the troops are just kind of milling around. They don't know what to do.

Lieutenant Shepard, 7th Marines, also promoted on the field of battle. We salute you, Lieutenant Shepherd. I would stress in training teamwork between the leaders and all units, liaison between support plans and all leaders, liaison between artillery and the infantry. If I were training my unit again, I would really have some high class patrol training.

I would do everything with these patrols I could possibly think of to include losing them and making them go across country without maps or compasses. The Japanese do a lot of yelling at times And at other times they are deadly silent One night some Japanese got in our marching column We discovered them and bayoneted them At another time I heard I myself heard a Japanese yell in good English K company forward

The Japs don't like our men yelling back at them Okay next we get to master gunnery sergeant RM foul 7th Marines And he's 24 years of service He said, we learn not to get excited or go off half-cocked where there's noise. The Japanese make noise to mislead us. They shot off some firecrackers at the start, but we have learned that where the noise is, he ain't. You never hear him move. He sleeps in the daytime and does his work at night.

Officers and NCOs during shelling should move around and talk to the men. Quiet them down. If you don't do this, some of them will walk around with their fingers on their triggers and they get to imagining things. And along this line, we learn to post double sentinels. One man to quiet another. Sheesh. Imagine that.

You got to put two people on watch because you got one of them is going to freak out. All my time in the Marines, I've seen men bunch up. And I've talked about this and make my NCOs talk about this all the time. The men seem to fear separation. I talked about that in leadership strategy and tactics. I got a whole section called Don't Bunch Up. And I didn't just talk about it from the battlefield perspective. But what happens is the reason I had to talk about it in there

is because, yes, people bunch up on the battlefield and they do it because they're afraid. And because you want to hear, you want to be close. Like, I want to get to you to hear what you have. What's going on? But what happens from a leadership perspective is people bunch up mentally from the lead. So Echo, you have an idea.

And I like to crowd in with your idea and put my ideas in there. We want to get together. We want to talk. We want to give our input. It's like, man, give that person some space. Let that plan develop a little bit. Don't bunch up. Don't crowd it.

This one says, the Japs are man monkeys and they run around considerable. In order to compete with these man monkeys from Japan, you've got to be an excellent shape and you've got to be tough. We can lick them and we are. doing it all the time, sir. So, yeah, you were saying they're like in great shape and they're able to move around through the jungle very quickly. Well, I suppose it's like when, uh, when Joe Rogan calls some fighter like a guerrilla or whatever, right?

Yeah. Or a monster. Yeah. Monster, animal. Yeah. Yeah. Is it an animal? Check.

Man monkeys. Lieutenant Colonel Frisbee, executive officer, seventh Marines. I hope the army is being toughened up. We toughened up by bivouacking, not camping at the combat ranges. We lived at these combat ranges in order to teach platoons to keep off the road. We made platoons march in the field alongside the road when they moved from one combat area to another. Hey, what's bivouacking? Sleeping in the woods.

Not camping, but, you know, setting up a small area to sleep in. you're not like put pitch in a tent. It's like a, uh, just a, a make shift sort of, we're going to sleep here. Gotcha.

Like not even at camp, like less. So just kind of for sleeping for rest. Yeah, yeah. But it's not like in a bad way or a necessarily good way. More just like, yep,

to get sleep. Like, hey, we've been patrolling. All right, we're in a good spot. Hey, we're going to bivouac here for the night.

Okay. You know, half guys on security. Other half guys get, you know, put your head down. Get some sleep. Gotcha.

Probably a good, defensible position. Here's Lieutenant Colonel N.H. Han Khan. Second Battalion, 7th Marines, and by the way, Medal of Honor from Haiti. It pays in the attack in the jungle to use the heavy machine guns. There is a difference of opinion, as you have noticed, on this matter. It's hard work, yes, but don't overlook the value. morale and otherwise, and don't forget about the high rate of fire.

If you ditch the heavy machine guns and substitute the lights in their place, you must remember that you will be up against the Japanese machine guns. As we all know, I'm a huge fan of machine guns. Yes, sir. And apparently so is the lieutenant colonel. Be careful about withdrawing the men unless all the men know what it's about. If you don't do this, you're liable to make the men panicky. We already talked about that.

