Jocko Podcast - 304: How NOT to Lead. The Psychology of Military Incompetence Pt.2

Episode Date: October 20, 2021

0:00:00 - Opening0:02:51 - On The Psychology of Military Incompetence.2:33:17 - How to stay on THE PATH.2:49:05 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 304 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Also join us tonight. Dave Burke. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. We're going to continue our review of the book on the psychology of military incompetence.

We started that on the last podcast, 303. Believe it or not, we only got through the forward and the preface and two chapters. So this one could take a while. but there's a reason. There's a reason I've been sitting on this book for a while. There's a reason I'm doing this podcast right now. And so today we're going to get through some of the first part of the meat of the book, which is the historical examples.

And these historical examples are what get referred back to throughout this entire book. So each one of these situations that we're going to talk about, They're broken into chapters in most cases, not 100%, but these are disastrous military engagements or battles or campaigns or wars. And each one of these events could be an entire book. And that means they could be each event could be a podcast or two or three. And some of them have been, you'll notice some of them that we'll talk about. We have done podcasts on because they're significant military events. Some of them I'm sure we'll come back and visit in the future and I'm gonna move

I'm trying to give enough information in from each one of these events so that when he refers back to these events later You get it because if you don't have the context then you won't understand the references that he's making So I'll try and condense the historical examples a little bit But it's it's rough and some of them are really obvious for For instance, the section on like World War I, considering what World War I is, it's relatively short. Why? Because most of us know the basic history of World War I.

Same thing with World War II. But then he gives more specific examples inside of each of those and outside of those wars that are definitely more detailed. And this section of the book starts with an epic example. of incompetence and tragedy it is about the Crimean war including the famous or infamous depending on who read you the story charge of the light brigade so this war was fought between October 1853 and February 1856 between Russia on one side who eventually lost to an alliance of France the Ottoman Empire Great Britain

and Sardinia. And so we're going to get into it in the book. The Crimean War certainly marked an exceedingly low point in British military history. The poor quality of the officers, most of whom had bought their commissions and for whom no standard of education was required, stood in marked contrast to the excellence of the men, described by one observer as the finest soldiers I ever saw in stature. physique and appearance. So right out of the gate, we don't like this scenario. How do you get to be in a leadership position? You pay money. That's how you get to be in a leadership position. Your dad

is a rich, whatever. And so you're a spoiled punk-ass kid and your dad wants you to have some clout in the world. So he says, oh, I'm going to buy you a commission. And by the way, the more money he has, the more rank you get. It's savage. But yeah, he's also saying that the the men were squared away. Amongst the officers, there seemed to be an inverse relationship between rank and efficiency. The more senior they were, the less competent they appeared. At the apex of this pyramid of mediocrity stood or rather sat, for he was always on his horse or in his quarters, and being inordinately shy rarely walked amongst his men, Lord Raglan.

His qualifications for leading a British expeditionary force appear to have been his age, 67. His lineage, he was the youngest of Duke of Beaufort's 11 sons, and his experience 25 years as military secretary to the Duke of Wellington, and then Master General of Ordinance. No one would accuse him of having a mind cluttered by any previous experience of command, for he had none, not even of a company. So this guy, Raglan, which is a bummer, because Raglan is the name of an awesome surf spot in New Zealand. It's also a name of one of my favorite restaurants in San Diego, which is named after the surf spot, not after, not after Lord, not after the Lord. Lord Raglan.

Raglin O.B. shout out. His appointment, however, was not wholly inappropriate. For of him, it was said, his chief merit was that despite his incurable habit throughout the campaign of referring to the enemy as, The French, which by the way, the enemy was the Russians and the French were on his side, he was admittedly admirably adapted to lessen the friction in coalition wars. So this is a guy that was sort of, you know, easy to get along with, right? Oh, you've got a bunch of people. We got the French.

We got the Sardinians. We got the Ottoman Empire. We got England. Let's put somebody in charge that kind of can make friends. So that's his admirable quality. in fact raglan seemed to agree with the with most french proposals it was a characteristic of the man that he hated conflict there's so many weird things in all these different personalities it is just you know I was on eF online today or sorry extreme ownership academy today and somebody brought up one of those

personality tests and so he was saying you know we we had a company offsite and we did this personality test and it made me start thinking about hey when I'm interacting with someone else I need to think about what type of personality they have and try and relate things in a way that will best land on their personality and I said yes absolutely and then on top of that add 78 other items who is this person what's their personality type sure what's their experience what's their background what kind of are they having today? What's their position in the organization? What's my relationship with them? Because what we're dealing with when you're dealing with other human beings is that thing that we

talked about on the underground podcast, which is we're all insane because we all see the world a little bit differently. So when I'm relating to Dave, I can't just think, oh, it's just I need to relate to his personality, but how does he feel about this project? What's his passion level? What's his experience? How much does he know? Has he had bad experience with this department? that he's going to go take charge of all those things you have to think about when you're going into these situations dealing with other human beings. It's a disaster. Yeah, we say leadership's a human nature endeavor all the time. And this idea of even just contemplating how the other person is going to react is a huge step in the right direction.

Oh, and it's shocking how many people. You know, that's really what you get. When you get the young inexperienced leader, they're seeing everything just through their own eyes. Right. And everyone just, what is wrong with everyone? Oh, I'll tell you what's wrong. They're humans. Fast forward a little bit.

If Raglan and his staff constituted the nerve center of the army in the Crimea, the sinews compromised a field force of five infantry and two cavalry divisions under commanders who, for the most part, did little to inspire confidence. Here, too, the problem was partly one of age. Apart from the 35-year-old Duke of Cambridge, cousin to the court, Queen, all the senior commanders were between 60 and 70 with Sir John, Burgoyne, Chief Engineer, topping the list at 72. Certainly it could be said of them that what they lacked in experience they made up for in years.

So am I committing ageism right now by saying, hey, if you're 72 and you're in a war that's taking place in 1853? maybe you're not in the best of health. And maybe you shouldn't be running a war. Check. As I think a lot of times in these wars back in the day, like if you're a British lord or whatever, this is just going to check the box, right? Oh, you can go out and, you know, kill some natives and be a hero for the king or for the crown, right? Some of that is definitely going on.

As has so often been the case, the next lower level. of command did contain some leaders of vigor with a talent for war. Such one was Sir Colin Campbell. His command, unfortunately, was no larger than a brigade. As usual in those days, the cream of the crop of the army was the cavalry commanded in this instance by Lord Lucan, an impulsive man of moderate intellect and lacking experience. There you go. That's a good way to start. Directly under Lucan, in charge of the heavy and light brigades, respectively, were James Scarlett and Lord Cardigan. The arrangement was not a happy one.

To select Cardigan for a position subservient to his brother-in-law, Lucan, was hardly less felicious than subordinating a mongoose to a snake. So you have these two relatives that hate each other, and one's been put in charge of the other. Lord Lucan's been put in charge of Lord Cardigan. Fast forward a little bit. The prime characteristic of Lord Raglan, his almost compulsive non-participation, aristocratic, courteous, and aloof, he seemed to display many of the characteristics of the extreme introvert.

So distasteful was it to have any direct contact with his fellow men that he could hardly bear to issue an order. And when he did so, it was couched in such a way to ensure a vast, gulf between his wishes and the comprehension of those for whom it was intended. Think about that. You're giving orders that basically make no sense. It's insanity. It's the opposite of simple, clear, and concise. This first battle was won by England, but it was not exactly, didn't exactly go the way they wanted it to um that battle was at alma despite the fact that raglan watching from afar played

little part in bringing about alma was a victory for the allies thanks to the courage and superb fighting qualities of the soldiers and their junior officers through what one observer described as a great want of generalship the victory was achieved with much unnecessary loss of life even worse because of a total failure to follow it up yielded few if any dividends for the camp As a whole so they were able to win the battle this first battle only because the soldiers and the junior officers were freaking squared away and brave and That's a that's a thing that you get throughout these but throughout this book is The bravery of the soldiers is Undeniable, but they get put in situations that are just disastrous

There is one final point of some relevance to the thesis of this book. It concerns the matter of initiative Lack of direction from those at the age of a hierarchical authoritarian organization provides a special dilemma for those at lower levels in the chain of command. Confronted with the absence of clear-cut orders, what are they to do? So you're in a hardcore hierarchy and there's no clear-cut orders. What are you supposed to do? If they take the law into their own hands, they run the risk of being accused of insubordination,

particularly if their plans happen to miscarry. But if they do not show initiative, then they are equally likely to suffer. for not having done so at alma the field officers for want of higher direction use their own initiative with considerable success and doing so they save the day if not the campaign this is what we set up in organizations when we're micromanaging people and all of a sudden you can't get the word out what are people supposed to do if you've trained them to get micromanaged they're not going to do anything fast forward a little bit trouble started in dividing command between the two generals lord lukin and lord cardigan already mentioned them individually neither will

was fitted to his post together they were a disaster as one of their fellow officers wrote in his diary the more to the more i see of lord lukin and lord cardigan the more i thoroughly despise them such crass ignorance and such overbearing temper raglan did not excel in dealing with these men instead of loyally supporting lukin he appeared to condone even the most flagrant excesses of the incorrigible cardigan so he's got the senior officer which is lukin and instead of Like, okay, you know what? You're just going to support the chain of command here. Instead, he sort of lets Cardigan run wild as well.

Not only did he allow Cardigan to bring his private yacht into Balaclava, where for weeks it took up valuable space in the congested harbor, but he also permitted him to live on board, even while his brigade and divisional commander were roughing at ashore on rations under canvas. I like how Dave is just closing his eyes and shaking his head. throughout this by forfeiting his position of authority and exacerbating the already bitter enmity between his subordinates raglan's laissez-faire handling of these relatively minor matters so the seas of the ultimate disaster the destruction of the light brigade so look we've heard some

crazy stuff but when your troops and your leadership and your subordinate leadership are living off rations intense and you're in a freaking yacht in the harbor you can't make that up dude that is a level of crazy that you almost couldn't believe and we were hearing stories about like they were bringing pianos and like you know gramophones and stuff like wow that's pretty excessive and now you got my I want I need my personal yacht in the harbor and I'm going to live on it Yeah. Man, that's rough. Have you ever been on a yacht before?

Not like a real yacht, no. Echo Charles? Yes, sir, I have. Yeah, I've been on a yacht. And let's just say it's not exactly roughing it. No, no, sir. Crazy. Fast forward a little bit.

For behind the color and the glory, behind the valor and the dash, the charge of the light brigade was a blunder of monumental proportions and an object lesson in, what can happen when the promotional machinery of a military organization is such as to put troops at the mercy of men like Raglan, Luken, and Cardigan. And there's a book. Actually, Laf always wants to cover this book on the podcast, The Charge of the White Brigade. You get into the details of these.

It's insane. It's totally insane. Here's a little brief of it. The explanation of this curious lapse hinges upon the fact that Lucan had oppressed upon Cardigan that his job was to stay put and defend the position. attacking only such enemy forces as came within reach under the circumstances Cardigan determined that he would not give his brother-in-law the slightest grounds for making a complaint should the attack fail if it did then Lucan should take the blame

Lucan had ordered him to defend the position and defend it he would even if it cost him his life haven't I said before some people they would rather die than let their ego get get offended here's a classic example It seems that the charge of the Light Brigade, from which only 15% of the original force of 673 road back, was the end result of faulty communication between five men, Raglan, his quartermaster General Airy, Lord's Lucan and Cardigan, and the impetuous Captain Nolan. Ragland's contribution is that he issued orders, the precise meaning of which has remained a matter for debate.

the fourth and more disastrous of these orders, Airy wrote out on a flimsy piece of paper. In doing so, he made no attempt to unravel the enigma posed by the words of his master. And the... I'm trying to see if they have this in here. Yeah, Raglan says, Cavalry to advance and take advantage of any opportunity

to cover the heights. They will be supported by the infantry, which have been ordered to advance on two fronts. That is the vaguest of vague orders. right there as they're trying to sort through this, which front, what guns in its new written form, the order was then passed to the unbalanced Captain Nolan, who loathed both Lucan and Cardigan. This glittering young officer of the 15th Hussars, who made up in arrogance what he lacked

in perspacity, delivered the order to Lord Lucan. Lucan, whose comprehension of Raglan's wishes seems to have been minimal, but who is not going to demean himself by bandying words with Nolan conveyed his interpretation of the order to Cardigan. This is like the telephone game you play when you're a kid. Cardigan with a bunch of ego. Cardigan, to give him his due, realizing that he was being asked to charge the Russian guns down a valley flanked by artillery, expressed considerable astonishment at what would

so evidently be the coup de grace for his brigade. But once again, communication foundered on the rocks of mutual dislike, pride. and jealousy joined and then overtaken by the irrepressible Nolan cardigan led his brigade into the jaws of death there's a little section here on a portioning of the blame like what do you do and he says this and it's a very interesting thing to be talking about in this book because well you'll see it's a very sad feature of authoritarian organizations that their nature inevitably militates against the possibility of learning from experience through the apportioning of blame. So these authoritarian organizations can't learn from mistakes because they just blame each other.

This is the opposite of extreme ownership. This extreme disownership. The reason is not hard to find. Since authoritarianism itself is the product of psychological defenses, authoritarian organizations are past masters at deflecting blame. They do so by denial, by rationalization, by making scapegoats, or by some mixture of the three. Wow. This is why the book Extreme Ownership has hit a mark, because it's the opposite of this.

Denial, rationalization, making scapegoats, or by some mixture of the three. However, it is achieved, the net result is that no real admission of failure or incomprehendial. is ever made by those who are really responsible. Hence, nothing can be done about preventing a reoccurrence. In this instance, as many others to be considered presently, scapegoats were found. One of them was Captain Nolan and an easy choice since he had very considerably allowed himself to be killed.

I mean, you can't make this up. You can't make this up the fact that the book Extreme Ownership and the concept of Extreme Ownership is, Literally the opposite of the psychopathology of bad leadership and the people like even in the you know I did a TED talk about extreme ownership and sort of part of that is No one takes ownership of the problems and therefore the problems don't get solved that's what this just said in more words because Because no doctor Nixon is smarter than I am not the only problem Another thing going on they mean meaning the charge of the light brigade was not the only Bad situation that unfolded in the Kermian war the Kermian mismanagement reached its apagy not in the battle so far considered

But in the winter and by the way I'm skipping some battles he gives more detail not in the battle so considered But in the winter which followed them despite the fact that between October 1854 and April 1855 There was no fighting whatsoever Ragland's army suffered a 35% decline in its active strength this loss was due to a total disregard for the army's physical welfare and a refusal to ameliorate the cold and wet of a Russian winter. Men died of cholera, exposure, malnutrition.

They died of untreated wounds of scurvy, gangrene, and dysentery. As one surgeon observed of the early losses at Balaclava, we now bury three times the number of men every week and think nothing of it. That's not from combat.

That's just from people dying. According to one writer, What killed more men than Russian bullets? What made life miserable? What sent men in the hundreds to the hospital tent or the grave, they were frequently synonymous, was want of firewood. Without it, not only were men never warm, not only could they never cook their ration of cold grunter, but they were never dry.

