Jocko Podcast - 321: Set a Goal, and Just Get After It. With Retired SEAL, Chris Gifford.

Episode Date: February 16, 2022

0:00:00 - Opening0:03:06 - Chris Gifford.2:56:33 - Final thoughts.3:09:39 - How to stay on THE PATH.3:34:07 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 321 with Echo Charles and me Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. So, it's cold, wet, dark. I've been awake for a few days. 19 years old. It's hell week. It's kind of crazy.

But I'm having fun. A bunch of people have quit. and you do you have no idea who's going to quit my boat my boat crew leader quit who he was a prior quitter so he had been already been to buds been to the fleet realized he didn't want to be in the fleet gone gone through the whole administrative rigamarole to get back to buds and he just quit watching people quit is crazy they quit so fast you can't keep track of it it's just It's just a mass exodus. And so what happens is your boat crew.

You're in a boat crew of six or seven guys organized by height because you need to be roughly the same height to carry a boat on your head or a log on your shoulder. If you got six or seven guys, you've got to be around the same height. So you're organized by height. So as people quit, you get less and less boat crews. You keep lining up to adjust who's in your boat crew. but by by late Tuesday night or early Wednesday morning things start to settle down meaning most of the people that are going to quit have quit and so now you see who's left and it's again you have no idea who was going to quit and you got all kinds of different people tall

short stocky lean smart some not so smart some introverts some introverts Some extroverts. There's no stereotype. There's no stereotype. There might be a public stereotype of what a SEALs, but it doesn't exist actually in the SEAL teams. You have no idea who's going to make it. Only the big frogman in the sky knows who's going to be a frogman down here on Earth.

In my boat crew, end up with some solid guys. One of them is a quiet fella from Kentucky, and he's holding strong. His name is Chris Gifford. Steady as a rock, calm, stoic, solid. And we kept paddling. And we made it through Hell Week. And we both eventually got assigned to SEAL Team 1 and ended up having some pretty cool experiences together.

And he ended up with a career as a SEAL like me and a ton of lessons learned along the way. And it's an honor to have him here with us tonight. to talk about his experiences and share some of those lessons learned. Chris, it's good to see you, man. You too. Thanks for coming by. Thank you so much.

This is a bit surreal because I'm a big fan of this show and just to be here with you and Echo and talk about this stuff. It's awesome. So thank you. Thank you for having me. We're going to get into buds because I don't remember a lot of buds. And so I'm hoping you can fill in some holes along the way. but before we get there, let's start out at the beginning.

Let's start about where you came from. Yeah, so I grew up in Kentucky in Lexington, which is kind of a college town. And it was a great place to grow up, and it's still a great place today. But when I was in high school, I wanted to leave. I was ready to leave. What did your mom and dad do? So my parents were divorced. My mom worked later on she got remarried.

They owned a body shop, so they ran that. And then my father was not too far away in Louisville, and he ran his own business. It was kind of an answering service for people who did inspections. house inspections. So they would call him, he would set up the appointments and then just fax the appointments to them. But who was more influential to me was probably my best friend's family. And he was, Mr. Hall, he was a great guy, and still is today, but he was retired, or not retired, but he was in Vietnam in the Army and just kind of an outdoors type person. was real instrumental in helping, you know, me kind of get into that outdoor, you know,

not staying inside, getting out and being in nature more. Big Hunter had a lot of guns and stuff, which made me more comfortable around it, and all this stuff made a big difference later on. Because, yeah, being from Kentucky going to San Diego was a, Big change. And it was pretty evident early that I would have that. Now, if I remember right, you were, weren't you an electrician or something? Yeah.

So the, as I was wanting to go into the military, when I was 14, my best friend and I, went to Gulfport, Mississippi to visit his uncle, who was a CB chief. And we spent a week there with him. and he was great. He took us to the base, kind of exposed us to all that. And that's when I was like, yeah, I think the Navy is a good way to get out of Kentucky. It's a good environment. This is the type of culture I want to be in.

And my best friend and I at the time were also dive qualified. So we'd already been through like the paddy, open water. My friend was big into that. And so we kind of, that was our high. So we go down in Gulfport, Mississippi, and he takes us around, and he said, you know, if you like scuba diving, you might want to look at the seal teams. And we're the seal teams. So he had the All Hands magazine, which is about, you know, so this was mid-80, which is the only information that was out at the time. And we look through it and it's like, yeah, this sounds cool.

This is, I think this would be good. So we tried to do, my friend, I try to do as much. research as we could. And we kind of determined that, and now in the Navy, you'll call it a POA and M, you kind of set up these milestones on how to get to a targeted goal. And I knew that at the time, in order to go to Buds and be a seal, you first had to go to an A school. So my thinking was, okay, if I got to do a trade and they had a list. of the different source ratings that you could be to go to Buds. I figured if I could learn this early, then when I was in A school, I could work out more,

and I could focus on going to Buds. So my high school had a program to go to vocational school half of the day. So the first half, you did your whatever required courses, math, English, whatever. And then the second half, you left the campus, went to a vocational school, and you studied a trait. And I chose electricity just because a lot of my family were in construction. It was, I would spend some summers working for my uncles as a plumber, and I knew I didn't want to do that. So electrical work was a lot easier. Well, and that wasn't easier, but it was cleaner.

Cleaner. Cleaner. Yeah, I wasn't scooping shit. So it was So I chose That electrical work And with the whole intent Of just learning that

So when I got to A school I didn't have to study as hard I could just go to the gym Every night What was in the All Hands magazine? You know it just had Just cool pictures Well it had the pictures

But it kind of outlined You know this is what you have to do To go to budge Yeah you have to So many pull-ups So it's, you know, the times on your runs, your swims. They talked about the source rating. So it was all about just kind of how to get into it.

Very little was about what they actually did. Did you read any books? Like the, there's a couple books that predated you and I going in the military, going in the Navy. Did you read any of those? I didn't read any of them. No, no. I, when I was in high school, I was a mediocre student at best. I knew to join the Navy,

all I had to do was graduate with a three point of seat. And that's all I did. Did you do any athletics? I did. I was a runner and I ran distance. And that was because I was, you know, like I am now, but, you know, very thin, long legs. And I think it was like 135 at the time. What's distance?

What kind of distances? So for track was the two mile or, yeah, it was the two mile run. the one mile run and the half mile, or 880. So my high school, it was mostly all sprinters. And there were very few distance runners. So it was good that the coach kind of left us alone. And that's all I did was just go in and run miles and miles every day. And so that was kind of my strong point.

I did swim, but I didn't do the type of swimming that I probably did to be competitive. I think around my group of friends, I was probably a very good swimmer and I think compared to the general population today. You were a good swimmer amongst your nine friends in Louisville, Kentucky. Yeah, exactly. So, but running, running was definitely my strong point. So you get in the Navy, when you show up to buds, what, what was your thoughts when you showed up to Buds? Well, I think by that time, I felt pretty comfortable with how we were, or how Buds went. And a lot of that was because my best friend, again, we both wanted to go in the teams together, but he was a year ahead of me. So he actually

joined the Navy one year ahead. And so he was kind of communicating with me, how things were going. and when I was in A school, I actually was here in San Diego. So on the weekends, I would take the bus over to Coronado, meet him, and, you know, hang out with him and kind of get some inside. But before that, did he make it? He did. He did. Oh, dang. Yeah.