Mob mentality can happen. you must realize that there is such a thing as not attacking when ordered to do so. We have got to get to a point where the men go ahead when ordered and damn the hindmost. Corporals must be indoctrinated with leadership to overcome this and all ranks have got to have the hate. Like I said, this is a different time, man. You're going against a different enemy. We're talking about you have to hate. the enemy.

That's where we're at. Here's a conference with three second lieutenants and five old NCOs of 2nd Battalion 7th Marines. The basic principle of leadership in the U.S. Marine Corps is that the individual is told of his responsibility in different situations and is held to it.

You've got to have confidence in each other. When signals to move forward are given, you must have confidence that the men next to you will move forward even if you cannot see them. We have that kind of confidence in this battalion. There's a quote here, which I am in full agreement with.

It says, we love the heavy machine gun, period. We have two American Indians. We use as talkers on the telephone or voice radio when we want to transmit secret or important messages. It's awesome. And kill them. Kill them dead. Our platoon, our motto in this platoon is no prisoners.

Second Lieutenant D.A. Clark, 7th Marines, promoted on the field of battle. This officer was interviewed in the hospital where he was recuperating from wounds. We have a lot of trouble in my platoon with water discipline. We also have trouble with men bunching up in order to talk to each other. They seem to do this even though it means death.

Major Buse, Assistant G3 on General Vandergriff staff. We have had to multiply our unit of four. fire in hand grenades by five. The yellow color on hand grenades is poor. Why can't they just be painted black as the yellow color enables the Japs to throw them back? You ever seen that color combination? It's very common in the military.

It's like an olive drab, but then the writing is in yellow. And like even the grades, no one listened to this guy because a grenade still have like a yellow band around them. It's not like a bright yellow, but it's definitely a yellow. Yeah. Wait, why is that? Why is it yellow? That's just how they mark them. I mean, there's no particular reason.

It looks kind of dope. I almost actually leadership strategy and tactics almost when, in fact, the reason I didn't go, because this is olive drab, the reason I didn't go that same exact yellow is because you couldn't really read it clearly enough. Yeah. That's kind of a bummer. I should have just stuck with it, huh? Yeah. Like claim more, do claim our minds? Are they yellow?

Well, it says front towards enemy? Yeah. Actually yeah Yellow Marr I think yeah Yeah yeah so it's very good it's the common thing Yeah it's the common stencil color is this olive drab green and it's a faded yellow It's like a drab yellow yeah He says this

I am being sent back for arrest we have been in action continually here from August 7th 1942 until this date November 26th 1942 what we all marvel at is how general van derrift can stand it's so much better than we do it must be his character we'll have to do like a full-on podcast on general vandergriff major ben jane northridge c o second battalion 164th infantry if i could train my men over again i would put officers and men in slit trenches and drop bombs nearby to overcome fear we were all scared to death at first let's overcome this fear how about firing some captured 25 caliber ammunition out of captured rifles to let officers and men know the sound also captured Jap machine guns Ammunition out of their captured machine guns got to get used to that sound

Luckily we do I mean luckily we have AK 47 so we can do that no problem no factor we know what that a case sounds like Lieutenant Colonel Frank Richards CO first battalion 164th infantry He says if I were training my battalion again I would have training in patience. I would have patrols wait for the enemy to expose himself. They move around too. They have to relieve themselves and they have to get food. I would have the men in this patience training made, be made to sit still for hours at a time. Captain John A. Gossett, CEO, Company H, 164th infantry, teach the men the capacities of the hand grenade and handling men. Isn't that crazy dude? This guy's here in Guadalcanal and here's the

two notes that he's got, he says, you've got to learn the capacities of hand grenades and how to handle men. I thought I knew how to handle men, but since I've been here, I have revised my ideas as I have learned a great deal. I have learned the primitive rough and tumble way. You can't pat all men on the back. You have to be rough with some men in order to get results. It is not a very important. It is Not my nature to be rough, but I am forcing myself and I have learned which of my men I can pat on the back and which I have to deal with in the hardest manner. Everyone's the same. Everyone's different. Captain John A. Dawson, commanding officer, company B, 164th Infantry.

If I could train my company again, I would have some maneuvers on which the men were deprived of food, water, and comforts in order to find out. which NCOs and men can't take it. I would relieve these people. This type of maneuver would teach men to know and expect hardships. It will lessen the shock when they come up against the real thing in the presence of the enemy. It is important that the entire squad know how to operate the BAR, not just two men. Reason, think of the BAR men who are wounded, get killed, and become sick and have to be evacuated. Again, cross-training.