One of Ragland's colonels wrote, they go down to the trenches wet, come back wet, go into the hospital wet, die the same night and are buried in their wet blankets the next morning. And an army surgeon wrote, I never thought the human subject. would endure so much privation and suffering. And we have to remember, this is when freaking England is a superpower. This isn't like some rag-tag military unit.

Hey, what's exposure? New diabetics. Like cold, either cold, hot. You know, if you're out in the tundra, the freezing tundra, you die of being too cold. That's exposure. If you're out in the desert, you're exposed to heat, you can die of that.

Just the elements in general. Elements in general, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You probably wouldn't know about that growing up in Hawaii. No, sorry. You're not going to die from exposure in Hawaii.

You actually go sleep in exposure in Hawaii. It's all good. Back to the book. Eventually, after a winner of terrible privation, Raglan's army came to the last battles of the war, those of Redden. They involved the storming and capture of a fortress on the outskirts of Sebastopol.

It seems that little had been learned. Again, there was gross underestimation of the enemy's ability. Indeed, the forthcoming engagement was regarded with such equanimity that it attracted a large assembly of sightseers. When the band of the Rifle Brigade played light music, an audience of officers' wives, traveling gentlemen, and even a number of serving soldiers took up position on surrounding hills. Raglan, with his mind closed to all that had gone on before and an enduring overconfidence

in his army, chose only four. 400 of his 25,000 men for the first stage of the battle. The occupation of some quarries from which the assault on red end would be mounted. This proud economy in Manfowar was his first mistake. So you've got 25,000 people and you're going to use 400 of them. And by the way, there's people, there's a band playing. I don't even know what kind of music they're playing. What do you say, light, spirited music?

If you're going into combat and you're not listening to Metallica, you shouldn't bring a band. Raglin staff miscalculated the strength needed to occupy the quarries and to repel counterattacks. Reserves had been inadequate and unavailable when most needed. Little thought had been given to the selecting the troops to be used. The proportion of veterans was low. Many of the officers, although unquestionably brave were young and inexperienced, but it was with the second stage of the battle, the main assault that things went really wrong. Again, Raglan and other high-ranking officers underestimated enemy strength and overestimated

the effects of artillery bombardment with which he preceded the attack. Nor did he appreciate that between the bombardment of the Russian fort and the Don attacked forced upon him by the French commander, the enemy would well be able to repair their defenses and their guns. So you can just see mistakes are just piling up. Under the circumstances, it was hardly surprising that the great volume of fire from the Russian guns brought the British attack to a very bloody halt. It was at this moment just when it was most needed that Raglan's artillery received an order to cease fire.

It was this last blunder which transformed an aborted attack into a massacre, no longer intimidated. Enemy muskets poured a hail of lead into Ragland's stricken army. The latter parties moving like snails beneath their load were moaned down as they struggled up the slope. Thus ended the first battle for Redan until then the most disastrous of the war. Ragland's army had no illusions as to the incompetence of their general and his staff. A staff officer wrote, We had been told from headquarters and other high authority that success was certain, that the arrangements for the plan of attack were so perfect that they must succeed.

When they put to the test, they turned out to be so excrabbly bad that failure was inevitable. Others described the battle as mismanaged, blotched, blungled, feeble, and ill-concable. conducted bad business, a bungling, disgraceful, childish failure. Later, Lord Wollesley wrote, Upon this occasion, what we asked from them was beyond the power of men to give. Our plan for the attack was simply idiotic and was bound to fail. Another writer has this to say, not only was it a question of defective tactics. At headquarters, there was merely ignorance, not merely ignorance, but an entire lack of vision.

How was it possible that Raglan and those about him, knowing as they ought, by this time, the remarkable Russian ability to repair damage overnight could believe that 2,000 soldiers would be able to advance over a shell-swept glaciers, 250 yards in length, thread their way through an undistroyed abidus, cross a ditch 20-foot wide, and then a sail and escarpment without preliminary bombardment? I mean, can you even fathom that sort of operational planning? You have to think. This is no thought. Yeah, I'll be honest with you. I'm having a hard time listening to this and trying to even capture like the seminal, like the critical portion of this.

I'm trying to get in my head, like what is the most critical lesson from this? Of all these things that you keep piling on top of each other, of all these insane things. And there's a part of me that that finds it unbelievable. Like I am literally having a hard time believing this happened, knowing that it did of something I think is probably, you know, the biggest lesson in leadership

and something you articulate to people all the time, which is you actually have to care about your people more than yourself. That fundamental belief, not a tactic, not like a tool, but the belief that your people matter, more than yourself. And we see that people struggle with that. We see people struggle with that. We do. And we try to help them. And there's an ego and there's selfishness. And there's some natural tendencies we have to fight against. But the depth, the gulf between that idea and this is so far apart that it's really hard to appreciate how little the perception is that the

things that you're talking about aren't things. They're people, like human beings on your team. And hearing it is it's hard to comprehend how do you get so disconnected. You know, the yacht was like sort of a funny, a little bit like sad story. But we all know that we, I know it's coming. I know what the outcome is. So the culmination of that is how inconceivable it could be. And then how there's a lesson inside there of if you don't care about the people around you, you're not going to listen to them.

And how far you can get from that. I mean, this isn't this isn't a thousand years ago. Yeah. Yeah. The um like there's a billion different the last section I read it's like oh a tactical problem tactical problem tactical problem tactical problem tactical problem We get that there's some tackle and people make tactical mistakes how the question is how do you make all these tactical mistakes the answer is leadership Yeah all your problems are leadership problem and the solution is leadership The solution to problems is leadership and you end up with people that are bad leaders in these situations

They make bad decisions and things fall apart and the other thing we have to think about too because this is a very It's a military thing. It's a military idea But there's there's the men and there's the mission right and there's a priority Sometimes people say well you know the mission is the most important thing the reality is That's actually not true if you prioritize the mission over the mission over the men, you won't have any men left and you won't be able to execute any missions. So they're mutually supporting things that need to be both, that both need to be addressed and taken care of.

If, if, now look, can you do, can you get a mission where, hey, Dave, you're going to take your assault team in and you're taking out this, you know, air defense node in North Korea and Jocco's team is going to take out the other defense node and XACO's. And if we don't take out these three defense nodes, we can't, like, we're not going to strategically achieve this objective. Then it's like, okay, look, look, we're going to be, we're going to be taking some casualties. And look at D-Day. That's what we did.

Look at the Pacific Island campaign. That's what people did. But to look at a situation like this where there's about 10,000 other ways to execute this mission is insane. Yeah. And if, and if you're going through that sort of mental arm wrestling over the men or the mission or the people and the mission, the only way you actually get people to be willing to do that mission is for them to know that you care about them more than yourself. And that's too, that's your

point is you're not even saying the mission isn't as important as the people in like in a in a hierarchy. You're saying that if you actually want to be able to accomplish the most difficult things, the most difficult missions, missions that almost appear unwinnable. If you actually want to be able to do that, which of course we do, we're here to solve the problem. We're here to complete the mission is to have people willing to do that. And the only way to do that is for them to go, oh, Dave actually cares about me more than just getting the check in the block that he knocked this thing out or took care of this one thing or got this mission solved. We can tell his boss, yeah, mission accomplished. And you actually have a better chance of doing things that by rights

almost appear to be impossible. Yeah, the culture that you have inside your organization, you can have a culture inside your organization where people are going to be willing to sacrifice their lives for your team, right? And if you look at this time period with the Brits, the Victorian, the honor, the glory, the, I mean, when you know at the beginning phases of World War I, when they would, when they would, if there was, if you were a military aged male and you weren't in the military, the women would give you the, the white flower. Right. Which meant you were a coward. And so people are like, okay, where do I sign up? Right. And that was. kind of the deal. Look at the Japanese in World War II. Now were those guys, was those

kamikaze pilots brainwashed? Well, not even just brainwashed, but what are they regretful? Yeah, in some cases they were. But also, they were committed culturally to this overarching thing. Here's the problem with that. In both those cases, if you as a leader continue to sacrifice people without making the progress, you end up having to say, this is a working out and the people will look at you and say wait a second we we tried this this isn't working you need to figure out a different plan or we're not going to do what you tell us to do um continuing on here for the student of the psychosomatic disease the aftermath of the battle is not without significance immediately following the defeat raglan was seen seen to age visibly

within a few days he had contracted cholera and before 10 days had passed he was dead to his generals were similarly stricken. Raglin's demise added to the depression of the army. Had they known that his replacement would be 63-year-old General Simpson, their grief might have been more acute. It's not that Simpson was a harsh task master. On the contrary, he was a gentle old man, but a very mediocre ability. He was as devoid of useful experience as had been his predecessor.

her, his methods were rather simpler than those of Raglands, presumably to avoid giving a wrong order. He gave no orders at all. And he devised no plan. In the words of one observer, he did not command the army. On the day of his promotion, he is credited with saying, they must indeed be hard up when they appointed an old man like me. How about you say no?

And by the way, if the boss doesn't come up with the plan, come up with one. In fact, the government was not so hard up as they were. They had to entrust the army to this gout-ridden old general. A far better choice would have been the energetic and outspoken Sir Colin Campbell, a man of considerable ability and wide experience. But Campbell was a maverick. And as such was unpopular with the military establishment. He also came from a relatively humble background.

So instead of taking the freaking George S. Patton of the crew, you take this loser. Under Simpson's quavering and. In effectual hand the second battle for Redden the last battle of the war proved even more disastrous than the first Once again a massive bombardment was followed by a frontal assault across a heavily defended triangle of ground flanked by Russian guns But this time the troops were younger and greener and despite all their training on the parade grounds of Aldershot less inclined to valor than discretion having sustained 2,440s 17 casualties in two hours of fighting. They turned tail and fled, thus adding humiliation to defeat.

So that's what I was just talking about. Hey, we're willing to sacrifice. But there's a line. 2,447 casualties in two hours of fighting. As an example of protracted military incompetence at a high level of command, the Korean War is not unfortunately unique. It was, however, the prototype for subsequent ineptitude.

those smaller number in comparison with those of later wars, the 18,000 who died owed their ultimate, their untimely demise to an mixture of poor planning, unclear orders, lack of intelligence in both senses of the word, and fatal acquiescence to social pressures on the part of their commander. That's a very interesting topic. Social pressures, we see a lot of that going on in this current time in the military. social and political pressures on war fighting units who have a job which is to fight. They died because they were mismanaged by men whose positions in the military hierarchy

owed less to their ability than to their wealth, their place in society, or their reputation for, quote, fitting in. They died because soldiers were too readily regarded as expendable objects. the Crimean Wars The Crimean War was fought at a time Of the greatest prosperity this country had ever known When British efficiency, inventiveness, And sheer entrepreneurial vigor knew no bounds

As I said earlier, this isn't like a rag-tag crew Why then was it fought so badly, so badly That the casual observer might have been forgiving For thinking that at some level We did not really want to win Of course, there are some of some people, obvious and immediate reasons governmental stinginess clearly played a part as did the deliberate policy of entrusting military matters to the to an aristocratic rich but essentially amateur

elite this on the grounds that such a class would need that would have neither the motivation nor indeed the skill to turn upon the state but this is only to touch the surface of the problem such reasons do not explain the passivity and non-participation the monumental errors of judgment, the ludicrous appointments, the paralytic ability to improvise or innovate. They do not explain the staggering and ultimately self-destroying wastage of manpower, which seems to have its origin in a curiously detached attitude toward human suffering. Finally, they do not explain the even greater depths of incompetence shown on this occasion by the enemy of whom it has been said, quote,

the Russians with more men in the field and immense potential reserves were even bigger muddlers than they are invaders and seem to move in a vague dream of battle. So this, that whole last section is saying, look, there were some problems. Like maybe the government didn't support as much. Maybe there was some,

some, some, what do you say? Governmental stickiness, right? So there's some problems, but you should not be losing like that. It doesn't explain all these issues. And especially,

that last part which says look the Russians were like crap anyways it's not like they got beat by the freaking Woffin SS in 1941 so there's issue issues um next the next thing that he talks about in here and again there's so much more detail let's get this book there's so much more detail that is important um the next section here chapter four talks about the booer war And we covered the Boer War on podcast 233. The Boer War, the Boer Army consisted, isn't an interesting statement about decentralized command. The Boer Army consisted of 35,000 generals,

each combatant, his own master defending his homeland. They were also good marksmen, agile, horsemen, and determined members of a flexible, knowledgeable guerrilla force. So that's what we're dealing with now, the booers. Boer Makum plan. Remember that? Were you waiting for me to say it? Well, kind of.

No. That's the expression in South Africa for the booers. It's like they're going to come up with a plan. The booer makes a plan. That's my Afrikaans. But that's the kind of people that you're fighting. You're fighting farmers. You're fighting people that work the land, that ride horses, that shoot, that hunt.

That's who you're fighting against. freaking legit enemy Fast forward a little bit Largely because they eschewed Any form of Sartorial elegance That means clothing by the way And preferred the wearing of civilian attire

Dark cloaks and floppy hats To the sorts of uniforms affected by the British The booers were dubbed a rabble of illiterate peasants And their army utterly ludicrous So these guys were just wearing like what they wore in the field This is like if you went to war with Texas, and they showed up wearing freaking Levi's, cowboy hats, and wrangler shirts, right? And you're like, well, who are these guys? How are they going to find us?

Always good to underestimate them based on what they're wearing. Yeah. Fast forward a little bit. As Lord Kishner said, the booers are not like the Sudanese who stood up to a fair fight. They're always running away on their little ponies. There are good many foreigners among the boers, but they are easily shot as they do not slink about like the boers themselves. So here you are complaining. What kind of tactics are these?

What are they doing? We had to be careful that. Like in Iraq was like, oh, they're running around just doing these IEDs. That's cowardly. It's like, oh, they work. Yeah. How about that sense? They're not as easily shot.

Complaining that they're hard to kill. Yeah. Check. I guess maybe they know what they're doing. Yeah. Sounds like they have a good plan. Yeah. And by the way, we did this to them in the Revolutionary War.

But just FYI, they're England. Their Lord Kishner. Remember what happened at Lexington and Concord? You know, we were scurring around too, and we kind of kicked your ass. So you should have maybe learned some lessons there. Which is one of the points of this whole book is the fact that there's no lessons. No lessons. This then was the background of the attitudes and expertise of the British Army brought to the Boer War.

Any residual doubts about its unfittedness for the expedition tend to dissipate when one considers the behavior of the generals put in charge. the leading character was the commander-in-chief, General Sir Redvers Buller. According to a contemporary description, there could be no finer choice for the South African adventure. There is no stronger commander in the British Army than this remote, almost grimly resolute, completely independent, utterly fearless, steadfast and vigorous man. Big-boned, square jaw, strong-minded, strong-headed, smartness, sagacity, administrative capacity. he was born to be a soldier of the very best English type, needless to say, the best type of all. Freaking legit, right?

Here's the reality. Unfortunately, this assessment was at variance with the facts in all but two particulars. Firstly, he was indeed big. Secondly, though sadly lacking in moral courage, he was undoubtedly brave when it came to physical danger. In this respect, as in many others, he was not unlawful. unlike Raglan of the Kermian War, and indeed some other commanders of subsequent years. Of Sir Reverse of Buller, as he became to be known.