What team do you go to? He went to STVs. Oh. Yeah. And that was, yeah, he did one tour there. and then he got out, went into the police force and still has a great career doing that. So you had a good heads up as to what you were going to be facing when you got to buds? I did.

And that year, while he was gone, I was just so focused on what I needed to do. And I think one of the issues that I had, again, I was a good runner, a decent swimmer, but I'd never lifted weights before. And I didn't even know where to start or definitely I would have hurt. myself. So I went to the YMCA and I met a former Kentucky football star, Cisco Bryant, coach Bryant, and just went in and said, look, and again, 135 pounds, 16 years old. I said, I want to be a seal. And he's like, uh-huh. And I said, you know, here's my strong points, but I don't have any weight training or anything.

And he mentored me for that year. I would go every day that I could. And he worked with me. And if anything, he kept me from getting hurt, which I think a lot of kids trying to go today, you know, they just push it too hard and get hurt before they even go. But he was a good mentor to me and got me kind of that more comfortable with my body, my weight, and to be able to hand.

handle that. So I felt pretty good going to Buds that. And you were good on pull-ups, push-ups, dips, yeah. And he's-and-rope climbs and all that. Yeah, yeah. He's the one who kind of worked with me on that and put me on a good program to be able to at least, again, make the markers. And, you know, back then, not a lot of people knew about Buds. So really all you had to do was, you know, meet the minimum. You weren't trying to outperform at that time. And I remember doing one of the test. I think it was the test right before you class up. They were like, all right, eight pull-ups and they're trying to get everybody through. Once you did your age, they're like, all right, hop down, next. And they were just trying to. They just didn't even care. Yeah. It was just trying to,

yeah, if you were ready to class up and you met the test, then you were ready to go. They weren't, you weren't really competing. I got a confession to make. You just made me thinking, this and I feel like a dick so there was a guy remember we had to do that class up test and you you count your buddy's reps and my buddy who I know exactly who it is because he ended up making it on sit-ups he didn't he was shy the number I didn't know him at the time and you know I think you had to do 75 sit-ups or something like this and he did like 68 maybe he even did like 72. Like for time or something?

You have two minutes. Okay. You have to do it's run, swim, or it's actually swim, run, pull-ups, sit-ups, push-ups, something like that. Gotcha. Minimum numbers. Like you said, Chris said the minimum for pull-ups was like eight. Yeah.

But that was it. You do eight. Okay, you're good. You're going in the class. This guy who I end up, I know him. Like later on, I know him. He's a great guy. He's a good guy.

He's a great team guy. Blah, blah, blah. he did like 70 shy of the sit-ups and the instructor came over was like what was his number and I'm like 71 fail you have such an asshole honey I feel bad dude you know but at the time and also at that time it was like you didn't know who was making it you didn't and I don't think we had really had that attitude because I think you get into an attitude of the class like you got to help your friends out like help your buddy and we weren't there yet because we were just hey are we going to class up. And so I just, and I also have like a cold-blooded streak of honesty and it's hard for me

to lie about shit. And I actually had one person at one time. You're incapable of lying. I'm like, probably pretty close. So the instructor asked me about 71. They're like, fail. Cool. Sorry, bro. Yeah. Well, that, yeah, that reminds me of when I first got two buds. So I think when I got there, the class before is just classed up. So everyone that was waiting in that fourth, or whatever, that pre-training phase, they had all left for the class. So there was, but there was a handful of people that were kind of hanging around and there was kind of a, there were a couple of people that kind of felt that stayed in that limbo, that purgatory for way too long.

And whether, you know, they're like, oh, I'm not ready to class up. So, you know, maybe they wouldn't do as many of the police just because you had orders there. It costs way too much to send you someplace else. So if you kind of, you know, you could stay in fourth phase for months, maybe even a year, but too long. Yeah. But your clock doesn't start until you class up.

So there's really no reason to stay in fourth phase because you're just never going to go anywhere. So but I show up and there's not a whole lot of people there. And I get a room and meet my roommate who ended up being my swim buddy, great guy. And it was like a Friday. It was the first day, or first day I had just gotten on my uniforms and they would have a schedule. So you're around the other, the actual classes, but they would meet morning for PT and they would do something. But then they'd say, okay, come back on the beach and we're just going to do surf passage and just practice going in out of the water.

There's no time. There's no limit. Nobody's watching you. It's just, you just go out and do it. you know, we're going to do a run or go to the pool or something. So this day, they were, they were doing surf passage. And this was, I guess it was March. So the waves were pretty good there. And so being from Kentucky, didn't grow up around the ocean. I wasn't, you know, surf or anything, I got my ass hammered. You know, we had those duck feet that weighed a ton. And, you know,

I put them on and get out in the waves. I get knocked down. I get up. I'm trying to swim out and I'm trying to swim over the waves and I'm just getting pushed right back into the beach and this happened you know it was the whole time so the two hours or whatever we're doing it and I get back to the room that night and I'm like how can I be a seal if I can't even get through the surf zone this is ridiculous so I talked to my roommate who was I think he was from California or from a coastal state he's like dude no worry about well we'll go out this weekend I'll teach you and he did he took me out and taught me how to dive under the water and kick like hell and just get through and uh that was kind of my first experience of this is this is what a

team does you know when somebody has an issue a buddy who has a little bit of knowledge says hey you know i can help you out yeah that's a good thing you didn't get the introduction of the teams from me short stroke and your sit-ups like i did to that dude oh man uh uh So you and I are, you and I, what are you, six feet? Five 11. Yeah, so I'm five 11 too. Because I remember we got linked up together pretty quick because we're literally the same height. And that means even in, I don't know if we, do we mess with boats and stuff in fourth phase?

I don't think we did. If anything, it was just kind of an introductory thing. Like here's how you put it on your head. Here's how we lift it up. But it was mostly, it was just kind of PT type stuff, physical. just general training. And then we roll into first phase. What did you think of that?

You know, again, I was kind of a small guy, but I didn't require a lot of maintenance, which was nice. Yeah, you were low maintenance, right? Because the big guys, I remember being on the O course. This was right at the beginning. I don't know if you remember this, but we had a big guy.

I know exactly what you're talking about. And he was awesome. I mean, and he was a good guy. loved him. Everyone loved him. He was a good runner. He was an awesome swimmer. I think he was a collegiate swimmer. But he was, you know, what you would think a seal looked like. And we were on the O-course. And, you know, we were all lined up and everyone just kind of goes. And it wasn't like a time thing. You just did the loop a couple of times just to practice, you know, your techniques. And I remember this guy got to like the third obstacle, which was the high wall. The high wall. So it's a wall that's probably 12 feet tall and there's a rope on it.

And you climb the rope like Batman. You know, you hold the rope and you put your feet on the wall. You kind of walk up the wall. And then you get to the top. You flip the other side and you drop down. Dude, I remember that. This is one of the few things I remember for Buds is this evolution right here. I'm watching that guy. His forearms gave out. His forearms got out because he couldn't, he couldn't pull himself up the rope. and, you know, guys were kind of passing him through, and he spent the whole evolution on that wall. And we were, you know, the students that were done were over there cheering him on. The instructors were cheering him on, and they were like, get over the wall, get over the wall.

And, but he never made it over the wall. And they dropped him, performance drop. Oh, that was a performance drop. I think so. But now that, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It might be what you remember.

It might have been a, I don't know if it was a DOR or if there's a performance. I don't either, but again, but that, it was kind of another realization of, you know, you don't know who's going to make it through. Do you remember how many people we classed up with? So the number that I remember, and I don't have any real evidence of this, was about 116 or somewhere a little over 100. Really? That's what I remember.