Lieutenant John S. Gray. platoon leader company C 164th infantry the biggest thing I have learned since I hit this island is that leadership and initiative is so important here the platoon leader can only be in one spot at a time and men must be trained to act correctly on their own I've never seen this type of training yes decentralized command that's just post that on your brain sergeant WV de maas squad leader company C 164th Infantry. Sir, I would like to say that there is no place for recruits here.

We need trained soldiers who have initiative and know what is the right thing to do. The jungle is so thick that squad leaders cannot get around all of the time to see men and tell them what to do. This is the common theme. This is Colonel B.E. Moore. Commanding officer 164th Infantry. Note, when I saw Colonel Moore, he was interviewing a patrol and patrol leader who had just come back. They had been on a reconnaissance for 15 hours. The patrol leader had been met at an advanced position and as he had valuable information of the enemy, he was conducted by Jeep to the observation

post of the artillery where he directed artillery fire, then returned to the colonel where he made his report. The patrol and its leader were nearly exhausted. Colonel Moore had on hand a small sample bottle of brandy, which he issued one small sample bottle to each two men. He made them dilute this brandy with water in their canteen cups. It was noticeable that this helped them. The following interview took place after the patrol had been dismissed. One could not be around Colonel Moore very long without realizing that he is a leader and regimental commander in every sense of the word.

Taking care of his people. And he says, the greatest problem is leaders. And you have to find some way to weed out the weak ones. But platoon leaders who cannot command, who cannot foresee things, and who cannot act on the spur of the moment in an emergency are a distinct detriment leadership. And this is the last thing we're going to read from this book. He says, many of the junior leaders have not used their heads at times, In their training, I recommend you put them up against situations where they must use their heads.

He says the good leaders seem to get killed. The poor leaders get the men killed. The big problem is leadership and getting the shoulder straps on the right people. Not one man in 50 can lead a patrol in the jungle. If you can find out who the good patrol leaders are before you hit the combat zone, you have found out something. I have had to get rid of about 25 officers because they just weren't leaders. I had to make the battalion commander weed out the poor junior leaders. This process is continuous.

Our junior leaders are finding out that they must know more about their men. The good leaders know their men. The good leaders know their men. Obviously, that's not new. We've heard it before. In fact, we've heard all this before. And what's crazy is they'd all heard it before. Right?

Like these principles have been around. These principles have been around forever. But they still made mistakes. They still had to relearn those lessons. And they still had to make every effort like this manual to pass those lessons on. And what should we do? Well, what we should do is we should make. Our best effort to receive those lessons, remember those lessons, just as we should remember these brave men who learn these lessons in blood.

What do you got, Echo Charles? I always like, so there's kind of two ways you can go with like all of this stuff where it's like you hear it over and over and over again, right? Which should sort of reinforce it. So you kind of got to be careful to not regard it. I guess maybe this happens subconsciously sometimes where you just, you know, you hear something over and over again and then it just becomes sort of just noise. Like, I already know that kind of thing. You know what's weird about me? Yeah, I know a lot of things.

Okay. When you say that, like, I can't relate to it. Yeah. Because every time I hear these things, I'm like, there it is. Yep. I'm like, there it is. It's a reinforcement. It's, I'm hearing it again.

It's a little bit of different angle, but I know what that means. Yeah. You know, like that last little section is so crazy to read that. It's so crazy to read that. This guy is saying, in training you, I recommend you put them in situations where they must use their heads. I teach that all time. That's the long front. We're like, oh, you want to train your leaders?

You can't give your leaders problems that there is a rote memorizable solution to. You actually want to make them think. I always bring up a story with the Germans. The Germans would give their subordinates. leaders in training they would give them problems that could only be solved if they broke the rules Which means there's no format to what they're getting them to try and do So how can you get your people you need to put your people in situations where they need to think so every time look and this is a lesson that I've taught before But I hear it and I'm like there it is

Yeah, yeah maybe because you like apply it so maybe often or maybe it made like such an impact for because of like your experiences and stuff Or maybe both I don't know but So it's always sticking with you. So you're always like looking to like reinforce to make it better to improve on this very thing that you're actually practicing. Yeah. You know what's interesting? So my last three years in the in the dreams, I was running that training. And so I got to see.