So instead of his name is Redverse, they started calling him reverse instead. Kruger writes, At the risk of marring the contemporary description, it should be mentioned that his big bones were particularly well covered, especially in the region of his stomach, and that his square jaw was not especially apparent

above a double chin. So this is just like a fat dude. And they're trying to be. make him sound like a badass. What was his attitude like? Fast forward a little bit. Buller lost no time in trying to rid himself of any direct responsibility for the conduct of the war by handing over the reins to subordinate commanders to whom he gave no further

directives. Buller's subordinate General Methuen with 8,000 men was very nearly defeated by 3,000 booers. Methuen's objective was the Modder River, a natural defense line for booers. Accordingly, without any reconnaissance, he ordered his troops to make. make a frontal attack are we starting to get if we start to understand the frontal attack might not be the best move since he could not see the enemy he wrongly assumed that no enemy was there led by their officers the men advanced across the flat and open veld

towards the river all went well until they were within easy range of the booers who had concealed themselves with what was subsequently described as a fiendish cunning below the deep banks of the river those of Methuen's army who were not killed outright by the sudden blast of fire from the invisible boers spent the day lying prostrate under a scorching sun. In a temperature of 110, unable to move forward or back, they, including the 70 wounded, suffered extreme discomfort from thirst and slowly blistering skin. Methuen's remedy was to direct heavy artillery fire on the boer positions. Thanks to the latter's use of cover, this barrage had very little influence on the

course of events, apart from killing a number of his own troops through faulty range finding. It was only under cover of darkness that the British eventually withdrew, leaving behind 500 dead and wounded. I keep falling into these little traps as I'm listening to you. And the trap I keep falling into is you started up like, hey, here's this guy in charge and he's totally incompetent.

And he's going to relinquish the command and the control and this whole responsibility to his subordinates. And I'm thinking, awesome. That's awesome. I would love to be that subordinate. Cool, I've got an incompetent boss, but at least he's letting me be in charge. And the trap I keep falling into is how far down this goes, this sort of like illness of the organization, that this leadership.

It isn't just the people at the very, very top. It's all the subordinate commanders as well. Because when I hear you say, you have a weak boss, I like that. Kind of fired up. Cool. This is awesome. Sweet. I'll be in charge.

This is great. And I can do whatever I want because he doesn't seem to care. But that's, I've fallen in that trap a couple times now hearing you talk about how, far down this goes of people that have should not be there for their dads are buying their position or whatever it might be i got to bring this up i'm bringing up right now there's a underlying this book this book catches so many of the themes that i talk about all the time and that we talk about all the time there's one theme that i've found throughout this book that never gets addressed Never gets addressed in this book.

And it's an underlying theme that is so obvious as you read this book. And that is the idea of detachment. Because every one of these military leaders, as you read the decisions that they're making, and you know that they're all caught up in their ego and their social structure and the hierarchy and the actual tactical engagement that they're in and what they can see, they make. It's so you just sit there and think hey hold on a second you're gonna you can move across his open field that you're an idiot like why are you doing this and the reason one of the reasons yes there's ego Yes there's there's there's a social structure and hierarchy and bravery and all those things yep they're all there But if you are in charge of something and you don't take a step back to actually assess what is happening how it's going to happen

Why you're going to do it this way if you can't detach from these things and you don't detach from these things and You are going to fail and you're going to fail all the time. And that's one of the only themes that I talk about, that we talk about, that really doesn't get addressed here. He never says, hey, and maybe I didn't catch it. Maybe we'll catch it the first time because I'm paying attention to it as we read it. But he never says, hey, no one took a step back and looked at this plan. It doesn't really say that, which is a huge red flag. You know, we were talking about this

commercial Is that what it's called? Advertisement, right? We shot, right? An advertisement, Echo Charles was in charge of an advertisement. You were making a video for Jock Fuel going to get some go, right?

And I had a small role, you know? Sure. Small role, one line, right? Sure, one line, yep. Well, when I showed up, So you guys were kind of done with the filming and I showed up to deliver my one line. Right? Yes, sir.

And when I came in, I kind of changed the script of not of my line, but of the, I would say the lead actors. The straight up ending. Yeah. Well, as I was trying to explain is like, that's not because I'm smarter. It's not because I'm funnier. It's not because I'm better at writing. It's because I, when I came in, your mind is filled with, you know, first of all, four or five hours of prep what you think the shots are going to be, right?

And writing. And then you've been on scene for how long. Were you an hour there? Yeah. So you're on there for an hour. You got all these different components in your head. You're trying to assemble what it's going to look like. I stroll in, you know, fresh off of like a jaco go.

I'm kind of hyped, ready to deliver my line. And I hear the ending. And I go, hmm, but I'm detached. And so I'm seeing it from a bigger perspective. And I go, hey, the closing line should be this. And you were like, a little bit of resistance, a little bit of resistance, because I know it hurts a little bit. Well, okay.

Go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to say the resistance was more like the feeling of momentum. You know how like, okay, we got the beginning. We got everybody here. It's boom. The beginning. Then we got the middle, you know, and the end is right after this.

So it's kind of like things are coming along, you know. So we're ready and when we kind of are writing momentum. And you change it. It's like, oh, shoot, we got to kind of shift and pivot, as it were. Right. So it was kind of that a little bit, but I did recognize immediately that that was a good ending. And the only reason I was able to see that is because I was detached. And as I came in, kind of looked at the thing and saw how it was going.

It's like, okay. And luckily, you're a humble person. You were like, check. You weren't like, you know what? Hey, Jocco, you don't know how the whole thing goes together. Hey, you have, hey, that's not, well, we're looking. You know, you could have given me 87 different excuses that I would have been like, okay, you know what I mean? I'm not going to impose on you and just be like change it because this isn't, you know,

it's not like you're going to win an Oscar for this freaking ad, although maybe, you know. So, so, but luckily you're humble and you are, you are detached enough to go, hmm, okay, cool. So that's what, that's one thing that I see, that I don't see in this book. I don't see Dixon talking about the fact that one of the best skills for a person to have to overcome all these other problems is being able to detach, take a step back. Yes.

I was just thinking about, and we talk about detachment all the time, all the time. And I was thinking about these situations if you just described two of them, you know, between those two conflicts, the Crimean War and the Boer War, is this idea that detachment only works that the people on your team

are actually prioritizing the team being successful over these other things like the social pressure or these other, things that I know they sound outlandish. I know that they sound outlandish the way you're describing this, but but even inside these organizations, does Dave like, oh man, I mean, I kind of work for Jocko. This is kind of his company and, and I don't want to, I don't want to make him mad. So, so go, go, go, go. Yeah, here's what's interesting about what you're saying. You, because of what we do for a living, you're already aware of those things, right? A person,

that's, you're not, even what you just said, like, wait, is Jock? That's a detachment. You're assessing what's going on. Most people are just, they're so caught up. They're like, I'm not going to let Dave Burke get controlled this operation. That's what they, that's the end state. Yeah. The end state is, I'm not going to let Dave Burke run this thing.

Or Echo's like, I'm not going to let Jock change. That's it. I'm not going to let Jock change the way this script is going. That is it. He's, that's the firefight right there in his head. I'm not going to let Jocco dictate what's happening. I'm in charge. Hey, Jocco, we're,

doing it my way. That's that's what happens. That's what happens to these guys. The fact of the matter is they don't detach so they can't see it. So it's yes, you're right in the fact that you're right in the fact that they aren't considering it. But the reason that they're not considering it is because they can't even see it because it's all around them. It's just the way they're thinking. It's the way they're thinking, which is freaking hard. Horrifying. Yeah, that's the horrifying part horrifying part. Yeah Gets worse by the way within a few days of his performance at Modder River. He confirmed his worst the worst fears of his critics and even more disastrous Battle of Magers Fortine

Magers Fontyne sorry to the people of South Africa to the Afrikaans. I'm sorry Makers Fontyne Especially for a Dutch guy should be doing a little bit better the boers were concealed in a narrow in narrow trenches in front of his objective They waited patiently until the British came within easy range. Surprise was complete when they opened fire. A hail of lead swept through the ranks of the Highland Brigade. Within minutes, the ground was carpeted with dead soldiers, including the Highland commander, George Wowshop.

It was too much for the remainder, despite their training and discipline, despite the honor of the regiment, despite all the factors, which the High Command finally believed would induce uneducated soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the shortcoming of their generals. They broke ranks, turned tail, and fled. As they did so, they were further pounded and demoralized by hitherto undetected batteries of booer artillery. Fast forward a little bit. Methuen was by no means the most foolhardy of the generals. There was General Feather Stoneaw, who at the Battle of Belmont insisted on riding up and down in front of his men in full regalia, thereby announcing his importance to the enemy and effectively hampering the fire of his own men. It was not long before the booers rectified his error by shooting off, shooting him off of his horse.

There was General Hart who at the Battle of Colenso inflicted 30 minutes parade ground drill on his brigade brigade before marching them shoulder to shoulder in barrack square precision across the open veld against the boer position. Since it was broad daylight, his densely packed column provided an irresistible target for every booer gun and rifle within range. This battle, in this battle, the British were defeated with a loss of 1,139 casualties and 10 guns against the Boer losses of six dead and 21 wounded. Fast forward a little bit. It is at this point it becomes necessary to introduce another concept which is relevant to the contact of the South African War. It is that of the effects of psychological stress upon decision making. It is perhaps their resistance to stress

and their ability to carry on when things go wrong that good generals are most easily distinguished from poor ones which by the way if you can detach that's what's going to allow you to do that by this standard general Buller physically so huge failed dismally irresolute from the outset the three defeats sapped whatever confidence he ever had from being weak and fearful he became a veritable jelly of indecision his plans became vague and indefinite his specific order scarcely more enlightening. His lack of moral courage in the face of adversity revealed itself most clearly in his propensity for making scapegoats of his unfortunate subordinates, those admittedly incompetent generals who had blundered on without direction or assistance from above while taking none of the

blame himself. Again, the direct antithesis of extreme ownership. The nearest to such admission was a reference to bad luck. Bad luck it may have been, but worse luck was to follow in the shape of that 1,400 foot monument to military ineptitude spying cop the totally unnecessary storming of this mini mountain was to the booer war what the charge of the light brigade had been in the kermian war the details are as followed while still numbed by the series of defeats just recounted bullers army of 29,000 infantry 2,600 mounted men eight field batteries and 10 naval guns was enriched if that is the word by the arrival of a fresh division commanded by Sir Charles Warren. Fast forward a little bit, the plan went wrong for several reasons.

In the first place, Warren's division was far too small for the main attack. The second reason for disaster lay in the character of Warren, who has been described as a dilatory yet fidgety, overcautious, yet irresolute, and totally ignorant regarding the use of cavalry. He was also obsessive, obstinate, self-opinionated, and excessively bad tempered. Isn't it interesting how you hear bad tempered a lot when this guy is describing

freaking knucklehead leaders. This also included an obsession with enormous baggage train and fear that it might be destroyed by a non-existent enemy by non-existent enemy guns on the small mountains spy and cop. So concerned was he with his baggage

that he spent 26 hours personally supervising its transfer across the river. the delay was invaluable to the booers. So this is the guy that had, you know, pianos, long-horned gramophones, chests of drawers, polo sticks. Like, this is one of those guys. And so he's trying to make sure that all of his baggage

is getting where it needs to be. And personally supervising this freaking savage. Fast forward a little bit. So while the general stayed below, the men were ordered up the steeply sloping mountainside. So he kind of thought that we needed to. to take this high ground, spy and cop. Seems like a good call.

The men were ordered up the steeply sloping mountainside into a fog, hardly less dense than that which clouded the minds of their commanders. When in almost zero visibility, they thought they had reached the summit, the assault force halted, congratulated themselves on the total absence of opposition, raised the union jack, and tried to entrench. The operative word is tried, for the top was much like the rest of the mountain, solid rock. Nobody had warned them of this. By the way, he didn't do a recon, just FYI.

They decided to use sandbags only to find that no one had remembered to bring them. While the mists cleared, they did the best they could with pieces of rocks and clods of earth, only too well aware that this flimsy protection provided no overhead cover whatsoever. If this gave them food for thought, there was more to follow. For with a further improvement in visibility, they made a second disquieting discovery. They were not where they thought they were. Instead of the summit, they found themselves on a small plateau. Some way below the mountain top 1,700 men on a piece of ground 400 by 500 yards and above them on three sides the boers

The enemy opened fire within minutes the ground was littered with corpses many with bullet holes in the side of the head or body owing to the lack of overhead cover the losses from shrapnel were even greater trapped in this seemingly hopeless position without any guidance or directives from their general the 200 Lancaster Fusoliers laid down their arms and surrendered to the booers. Their place was taken by reinforcements sent up from below. Meanwhile, Warren and Bullard did nothing to help the hard-pressed troops, no doubt appalled by what was happening to his army on the heights above Warren. Supine, at the best of times, went into a state that has been described as paralytic. Important note, a war correspondent who had witnessed the dire events on top of the mountain hurried down to the commanding general.

But instead of receiving this, admittedly unsolicited information with gratitude, Warren flew into a rage and demanded that the journalist should be arrested for insolence. Name of the war correspondent was Winston Churchill. Before moving on to the next example, it's worth placing the Crimean and Boer Wars in the same perspective. Both present a picture of what appears to be unrelieved stupidity. But more interesting is the psychological pattern of these events. Here was a rich and powerful nation, anxious to assert its rights, first in Russia, then

in South Africa. What did it do but send out highly regimented armies which endeavored to make up encouraged, discipline, and visual splendor what they lacked in relevant training, technology, and adequate leadership? As to the latter, in each case a commander-in-chief was selected who, despite his deficiencies, remained inordinately popular with his troops for far longer than he deserved. Both men were genial, courteous, and kind. Both were inexperienced, irresolute, and lacking moral courage. Both were rich and well-connected, but both when the occasion demanded

were only too ready to divest themselves of all responsibility for the errors which they had made. And the one seemed quite unable to learn from the mistakes of the other. From the moment, it might prove helpful to keep in mind certain characteristics of the incompetence just described. They include.

So here's we get into a list of problems. Number one, an underestimation, sometimes bordering on the arrogant of the enemy. Check. And equating war with sport. Oh, that's a good one. An inability to profit from past experience.

Hello. A resistance to adopting and exploiting available technological and novel tactics. This is just a list of freaking what not to do. And aversion to reconnaissance coupled with a dislike of intelligence in both sense of the word. And I probably skipped over. There's a lot of situations where they don't do any recon. They're like, oh, yeah, we know what to do. And they just go and execute.

Great physical bravery, but little moral courage. And apparent imperviousness by commanders to loss of life and human suffering amongst the rank and file. Or it's converse and irrational and incapacitating state of compassion. Passivity and indecisiveness in their senior commanders. A tendency to lay blame on others. Boom. A love of the frontal assault, boom. A love of bull.