I remember more than that. Yeah, who knows? I don't remember much. Well, I remember losing a guy on the first PT of the first day. And we were on the grinder. You know, they were posing us down, and we got wet a couple of times. And he turned his ankle or at least indicated he did. And they're like, you know, of course, yelling at it.

I mean, it's the first day of buds. And they were yelling at him and he, you know, went over and quit. But yeah, yeah, I remember. never losing, and then we lost people for performance. I don't think it was safety, you know, a couple of weeks before graduation when we were on the island. But, you know, you mentioned at the opening about the boat crew leader. And I remember that like it was yesterday.

We, it was, we're getting ready to do. Night rock portage. Rock portage, yeah. And they bring everybody into the, into the classroom to give us the brief. And it was looking bad. out there. So this, you know, it's probably April, May, you know, the winds were high, the waves were going up. And we were just kind of sitting in there. You can hear the wind howling outside. And one of the instructors comes in, he's like, oh, man, this is going to be,

this is going to be ugly. And this was before they had guys wear helmets, right? Because it's easier now. But they all, they're like, you know, make sure you're wearing your hat. So if your head smashes against a rock, it'll keep your brains in and it'll soak up the blood. and they're just going on. So they come in, give the brief, and it's, yeah, it's looking bad out there. Plug bath. Yeah, they're just talking it up.

They're like, all right, get to your boats. So we all run outside, and we had people quit. Just bang, bang, bang. And I remember, it's the way I remember. Our boat crew leader comes up. He goes, who's the next in charge? And it was one of the other guys. And he hands him his paddle, and he goes,

I'm falling by the wayside. Yep, that's the exact quote, bro. That's the exact quote That's the exact quote that that dude said And I remember you you guys were We're good friends I think I was his roommate I'm almost positive I was his roommate

And you know We were all at first round come on man You know stay in there stay in there At first I go what I don't understand what he was doing Like I'm falling by the wayside What's this mean like are you picking up a different position on the boat

You're gonna you're gonna paddle from over here I didn't know what the fuck he was talking about And so I think I literally said like What are you talking about? What are you talking about. What are you trying to say? Yeah. Yeah. And we were all kind of like, and then Jock turns out, all right, see you later and just walked off. And we're all looking at like, see you later. We just walked off. And the evolution wasn't that bad. It wasn't that bad, man. It wasn't that bad. He got sucked in. He freaking rang out. We also had another guy that was a stud

that was like, all the instructors loved him. He was kind of a jacked guy. He was from the northeast. and I remember he quit and it was like, dang. I mean, he was a stud. He was doing great at everything. It's just a stud. And you're just thinking, what is wrong with these people? Which is a really accusatory thing. It's not for everybody.

The program's not for everybody. I understand that. It is very, here's the strange thing. You, you research about this thing, this job. You enlist in the Navy for six years of your life. you sign the dotted line for six years of your life. You train, you wake up early, you swim, you do all these things. And then first night of Hell Week, you just got, I was wrong, I'm out.

Like, that's a lot of investment for zero return on that investment. Yeah. Hell Week. Do you remember, did you have any hallucinations? Yeah, when on the long paddles, the just, kind of seeing stuff in the water, some lights and stuff, but nothing as bad as some others.

Yeah. Some others. I saw a couple traffic lights out in the middle of the ocean, and I knew I was hallucinating. I was thinking, oh, there's a traffic light, but that's obviously not right because we're in the middle of the ocean.

One of the clearest memories I have is one of the guys in our boat crew whose nickname ended up being Chet in the teams. Who was my swim buddy? He was your swim buddy. He swore. he was swearing, saying swear words for like a half an hour. Yeah.

And I just remember thinking, dude, this dude is coming up with some creative words right now. He was just swearing for like a half an hour. He was so mad about everything. And he was just dropping F bombs, man. It was freaking hilarious. Hilarious. Yeah. Yeah.

Now, he would, and such a great guy again. I mean, he helped me in so many ways. another thing was I was a good swimmer but swimming in the open ocean was was not my thing and you know farm boy from Kentucky so but he was good at guiding and uh he helped me a lot of times because when I was guiding I was all over the place and there were a couple of times where you know the instructors were counting down you know 30 29 and we're just you know, doing everything we can to make the time. And again, it was largely due to just my inability to swim, swim straight.

But we never failed anything. But, yeah, there was a couple of times that we're close. Yeah, I failed to swim. My swim buddy, who obviously I'm not going to say his name, so we failed to swim. And it was a swim that a bunch of pairs failed. So we all lined up. Now, was this like a time?

Yep. It was a time swim sometime in first phase. It wasn't like conditioning where they're like, all you fail. No, but a lot of us failed. Like there was probably a current or something, whatever. So we fail. And this particular, who is in our boat group, by the way. And you'll know who it is. But so we're standing in swim pairs and they're calling us in the first phase office to explain why we failed.

And this guy, this guy we walk in. And the instructors are like, you know, why did you guys fail? No shit. My swim buddy goes, Willink can't guide. And the funny thing was, I was actually, I was actually good at guiding, and I wasn't a horrible swimmer. And I just couldn't, I was in a state of shock, and I was like, I guess not. And what we ended up doing as a class is we split up between, they gave us to good swimmers. So they're like, okay, you, you know, Willink, you suck.

And they put me with another guy, and they put the other guy with another guy. Well, I passed the next swim. He failed the next swim because he was. slow but he blamed it on good old Willink over here that was the first that's like the first in the first memory I have of somebody just not taking ownership and how totally jacked up it was and I was thinking even the instructors I could see the instructors they they didn't look like oh well what's wrong with you willing they looked at him like oh you're a you're a dirt bag they could feel that from them so oddly enough what did you have was there anything that was hard for you

buds? I wouldn't say like hard but again I didn't win anything I didn't lose anything I was right in the middle if there was anything that came easier to me was just the running just because I just spent so many

years running I had and I had the body for it that wasn't an issue I didn't really get I mean I got cold as as everyone did but but yeah for dive phase no issues, but I was comfortable in the water.

I was already a scuba diver. Do you pass pool comp first time? Yeah. Dang. I failed poolco. I do remember when we had life saving. And I was trained lifeguard, so I felt pretty comfortable at that. And I got one of the instructors who was of shorter stature.

And I was like, okay, well, I should be able to handle this. I don't know if he had a weight belt on or just whatever, but, man, he whooped my ass in the pool. And it was, I think it was right before they started grading us. And it really kind of shook my confidence a little bit. But I ended up doing okay. But yeah, I mean, sometimes you get that. Just get the bad drawl. And especially on pool comp, you know, if you got somebody who's kind of watching for, you know,

like did you do 71 sit-ups or 75? Yeah, I failed pool comp and I didn't even go past the first the first thing where they rip your mask off. He ripped my mask off and he started just doing, he started going up, getting a breath, coming back down, knocking my regulator out. Go up, get a breath, come back down, knock my regulator. So I didn't get a breath and I was down there for 17 minutes. And I just sat there like kept putting it back in and kept going to doing the procedures.