And I always say that the training that I ran was the best leadership laboratory in the history of the world. And I would be willing to go toe to toe and anyone that thinks that they've seen them better. Well, not not to fight them, but I would be interested. If there was someone else that says, oh, we had a leadership situation where this is what we got to see. And therefore, we have a really good understanding of leadership as well. I'm sure there's other things that are out there. I'm telling you, when I was running that training, it was freaking awesome. Because you're seeing platoon after platoon after platoon after platoon with different leadership.

You could see the good leadership versus the bad leadership. You see what work, what didn't work. It was the best leadership laboratory. And I learned that I got to take the lessons that I learned and see them applied. And when they applied them well, things would go well. If they didn't apply them well, things would go bad. It was so obvious. It was so obvious.

And what's interesting is now at Eschlam Front, I kind of get to do the same thing because it's, hey, I work with a business. Here's what's happening in their market. Here's what's happening in their expansion. Here's what's happening as they grow. So we get to see, oh, here's the leadership. Here's what you need to do. And then it's like, this is the mistake that you're making. This is where you need to move.

And so, like you said, I'm very lucky because I continue to get to work directly in this environment that I've been completely and utterly engaged in for, you know, I mean, for a long, long, for decades. And yet, I guess maybe that's why when I see these things, I think to myself, like, yes. Like I get, it just more reinforcement. And yeah, so I get. Do you like it? What? Like straight out.

Okay, so we'll call this maybe oversimplify it, simplifying it leadership, right? Do I like it? Are you serious right now? I am, man. I absolutely love it. Okay. I love it. And you know what? I love it in the way that what I love about it is it is a continual challenge to it's it's it's it's solving a problem and getting the grad it's it's it's kind of like Jiu-jitsu in that you get out there you learn a move you see a move you use the move it works it doesn't

work you make adjustments on it. It's a very similar thing. But yeah I love it because it's super complex and yet it's super simple, right? And the gratification is, is extraordinary because people, you know, like, people say, I did what you just told me to do, you know, I did it in the last meeting, and Fred's on board now. And you're like, that's awesome. And this was a problem for someone that was a legitimate, not just a challenge, but like a threat to their lifestyle, right?

A threat to their business, a threat to their corporation. And you're like, hey, here's this. Here's, okay, do this report back. Let me hear what you got. Okay, here's the report. Okay, here's the reaction. Okay, good. That means continue moving in this.

Oh, no. That means go over in this direction. So to be able to be able to be lucky enough to take all these lessons that I learned and be able to apply them on a daily basis, it's ridiculous. It's freaking awesome. Because like it's... Do you like leadership? Well, I knew the answer and maybe it was kind of a semi-retorical question.

But if... Because some people, they don't like it. They see it as a necessity and stuff like that, but they don't really like it. So, and it's a spectrum for sure. It's like sales, you know? Like sales, for example, where some people, they just love it. And every little tip, every little thing, every little, like, established, like, element of successful

they're all about it. Well, people can be into all kinds of stuff. Yeah, Jiu-Jitsu, guitar, drawing, oh yeah, reading, I mean. Yeah, so if there's a certain philosophical element that has like withstood the test of time and the reading and here, reading there,

man, it's going to reinforce a thing. They're going to be into it and it's going to be just in their head. They're going to pie it any chance that they get, even if it's this much of a little development, they're going to pie it, boom, just ready, is down because they enjoy it and that's part of their jam. But if let's say you don't really like it, it's like a chore or whatever, right, you know,

there's certain introvert type people who are in a leadership position who kind of don't like it. They'd rather someone else deal with the people or something like this. For sure. And then so those are the ones that might be, I don't know, but they might be the ones that are going to be making these mistakes over and over again because they're not consciously, like, actively trying to implement these lessons that are just in someone like your case just straight up being reinforced yeah but for them it's it's almost like not even getting in it's kind like yeah I heard that before whatever I heard that before whatever I'm too busy like not caring

almost in a way like I'm too busy like caring about the things that I care about and like yeah I think I think where oh there's a lot of misconceptions and I wrote about this in leadership strategy and tactics but here it's it's on like the cover flap or whatever Leadership is the most challenging of human endeavors. It is often misunderstood. It can bewilder, mystify, and frustrate even the most dedicated practitioners. Leaders at all levels are often forced to use theoretical guesswork to make decisions and lead their troops. It doesn't have to be that way.