And we covered a bit of this, but we brought up the term chicken shit. Actually, someone sent a great, I forget what document they got it from, but the term chicken shit is exactly, I should have brought that definition. It's exactly what I was trying to describe. The technical definition of chicken shit is perfect. It's like meaningless, imposed discipline for the sake of discipline. I love a smartness. I love a bull, smartness, precision, and strict preservation of the, quote, military pecking order. A high regard for tradition and other aspects of convert conservatism.

A lack of creativity, improvisation, inventiveness, and open-mindedness. A tendency to eschew moderate risks for tasks so difficult that failure might seem excusable. And last but not least, proclamation. This is a good little filter to run yourself through once a week to see where you're at Just to check on your damn self What do you got Dave? I'm literally writing So as you went through that list I tried to just as quickly as I could just make the connection Humility humility innovate adapt default aggressive humility cover and move dichotomy extreme ownership direct approach

Innovate adapt detached devolved aggressive discipline and how quickly And this isn't to like show how smart I am. It's like how easy it is to make the connection. What you preface this was he kind of, I think he listed three. One was technology. I forgot what the first one was and the third one was leadership. And really the list could just be one.

It's leadership. But the title of this book is, the title of the book is the psychology of it. It's the individual's person psychology. And when we're talking about these things is how painful it is to sit from the outside and watch the hole that they dig, or just how obvious, and to your point of detachment, how obvious it is.

It's not nuanced. It's not like a slight little adjustment. You're just sitting back here watching this, and you know there's zero chance it's going to work, not because we know the history, but because of the setup that you're revealing, this is the situation, this is how these people make decisions. This is the way they think.

Like, this is going to fail. This is going to fail. And how easy it is to attribute every single one of those to a basic, fundamental leadership behavior. It's disturbing. It's disturbing. Not the least of which is the one that repeats itself more than anything else, which is what you talked about at the very beginning was humility. Just the inability to be humble. It's it's it's hard to listen to you, man. Yeah. It is very difficult and it's about to get worse chapter 5 Indian interlude, which also includes a little section on Afghanistan from the data considered so far it might be thought that military incompetence is confined to intracial

conflicts, white against white. Unfortunately, as suggested by the following account of a minor incident at the time of the Indian mutiny, this particular prediction is not borne out. When it comes to interracial conflict, a pattern of incompetence is little changed. Here is the story of Fort Ruiya, as recounted by P. Scott O'Connor. General Walpole, Walpole, who, it appears that never before held the independent command was ordered to lead an expedition up the left bank of the Ganges River from Lucknow to Roe-Hickland, Ro-Hilkland to clear the rebels out from that part of the country. The brigade set out from Lucknow on the 7th of April 1858, and on the morning of the 15th,

found itself in the vicinity of Fort Ruyah. The troops had marched nine miles that morning, but Walpole, anxious to win him. his spurs with the least possible delay sent his force immediately to the assault. The fort was the residence of a rebel landholder named Narpat Singh. He had but 300 followers at his command, but taking advantage of the troubles which beset the British in India. In the dark days of 1857, he unfurled the flag of rebellion at Ruiya and bade the government defiance.

His stronghold was nothing very formidable. on its northern and eastern faces was strongly defended by a high mud wall and a broad and deep ditch covered by a dense jungle but from the west and south it was open to attack as the wall on those sides were but a few feet high the defenders relying mainly on the jahil the waters of which lapped the fort to protect them from their enemies coming from that direction there were two gates to the fort and these opened on the sides just mentioned and there is no doubt that the general wall pole delivered the assault from the direction of the fort must have been quickly reduced with but a fraction of casualties which actually occurred. It was the month of April

and the water of the Jeheel was everywhere very shallow and in many places dried up so that the only obstacle to an assaulting party from that side was lacking. So there's a place where you can assault this thing pretty easily because there's supposed to be a river there or some kind of a pond there, but it's all dried up. So that's the obvious place that usually you use that for defense, but it's not there. It's like you have a moat, but the moat is dried up. Okay, well, so that's where we're going to attack. However, back to the book, but General Walpole took no trouble to reconnoiter and even without a cursory examination of the position,

launched his men in a blundering haphazard manner against the strongest face of the fort. The rebels, it was reported, were prepared to evacuate the place after firing a few, rounds, but when they saw the British advancing against the face which could be defended, they changed their minds and determined to show fight. Now Walpole, under the mistaken impression that there was a gate on the east side of the fort, directed Captain Ross Grove to advance with a company of the 42nd Highlanders through the wood in that direction, and to hold the gate and prevent the enemy from escaping. The company advanced in skirmishing order through the jungle before them and dashing across

the open space of ground, which lay between the foreman. and the fort found their progress impeded by the ditch which had up until that point been invisible There was no alternative but to lie down on the edge of the counterscarp and There and as there was only a few paces between them and the enemy and no shelter whatsoever They were exposed to a galling fire and suffered severely they held on to their position however in a most heroic manner awaiting the development of the attack in the other directions but finding after a time that no other attack was being made and Grove sent word to the general and tell him that there was no gate and requested scaling ladders for an escalate Dude, don't talk about a brave

Individual They're freaking Under-wethering fire and there happens to be no gate instead of said hey dude, we're out of here. He's like, hey, can you send us ladders? Maybe Meanwhile Captain Kaif Holy unaware of the ditch which had checked Grove in his advance came up with his Sikhs and dashed into it with no ladders to help them out again. They were shot down without mercy by the enemy No orders had yet reached Grove, nor were their scaling ladders forthcoming. So a second messenger was dispatched to the general asking for reinforcements.

The general apparently now alarmed at the consequences of his own rashness, hastily sent the heavy guns around to the west, and ordered a bombardment of the fort from that side. I'm sure if you're tracking this, you can see what's common. A very natural result followed. Some of the balls from the guns going over the fort fell among our men on the other side, for they had not yet been withdrawn. A report to this effect was carried to Adrian Hope. Who at once and Adrian Hope by the way, this is like the son of Earl John Hope who is like a royal and a very respected heroic soldier from the peninsula wars.

So Adrian Hope, a report to this effect was carried to Adrian Hope who at once rode off to inform Walpole. But from what followed, it appears that latter doubted the accuracy of the statement for Hope immediately returned to see for himself. It's another thing that you're going to hear in this book is when you hear something that doesn't quite fit in, you deny it. This is something we see every damn day. Oh, it doesn't match your narrative? Cool. Ignore it. Good God, General, exclaimed Grove on seeing him, this is no place for you.

You must lie down. But the kindly warning came too late. For even at that moment, hope fell back into the speaker's arm shot through the chest. Soon after came the order to retire. General Walpole rode back to camp. Under the cover of darkness that night, the rebels slipped out of the fort and made good their escape. The loss of the country sustained by the death of Willoughby, Douglas, Bramley, Harrington,

and of the hundred and odd men uselessly sacrificed before Ruyah was great. But the loss of Adrian Hope was a cause for national sorrow. His death was mourned on the spot by every man in the camp. Loud and deep were the incentives against the obstinate stupidity which had caused it. General Walpole's unhappy expedition was not the first disaster to befall the British Army in India. 16 years previously in 1842, a catastrophe occurred beside which the events at Fort Ruyah seemed scarcely worth a mention. Quote, the road was strewn with mangled corpses of their comrades and the stench of death in the air all along the route they had been passing little groups of camp followers starving, Frostbitten, and many of them in a state of gibbering idiocy.

the Afghans not troubling to kill these stragglers had simply stripped them and left the cold to do its work and now the poor wretches were huddling together naked in the snow striving hopelessly to keep warm by the heat of their own bodies there were women and little children among them who piteously stretched out their hands for help later the Afghans were to report with relish that the unhappy fugitives in their blind instinct to preserve life a little longer had been reduced to eating the corpses of their But they all died in the end. The British retreat from Kabul in the first Afghan war was described by field marshaled Sir General Templar as the quote most disgraceful and humiliating episode in our history of war against the a against an Asian enemy up to that time and quote judging from the details of how a British army of 4,500 men was wiped out by what was in comparison with the British strength a handful of Afghan tribesmen the field marshal's words were are nothing of an overstatement. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. So what did the British do wrong? How did they end up in this situation in Afghanistan? In this worst possible site, the British laid out a camp. So they had to figure out where they were going to build a camp.

And the worst possible site, the British laid out a camp to the worst possible design. Not only was the two mile perimeter, a purely nominal obstacle consisting of a low, wall, a narrow ditch, far too long to be defended by the numbers it enclosed. But the hole was open at its northern end to a compound of dwelt. Wellings for the British envoy and his staff. This hot-patch of houses positively invited infiltration by even the least intrepid of enemies. To complete this incorrigible behavior, there had been one final act of such unbelievable stupidity that its repercussions were to lead to the death of an army.

By the orders of the commanding officer, Willoughby Cotton, the army's commissart stores were constructed a quarter mile outside the contonement. So they have their camp and they build they put their supplies a quarter mile outside the camp The consequences of this division decision were tragic and inevitable When the Afghans finally rose up against the British the army were promptly cut off from their supplies Thus it was under the threat of starvation that they ultimately capitulated to Akbar Khan the Afghan leader and began to retreat which cost them all their lives It's it's I'm really glad you brought up the concept of detachment being, maybe he gets absent from, at least from an explicit sense.

But you're trying to piece together how this is possible from a, from a professional, maybe the most professional military in the world, at least historically at that point. Yes. You know what I mean? Like you said, not a bunch of just JV dude trying to put some things together. And the only thing I can get in my head is what you, you talked about earlier, is, is the, the inability to recognize the potential. And so the disbelief of, hey, if we do this, you know, they could attack us and kill us all.

And you're like, nope, can't happen. Cannot happen. And being unable to acknowledge that if something isn't the way you think that it is and someone going, I guess I got to think someone's going, hey, boss, do you think we should bring it inside the lines? Because it could create some potential risk for us. And the answer is that can't happen. Or some, I'm trying to create in my mind some version of it. of that where the disbelief is so high that they don't even recognize.

I can't come up with another way to understand how it could be so bad other than when you made that connection of detachment and how do you deal with with information that you can't process. You just deny that it happened. How old is your oldest daughter? 12. Okay. So if I said your oldest daughter and what type of military training is she had?

A little bit. You know what I'm saying? Like you take a 12 year old girl that. plays guitar and is on the freaking softball team, whatever. Yeah. And you say, hey, listen, I want you to design a fort to defend yourself from bad guys. Here's what you have. Here's the supplies that you have.

There's zero chance, zero chance that your daughter says, you know what? Here's where we're going to put all of our guns and all of our army. And we're going to put our supplies way over here. There's no chance that that happens. It's freaking ridiculous. The power of the psychology of disbelief or whatever I'm coming up with the term of, you say something, I'm like, that can't be possible. So my only choice is to dismiss it.

Yeah. And again, the detachment piece, if you sit there and come up with a plan yourself, you're not going to see these things. You've got to, even if you have to let your 12 year old daughter come up with a plan. But dude, is it so unreasonable for me to just say, hey, man, at least put your supplies inside the lines from a professional military? I have no idea why that decision was made. It doesn't really talk about it.

You know, is it like, hey, well, I mean, I can't even really think of a reason right now. Right. Hey, we don't want the stores to be attracting bears. I mean, I don't know. That's why you might not stay with your food if you're in Alaska. Right. I don't know what they're thinking. It's craziness

But if you're all wrapped up in it You are not going to see it I guess the other end that you might not see Is if you're too far away from it If you're the boss and you're like hey just go ahead and put the stores wherever you want And you know you're like well you know I want this to look like an organized camp So I don't want a bunch of crap sitting around here So we're going to move it out there and I don't pay attention to it

Yeah So maybe there's too much detachment My guess is not enough I mean I think there's some validity to that comment though It's certain elements throughout this You're talking about people that are so far detached. There are miles so far away that there's not even

a connection to the potential risks that come from that. So I think you're right. I think there is elements of this. It's like I don't, the boss doesn't seem to care about these critical fundamental things because he is like oh I got to make sure my personal gear gets across this river. He's taking him 28 hours.

This guy is so detached from things while he's so focused in on these other things. Yep. Yep. And there's a dichotomy for sure. Oddly enough. The government of India chose this moment to appoint Major General William George Keith Elphinstone as commander-in-chief in Afghanistan. He was, to say the least, an unfortunate candidate described at the time as, quote, the most incompetent soldier that was to be found among the officers of requisite rank.

And it sucks because we're laughing and you're going to see what happens and it's freaking heinous, Even if necessary, his qualifications were certainly not sufficient. They were that he was, quote, of good repute, gentlemanly manners and aristocratic connections. So that's why he's getting hired. He's good repute. He's gentlemanly manners and the aristocratic connections. This is like the opposite of the BTF Tony in case of war break glass. Like, hey, we got a scrap.

You want me to go, you want me to take a bunch of people and live out in the middle of, you know, bad guy country? This is not I don't want anyone with gentlemanly manners. I want somebody with that can knows how to throw a hatchet Yeah, I want that nice guy who's well connected. No, no, I don't want that guy He had last seen active service at Waterloo 25 years previously and had since been on half pay He was elderly and so stricken with gout that he could scarcely move like general sir redvers buller half a century later Elphinstone had no illusion about his unfitness for the job and it pleaded that his health made him quite unsuited to the demands that would be put upon him. But Lord Auckland, the governor general, was adamant,

and so the gentle, courteous Elphinstone was shipped off to Kabul. Once there, whatever shreds of self-confidence he may have had were speedily removed, firstly by the ludicrous nature of the army's contonement, and secondly, by encountering for the first time his new second-in-command, Brigadier Shelton, a rough brute of uncertain temper. So appalled was Elflinstoneed by the army's, location that he offered a buy-up surrounding land so he could then clear the suitable fields of fire. His generous offer was refused about Shelton. He could do nothing. So he kind of showed up

and recognized they're in a bad spot. Fast forward a little bit. There's a there's another area. And he goes, trying to figure these things out. Elphinstone ordered Shelton to march on the fortress. This is another area. No sooner had this order been received, though, that it was countermanded. Shelton, unimpressed by this stop-go policy reported retorted that, retorted sharply that if there was an insurrection in the city, it was not a moment for indecision and recommended that Elphinstone at once decide upon what measure we should adopt. Elfinstone then countermanded his countermand, and once more ordered Shelton to march at once to Bala Hussar. That's an area where they were having issues.

But barely had Shelton started before he was overtaken by another order to the effect that he should halt and remain where he was. But no sooner had this order been received, reducing the second in command to a state of approaching Apalexy that it was followed by the inevitable counterorder. It seemed that he was, after all, to proceed with his men to the fort. And this, surprisingly, he did. Meanwhile, Elfinstone was canvassing opinions as to what to do next. I mean, this is just a freaking disaster. When Elfinstone did act, when eventually Elphinstone did act, it was a case of too little, too late. McNaughton, a brave, there's a guy that tries to sort of figure out and negotiate a deal, a guy named McNoughton.