And then after 17 minutes, he literally did, I sat there on my knees for 17 minutes and all he did was knock my regulator out come back down knock my regular out come back down and I kept putting it back and I'd get like half a breath boom it was gone again so and then after 17 minutes he came down gave me this gave me the signal to come up and I come up and I wasn't even stressed I was like so I come up and he goes you failed you didn't look comfortable on there and I was like who yeah instructor and anyways I ended up becoming friends with him later in the teams. And he's like,

oh, yeah, I remember this guy. I was just fucking with you. And I was like, oh, great. You know, my life. So, yeah,

you get messed with sometimes. That's the way it works. Yeah, yeah, I never was a Bud's instructor. I don't, you don't know if that's part of the program or something,

see how you handle failure. I don't know. But, uh, yeah, it's, it's kind of a weird dynamic. And,

uh, but that school is, you know, the way it's run is, is phenomenal. And, I mean, it's a science.

And, And they do good work. It's kind of crazy. Yeah. It's a crazy thing. It's a crazy thing because you would not think that 80% of the people that show up to that, that have enlisted in the military, that have gone through screening tests, that have trained, that have told their friends and family, I'm going to be a seal.

You wouldn't think that 80% of those people in that category would quit. You wouldn't think it. and they do. It's some crazy times. Crazy times. All right, so we get done. San Clementeown. How many guys do we lose at San Clemente Island?

Not too many, but there were a couple of guys, one in particular that was in our boat crew that got a safety violation. Yes, and that's the very guy that called me out as being the failure. So I think he was getting tracked the whole time. I do too. I think he was getting tracked

because I think they just thought, This guy's not a team player, and we don't want them in the teams. It's interesting. I didn't know that. Yeah. That's the very same guy. It makes sense. We also lost an officer out there.

Yeah. And he was a really good guy. He was, he was, were we in the same boat crew on the island? Because they moved people around. I'm not sure if we were. I don't think so. But yeah, he was my officer, my platoon or element. He wasn't mine, so we were different.

I had a different one. He was mine. And I remember before we went to the island. We, our kind of platoon all met at a pizza place together. And, you know, he talked about what was coming up. And we even had our spouses there and stuff. I mean, it was something like you would do in the teams. And we get out there and they got him on something.

It was so stupid. It was a weapons test. Yeah. Not a shooting. Like an academic test. It was like an academic test. there was something going on there. He made somebody mad or something like that.

I think, yeah, because I believe I talked to him soon after that, and he kind of indicated that there was some pass on the officer side. I'm not sure if he was from the academy or not, but he wasn't. He wasn't from the academy. Yeah, there was something there that didn't work out.

And it was unfortunate because, I mean, what little time we were with him, I think he made an awesome officer. That's the, that's the, hard part about having a certain level of subjectivity in the training, which there's less of it now. Yeah, there's less of that subjectivity. When we went through, it was very subjective.

And in many cases, that was the right thing because a team guy, instructors, looking at a guy saying, I don't really want this guy in a platoon with me, which is the ultimate test. Now, there's a great trick that one of the master chiefs played on the instructors at one point. one of the master chiefs who you know but um he he was running buds and he brought all the instructors into a room and was said you know hey right who thinks you know we should we should make this you know make sure it's as hard as it can be and set the standards and everyone's like yeah yeah and so I said okay what about the run times what should we make it and guys are chipping down the run times chipping down the swim times chipping down all these things and then they get done with

this new model of buds and then he pulls out a stack of records and it's all the instructor's records. And he and he says, none of you would be in the teams. And he was right. You know, you can only be so hard. So the subjectivity, I think it's less now. I believe it's less now. But it had a benefit and it had some negatives because the benefit is if a guy

really didn't belong. Because look, you can be a tough guy. You can just be a knuckle dragger like, oh, I'm not going to quit. That does happen. Guys just not going to quit. They're just tough, but they don't belong in the teams. and they could they would get rid of that guy. But occasionally you get a guy like that officer who was a good guy,

but I mean, we did, we spent a lot of time with him and he was a good guy. And for whatever reason, rub somebody the wrong way. And that was that. Bye. Yeah. Freaking rough. I hope he went on to do great things. I'm sure he did.

I'm sure he did. So you and I both get orders to seal team one. Did you request, did you request West Coast? No. Really? So that, uh, you feel like. out your dream sheet, which I think is pretty worthless. It was for you.

It was my dream all day long. I was like, team one, baby. It was literally my first choice. I'd be interesting to see how they did the division. But so my best friend, who, again, I grew up with both always planned to be in for SDV. I did. I wanted to go to these ghosts. You knew a homie person that put in for SDV.

So on that, so I put, you had three choices. My first choice, I think I put like Siltine. mate or silt it was an east coast team but my third choice i will go to stv's on on the east coast just because that's where i wanted to go and i get still team one that's crazy that's crazy yeah i'm sure it was just you know needs of the navy as i've i've learned throughout my career that that you that will come first and i'm sure they had numbers that they needed and i don't again i don't know how things got divided because we had almost half our class go to the East Coast.

Yeah, it was kind of half and half, it was kind of half and half. It almost, it almost was, like half of us went to East Coast, half of us was. And we had guys go to SDVs. Were you married yet? I was. I got married right before Butts. So I, I went home after A school on that leave, got married, and then went to Buds. Then my wife finished college, and then she moved out to San Diego after she finished. What did she think about coming to San Diego? Diego. In the beginning, it was, she didn't want to leave, you know, the East Coast because all of our family was there. And so she's like, all right, I'll go to California, but don't ever ask me to go out of the country. And, of course, 15 years later, we get orders to Germany, and she would have left without me because she wanted to go so bad.

So she had a total turnaround. But we joke about this all of that. Because we're still married. We'll have, yeah, 31 years. Impressive. But, yeah, yeah, it was, she came out to San Diego and being married in Buds was kind of interesting because a lot of people think, and I did, you know, before I've found out that, you know, Bud's kind of like boot camp where you're there all the time, but it's not, you know, you have a schedule, you show up for the schedule.

When you're done for the day, you're done. Weekends you're done. So we lived out in town. Where did you guys live? down in I-B. Dang. And I had a crappy apartment. She had a college friend that came out with her, so to help with the rent.

But our room was all guys who lived off base. So it stayed very clean because we weren't living in it. The beds were always made. Floors were always wet. We might come in. And actually, Ty Woods was one of my roommates from Benghazi, who later died. in Benghazi and but yeah we because he had lived off base so all the guys that had places off base got a room together and so we didn't have to clean him as much so you

clean I didn't leave our base I don't think I left base and say like even to this day if I can stay at my house I'll say at my house I don't want to go anywhere yeah there's no where I want to go there's no one that's like hey you want to go to a restaurant echo's like hey we're sure where I'm having the fight to my house tonight I'm like cool enjoy watching him I'm watching them too. I'm watching them by myself in my house. I was like, okay, this is my barracks. I was in 602, whatever that barracks, 602.

I'm in barracks, cool. I stayed there. That's all I did, but stay there. I don't think I left base in first phase. I don't think I, maybe, did I go to subway or something possibly? But knowledge is in there like sharpened my knife. Didn't have a car, didn't have a bike. What are we going to do?

I'm going to sharpen my knife, going to polish my boots, going to clean my room, going to hang out with my other loser roommate. that are also young and just not doing anything and we're just going to sit around and have fun. But yeah, that idea of that people don't understand is that buds, if you want to, when training's over, you can go, you can go get drunk if you want to. Yep. It's almost a test in its own right of what you're going to do and how you're going to behave and you'll get rolled up eventually or that'll be that.

So you end up getting orders to seal team one. Did you protest them or you just like, oh, no, no. Hey, Roger that's where they want me to go. And, and I mean, again, it wasn't like I was the only guy. I was with 15, 16 of my best friends. So it's like, all, well, we're going here. And did any, we all kind of went to team one, right? Did people go to other teams?