There are principles that can be applied and tenets that can be followed. There are skills that can be learned and maneuvers that can be practiced and executed. There are leadership strategies and tactics that have been tested and proven on the battlefield in business and in life. That's what I think people miss out on, is they miss out on the fact that it's not, it's, it's kind of like any, any skill set that you want to learn. You want to learn how to play guitar.

You've got to learn the chords. You've got to learn notes. You want to learn jiu-jitsu. You've got to learn an arm lock. You want to learn how to play basketball. You got to learn how to dribble. You couldn't expect. Why would anybody expect that they could walk out on a basketball court without ever

practicing and be good at it? Now, let me ask you this. Have you ever watched some like a skateboarder or a BMX guy or a mountain biker or a surfer and been like, oh, that looks, you think in your weird mind that you could actually do what they're doing. Sometimes, yeah. Not the skateboarding guys, but yeah, the other guys. Yeah, skateboarding now, that guys are crazy. But you think, oh, like, oh, I can see myself doing that.

So I think people look at leadership sometimes, and there's things that are happening. Oh, yeah, I would do the same thing or whatever. It looks easier than it is. Yeah. And so you have to be careful of that. And maybe that's why I continue to enjoy reading and learning about it because I see how hard it is. I see every day what a challenge it is for people. So if I can take one thing away from a book that I can use as a tool to help someone else maneuver through a challenging leadership situation, I love it.

I love adding that capability. Yeah. Makes sense to me. So speaking of learning and improving and getting better, what other suggestions might you have for us? I do. Mr. Yeah, kind of like me. Echo, Zane, Charles.

It's kind of like me saying, hey, X, Exercise will help improve every other aspect of your life. True. Unlike any other thing or whatever. True. You know that thing. Sure, I'll say it over and over again. Whatever.

It helps reinforce it. Hopefully. Hopefully it doesn't become noise. I'll give you some credit right now for taking what I just said, which is a pretty meaningful moment. And what you just said is you're going to continue to read the same stuff over and over again on the support section of the podcast. What's good for the goose is good for. for the other guy. You don't understand what I'm saying.

Anyway, we're working out. That's going to improve your life. Health, fitness. What if you just tried to say things in a different way sometime? Like maybe people would be more interested in it. It's possible. It's possible. Nonetheless, we are still working out regardless of how I say it.

I worked out today. Did spots. What? Oh, good job. I had pull-ups today. By the way, we're in the process of the, Let's call it the new garage gym of justice. We are probably two months out maybe right now.

So we're getting there. Really? Yeah. If anybody, if anybody, you know, maybe a year and a half ago, there was a transition where I was, I moved into a temporary holding facility for myself. And that meant a temporary workout facility in my home. And that was all a strategic move.

to long term have a much better sort of facility facility. Prude. Yes. So we're getting there. I'm looking forward to unveiling that. I might even do, you know, the, I'll get people that say, hey, show us your gym. Gym tour.

Like gym tour. Hell yeah. Well, I'll tell you what, I will, when I, when the new gym is complete, or at least like when it's kind of getting close, we'll do a little, we'll do a little facility tour. Yeah. So you're thinking, so what are you going to do? Or you're saying a month or two months, ish, two months, ish, maybe three, maybe two and a half.

No, maybe two. Okay. We're getting there. We're getting close. There you go. We're getting close. So improvements across the board, straight up, facilities, personal health, all that stuff. To what we're looking for.

It's what we're looking for is what we're going for. Anyway, we've got supplements for you. If you need them, which, you know, need, you know, that's a spectrum. but this thing will 100% help you. Yeah, I'm going to go ahead and say that you need, you need to get joint warfare and krill oil for sure. Yeah. I'm not sure of it.

Well, if you're listening to this podcast, which means you're getting after it, right? Okay, if you're not listening to this, which we don't care, then you don't need it, right? Sure. You legitimately don't because you're like on your own program. You're probably watching TV. You don't need joint warfare and super krill if you're,

to strengthen your, thumb to press the remote control. You're not. A little bit different. Yeah. You can just get whatever, more, more French fries, more Cheetos. That's what you can get. Yeah.