It says McNaughton, a braver man than Elphinstone tried to double cross the Afghans. It was murdered for his pains. And there's another like British, British civil servant that gets murdered. Fast forward a little bit more. Again, we get these books so you can understand these a little bit more fully. while rage and a thirst for revenge consumed the lower ranks of the army those at the top became increasingly indecisive and anxious to appease inevitable inevitably the afghan surrender terms stiffened until finally elphinstone in response to empty promises of safe conduct found himself agreeing that his army without its ordinance but encumbered by 12,000 non-combatants including many women and children would go back the way they had come so they decided to give up arms. This may sound familiar to everyone right now. They're in Afghanistan. They decide, oh, if you let us out of here, we'll give up our arms. And when we go to give up our arms,

that's okay. But we also have a bunch of our wives and children with us. I don't know if I made that clear yet. This is the old school, you know, imperial idea. You go on deployment. You're going to go for years. You're going to take your wife and family with you. Having decided upon the disastrous plan of trying to reach Jalalabad in the depths of winter. across mountain ranges infested with hostile tribesmen. Elphinstone proceeded to make matters worse by further procrastination right up to January 6, 1842. He remained in agony of mind as to whether or not he should commit his army to the march. And when on that faithful day, they eventually set off, he changed his mind when half the force were already on their way.

Like, you can't make this up. Like, if I told you that this guy was changing his mind every 20 minutes or every day, you just wouldn't believe me. It doesn't sound real. He tried to stop them, but now his order to halt was disobeyed. For good or ill, the die was cast. It was for ill. So here's this group walking unarmed through Afghanistan. Again, this may sound familiar.

They walk, here we go. Without food, firewood, or any shelter beyond that provided by holes scraped in the snow, many died each night. By day as they traversed grim passes, thousands more died. at the hands of murderous Gilz's eyes, which is a Pashtun tribe, like hill people. At the end of four days, with 70 miles still to go, only 850 remained of the original 4,500 soldiers. By the end of the 10th day, their number had been reduced to 450. Throughout this pitiful adventure, Elphinstone, despite the trail of corpses which lay behind him, retained a pathetic and wholly unjustified faith in the Afghan leader's promise of safe conduct.

Hmm By the end of the fifth day The total losses of soldiers and civilians had risen to 12,000 And one officer described it This was there was literally a continuous lane of poor wretches of men Women and children dead and dying from the cold or wounds Unable to move and treated their comrades to kill them to put an end of their misery I mean it's just it's it's horrible how did this on how did this unfold here's Elphistones

This refined and gentle creatures manifested what at first sight may appear to be some curiously inconsistent characteristics By his own admission, he sought the bubble reputation in India, and yet when given important command shrank from the responsibilities it entailed, he was hopelessly indecisive, lacking in moral courage and suggestible, yet could on occasions manifest irrational pig-headedness. He wobbled when he should have been firm, yet was rigid when he should have been flexible. What a nightmare that is. Finally, he was courteous and kind, retaining the affection of many of his followers right up to the end, yet could be totally lacking in compassion for many of those who had suffered at his hands.

This is this thing to watch out for, by the way. People that are super nice and get along really well with everybody, but they make bad decisions a lot and people just kind of like can't get mad at them. Just to wrap this section up, to conclude this account of the total dissolution of an army. On January 13, 1842, soldiers on guard at the British fort in Jalalabad saw a single horseman riding toward them with all the speed that his maimed and worn out horse could muster. It was the surgeon, Dr. Brighton, the only man, it seemed to survive the fearful journey from Kabul. And the footnote here is that Briden was the only European to arrive at Jalalabad, but in the days after his arrival, a few Indian soldiers and a number of followers also completed the journey. Elphinstone himself died of dysentery after being made captive of Akbar Khan. We were laughing a couple minutes ago, and I don't know, I wish I could remember the word.

There's a word that described, like when your reaction doesn't actually match what you're feeling, and I forgot what that word is. but it's, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a level of disbelief. I mean, this, this, the reaction that I'm having, you're hearing this, when you're laughing at the description comes from like the level of tragedy. This is the, this is a lot, because I didn't read this, you know, I, I had actually I have this book. I mean, I knew, I kind of knew this was coming, but I didn't do the, but you did. I didn't do this cover to cover depth. I kind of spun around and you had shared some things with me. The depth of here is much more than I, I, I kind of anticipated.

And, you. still have, for me, it's still this hard time of connecting the behavior and the tolerance of the behavior to the outcome, which is real human life. That's the piece. And if you look at it, kind of in the larger sense of the precursors to World War I, it makes it even that much more difficult to believe because if you were going to give any potential free pass would be you didn't see this coming. If you were, if you, if you, if some, if you, if some, you, if Somehow that could be the case. And so whatever potential nail in the coffin is left unhit is you didn't see this coming.

And this is just tail upon tail upon tail upon tail of a total disregard. And the hardest part about that is what you just said at the very beginning is they don't learn any lessons from it. And I think that's where the disbelief for me comes from where I'm laughing like almost in literal disbelief of there's no way this is going to happen again knowing what this all leads up to as well. And let me tell you how easy this is, how easy this is, and this is what's so freaking crazy. You and I look at a situation like this and we go, there's one thing wrong, bad leadership, bad leadership. Oh, you got a problem like that, it's bad leadership.

Did they pick a bad spot? Why they pick a bad spot? Because they got bad leadership. Like this is just bad leadership, bad leadership, bad leadership, bad leadership. So at some point you look at these disasters and you say, hey, our freaking leadership, selection, training, is wrong. We're doing something wrong.

We need to fix it. Instead, what do they do? They blame the troops. They blame the weather. They blame the enemy. That's what they do. And that's accepted up and down the chain of command. It's a freaking disaster.

It's crazy. And this was, look, we'd have a bad seal platoon coming through. Zero times. Zero times. Did I say, wow, the troops are all jacked up? Wow, the E5s don't know how to work the machine guns. Wow. The Corman doesn't know how to work on people.

The point man doesn't know how to navigate. Zero times did I say that? Now, would you have a bad freaking point man occasionally that would get lost? Yeah, and you know what? Good leadership would say, hey, dude, you're going to rear security right now. You know, we'll work on your. Did you have somebody that was maybe not too great on a machine gun? What did they do?

The leadership said, hey, bro, you need to go out and do some extra machine gun classes and courses. You need to run some drills. So you're better. never did I say well you know this platoon is going to fail this block of training because they're machine gunners because they're riflemen because of any other reason than the freaking leader is jacked up totally that's what's going on and either the leader figures it out or you got to replace him and that's a hundred percent of the time that's a hundred percent of the time because if even if in a fantasy world you had a platoon come in where all the machine guns were terrible all the people

are fat and out of shape none of all of that you could be traced back to oh is there is there makeup in this seal platoon somehow different than all their ones? Or is there actually a leader who, for the last 18 months, has been tolerating or not holding a stand or not training or not? What has allowed this to happen? First of all, we know it doesn't happen. But even if it did, is there something unique about those people that doesn't allow them to operate a machine gun? Or is there a leader tolerating this behavior to let that place to get to a state that's so bad that they're incompetent? And again, I'm even saying that just to reinforce the idea. that we know that it happens zero percent of the time,

but even if it did in a fantasy world, it still comes back to the exact same reason why. There's a leader allowing that to happen. At some point in my career, probably when I read a bout face for the 19th time, and he talks about the fact that there's no bad teams, only bad leaders, that changed my perspective for the rest of my life.

Because you look at a jacked-up organization, a platoon, a task unit, a team, a battalion, a company, a business, you look at it and you see problems and you go, oh, it's, oh, I already know what the problem is. I already know what the problem is. And yet, as to your point, despite these failures in India, in Afghanistan, in Crimea, in the Boer Wars, in South Africa, despite all these failures, failure upon failure upon failure upon failure, which is freaking a red flashing light when you look at it with hindsight and you go it's leadership leadership leadership and yet you're going to see they're not they're not even developing their leaders properly

they don't make any changes and by the way let me throw this out there i've worked with the brits the freaking brits are outstanding totally the brits are freaking outstanding soldiers there are some of the most professional human beings never even mine military they're some of the most professional human beings ever interacted with in my life so obviously Obviously now they've made some steps, but. And just another thought I keep having, and this came up for me. We talked about it during Wars of Racket, 300. That is, is, these are hard stories to listen to.

These are hard stories for me to sit here as an audience member of this podcast. Listening to you talk about it is to make sure that we don't fall into the trap of, oh, this is Jocko telling a story about a bunch of other incompetent leaders. the ease with which we can, as leaders, especially get put in charge, how easy it is to slide into some of those habits. Maybe not to this degree. Maybe not to this magnification, but this is not a story to be taken about what's wrong with everybody else. It's how easy a regular human being can be placed into a position and fall into the trap of being a bad leader through things like humility, humility, detachment and that these are tails that that the lens that you got to look at

is a mirror as much as anything else like hey do I do I do I do some of these things yeah we do leaders fall into these traps yeah make yourself that checklist that's right am I doing this yeah all right this brings us to chapter six which is the first world war and here we go only the most blinkered could deny that the First World War exemplified every aspect of high-level military incompetence for sheer lack of imaginative leadership inept decisions ignoring of military intelligence underestimation of the enemy delusional optimism and monumental wastage of human resources has surely never had its equal you imagine looking at what's happening and you see all those

things occurring in an age when it has become fashionable to question authority it may well seem strange that a bear 60 years ago millions of ordinary men living in indescribable conditions could with courage with a courage fortitude and cheerfulness past human comprehension meekly carry out the lethal decisions of well-fed generals comfortably housed many miles behind the place where their orders were being translated into several kinds of pointless death. Apologists for this period have found good things to say of some of the generals who took part. We are told that Hague did the best he could, given the conditions of the Western Front, that he was rock-like and tenacious. Joffrey's saving grace, so it has been

said was that he was a skilled politician and the only man with enough prestige to dominate France's allies and to quote AJP Taylor even sir John French was supposed for some time to be a great military leader other views have been less charitable quote stupid obstinate blimps butchers ossified brains and donkeys are just a few of the unkind epitats which have been applied to those who bore upon their immaculate shoulders the responsibility of committing a generation of young men to various forms of mutilation on the battlefield a contemporary expression of this point of view puts it thus it is hard for a connoisseur of bad generalship surveying the gray wastes of world war one to single out any one commander as especially awful there were dozens on both sides

incompetence took several forms these included the implementation of a plan for the disposition of the british expeditionary force that had been devised three years before the outbreak of hostilities and remain unmodified in the light of subsequent events you said this on the last podcast dave you're like oh machine gun oh they're shooting a machine gun at us stop everyone go back to the planning room that's how long it takes to figure that out. We receive a burst of machine gun fire and we go, hey, blow the whistles and stop and everyone go back to the trench and we need to figure some shit out. Two, a tenacious clinging to the age-old practice of frontal assaults, usually the enemy's strongest points. Skipping ahead a little bit of three, the underuse and misuse of available technology. Hague's

opinion that two machine guns per battalion would be quite sufficient and the attitude of some reactionary elements to the development of the tank of the tank are cases in point and we're going to get into some of that reactionary when when people figured out what the tank was hey i don't know if that's a good thing doesn't seem like a good idea for a growing belief in the value of prolonged bombardment before launching an attack besides being enormously expensive such bombardants necessarily saccharges The vital element of surprised made the intervening ground almost impassable to the subsequent assaulting infantry and provided numerous Convenient craters to which the enemy machine gunners might betake themselves from their deep dugouts after the Holocaust was over there to wait the slowly moving ranks of attacking infantry I had to detail that one because as I read that I was like hmm

Why is that bad? Right. Oh, there's the reasons a tendency on the part of high command to ignore evidence which did not fit in with their wishes or preconceptions here's one that you might not anticipate number six a terrible crippling obedience and man if I don't have to go over this over and over again with people you don't want subordinates that are just going to obey you don't want that there was even at the highest levels of command an attitude of mind so pathological and unrealistic that on occasions even army commanders dared not express their doubts about the viability of a particular order or venture preferring to conceal evidence from

their superiors rather than be thought wanting and courage or loyalty it's better to say yep got it thank you did yes sir we will go and assault that trench yes as ladle hart wrote of the third battle of epres it would seem that none of the army commanders ventured to press contrary views with the strength that the facts demanded one of the lessons of the war exemplified at passiondale is certainly the need of allowing more latitude in the military system for intellectual honesty and moral courage. There's something very wrong in your organization if it requires moral courage to push back against the boss. Right. I get it.

Moral courage is important. But if we have an organization and a culture where you only push back if you have tremendous moral courage, that's freaking wrong. Yeah. How much of a mismatch occurs in our relationship if it requires moral courage on my part to ask you a hard question. Instead of going, hey, dude, hey, real quick. And you're like, yeah, what's up? Yeah.

How much of a disconnect is there between you and me if I have to muster courage and face what is the reason that I'm being courageous because I'm afraid. I have to deal with this anyway because there's fear involved. What does that say about a relationship? If I'm afraid to say something. And you talked about this ignoring of evidence and then the B, the willingness to just agree with your leadership. How convenient is it when the thing you have to grapple with your own mind is,

well, I'm not going to be there anyway. I'm not going to be one of the leaders that gets mowed down. So this isn't nearly as hard for me as it would be if I'm like, whoa, hang on. I have to be out in front of this assault. That's a very different story than I have to send my men to go do this.

Those are two very different things. Yeah, they should be, it should be worse. It should be thinking, hey, hold on a second, Dave. hold on a second, sir. I'm not sending my guys.

I'll go, but I'm not sending my guys. It should be the opposite, but it's not. And, you know, we talked about this a couple times, and you've referenced, well, I mean, it's really pulling from the book, it's referenced technology. And I made a little connection in my mind because a theme that keeps coming through here is, and I wrote down, like, disbelief of the evidence. Hey, the evidence is showing you this, and you're like, I cannot process. I can't process that, so I'm going to just.

I'm not going to accept that it's even a thing. There's disbelief in that. I saw this when we developed, and the machine was the example we used last time, but when we developed stealth technology, and it really became evident to the world and desert storm. Because nobody really, most people didn't really know what was going on. Then all of a sudden, first time of Desert Storm, we're flying on the top of Baghdad with airplanes that nobody could see.

And there was a level of disbelief going on there from the Iraqi defense system there's bombs going off around them. They're like, I hear, I hear airplanes. Those are jet engines flying over our heads. I can't see them, but I hear them. Things are blowing up. But there was an incapacity to accept that it was happening because they didn't see it.

And this doesn't exist. Well, unfortunately, one of the byproducts of that was some people were paying attention to that. And there's this massive shift from the early 90s to building stealth airplanes. We have a bunch of them now. Guess who else has? The Russian and the Chinese. are, you know, our primary enemies.

But the idea of being in a fight was something you can't see, which is what's, one of the things that South allows you to do is one of the most common things that you see when you're in the stairth airplane is other people behaving as if you're not there. When they know you're there,

they just can't see you and like, well, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. You're like, good Lord, you are just going to allow things to unfold because you cannot, you cannot come to, grips with what it's happening even though I know it's the wrong choice of words even though you know what's happening and that machine gun example is probably the best real-time

example of there's a machine giving shot at us I know but we're just going to keep going down this path we're going to get to uh singapore in the second world war and when Singapore goes down the the Japanese attack with their aircraft and it's a night attack and there's like a 30-minute warning of hey there's an enemy inbound and a bunch of the leaders were like, no, the Japanese don't attack at night. They didn't do anything. They didn't launch aircraft.