Yeah, so. Other West Coast teams? A couple of guys went to five. Like my swim buddy, he went to five. A couple of guys went to STBs. I wasn't, I'm not sure what coast they were on. But, yeah, we had, but they were kind of an anomaly. There was a big grouping.

A crew of us went to one. Yeah. A crew of us went to one. That was what happened. Yeah. When we showed up, we didn't even, you and I went to calm school before we even went through SQT, right? Yeah. So when we showed up at that time, the training department, which was at the team, they had, of course, they had to train the platoons that were getting ready to go overseas.

So they only did SQT, so qualification training, at certain times of the year. And you had to wait until you got people because remember we had people from other classes that came after us that went through that training together. So during that time, we all went to departments to work. And before I joined the Navy, I met a, the only time I ever met a, the only time I ever met a prior seal that gave me any decent information. It was in Kentucky. I don't remember how I got connected to him. I think it was through my parents because he had did something with trucking. And he met me for breakfast one morning. So I'm 17, I think, at this time. And I'm just asking

him all the, any question that I had. And he just, you know, he was very direct frank with me. He was, you know, dispelled a lot of the myths like killing the puppy and, and, and, and, you know, And they literally drowned you. Yeah, yeah, all the, all the stupid stuff. And he gave me like a couple of pieces of advice. First thing was for, for Hell Week, how to get through Hell Week. This was his thought was that what gets guys the most is they plan or they think too far ahead. They're not focused on the now.

And so, you know, you're getting ready to do a run or, you know, getting ready to do rock portage, and you're thinking of what's going to happen next week and, you know, on the swim that I'm not very good at. And they just, that gets into this loop and you just end up quitting. He said, don't do that. Just think about what, what are you doing right now? You got to run. What do you have to do to prepare? Get your boots, get your, you know, gear, and do the run.

What's next a swim? Okay, what I need? I need my knife. I need my this. So just stay on the now. And then when that gets too tough, then just take it, you know, I'm going to get to this next hour. And I'm just going to focus on what I'm doing, get through whatever it is right now, get over this obstacle, and then I can move to the next one. And that's what I did that during Hell Week.

It's like, what am I doing right now? And Hell Week is great for that because you don't have to plan. All you have to do is show up with the right gear and do what they tell you to do. For me, Hell Week was a relief because I wasn't worried about failing anything because I was like, hey, I'm not quitting. I wasn't, I had failed to swim, like I said, because we had issues. I had failed one run because I tried to pace myself and I'm not a fast runner. So I was like, oh, you know, I've passed whatever it was, three runs at this point. So I'm going to pace myself on this one and I failed.

It barely failed, but I failed. So I was always sweating, failing stuff. And so when Hell Week was coming, I was like, cool, I can't fail anything. Bring it. And I had fun. Yeah. I mean, I had fun because I knew that I wasn't going to quit and I was just having a good time. So the second piece of advice that it gave me came when it was when you get to the team,

you need to find the job that nobody wants, do it, do it well, and you'll always have work. So when we showed up at Siltim 1, and we're all kind of going into the departments, I was like, I want to go into the comms department. Because nobody else wanted it, because carrying the radio was heavy, and people had this kind of idea that comms was just this mysterious magic thing.

When it worked, it was PFM, you know, pure fucking magic. When it didn't, well, you know, the gods weren't. aligned, you know, yeah, the moon wasn't aligned that day. And, uh, and I knew that not to be true. And if I could, you know, do that job well, then I knew I would always have a job. And, and back then, you know, if you weren't in a platoon, they had you in a department. And, uh, you know, like, well, today it's, you know, everybody's a shooter. So you just keep rotating out. But back then there was no guarantee of that. And if they had too many people at the team, then if they didn't need you, then you just sat in a department until something else came. So I wanted to go into

comms. And when we got to the team, there was a billet, two billets that opened up at the East Coast Com School. And the way I remember it, at that time, you know, there was this kind of my belief was there was this real East Coast, West Coast rivalry. And none of the older guys at the team wanted to go to the school because that's the East Coast. I don't want to go to the East Coast. We do it better here. And I think people in the training were like, you can't teach me anything.

And we were new guys. Didn't even have our trinant yet or even through SQT. So we're like, we'll go. and sure enough they're like okay cool and yeah and they sent us to to com school I had stood quarter-deck watch with a post-platoon commander lieutenant who we you know so we this is back we used to sleep on the quarter-deck you know in that little bunk room so we're hanging out you know whatever we got pizza for dinner and I mean this is literally within being at the team for probably a week.

And he says, you know, I'm like, you know, freaking, I'm ready to rock and roll. I think we're going to nom, the whole nine yards. And, you know, he says, well, what are your hopes? And he's a very cerebral guy. Anyways, very nice guy. He's like, you know, what are you looking to do? Look, look, I want to go on ops. I want to be, I want to go out there.

And he goes, hey, if you really want to go on operations, you need to become a comms guy. Because no one wants to do it. And yet every operation, there 100% has to be a comms guy there. You don't necessarily need a sniper. You don't necessarily need a point, man. You don't necessarily need a machine gunner. A rigger. You don't necessarily need a rigor.

You need a comms guy. And so if you want to go on every operation, you go be a comms guy. That morning, I woke up, really turned over the watch. I went right to the comms department said, I'm going to be a radio man. So there you go. That's how I ended up. And I remember there was pushback. from the guy at the East Coast that said,

we do and send me two new guys. This is an advanced course of instruction. You can't send new guys. They're going to get slaughtered out here. And we just said, bring it. So we show up. That was a freaking great course of instruction. It was phenomenal.

And that was, again, the start of our career. And to have that skill. And again, when we get back or got back from the course, I'm sure that we had some bit of arrogance about us. I know that might surprise you about Chaco. But I mean, we understood it. We had the skill down, and there was nobody could touch us. And you'll probably remember the guy who taught comms and training cell at the time.

He was not a fan. He hated me. He hated you. You hated me. You were quiet enough to be like going to the radar. I was like, that's actually wrong. You did? 19 year old jockel was a handful, son.

When we were in SQT and he was doing his comms class, he, yeah, he was just all over the place. And I remember specifically the Zulu time. Do you remember that? He was trying to explain in developing a comms plan that all times are in Zulu and why it's in Zulu. but his terminology wasn't quite correct. And he was saying that Zulu time is so many hours back or something. And you were like, no, Zulu time is Zulu time. And you can see it.

I'm a new guy, bro. And you can see it in his face. He's getting kind of red. He's like, no, no, no. What it means, because it was something that had to do with daylight savings time. It changed. And it's like, it's. It's like, it's this off of Zulu, and you're like, no,

Zulu time to Zulu time. I used to run my life on Zulu time. So when we went to that course, this is the cool thing. So we show up at this course. We're not SEALs. I mean, we're new guys. We don't have our Tridons yet. We jump in with a bunch of experienced East Coast guys.