If you're in the game, you may want to get super krill. You may want, yeah, you should, you need to get super krill. You need to get joint warfare. And the reason I say need is because if you don't take it, you have issues. You will have issues. That's it. Don't just get away from the issues. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like one of those things. Like you ever play, uh, you play, uh, you play. soccer before right soccer baseball football right the you wear certain kind of shoes called cleats really cleats so when you still when you go play when you suit up you put on your cleats you don't put on tennis shoes no I mean look is it possible to put on tennis shoes do you need cleats that's the thing do you need cleats depends on what you mean by need right exactly and that's exactly what I'm saying okay so

clarification accepted look look if you want to stay on this path and not worry about your joints giving out on you and they can oh they can get it give out on you for sure they can bother you ache they can ache when you're not even exercising straight up they can but if you don't worry about that kind of stuff that's when you take the joint warfare and the super cruel oil 100% just take it every day like I do every single day so far since our last talk anyway glad you've tightened it up yes sir also discipline and discipline go kind of the same thing just different delivery. Different modalities of delivery.

Yes, sir. Big time. So yeah. You know, the powder, there's the powder, there's a pill, there's the energy drink. I'm just to call it energy drink. Healthy energy drink. Yeah, even though it's barely related to the common, what's commonly considered an energy drink. Right.

When I think of energy drink, I think, oh, massive amount of sugar, massive amount of caffeine, massive amount of chemicals. Yeah. To keep it from getting spoiled. Yeah, yeah. That's what I think of when I think of an energy drink. And I think of a pink orange and yellow can that it's in. Yeah, silver maybe. Yeah, that's what I think of.

So that's an energy drink. Now, it is very strange to say that what we have, which has no sugar, it's sweetened with monk fruit, it's got 95 milligrams of caffeine. So it's got caffeine in it, but that's the same as a cup of coffee. It's not some crazy amount that's. get you all psycho jittery and you have a big crash from and there's no preservatives in it because we pasteurize it so what we're really talking about are two totally different things one of them has a bunch of bad stuff in it the other one has a bunch of good stuff in it yes so so why are they both

called energy drinks I'm not 100% sure one of them should be called an energy drink the other one should be called poison next question not to get too analytical on here but I think I know why because you and you know some of us we think of energy drinks not as what the whole energy drink we just think of the stigma not just the stigma but the stigma is a very significant portion of sure and rightly so by the way you put some if there's some stuff that's straight up bad for you that should mean something yeah that's what I think so you know you think about those kind of things and rightly so like I said but you know you know they're like hippie people that will say like, oh, that's bad energy.

Yeah, that's different. So now I'm kind of feeling like there's such a thing as like bad energy drinks. That drink has bad energy. We got the good energy. To me, that's in play too. I think so. So, you know, if you consider the stigma of energy drinks and it's not an unfair stigma, it's not fair. It's accurate.

It's a fair stigma. If you consider that and you associate it with the word energy drink, yes, when you look at jaco, discipline, go, citrus, Psycho, Jocko, all these flavors. If you look at that, then yeah, they're not going to be very similar in that way. Because we don't have the stigma over here. No stigma. Energy drink without the stigma. How about that?

There you go. There you go. Boom. Look at that one. Go to jacofuel.com. You like that one. Yes, sir. Joccofuel.com.

That's where you can get it. That's part of origin, maimed. It's all kind of the same deal. You can also get them at Wawa, the energy drinks, the stigma, the unstigma. stigmaless energy drink at Wawa and the vitamin shop as well. Also, mok. Moke. Don't forget about Moke.

Vitamin D 3, Cold War, Jocko white tea. I'm actually drinking some of that white tea right now, drinking some of that. And I'm drinking a discipline go. So I'm kind of getting after it. Vitamin Shop, Wawa, and origin main.com. Also got some, we talked about Jiu-Jitsu a little bit today. Fortunately, let's say it was not required to be put into use in Guadalcan. now.

No. Right. Luckily we had, we had our bayonet. We were able to just stab people in the neck and didn't have to choke them. But had it been required, we were happy that people were trained in jujitsu. And we, even if we don't have to use it, even if you don't have to use it ever in your life, in a real situation, believe me, you're going to want to have it. So train some jiu jihitsu. And when you train jiu jih Tzu, you're going to want a ghee to train in.

You're going to want a rash guard to train in. and you're going to want those things to be made in America. And you're also going to want them, like, you're going to want the best possible ones that you could get because you're kind of making a commitment in your life to Jiu-Jitsu. You're going to look at yourself in the mirror and say, you know what, we're going to do this. We're going to gain a skill that will help me in all aspects of my life.