They didn't do anything. They just sat there like, oh, no, that's, no, the enemy, the Japanese don't attack. They don't fly their aircraft at night. It's not them. It's not happening. It's exactly what you're saying. It's the exact same thing.

This isn't happening. This isn't happening. Detachment from reality is not good. The kind of detachment we don't like. I think it's the one kind of detachment I don't like. It's detachment from reality. And number seven, a readiness to accept enormous casualties in terms of the number of lives lost relative to the ground gained,

the actions of the First World War make dismal reading. In the first two hours of the Battle of Luz, we lost more men than were lost by all services together in the whole of D-Day on 1944. That's two hours. On the first day of the Somme, offensive, the British Army suffered 57,000 casualties. On the first day,

the biggest loss ever suffered by any army in a single day. And yet, as one historian has put it, to see the ground gained, one needs a magnifying glass and a large scale map. He'll cover some of the World War I stuff, but it's a pretty brief. As I said in the opening today, as he goes into more well-known events like World War I, he doesn't go into as much detail because we already know about it. But he does go into some detail. This next chapter is about Cambrai, which there was a battle of Cambrai, and it's really the first tank battle where tanks were used. And this is just so important because there's so much resistance here. In 1912, a private civilian inventor, E.L. Demol of Adelaide presented the war office with the design for a tracked vehicle, which, to put it,

At its simplest would help solve the major tactical problem of the First World War, which hadn't even started yet, how to get soldiers across no man land barbed wire and enemy trenches without being shot. The war office looked at DeMoll's design and laid it on one side. In 1915, through a total lack of personal protection, British soldiers on the Western Front were dying at the rate of thousands a day. DeMole was moved to resubmit his invention. Again, it was ignored. And by the way, he didn't come up with this idea. Four runners of the tank can be traced back to Caesar's invasion of Britain.

Leonardo da Vinci had designed an armored fighting vehicle in the 16th century, and the concept was advanced by H.G. Wells in his book, the Liann Iron Clads published in 1903. I remember when I was a kid. I saw that Leonardo da Vinci tank. I was pretty stoked on that thing. It might be concluded, therefore, that his invention was put aside not just because it was a new idea, which it was not, nor because it was not needed, which it was,

but because it conflicted with a mystical belief in the virtues of horsed cavalry and in the power of a prolonged military barrage. Now we get into some of the politics that was going on about the tanks. While Churchill and Lloyd George were enthusiastic supporters of the tanks, Master General of Ordinance General von Donop remained implacably opposed to any such development. In the services, the major proponents of the tank developed, included ironically a small group of naval officers the fact that the admiralty felt less quote threatened by tanks than the war office did was strikingly illustrated at one of those

demonstrations wherein proponents of a new idea strive to convert skeptics by confrontation with evidence of their senses after an impeccable display in which prototype tanks cut through barbed wire cross-ch trenches slithered through mud and clawed their way out of craters a naval officer was heard to remark, we ought to order 3,000 now. So the Navy guy's like, hey, bro, that looks like a pretty freaking good thing. But the war office contingent remained cool. One senior general retorting, who is this damn naval man saying we will want 3,000 tanks? He talks like Napoleon.

Him and his detached point of view. They get some tanks. They get some of them. They use them in battle and and here's what happens of course how do they use them about this is like when you learn a new jiu jitsu move Like hey echo you know here's this new move and I teach you the freaking whatever Some arm lock variation you go try it for the first time how does it work? It doesn't work So you're like I'm never using this again

Similar activities here the small Cooper Cooper writes the small part played by the tanks how However successful on the local scale was overlooked in the general sense of failure, doubts which many staff officers had previously expressed as the value of tanks turned to scorn. Instead of trying to plan an intelligent use of the superior weapon that had been put in their hands, the military leaders could only make minor criticisms of minor details. You don't talk to this arm lock. I was totally off battle. You know, whatever.

Instead of you saying, hey, you know, I need to make some adjustments the way I'm employing this. Can you help me? Instead, you just go, dude, I'm not, your move sucks. Don't you, I mean, you always say how when you implement anything new, you're going to lose efficiency or whatever. Lose efficiency. Yeah. The first thing that happens all the time to me in Jiu-Jitsu.

Some new move that I'm starting to work. I get smashed by everyone. Oh, yeah. And you're even, it jams up other parts of your game. Oh, totally. Because you're thinking way more or way less than you usually would. And then, yeah, just be like, oh, yeah, jiu-jitsu sucks now. Yeah.

Or that move messed up my game. That whole part of my game is not doing that. Fast forward a little bit. Frustrated by failure and unable to admit their own contributions to defeat. By the way, when they lost this battle, when they used tanks for the first time, what was the problem? Oh, it was the tanks. There wasn't any mistake that they made. They did what the highly prejudiced do in such a circumstance vented their feelings upon the original object of their prejudice.

And in doing so precluded any chance of learning from the exercise. Fast forward a little bit. Meanwhile, the futile third battle of Ipres continued to consume the lives of infantrymen at the rate of more than 2,000 a day. Nevertheless, the general headquarters blamed the waste of life upon the few tanks that had been used. I mean, this is, you can't make this shit up. It seems they disappeared into the mud along with everything else. Now, here we get to this chapter or something. The Cambrai tank offensive on November 20th.

1917 occurred in three stages the first was eminently successful 380 tanks operating on ground suited to caterpillar tracks achieved a spectacular success overrunning three strongly held lines of enemy trenches whereas previous offenses had been measured in yards gained for tens of thousands of lives lost the Cambrai offense advance was four and a half miles on a six mile front with negligible casualties so there you go they'd freaking use the tank They're like, hell yeah, this worked. But if the first phase, first stage was an unprecedented victory, the second showed a beginning of the rot, which was to turn victory into disaster. There were various contributary factors. The first was General Harper, whose 51st Highland Division had been given the task of capturing key objectives

in the center of the attack, the village of Flesquires. I'm sorry, everybody, about my pronunciation. Unfortunately, Harper, who had been described as a, quote, a narrow-minded soldier of the old school was one of those who disapproved of tanks. Consequently, not only were his troops given little training in working with the new weapon, but they were instructed in tactics contrary to those recommended by the tank corps. Even worse, Harper delayed his assault by one hour because he did not believe that the first objective, the Hindenburg main line, would be captured so quickly. So this guy's just a hater Out of the gate Can you imagine you get a tank and you're like hey I'm not going to get my people proper training on it?

The unnecessary delay allowed the Germans in an hour Allowed the Germans an hour in which to bring up and sight field guns on the ridge Here in one here's one description of what followed The tanks continued blithely onto the crest of the ridge in line abreast as instructed They came to the top Huge dark shapes silhouated against the skyline and there before them were the German field guns had the infantry been close behind the tanks as Fuller had planned They could have easily dealt with these guns in a matter of minutes, but the infantry were far behind not only held up by having to find their way through the wire But because of the machine gun fire which was causing heavy casualties the tanks were on their own with such perfect targets the German gunners opened fire one by one the tanks were hit and

while the crews worked desperately at the Cumberson gears to drive a zigzag course, and the gunners tried to return fire. But taking accurate aim and all the pitching and tossing was virtually impossible. It was some minutes before the German guns had been put out of action, but by this time, 16 tanks had been destroyed with huge gaping holes in their sides. Most were on fire, and those crew members who had not been killed outright by the blasting shells were burned to death. There were no survivors. Through a pious, fast forward, through a pious and mistaken belief in the value of horsed cavalry and a paralysis thought occasioned by years of trench warfare, the brilliant breakthrough by the tanks was thrown away.

Some ten days later, the Germans counterattacked in a matter of hours they recovered much of the ground originally lost. The British Third Army commanded by General Sir Julian Bing lost 6,000 men taken prisoner, some thousands killed or wounded, and a vast quantity of guns and other equipment. The magnitude of this disaster was directly attributable to a feature of high-level military incompetence seen all too often, the ignoring of intelligence reports which did not fit in with the preconceived ideas. When at last news of the disaster reached Britain, it was naturally assumed that the generals had failed again. Hague's reputation already low sank to a vanishing point. The war cabinet demanded an immediate explanation. Hague's response was to endorse a report from General Bing, that the third army had not been taken by surprise and that the failure to stem the German breakthrough was due to the shortcomings of those junior officers and COs and men who had been involved in the fighting

What a freaking savage in the face of so much contrary evidence these views did not impress the critics to stifle further to debate the war cabinet called in general Smuts and this freaking savage smuts stated and they go into what his relationships are he's you know he's just a just a real piece of shit. Smuts stated higher command army or core command were not to blame. Everything had been done to meet such an attack. He went on to say that the fault lay either with local commanders who might have lost their heads or with those lower down junior officers, NCOs and men. Of those two alternatives, he preferred the latter explanation. And so Smuts, in the fashion of the day, blame those least able to answer back, the youthful, the junior, and the dead. Again, what corrections are we now making? We're not. We're not. We're not. We're

not making any corrections we're just like oh yeah it's the team's fault and by the way the team who fought with bravery that is unquestionable all in all this black episode raises several matters of great relevance to the theory of military incompetence presented later in this book stupidity does not explain the behavior of these generals so great was their fear of loss of self-esteem and so imperative their need for social approval approval that they could resort to tactics beyond the reach of any self-respecting donkey from their shameless self-interest lack of loyalty to their subordinates and apparent indifference to the verdict of posterity a picture emerges of personalities deficient in something other than intellectual acumen so can these people aren't stupid how about that phrase a lack of loyalty to your

Subordinates and how often we fall into the idea like that's supposed to work the opposite direction. They should be loyal to me because I'm in charge. I'm the commander and it's the lack of loyalty to your subordinates as the cause of why this happens sickening. As to how they look to a contemporary chronicler, here is the following passage. And so the white washing went on to protect armchair generals who in the main had little conception of what the front line was like and had no intention of going there to find out. One of those infantry men so blamed was J.H. Everest. During the two days when he and his fellow soldiers were being pushed back by the Germans, they had no water to drink and no food to eat. At the of the second day while waiting in a trance for a renewed attack everest went up to his company commander and asked for permission to search for water my request was refused everest wrote in a letter

nonetheless i went over the top and found some water in a mud hole thus ending two days of torture shortly afterwards everest was wounded and found himself in the australian general hospital at abbeville but the most bitter pill on top of this was to be blamed for their commander's own mistakes Can you imagine reading those freaking articles about how jacked up you were? Another World War I example here, chapter 8, the siege of cut. If the degree of military incompetence is indicated by the ratio of achievement to cost, then the activities of expeditionary force D under the command of Major General Sir Charles Townsend merit examination. Firstly, there was a 250 mile discrepancy between what was.

designed to do and what it tried to do secondly the cost of the this discrepancy was large to reach cut cost towns and 7,000 casualties during the ensuing siege of further 1,600 died attempts to relieve his force accounted for another 23,000 casualties when he eventually surrendered to the Turks 13,000 of his troops went into captivity and 7,000 of these died while still prisoners of war all of this went for nothing not one inch of ground or any political advantage nothing that is beyond corpses suffering and ruined reputation. So you have this take place.

This is in Iraq in Mesopotamia. I mean, this is, I guess, current day Iraq. In Mesopotamia, there were four enemies, the Turkish army, marauding Arabs, the terrain, and the climate. All four played their part in hazarding the lines of communication and bringing about a defeat which cost much and gain nothing. But the real instigators of this tragedy were neither the climate nor G. Neither the Turks nor the Arabs, but three generals.

General Beauchamp Duff, Commander-in-Chief India, General Nixon, Army, Commander Basra, and Major General Townsend, Commander of the Sixth Division, through an admixture of self-interest, personal ambition, ignorance, obstinacy, and sheer crass stupidity, this trio sealed the fate of some thousands of British and Indian soldiers. I kind of wanted to fast forward through this part, but this one is insane. Nixon, who made up an ambition for what he lacked for in intelligence, ordered Townsend to capture Amara, a township on the Tigris, some hundred miles north of Basra. Townsend, equally ambitious, but by no means stupid, did as he was bid. In doing so, he and Nixon were already exceeding the directive of the British government.

So they're kind of pushing the envelope down there. little glory-seeking happening, as well as occupying Amara. Townsend struck westward and took Nazaria. Nixon's appetite for glory was wedded by these easy victories. With no thought to the risks involved, he pressed Townsend to continue his advance a further 90 miles to cut. In this, he was backed by Duff, who had never visited Mesopotamia and had no idea of the conditions prevailing there, but Townsend had. He wrote to General Sir James Wolf Murray in England By the way, Townsend is about to become a villain of horror that you've

Likely can't even understand I believe this is this so this is Townsend running back I believe I am to advance to Amara to cut to El Amara The question is where are we going to stop in Mesopotamia? So this is sounds good, right? Okay, wait a second dude What are we trying to do we certainly have not good enough troops to make certain of taking baddad bagdad of our two divisions mine the sixth is complete the 12th has no guns or divisional troops and Nixon takes them from me and lends him to gorn yonge when he has to go anywhere i consider we ought to hold on to what we've got as long as we are held up as we are in the dardanelles all these offensive operations in

secondary theaters are dreadful errors in strategy. The Dardanelles, Egypt, Mesopotamia, East Africa. I wonder and wonder at such expeditions being permitted in violation of all great fundamental principles of war, especially that of economy of force. Such as a violation is always punished in history. So he's saying you got to prioritize and execute. Why are we running around doing all these different things? I'm afraid we are out in the cold here. The Mesopotamian operations are little noticed, though we are fighting the same enemy as you have in the Dardanelles, plus an appalling heat, the hardship in France are nothing to that. So this seems like a logical thing, right?

Townsend's like, hey, dude, what are we doing? Like, we already kind of got done what we're supposed to get done. Why are we pushing further? Let's hold what we got. I don't have a bunch of troops. I'm getting, my troops are getting pulled all over the place. Let's just kind of stand down. But it's an interesting, there's another historian that writes,

the letter was completely in character. It revealed a gift for strategic appreciation amounting to prescients. It revealed Townsend's chronic tendency to criticize his superiors and his obsession with his own affairs to the exclusion of all others It revealed his habitual lack of generosity to his colleagues Who whom he praised only if they were of inferior rank to himself his tendency to whine and almost embarrassing Immodesty I think that's a hard reading of that letter I think that's a little bit strong But the most extraordinary feature in the letter was that for all its strategic compressions it bore little relationship to Townsend's subsequent behavior I guess

that's what makes it interesting though he clearly realized that he was being asked to undertake a major campaign with the logistics of a subsidiary defensive operation he said nothing of this to his superiors 17 days after writing to Murray Townsend not only enthusiastically accepted Nixon's orders that he should advance a further 90 miles to cut but also entirely of his own bat talked of pursuing the enemy another 190 miles and possibly beyond that to Baghdad. Indisputably, he was a man

ambitious to the point of egomania, a man whom the lore of promotion had goaded throughout his career to such an incessant, intriguing and importunate lighter writing that he'd incurred constant snubbing and rebuke, yet he had persisted. To such a man,

the smallest hint of condemnation seems enthusiastic approval. Closing his mind to his own forebodings, Townsend and his unsuspecting troops pressed on. Once again, the Turks were defeated, and the British occupied cut. So they do, they press into cut, but this battle's not easy. Because remember I said those earlier battles were kind of easy?