And actually there was another, there was a couple guys from Team 5 out there that had a platoon or some platoon or two under their belts. And we just, same thing. Where everyone's lived there they're living in town whatever we're living in the barracks yep We're all we're doing is saying we have to learn Morris code you and I are like talking to each other in Morris code like for you can see 3PO and And R2D2 right? Studying this stuff we're totally into it we have no like people think you got graduate from seal training you have some kind of Tactics for the field we didn't have any of that we didn't know what we were doing or equipment or or equipment. Yeah, that's where we didn't have anything

So the chief at first he was pissed that we had got sent out there you sent me these two knucklehead new guys but then he realized we were freaking fired up and we wanted to be like there's not too many seals that are like hey i want to be a radio man that's what we literally wanted to do so once he realized that he was kind of like okay but then he would kind of test us and one of the tests he did so the that course uh the end of the course was a six or seven day in the field ft x and it was around a swamp as around an airfield that's a swamp you're in the middle of a swamp so this chief that was running the course he he he goes willing and he says hey if you're hardcore you'll go in the

field with nothing but a poncho and a poncho liner and i was like what did you say if i'm hardcore is that what you just said because trust me i'm jocco or i'm freaking hardcore so you're say a poncho and a poncho liner that's what okay cool yes i'm hardcore i'm going on the field to the poncho and poncho liner what by the way key component here poncho poncho liner no ground pad which is which is insane did you have a ground pad no so so you and i are idiots we have no ground pad we have no sleeping bag we have no bivisack we go with a poncho and a poncho liner and we are wearing wool not the smart wool you get today but like like world war two wool yeah w w i i i think we even went to one of those

GI Joe's stores or whatever and was buying old wool to wear. So we go in the field when we start when we drive when we're driving to the field and now so it's January in Virginia February maybe?

Yeah January February February we're driving to the field on our drive it starts raining as we start pulling into the area of operations, it turns to sleep. As we're getting out of the vehicles, it turns to snow. It's freezing. And I remember as we got out of the vehicle and we start, you know, our patrol into our first point, we get to this little creek or, you know, it actually has water in it. And Jaco and I look at each other. And Jaco goes, and he goes, you know, it only sucks the first

time. Because, yeah, you get wet. Once you're wet. You only get wet once. Yeah, you only get wet once. And so we just drove right through it. Yep, it only sucked the first time. That first time lasted seven days.

We sucked once for seven straight days. So we end up, so on that course, you had, we had communications windows that we had to make with stations around the country. So we're setting up these old school antennas. Echo Charles, this is where you literally take out pieces of. of wire and you measure the wire to the frequency that you're going to be communicating on and you hang these pieces of wire clandestinely in trees and then you make these communications window and we had like a communications window every two to four hours the entire time and what

happens is if you you're getting graded the whole time and he comes out and checks your you know if you've got like what they call if you're out camping so if you've got stuff strewn about and you got your sleeping bag out and everything's out of your rucks and he comes out and you're sack, then he's going to dock you points or he's going to send you on E&E or something like this. And if you miss communications windows, then that's points against you. And how strong your comms is, that can be points against you or points for you. So what happens with all the other groups, literally every single other group, they missed some of their com windows because it's every two to four hours.

And why did they miss their calm windows? Because they would fall asleep. Why would they fall asleep? They fell asleep because they got it on a ground pad, got into a bivisack, and a freaking negative zero degree sleeping bag and they just would fall asleep we literally could not sleep we could not sleep we were we would just stand we were I remember just sit there looking at you we're marching in place by a tree at 2 o'clock in the morning three o'clock in the morning we have every piece of clothing that we have on we got a poncho over us and we're marching in place trying

to stay warm because we're going to freeze to death bro we have we're soaking wet it was freaking ridiculous. No ground pad. We don't miss any com windows. We set up great antennas because we had all this time to set them up because we weren't sleeping. And we make all of our com windows.

We make good communications on all those com windows. And we end up as the number one pair. And the number one pair gets the early extract. Meaning when everyone had to stay like the full day or the extra night or whatever, we get pulled out of the field early as the number one pair. Two freaking meatball new guys.

We get pulled out of the field early. And here's an awesome thing. And I don't know if you know this, but that chief called the master chief. Yeah, he called the master chief of our command and said, hey, you sent these two knuckleheads out there. They just graduated the number one pair in the class. They're freaking squared away.

You should take care of these two guys. They're great seals. Which was, we weren't even seals yet. Yeah. So it was really cool. Obviously, I let it go to my head. Hey, no one can tell me anything about comms. I'm the frigging ultimate comms guy.

Well, I mean, if you look at it, it wasn't like we were just the right place at the right time. And, you know, we made a good decision. That was it. I mean, we knew, we knew our shit. Yeah. And there was no one else at that team, at least, that could counter that. So, yeah, I think we were, you know, somewhat arrogant. But, again, that's what we set out to do.

We wanted the hardest job. We were going to do it well. and we never had a problem finding work. Yeah, that was good times. So then we go into SQT. Yeah. So we go into SQT when we get back, which we had just been through freaking hell week.

I think it might have been harder than hell week. Well, I came out worse. Oh, that's right. You had significant trench foot, right? Yeah, yeah. For weeks I was down and I remember like sitting at home, having my feet in hot or warm Epson salt and just the pain of that feeling when it, when it comes back to your nerves.

And still today, I have nerve damage from that. It's when I retired, you know, you go through your medical screening. And yeah, I still have part of from that. Now, I've gotten used to it because it's been so long. Yeah, you had a legitimate case in 1991. 1992 of World War I trench foot. Yeah. From spending a whatever seven days in the freezing cold with our feet were wet the entire time.

That was another thing. He told us to wear jungle boots. He was like he, you wear, because you can wear all these, these, you know, Danners and these high speed boots. They're going to get wet and you're, you know, they're never going to dry out. And I was like, Roger that. So what I wear, jungle boots. What do you wear?

Jungle boots. And I actually carried that through my entire career. My entire career, I almost wore jungle boots 90%. of the time unless my rule was if there's snow on the ground in insert during insert I'll wear something else if there's not snow on the ground I'm wearing jungle boots and I did that my whole career because your feet because jungle boots they dry out echol Charles so there's little there's little drainage holes so they dry out and it might take them a few hours but if you're wearing a pair of thick insulated boots they

are not going to dry out and so I wore jungle boots almost my whole career and finally they started making some modern boots that were comparable to jungle boots. So now we go to SQT, which was awesome. We had great instructors in there, great instructors teaching us the fundamentals. We were kind of, we got, it was almost like our generation of instructors, those guys were like one degree of separation from Vietnam. For the vast majority of our instructors. It was. I also think it was important that the training.

was still at the team at the time. So, you know, these were people that you were going to be in a platoon with. And, you know, there was a lot, especially a SIL-Team 1, we have, you know, kind of that history of having that ownership and, you know, meeting a certain standard. And they really, they really pushed that. And I think that came out in the training that we got during that time. But yeah, these were guys that had been in for, and had multiple, multiple teams. I mean, they just did it over and over. And yeah, they had quality, quality training. It seems kind of funny now when I look back on it.

But there was this thing that they would say at Team One, Team One, it's not just a number, it's an attitude. And they, in fact, our seniors oftentimes were kind of joking when they said that. Because, you know, we also had the nickname with Stalog Team One because we had uniform inspections and haircut inspections and everything was like more militant. but I believed it. I mean, I was like, yeah, hey, it's not just a number, it's an attitude, especially young, joccur is all about that. Like, we're number one. That means something.

There's a reason. Team one. Of course. So I got a little crazy with that. But the instructors, freaking outstanding. And I still, so much of what I learned, I learned then. And I fast forward a little bit, but I always say like 70, of what I learned in the teams.

I learned while we were instructors at training cell at SEAL Team 1. Absolutely. We'll get to that. So we go through that. We go through SQT. We had any big high points of SQT? No, it was just, again, we were with all the guys from Buds and some others. And just quality, quality people.