Do you ever, or you know how like you look at yourself and you kind of have like a little bit of an identity, varying levels of identity, whatever. Do you part of that identity are you like a jiu jitsu person for me? Yeah, yeah I would say yes Yeah, but see how you just said I would say yes some because it's a spectrum for sure and not one one is not better than the other by the way Well the reason I said that is because We've talked about this on the podcast if it wasn't here's why I actually it's just a yes because if it wasn't for Jiujitsu

I wouldn't have be where I am because I wouldn't have been able to figure out a bunch of stuff right like do you just for me the physical part the knowing how to submit people or whatever that is as far as far as what I got from jiu jitsu this is gonna sound crazy that part the actual being able to fight and beat people up yeah of all the beneficial things I got from jih Tzu that part is 20% the 80% benefit that I got from jiu jit too was an understanding of the world now it ties into combat It ties into leadership and that those things also participated in in providing me with that 80%. Yeah.

But the jiu-jitsu was the factor that allowed me to see it. Yeah. So. Yeah, that makes sense. I think I would agree with that. So yes, I'm a jih Tzu person. Yeah. So, yeah, I feel like if I look my identity, I'm not not a jiu-jitsu person, but I'm not like, I'm a jiu-jitsu person.

You know, like if I, if you meet someone, someone's not going to be like, oh, yeah. that's a jujitsu guy. That's not the first thing they're going to say. You're not known as a jujitsu guy. Yeah. But people know you do jujitsu. Everybody knows you do jiu jih Tzu, even though they also know you do other things. Other things, yeah.

That are significant. I think that's why you, when I look at you, I don't see, okay, jiu jitsu guy, even though you're straight up jujitsu. Yeah, I don't know what's going to say. Yeah. Yeah, he's not not a juzzi. But then because you have all these other things that you have, like, straight up, like for lack of better terms, significant prowess like in you know i don't know about all that i don't have significant prowess in jiu jitsu even i'm still working on that one what is prowess really like doing good at

yeah yeah there you're okay were you worried well i think that yeah did i've totally miss you anyway i think that might be the first time ever said that out loud the word prowess nonetheless nonetheless let that discipline go kicking in getting them brain cells working whether you want to be a jiu jiu jitsu person or just have jiu jiu jitsu be Part of your life. You should definitely make it part of your life. You're going to need a geese. You're going to need rash guards.

Go to origin, main.com. And unfortunately, for all of us, we can't just walk around in our geese. Unfortunately. Unfortunately. So you've got to get other clothing. You can also get that other clothing at origin mane.com. Jeans.

American made boots. American made jeans with American denim. Rivets that are from America. Oh, guess what? Everything I'm talking about, Without compromise, made in America. Even the brass buttons. Even the brass, the brass what?

Buttons. The brass buttons. Those are significant. Sure, look at them. They're like, yeah, they're legit. I mentioned the rivets. I didn't mention the brass buttons. Yes, sir.

OriginMane.com. You're good. Yes, sir. Also, speaking of other clothing, Jocko's the store is called Jocco Store. That's where you can get T-shirts, hoodies, hats, all discipline equals freedom. Good.

All this stuff to represent. you're on the path heartburn jammed me out got that COVID cough homey see bro I knew you're gonna say that anyway um also on the t-sh also on Jocko store I was I wait I know we're we're over COVID now but when when when I had COVID and then you had COVID I was a little bit happy because I was like cool we can still record podcasts we can't have any guess but at least we can still go in there and record no factor yeah Yeah, it's true. A little bit happy.

No, no offense. Right. COVID plus COVID doesn't equal more. It cancels itself out. Yeah. Kind of thing. All right. Well, I'm clear.

We're all clear. Unless, Jocco store. Also on Jocco store, we have a T-shirt club. Working title. T-shirt club. Get a T-shirt every month. Different varying levels of layers on these T-shirts. They're inside.

They're Easter eggs in the shirts, in the, not literal Easter eggs, but Easter eggs. The expression Easter eggs, stuff that like if you listen, you kind of know, you know. Anyway, interesting shirts. You get one every month. It's cool club. Check it out.

If you want, jocco store.com. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. I think it's important. varying levels of importance. At jocco store, can't you also just get rash cards and just like a t-shirt, like this t-shirt that I'm wearing hardcore ricondos? Yes, you can. Fully.