At cut, it's not easy. And it's not easy for Townsend's troops. It's not easy for the Turks either. He says about the Turks. The Turks, though, suffering many casualties. They were not destroyed. They escaped. And then there were the British wounds.

Here's what's going on with the British wounded. The wounded suffered frightfully. Untended, they lay freezing all night. Some to be stripped and murdered by Arabs. And when daylight came were placed on supply carts, unsprung, iron slatted, and drawn across a cruelly uneven surface to the riverbank. There in fierce sun, they languished until they could be crammed on the decks of iron barges and towed very slowly downstream to Amara. What little water they were given was impure. What little treatment they could be given was ineffective.

Their wounds went gangrene. and they lay in a morass of their own blood and excreta assailed by millions of flies, quite unnecessarily, many of them died. Now Townsend, they also say this for another. He was, despite his appraisal of realities, loath to relinquish his own dream of becoming Lieutenant General Sir Townsend, Lord of Baghdad. And so grossly unequipped, he marched his men beyond the point of no return towards Baghdad. He never reached that fabled city.

for a army of 13,000 Turks lay across his path. Nixon received intelligence that a second Turkish army, 30,000 strong. And led by the redoubtable Khalil Pasha was also converging. But because this news did not accord with his desires, Nixon chose to ignore the report is untrue. 30,000 people had to take on Europe, whatever you have, 12,000. The battle marked the end of Townsend's luck through his conduct. Though his conduct of the fight was exemplary, if not brilliant, he sustained 4,000 casualties and again did not succeed in routing or destroying the enemy. He withdrew his force to cut, cut, which he knew to be without defense.

So this town of cut is not like a really great defensive position. And Townsend knows it. Townsend's newfound delusion regarding the virtues of cut may well have had its origins in a much earlier event. the siege of Chitral. When intractable desires are thwarted by reality, there is a tendency to hark back to the memory of earlier gratifications. And Chitral epitomized for Townsend just such gratification. Here, so this is Townsend.

As a young officer of the Indian Army, he had withdrawn into a fort and captained his small force throughout 46 days of siege. When eventually he did emerge, it was to find himself a hero. beloved by Queen and Country. So that's what happened to him as a young officer. He goes into this place.

They in lockdown and they hold out for 46 days. So now he's going to do the same thing at Cut. That's his plan. He can now overlook the shortcomings of Cut and see in his smelly collection of mud huts, the key to ultimate success. Another inconsistency in Townsend's behavior is that he had always prided himself upon the fact that he drew upon the lessons of history, identifying himself as the occasion demanded with such great captains as Hannibal, Napoleon, and Wellington. Like, we joke about that when you think you're freaking Wellington or Hannibal or Napoleon.

There was nothing he liked better than to quote the precepts of famous military commanders. Two such precepts were to make wars to attack and movement is the law of strategy. But here was Townsend's, Townsend, as heedless of Frederick the Great as he was deaf to the council of Marshall Falk, for to bottle himself up in cut was to assume a posture of defense as stationary as it was passive. So why is he doing this? Well, he's doing it

because he remembers that he had the big victory back in the day. And it was unnecessary for there was still time to fall back on the safety of hours. So he could have still made it out of there that he did not do so, cannot be ascribed to stupidity or to ignorance of the principles of war

for Townsend was neither stupid nor ignorant. His first move toward hastening his rescue was so to manipulate His would-be rescuers so they felt compelled to try and relieve the siege before they were ready. Thus he persuaded his army commander at Basra that since he had only a month's supply of food for his British troops and early relief was essential to sustain this lie and forced Nixon's hand. He deliberately refrained from rationing either his British or Indian troops, nor did he make any attempt to unearth the stocks of Arab grain concealed within the town. So he's out of the gate. He's just telling lies. Hey, you better come and rest me first. I'm running out of food. Just a freaking lie. What does Nixon do?

Well, Nixon trying to help out. Okay, dude, I want my people to starve. Nixon ordered the unfortunate lieutenant general Aylmer to break through the Turkish defense forces and relief cut. There's a whole section on here talking about how that goes down. Aelmer failed time and time again to achieve the impossible. Thanks to the combined efforts of the man he was trying to rescue and those of Nixon, the man largely responsible for rescue being necessary. The relief force suffered 23,000 casualties.

nearly twice the number of those invested. So this guy tells lies. They're like, hey, we need to go help them. We're not ready yet, but just run in there anyways. And they take freaking 23,000 casualties. Trying to say at 12. Yeah, double the people that are in there. Remember, I think it was a debrief podcast.

We talked about, you talked about, you made a list of things that keep you from being successful in the future. And one of them was lessons learned. Yeah, you always liked that one. I did because it was something I did. didn't expect. The way, and not just the way you were going through the list, because the list was like obvious ones, or, or let me say that more carefully, what appeared to be obvious ones.

And you got to that. And it's so easy now, once I've heard you say it, to just transpose that idea of lessons learn actually, if you're, and you didn't say, don't take lessons learned. Of course not. But they can be an impediment, especially if like the paradigm or the, the scenario with which that lesson was learned doesn't actually apply to the scenario that you're in. But it's the same city. Well, it must be the same situation.

Cool. We'll just take that. And we'll just, I did this back in the day when I was 23 and I was a hero. Watch this. And of course, it's easy to see now because I'm sitting in a detached position. But, you wrote down, I wrote down, you said it. Delusion, disbelief, and desire. God bless hearing that.

God, how bad. And it's that third one might be the worst one of like, I want to be a hero. I want to be, what did he call himself, the king of Baghdad or whatever. Yeah, that desire and go,

we're losing. No, we're not. Hey, we're outnumbered. No, we're not. Hey, we shouldn't do this. Yes, we should because you know what I want?

I want to be the king of Baghdad. Freaking disturbing. Crazy, man. The thing about lessons learned, lessons learned should open your mind not. Close your mind. These guys are lying, by the way. Secretary of State for Indian Army Commander Basra, Joseph Chamberlain, cabled this statement.

On arrival, wounded, on arrival, wounded Basra, please telegraph urgently, particulars, and progress. So this guy's saying, hey, what's going on with the wounded you got? And Nixon replies, wounded satisfactorily disposed of, many likely to recover. Medical services under circumstances of considerable difficulty worked Splendidly but Nixon too would lie for you just witnessed the arrival of 4,000 and the the Mejide which is a ship with 600 casualties on board and two crammed lighters in tow had reached Basra festooned with with Stalatite salicites of extradah Exkerta exude and exuding a stench that was a defensive from a distance of 100 yards. She had labored downstream for 13 days and nights on her

decks and on the exposed decks of her lighters. Men lay huddled in pools of blood, urine and feces, their bodies slimed with excrement, their wounds crawling with maggots, their shattered bones splinted in wood from whiskey crates, and the handles of trenching tools, and their thighs, backs and buttocks, leprous with sores. Meanwhile, Townsend, he's got his guys safely up and cut. this is happening these guys are getting slaughtered 23,000 casualties and Townsend's up they're kind of chilling over the period of the siege he evinced several characteristics his Townsend's communications were not however confined to those outside cut during the siege he had devoted much attention to issuing of communiques to his

troops these were remarkable for three features a flagrant disloyalty toward towards and criticism of his superiors of thinly veiled contempt for the valiant but unsuccessful relief force and a total absence of gratitude toward those who were losing their lives trying to rescue him. Townsend was always prepared to abandon his beloved command in the interest of either his own release or his own advancement. On March 5th, he had again requested promotion. This guy's called, he's captained, he's freaking ensigued after causing himself to be there.

He's asking to get promoted. On April night, for the second time, he had suggested that he should attempt escape to escape from cut and leave his division to its fate. Do you imagine running that up the chain of command? Hey boss, I think I should just try and get out of here and whatever happens to the division kind of happens to the division. Three times he had suggested negotiation to exchange cut and its guns for the release of himself and his men, though he must have known that only he would be allowed to go.

Twice he had sent ingratiating letters to the enemy commander in the field and once had insisted that no attempt be made on the life of an enemy field marshal. Any doubts to the correct interpretation of these unedifying facts are dispelled by three subsequent events. The first is a minor one, but nonetheless revealing. When Townsend learned that Aylmere's successor, Geroen, had been promoted to Lieutenant General, he burst into tears and wept on the shoulder of a shrinking subaltern because he knew that Goring's promotion meant none for him. The second is the fact that he did leave his division to die as prisoners of the Turks. And the third is that neither then nor later did he so much as lift a finger to ameliorate their plight.

For our present purposes, little remains to be said. After 147 days, Townsend's food supplies, which he had originally stated would only last a month, ran out. Confident from his exchange with the Turkish commander, that he would be treated generously. he capitulated on April 19, 1916, and handed his weak, starving men over to the not-so-tender mercy of the Turks. Then it was where their paths diverged. While he was transported in the greatest comfort to Baghdad and thence to Constantinople, his 13,000 men began their 1,200-mile march across the arid waste and freezing heights

of Asia Minor. And while he was whined and dined, on the... and entertained as the personal guest of the Turkish commander-in-chief. His men died in their thousands of starvation, dysentery, cholera, and typhus, and from the whips of their bad-tempered Kurdistan guards. They died of the heat by day and of cold by night. They died because they wearied of staying alive, dropping out of the column to be set upon by marauding Arabs who have robbed them, filled their mouths with sand and stones.

in all 70% of the British and 50% of the Indian troops perished in captivity. But Townsend was spared these sore details. For he traveled by train and arrived at Constantinople on June 3rd was met by the general commander of the Turkish army. His staff, members of the war office and a crowd of respectful locals. He felt very flattered. He was even more flattered to be entertained later at Constantinople's best restaurant, then escorted by a detachment of cavalry to the waterfront where a naval pinnis waited him.

His baggage, staff, and servants aboard, he sailed 10 miles down the sea of Marmara to the fashionable island of Halke, where, high on a cliff, he took up residence in a comfortable villa. That same day in the building, the Turks called the hospital. Those of Townsend's troops still too ill to march from Samara were being allowed by their captors to die in agony. There was no treatment for them and very little food, and those who fouled their beds were given an injection of brandly colored fluid, after which they stopped fouling their beds because they were dead. By that same day, more than a third of the British troops to whom Townsend had vowed he was leaving them only to procure their reparation had died. Yeah, I don't know if it gets any worse than that. Back to the point of this book. In conclusion, one point demands particular emphasis in the mismanagement of the Mesopotonian.

campaign sheer stupidity played a relatively minor role certainly duff was no genius and Nixon was unintelligent but Townsend was not men's fates were decided for them not so much by idiots as by commanders with marked psychopathic traits stupidity and ignorance there may have been but it was the ambitious striving of disturbed personalities which accounted for the loss of Townsend's force in such matters as as vanity personal ambition dishonesty lack of lack of compassion Townsend was not unique where he differed from others was in possessing charm intelligence and professional expertise in a world of the square the pompous and the

desperately unfunny Townsend had a refreshingly light touch but underneath the agreeable veneer there lay a fatal flaw which showed itself in ravenous self-destructive hunger for popular acclaim. Though its origins remain obscure, Townsend gave the impression of a man who at some time had suffered traumatic damage to his self-esteem, which resulted in an everlasting need to be loved.

That kind of wraps up the World War I phase. But there you go. You got a smart man, a charismatic man, a guy with combat experience, and a guy with psychopathic, rates. If you take those first ones, smart man, charismatic man, right? That guy would breeze through officers.

If we're looking for an officer, this guy's very charismatic. He's very intelligent, right? Oh, let's sign him up. Let's put him in charge of something. And not only do we bring him in, but then he's going to rise through the ranks because he's charming and he's smart, right?

And he's, as things go well, When things are going well He's freaking fantastic But the minute things went bad The psychopathic monster comes out To avoid that's what we need to look out for That's what we need to prevent And the only way we can do that is to

Study the past and try and understand it To the best of our ability Anything else Dave That's a rough one This has been a downhill adventure From the word go man and it's hard to listen to. You set it up, I think, really well at the very beginning of the last podcast.

These are not stupid people. And it gets reinforced. Just like that final, that little conclusion you just express. This understanding of these are not dumb people. And the psychopathic trade or the psychopathic tendency, the thing that might trigger that in us connected to the idea of humility is the fear of being exposed for not being smart. or the fear of being exposed for not knowing what to do, or the fear of being exposed for not understanding what's going on and how powerful that fear can be to get you to behave in a way,

I probably wouldn't use the word psychopathic very often to describe too many people, and it's totally appropriate here. Yeah, well, it's weird. When you think of psychopathic, you think of someone that thinks of their own self, so they murder someone. So they make this move,

and do whatever they're going to do that negatively impacts some other person or maybe a few people. You don't think of it of where it impacts 12,000 people. Right. Or 23,000 people.

Or 23,000 people. It's just insane. Yeah, and just the thing I was thinking about too and I'm trying to just make somewhat of an objective reconnection to the things we teach this idea of leadership is God, I wish I word it down, but the the the respect for your subordinates loyalty loyalty yeah the the the the loyalty to your

subordinates the belief in their just their basic welfare in this case just their basic welfare how liberating it is if you're surrounded by people that know that you care about them to like hey fellas I don't know the answer to this one and I'm like no factors or we'll figure it out hey I'm not really sure what we should do here sir no problem that we got this. And how many times the best thing I ever did was tell my subordinates, my junior Marines that were junior to me in the hierarchy

that senior NCOs, mid-grade NCOs, and be like, hey, Gunny, what do you think I should do here? Sir, I've seen this 10 times. Here's what I think you should do. Cool, right on. And just the willingness to reveal that you're not smart or reveal

that you don't have the answer or the willingness to just get past the fear of what will I look like if I don't know? And it's actually the best thing can do. The best thing you can do is go, hey, Jocko, dude, I don't know what to do here, man. And if I actually care about your welfare and they know that, Jock will solve that problem for me. I help me figure it out or come up with a thousand different ways that we could try

to make this thing work out. But if I succumb to that fear of maybe this costs me my desire to be the king of Baghdad, maybe this is the one that exposes me and I cannot let that happen. the ends, the lengths that people are willing to go to, and I think you said it, that people are willing, people are willing to die before, tell me what you said, I just, they would rather die than take an injury to their ego. Than take an injury to their ego. Yeah, they would rather die than take an injury to their ego. And this is the case where it's not their death. It's the death of tens of thousands of their other people, because they don't see them as human beings. And the hardest part is all the lead-up of the Crimean War, the Borough War, of like World War II, World War I's coming. World War I's coming. We're not gonna learn in these lessons. And you just see this, this tragedy coming

because you know what happens in history. And like, is this really gonna happen? And yeah, this is really gonna happen. And that's, I think that's what's made this so hard for me is like, man, we're not gonna, we're not gonna fix this in history. So I just gotta listen to this story knowing exactly what's gonna happen.

Yeah, you can't change what you know is coming. You already know where this story's going and you can't change it. And the, this, The other really scary thing about this is, like I just said, these are people that, you know, a guy like Townsend, he breezes through officer selection. He's freaking class president at OCS, right?