And now it was a good time. The training was good. And back to the Stalach 1. And I consider. I'm sure you do too. I mean, we grew up at Civil Team 1. And just what we learned there set for the rest of the career, set your work ethic, your, you know, the way you see things and the community as a whole.

And I'm proud to have been at Team 1. And from that period of time, it was, yeah, it was phenomenal. Yeah. I think I remember this time where you told me you were going on a trip. And I think you were going on some kind of a trip, and Team 5 was also going on a trip. And remember you told me you should have seen their pallets. Like meaning their aircraft pallets,

when you go on a big trip, you load your aircraft pallets with all your gear, and there's a science to it. And there's an art to it too, like making it all squared away, making it way to making it look good and making it look clean so the Air Force inspector will pass you. And I remember you saying,

man, you should have seen the Team 5 pallets. You were disgusted. Yeah, I mean, if it looks like trash, it probably flies like trash. We get done with SQT and we roll into our first platoons. We're in sister platoons now. We had to be. Yep. Because they didn't want to stack the platoons with both of us.

And this was, I think, a great, you know, strategic decision. They always had us, you and I in different platoons. But, I mean, we talked every day. And I remember, you know, if I did a comp plan or something, that worked or didn't work, we would get together and debrief about it. But yeah, they always kind of kept us separated.

Were you the primary com guy in your first platoon? No, there was a primary, but, you know, it was early on, like, just get it done.

So I had a lot of leeway. Right. But, because, you know, he had other stuff to do. But it was pretty clear who was making the, the com plans and who was keeping the gear and but and then from then on yeah yeah i was super

lucky being they i was the primary com guy in my first platoon pretty awesome a lot of responsibility for a freaking meatball new guy and that's also where i realized hey if you don't want to be told what to do do it ahead of anyone being able to tell you what to do so that was my goal our platoons had some unique personalities very very unique your platoon was pretty good pretty savage, dude. It was, again, an interesting time, and it wasn't, it wasn't like an even, or like a bell curve. It was you were either a brand new guy or you had four or five lieutenants.

And there was maybe one, but there was, there was really no in between. And luckily, I think there was five or six of us. new guys that there was at least one or two that had the spotlight on that so it kept the spotlight off the of the others and I was in my low

low mode you were like hey I'm gonna keep my mouth shut I'm gonna do what I'm told I'm just gonna make cause it was a scary place in the 90s at team one as a new guy it was much different there was there was there was scenarios that could unfold

really quickly if you were out the line as a new guy. And your platoon had definitely had some bruisers in it. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Some bruisers at it. Studs, freaking legendary freaking 90s team guys just getting after it. My platoon was a little bit more, a little bit more mellow than that. I mean, great guys, but just a little bit of a different personality.

The personality of my first platoon was a little bit different than the personality of your first platoon. We end up going on deployment together. We go to Guam. My platoon got in so much trouble on our first trip that we didn't do, we never left Guam again after my first trip. Really? Yep. We did one trip.

We got to Guam, we did one trip, and we got in so much trouble that we never did a trip again. They pulled us off the schedule. Wow. You're not going there, you're not going there, you're not going to there. I didn't remember that. Yeah. So that's why we, that's why I was sitting.

in Guam for five months. And how many trips did you go on? I think we did three. Yeah. So you probably did at least one or two of ours that we were supposed to do. We got rotated out. We were a disaster. The guys liked to party, I must say.

So got done with that. I mean, what was your first platoon? Any big leadership lessons learned? No. Again, at the time, I just did what I was told. And you were even though technically as being a calm guy, I was well aware of what I needed to do. But you're still kind of learning how the community works. And there's things in the field that you're still trying to develop.

And you know, you mentioned the guys. They were, it was a unique dynamic, but they were still solid people. Oh, for sure. They were good mentors and, you know, they worked with you. If you, you know, if you were really, hey, I'm, I'm here to do this. Then they were all about teaching you and sometimes, you know, not the care, but the stick. But you, you know, they did get you to where by the next platoon, you were ready to be a department head. You were ready to lead.

And you knew tactically what you needed to do. The underlying tone that I took away that I think was instilled in me the most at Seal Team 1 was being professional. And that applied to like, hey, when you're in the field, you're a professional. And that's what you need to do. You're squared away. You don't have your crap line all over the place. Your gears squared away. You don't have straps hanging off of everything.

That was the deal. Time to shoot. You freaking, you shoot. You shoot the way you're supposed to shoot. You're not throwing rounds all over the place. When it's time to make comms, you make freaking comms. And I still have an e-val that said made comps 100% of the time. 100% of the time.

There's no, there's no voodoo for freaking me and gift. We were making freaking comms. That's it. We were making freaking comms. That's what was happening. Definitely. Yeah, but that high level professionalism. Yeah.

And when I was talking about your platoon had personalities, they definitely had awesome crazy personalities, but for sure, professional. It's the same thing with the guys that were in my first platoon. They were a little bit more lighthearted, but they were professionals, and you didn't want to mess up, you wanted to do a good job,

you wanted to learn as much as you could, you wanted to be a good, you wanted to be known as a good operator. That's what you wanted to be known as. And so that's what you did. You know, we'd always be all of us, our whole new guy crew, Saturday morning, be at the team.

We'd be working out. We'd be fixing gear. We'd be hanging out. I remember that until, until basically we went on that first deployment. That was what it was. I just remember always being at the team. Always being at the team. This is just the way it was.

After that first platoon, then I started volunteering for ARG platoons on the ships, and you continued doing the, what we called spec ops platoons, which was going to, Guam basically and then going on exercises from there. How was that next platoon? It was good. You know, because again, now you're past the new guy stage and now people are looking to you to, you know, to start being a leader.

And we had good new guys, a great new guys. And I had now I'm the department head. So if there was any strains on me before, now those are all gone. You know, we had good officers and it was good. But it was still back to Guam. And spec ops, you know, it was the 90s. So, you know, you did what they asked you to do. A lot of fit, but the dry years.

Yeah. The dry years. Then you did another platoon. You got back from that? Yep. Did a third one. And again, now I'm starting to look at, okay, I'm ready to be LPO chief. I've got the comms thing down.

I'm good with that. Now I need to start moving up. And the problem that we had at that time was the way the Navy worked is you had that source rating. So you competed against that source rating to promote. And my source rating was I-Seemen, Interior Communications Electrician. So my job in the Navy was supposed to be fixing phones and navigation equipment on ships, which I had no clue how to do, but because I was an electrician and I understood how I could look at a schematic when I took the test, because that's what you take the test on, I could look at the schematic and go, oh, yeah, well, this is a resistor, it's probably this, and, you know, Navy tests are all the same. There's two answers that are totally out, and then there's two that are pretty close, and you just got to choose the right one.