I mean, you don't have to like go on there and join the club. No, no, no, not at all. That's an optional club right there that we, made. It's a good club. People seem to like it so far. Maybe if anyone look, let's face it,

Echo tried to come up with like, hey, we'll just call it the T-shirt club. Okay, oh, that's good. If anyone can come up with something better than that, which I'm sure most people can, please let Echo know that you have a better name, you know, even if it was called like the picklehead club or whatever.

People would be like a little bit more into it. Well, I don't know. what the picklehead club but I do agree I see what you're saying and I I can't disagree on that one okay all right cool we'll bring the people together also yeah so subscribe if you haven't already and leave a review if you're in the mood and go ahead be creative with a review if you want good these are all all good things also got some other podcasts yeah we got some other podcast jaco unraveling podcast we got the grounded podcast we got the warrior kid podcast and also if you want to if you want to join and support kind of at the next level you can go to jocco

underground.com where we have a sovereign a sovereign virtual land that we rule and that cannot be taken away from us no matter what happens so if you want to support that we got some extra things going on there we got some we got some alternative podcast that we're doing we got little Q and A. If you're in there, you can go to jocco underground.com and join that so we can connect. Check it out. And you can also check out YouTube videos that Echo Charles makes. And you can give him some feedback on in the comment sections.

I saw a comment that said, day that said, does Jocko read these comments? Here's your answer. Yes. I read the comments. The reason I read the comments is so I can attempt to. Give Echo Charles feedback about the level of explosions, fires, smoke, tanks, eagles, aircraft that he puts in the videos. Yes. Yeah.

Explosions are kind of like banana cream pie. You're not going to eat banana cream pie for breakfast lunch and dinner. You just have one piece of banana cream pie after dinner, maybe. See? Yeah, see. I see. You understand. I see the look on your face ready.

You know what I'm doing? I'm avoiding carrying on to this topic. Subscribe to subscribe to the YouTube channel called Jocko podcast. Boom. There you go. Good. Also, psychological warfare. Looking to that one.

If you're having moments of weakness, look into this. Psychological warfare is an album with tracks. Jock, each track is Jocko telling you, explain to you the methodology, the tactics, to get past that moment of weakness. Easy with ease, 100% accurate and effective. 100%. That's what psychological warfare is. Can you get that wherever you get MP3s?

You can get some visual reminders of the path by going to Flipside. Flipside Canvas.com, Dakota Myers Company, awesome company, makes really cool stuff to hang on your walls. Got a bunch of books. A bunch of books. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual.

I talked about it today. about face David Hackworth, which I wrote a forward to. The code, the evaluation of protocols. The discipline equals freedom field manual. Brand new version out. Way of the Warrior Kid. Four field manual.

Get it. We have the Warrior Kid one, two, and three. That's the whole series. Mikey and the Dragons, extreme ownership, and the dichotomy of leadership. Also have Echelon Front Leadership Consultancy where we solve problems through leadership.

Go to echelonfront.com for detail. on that we have EF online where we do leadership consulting live online we have leadership courses so if you want to get deeper into the principles that we talk about here you can go into that online training program and improve your leadership skills go to EF online.com I'm on there all the time so as the rest of the Escalam front team we have the muster coming up in Phoenix March 3 and 4 Orlando 25th and 26, Las Vegas, October 28th and 29. Those are our 2021 dates.

Go to Extreme Ownership.com. If you want to go to that, EF. Overwatch, if you need executive leadership inside your company, go to EFoverwatch.com. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, then check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, then go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. And if you didn't get enough of my belligerent beliefs, or you need more of Echo's speculative speculations, then you can find us on the interwebs on Twitter,

on Instagram, which just echo, I'm talking about what you call the gram. And on Facebook. Echo is at Equit Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. I'm also on parlor now, by the way. Okay. The new platform.

Sure. And I am at, Dr. Willick. And thanks to all the branches of service, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines, the Coast Guard. Thank you for fighting battles out there so that we don't have to. And thanks to police and law enforcement

and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all first responders, thank you for providing us. protection here at home and to everyone else out there look we heard these lessons before remember them you know them be disciplined take initiative train your people train your people from your front line troops to your senior leaders you want them to take initiative and practice so you get better

make sure the team knows the objective you know these things Remember these things. Remember these lessons. And also remember where these lessons came from. And remember the men who sacrificed everything for us. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.