He's smart. He's got some dapper to him. He's friendly. He's charming. This guy's just, you know, winter all day. Yeah. And he's surrounded by people that aren't so he stands out. Oh, yeah.

You know, people say, I started off all these podcasts by saying sometimes, And this is certainly true in the seal teams. Oh, if you're in the seal teams, you know, everyone thinks that someone is in the seal teams. They're like incredible human, incredible whatever. People think that about everybody that's in the military. Oh, this person was a general. This person was an admiral. They must be freaking awesome.

And look, there are tons of awesome seals and tons of awesome admirals and tons of awesome generals and colonels. Yes, we get that. But occasionally you look at one and you go, jeez, what just happened? Where'd that come from? And here's where it came from. because inside these organizations, they, if you're a,

you know, I said this thing about, I don't forget what podcast I said it on, but I was talking about the fact, oh, it was with Daryl Cooper. In a bad organization, the worst person rises to the top.

Like the person that is willing to just be totally ruthless is going to, like if you take the Nazis, who's going to ride to the top, the guys that are willing to do whatever, Those are the ones that rise to the top. They become the leaders. The mob.

Who's willing to go out and kill people? And those are the people that rise to the top. And unfortunately, sometimes even in a good organization, a person with those traits that can kind of hide those traits, they can still make it through the wickets and rise to the top. And it's until they get put under pressure that they go, woo. And their true self comes out. Well, good place to stop for today. And we know we need to be on the lookout for people with psychopathic traits.

It's true. In the meantime, you know, maybe we try and avoid having those traits ourselves. Maybe we actually try and become something a little bit more positive. Something good. Maybe we try and make ourselves better. Echo Charles. What do you suggest? Well, psychopathy.

Mm-hmm. Apparently, from what I understand, isn't like, it's like, it's like, a thing in your mind like a normal seemingly normal person can be a site and a clinical psychopath it has less to do with like crazy stuff that they do it's just the inability to if I'm not mistaken to empathize with people that's one of the big problems yeah yeah so yeah so it kind of makes sense where I mean I don't know if he's making a clinical claim clinical assessment copathy or whatever but if you if these people were psychopathic that's what it would look like I'm going to say yeah

If you do what Townsend did, and you're in a villa, while your men are being butchered, starved, tortured, killed, you're a freaking psychopath. Right. While telling your leadership, hey, I think I should get promoted and get evacuated. Yeah. It's like you just don't, I mean, and do you think this, and maybe this is like maybe goes without saying or maybe kind of obvious or whatever,

but is this one of those situations where you know how like you're such, so ahead of all the competition? and your organization or whatever, your team or whatever, is so big where victory is almost like a foregone conclusion and you start carrying about other stuff. Like you get like these individual self-interest that spring up because the real goal and the real like worry is kind of like on the backburner now. I think you're right.

I think that that's the British Army thought that they were just invincible. Yeah. The British military, the Britain thought it was invincible. Right. We're just going to win. So they're just more concentrated, yeah. Yeah, like, okay, winning the war. Yeah.

You know, we're going to do that. Or that's obvious or whatever. So now I start caring about like, you know, my, the king of wherever and all these other, you know, personal interests or whatever. I'm going to say something that, I don't know, maybe this makes me a psychopath. If I would have been in charge of the British military, I would assemble the hit team and we would have gone and killed Townsend, like execution style and brought his body back. and said, hey, leaders, this is not how we lead. And to the question you asked, too, I think given the author's education, he's using that term in the clinical sense. Like, that is not like a, it's not a slang term for a dude who's kind of messed up.

He's referring to him psychopathic tendencies. He means that in the medical literal sense of that word. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's what it felt like to where it's like, yeah, you know, 23,000 people dying and this I didn't care. He cares about other stuff. You remember when we set up the last podcast, this guy's background, right? Oh.

See, what's funny is I knew when you guys were going to start making jokes about that. I didn't know when. I didn't know when and I didn't know who, which is interesting. It was Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave, apparently. But either way, yes. I'm here now. I'm here now.

I'm here now. Yeah. And I'm here to let you guys know how to avoid psychopic. We're moving right into the day. Psychopathic behavior because I don't know if one can avoid actual psychopathy. I think you're. Either psychopath or not. Okay.

Okay, but how can we at least make ourselves a little bit better if we're not? It's like avoiding celiac disease. You know what celiac disease? Yes. So it's like you can't avoid celiac disease, but you can avoid gluten. You see what I'm saying? Okay. Anyway, so we're going to talk about discipline.

The supplement, no. Not necessarily just discipline as discipline with a supplement. Okay. Discipline go. Ready to drink. Energy drink. A new era of energy drink. A new idea of energy drink.

Indeed. Gluten free, by the way. Nice, nice. Sugar-free. Sugar-free, gluten-free, chemical-free. Preservative-free because it's pasteurized. Yeah. So we're not going to put any chemicals in your body.

Yeah. Into your temple. Yes, exactly right. So what you need, what you want, what you expect from an energy drink, the good parts, you get that. No downside. But you don't get the drawbacks. Exactly right. The downside is no downside.

So, Mia, I just drink. Three. Okay, I'm saying I drink three today. I drank three today. I drank three today. Okay, I'm more healthy than I was before. That's a good thing, dude. That's pretty solid, right? That's legit right. Okay, many different flavors. We're up to what? Seven flavors. Is that what now? I think we're at seven flavors. What's the best one? Mango, a hundred percent. Dave, what's the best one? It's not mango. No. Yeah, you're at mango. Well, hey, look. Hey, mango's good. I'm going to say it right now. I like mango. I agree. And it's one of the better flavors. It's one of the better flavors. I would say. Yeah, so you know how like... Different people like different flavors. Like my middle daughter, Dach Savage all day.

Dakota. What do you got? All day. Obviously. My son, Sour Apple Sniper. Not a psychopath. I understand, but... My wife, going to go in the distance.

She's cracking open all kinds. She's mixing it up. Party mix. Well, the good news is they're all good. Technically, you're not going to really drink one and be like, oh, this one sucks. It's going to be pretty rare. That's going to happen. So I dig it and I understand, but...

Technically. Yeah, man. But either way, whatever flavor you guys like, look, this is the new, the new era, the new, what do you, paradigm, right? That's the word of energy drinks. We don't have to worry about all that bad stuff anymore. Boom. So yeah, get that. Also, stuff for your joints. This is important. You might not think about it every day. It might excite some of us, like other supplements might. But when your joints start acting up, then you'll be excited to have them not act up. So yeah, you take joint. warfare super krill oil get on a routine too you won't have to worry about your joints anymore there you go vitamin D3 cold war we got extra protein if you need it in the form of mulk that's the one to get excited which you could call protein or you could call dessert let's face it bro it is so tasty you get done eating some elk which by the way we're eating at the willing cows old right now kind of a lot but sometimes you get done you're like I wouldn't mind some dessert to go on top of that fine meal I just had

Hey, but I don't want to eat ice cream. I'm definitely not eating cake because we're not cake eaters over here No, no, no, no, no. Do you, Dave Burke? Do you put, um, like, no. Foreign substances. Oh, yeah, so you just go. Actually, you know what? I knew that. I think you told me that already. Here's the thing that the frozen banana, like overly ripe banana. So every once in a while, you won't blend it up quite as good as Do I need to make a Tulsi Gabbard, like, drink? We got, I think we got, I think we got banana coming. Maybe that needs to be the Tulsi Gabbard flavor. Signature flavor of mold.

It's what is it called? It's called overripened frozen banana. Yes. There you go. Put that in. Sometimes you don't blend it all the way. Let's say you're in a hurry or whatever. Or maybe you just not just not as thorough that day, whatever.

And then you'll get the little chunks of the frozen banana in there. And it kind of feels like ice cream. It's a little treat. You can trick your kids with that too. but I think it's ice cream. All right. You can get the drinks. You can get all these things at vitamin shop.

You can get all these things at joccofuel.com. You can also get the drinks at Wawa. We're working on a bunch of other stores right now. So check it out. There you go. Also the free shipping situation. Oh, yeah. Kind of a big deal.

Would you call it a subscription? It is a subscription. Okay, there you go. Subscribe to any of these things. Like, let's subscribe to, for sure, joint warfare. subscribe to that for sure D3 you probably don't need to subscribe to D3

because it's got like 360 pills in there so like what are you going to yearly subscription it's going to show up no you don't really need to subscribe to that but super krill Joint Warfare definitely and then

whatever your go-to milk flavor yeah probably worth it yeah especially if you're lifting we'll say resistance training but if you're lifting let's face it's the mold that's That's going to be the jam 100%. All right.

What else? Also, Origin USA. This is where you can get your American made. Like, for real American made. For real American made. Jeans, boots. Guis. Geese, of course, for the Jiu-Jitsu.

Oh yeah, plenty. Rash guards also for the Jiu-Jitsu. Yeah, in hoodies. Compression pants. Otherwise, sometimes known as spats. We had that whole of the scotch. You ever wear spats? No.

Ever. Nope. The privacy of your own home. Why would I wear spats in the privacy of my own home? You never know. Okay, no. Whatever, bro. You know there's some stuff that you do in the privacy of your own home that you're just not going to just talk about freely.

I'm just saying. Well, okay. Yeah. Don't act like you don't know. That's like a, you didn't just catch me right there. It's like one of the dumbest things I've heard in like two weeks. What are you even talking about? That could or could or that may or may not be limited or not limited to spats is what I'm saying.

Just saying origin spats. I take it back. I take it back. No, no, no, no. It's all good. When Echo talks really rapidly, you know you kind of cross the line. You know, have a point. See, look at him.

Anyway, American made spats if you're into spats, whether or not Jock was or not. There's that. They actually come out with a lot of cool stuff also. Like that heavy hoodie that they got, the heavy. The heavy. Like, it's not like heavier or warmer hoodies is like a new thing. But the heavy is kind of a new thing. You see what I'm saying?

So they're doing some good. stuff over there at origin or in the winter winner arrived by the way in SD yeah I transitioned this morning to jaco white tea in the morning like a warm jaco white tea with a little shot of this one in that so it's a little bit a little chilly got

got to get out that heavy origin USA.com origin usa.com origin usa.com if you want to get me that stuff true um yeah cool also we have a store jaco has a store we we all it's all it's kind of all of our store now at this point uh called jaco store So you go to jocco store.com so you can get

By the way, our store is not located One quarter mile outside of our camp, right? We're not doing that. It is co-located in our camp. No. We will not run out of supplies in our camp. No, it's, yeah, well, you know, it's online, so I guess it's relative.

But either way, Discipline equals freedom, shirts, hoodies, some hats on there. A lot of good stuff on there. If you want to represent while you're on this path, while we are on this path. You want to represent hard or just a little bit at jococco scorer.com. We also have a subscription scenario.

Some good designs coming out. Some good designs on that. You get a new shirt every month with some cool fun, kind of layered ideas going on your shirt. Some kind of good stuff. Good feedback on that one. Yeah. So far. People are doing that one.

I also subscribe to this podcast, the Jocco Enravelling Podcast, that'd do with D.C. Grounded podcast, which we haven't done a long time. Warrior Kid Podcast, I know I owe some of those. You can also join us on jaco underground.com. That's an alternative amplifying podcast with some. It's Q&A answer a lot of questions for you all. There's a way to ask questions through that. We're on question.

We're done hundreds of questions so far. So if you want to tune into that, we also talk about, like I said, ancillary but impactful topics. And it's also, we're setting up this platform. Dotgo underground.com in case In case things get a little bit wild In case we lose control Which we would be

Losers if we didn't have a contingency plan, right? You could be I had to detach. I was looking at some of the things that were happening in the world and I was like We might get this might turn into a problem Yeah, I remember I called you. I was like hey dude, we need a freaking backup plan You're like it's gonna cost money. We gotta do this and I was like okay. Well, let's People will get in the game. So if you want to get in the game, it's $8.18 a month. If you can't afford that, we still want you in the game.

Email assistance at jocco wonderground.com. If you want to just support, if you want to have a place to go, if we get banned, what else could we get? Cut off. Inundated. Inundated. With outside interests. All those things. Do you want to hear the podcast with an advertisement for a mattress?

right as we're talking about, you know, a tank battle. Yeah. You don't want to hear that. Just mess up the whole. You also, by supporting that, you keep advertising out of this thing. Yeah, it's true. Also, we have a YouTube channel, the video version of this podcast. If you didn't know what Dave Burke looks like, boom, you can know.

So, yeah, or, you know, or like a lot of people, a lot of people are watching and listening at the same time. It's kind of the new, newer-ish, medium kind of. Either way. If you want to watch it on YouTube, you can't. We have a YouTube channel. Also some excerpts on there. So if you just want little nuggets, medium nuggets, we'll say. Origin USA has a cool podcast to subscribe to as well.

Psychological Warfare. I made an album for Echo Charles, kind of. Yeah. Kind of work fully. Really, actually. If you have little issues, little moments of weakness, press play on your phone after you download it from any MP3 place. And I'll tell you how to push through that moment of weakness. Flipsidecanvas.com.

Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. Final Spin. You better pre-order that thing right now if you want that first to dish. That's what I recommend. It's getting some good reviews right now from the, from the, kind of like the Terminator review people. People that like to smash you in their reviews have given it really crazy good reviews. Yeah.

So final spin. Dave, what's your review? Good. It's so good. Check DC gave me a review the other day Because I gave it to DC And he was like He was freaking stoked

So So Um Leadership strategy and tactics field manual The code evaluation of protocols Discipline equals freedom field manual Way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3, 4 Mikey and the Dragons

Hackworth, about face Extreme ownership Dichotomy of Leadership Uh, We have the leadership company Where we teach leadership Eschlonfront.com If you need details on that

That's where you can find out about our live events Including the muster including field training exercises, EF Battlefield. We have an online training platform. You can hear us refer to it from time to time. If you want to ask me a question,

go to extreme ownership.com and enroll in the Extreme Ownership Academy. And you can ask me a question. You can ask Dave a question. You can ask Laefa question. We're on there two, three times a week. We also have a bunch of courses you can take. So check that out.

And if you want to help service members active and retired, their families, Gold Star Families, you can check out Mark Lee's mom, Mom and Lee. She's got a charity organization that does all kinds of amazing stuff. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's mighty warriors.org. And if you want more of my boring, blathering, or you need more of Echoes, interjecting inquiries, or you want Dave's enhancing estimations, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the gram, and on Facebook, Dave is at David R. Burke.

Echoes at Equich, I am at Jock-Wilink. And thanks to all the men and the women of the military who are leading, not from a psychopathic mind, but trying to take care of their people and accomplish the mission. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders. Thank you for taking care of us by locking up the psychopaths of the world. And to everyone else out there, take care of your people. care of your people put them first and you don't take care of them by being easy or letting them cut corners or allowing a lack of training and allowing a lack of discipline you take care of them by helping them be the best they can be by helping them be prepared by listening to them by

incorporating their ideas and by putting your own agenda and your own aspirations below theirs go do that and until next time this is dave and neko and Jocco. Out.