So I was good at taking the test and promoting all the way up to E6. But after that, now you're competing, you're still competing to make chief, but we're all competing against in different ratings. And I Seaman just was not advancing because at the time, a lot of people that were doing that job would get out and go work for like AT&T or something. and but now cellular networks were coming in so nobody was getting out so the only people that were advancing were people who had been in 17, 18 years because you had to build up that time. But then all my friends who were in different ratings like I think whole technician was one,

you know, they were making rank because everyone was getting out and working at the at the shipyards. But we're all doing the same job as a seal, but that's not what they're testing. Thankfully that that changed and we have an SO rating. and that's better. But at the time, and that was really weighing on me on promotion, because I was ready to advance, but it was the Navy system that was keeping me from doing that. And so after the third platoon,

and that was our first rotation date, and we knew that some people had to leave, and some people would stay, and I think the course was going to stay, but I needed to find another way to kind of break out. And at the time, because we were deploying down to Southeast Asia, I looked at, okay, how can I be more of an asset to the team? And in my third platoon, who we had our platoon chief,

who made Master Chief, and who I'm talking about, because I think you did a platoon with him too, awesome guy, but he was a tie speaker. And we did a trip to Thailand, and I just remember he kind of commanded everything, even though he wasn't the guy in charge, but he spoke the language. And, you know, kind of going back to, you know, you want to be an asset. And to be a com guy, you're always going to go because you have the radio. Well, if you're a linguist, that too. And this was the 90s.

And so at the time, the administration, I think it was Bill Clinton administration, they were starting to normalize relations with Vietnam. And we didn't have any Vietnamese speakers at the team. I think we had one. He was actually from Vietnam. But we had a ton of Thai speakers and a ton of others. So I was like, okay, here's an opportunity to, you know, kind of get a skill. I could have, you know, they're wanting people to rotate. so I want to go to language school for a year.

And I want to stay on the West Coast, so I want to take an Asian language. I ended up taking Vietnamese. But that was an opportunity to be able to come back. And I eventually came back to one. So that was a one-year school? One year, yeah. It was one of the worst years of my career, for sure.

And one, because the school in Defense Language Institute is a phenomenal school. I mean, there's no other like it. But you, it's all you do is study. How many hours a day are you in class? And how many hours of day do you have to study? So the class was regular eight hours, it's from nine to whatever. And you take a break for lunch. But I, and this was one thing I wasn't prepared for,

and I probably should have studied harder in high school, should have taken a language. But I would get up, first thing, in the morning early, like around 435, and I would study for an hour and a half before for school. Then I would drive in, go to class, take an extra, because I think lunch was an hour. Yeah, it was like an hour for lunch. But they had to deal with, you could spend 30 minutes one-on-one with an instructor while they ate, so you just kind of discuss things.

And then, you know, you eat for half an hour. Then you start class again. Finish the day. I would drive straight home, study for another two hours, eat dinner, study for another hour, and go to bed. And you did that for a year? Well, I did it for about eight months. And it took about eight months to feel comfortable enough where I could take, you know,

maybe I didn't study that extra hour after dinner or something. But, I mean, we were learning 50, 60 vocabulary words each day. And this isn't a romance language. You know, Vietnamese is, you know, it's, you know. Completely and utterly foreign. Yeah. And it's a tone language? It's tonal. So they have...

I remember you tell me about this when you got back. So how you say a word... I think you told me about rice. Like rice means rice, white, eat, and some other things depending. It was something like that. So the word I use is ma. That's when I tell people about tones. So you can say the word maa six different ways in Vietnamese.

So it's ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma. Ma ma ma ma. I might have missed one. Anyway, but each of those words means something different. Totally different. About how you say it. So one means a rice plant as it's coming up the water. Another means your cheek.

Another way means your mother. Another way means a horse. Another way means a ghost or a crib where you bury people. So if you say the phrase like, De la Ma, if I'm pointing to a horse, obviously I'm not talking about my mother, but if you say it wrong and someone's just listening, it has a total different meaning. But you can say de la ma, de la ma'a, de la ma'a, de la ma'a, de la ma'a, and it means something different each time. So, yeah, it's just what took hours of just listening to, to, you know, cassette tapes. That's what we had at the time. And some people are better at this naturally than others, correct?

I would hope so. I wasn't because the amount of hours to, towards, you know, if you compare to the grades I was getting. I was way overworking myself. But I learned, I learned how to study was a big one. They actually had somebody who was getting their PhD on learning styles or something. And they came in and actually worked with us where we took like a survey. Then she met with us and says, okay, you're this type of learning style. And what it taught me is like I was wasting my time with flashcards. Because that's what everyone was used. some flashcards. Dude, this is like, this is my, my bread and butter is flashcards. So what she told me is you are better off just getting a blank notebook and just writing stuff down over and over. Kind of like

on the blackboard, you know, when you get punished. Because the way I will not make fun of my comm school instructor. So I would not make fun of my college school instructor. So I would just listen to conversations and I would handwrite it down. I'd, you know, run it back. And that, helped me kind of on the listening side, you know, understand what I'm hearing and be able to work it. But it was the other bad thing about, you know, bad thing about DLI, but challenging thing was the leadership. And I know you have a lot of different listeners. The Intel community, in my opinion, are not, you know, they're not necessarily leaders. They're good at getting information, putting it in reports. I mean, that's their job. Leadership wasn't quite it. And the

people that ran the Navy side of DLI were all intel people that were there for like their short duty. And most of the students at DLI are all kids right out of high school because they, you know, this is like their job. And they score high on a test and they bring them in and say, hey, you know, you're going to study Arabic. And they're like, okay. And, you know, they would do fine for a while. And if they failed, then they would kind of move them down to an easier language. And if they failed that, then, you know, it was to the fleet or whatever.

And but the leadership at the school was, was challenging because they didn't want to do any of the leadership part of actually mentoring and leading. So they guys like, because I was a, I made E6 while I was there, they kind of pushed it to us like, okay, you're the LPO the Asian division. And, you know, I'm just struggling to study every day and learn my 60 vocabulary words so I can, you know, talk that day. And now I got to deal with, you know, this person over here who, you know, went out and got drunk last night and, you know, it was underaged or crashed their car or, it was. just silly little little things and and I'm thinking you know you're on shore duty should and that's

something you should be doing but but it fell to us luckily we had some good representation there some officers and senior enlisted that were going through different languages and they they put a stop to a lot of that and I'll tell you one story the one of the guys was he was later our training master chief. Okay, yeah. And he was there and I show up. So I'm just showing up to DLI coming from Team 1 and got my, my whites on. I think we were wearing whites at the time.

You know, my whole business and I walk in and the lieutenant that was running the school, you know, they kind of, as you do your check-in, she's like, well, I know, I know you're an E-6. but we have, you know, your class doesn't start for a couple of weeks, so we'll just have you work in the master at arm shack or whatever until your class starts. I'm like, oh, okay. So I go down there, and the person working in the shack was like an E4 who had never been in the real Navy, had been at the school the whole time, and was failing. so they put them in this office to be the master at arms or whatever. So I show up, again, E6, or I was E5 at the time, and I walk in, and they're like, well, yeah, we're doing some painting of some of the offices. So paint cans are over there, just grab a, you know, grab a can and a brush, and you can, you know, work painting the office for the next couple of days.

I'm like, okay. So I walk out and I see the master chief and again, he's like, oh, great, another team guy. And I talk to him and I'm like, hey, what's a deal with, they want me to paint an office for the next two weeks? He goes, no, walks into the lieutenant's office, shuts the door, comes back out like five minutes later and says, you work for me for the next two weeks. So that ended that. Good stuff. Now, when you came back to Team One, now it's like 1997, 1996, 1996, 1997, something like that. Yeah.

And you go right into training cell. And that's where I've been now for a year or something like that. So kind of our core group all went to training. And so I was gone for a year, come back, and I'm kind of, you know, kind of getting the layout of what's going on. And I see all you guys. you're like, yeah, we're in training cell, we're running things. I'm like, all right. And I'm like, you know, are there any platoons?

Straight team one mafia at this point, man. We had our hands at everything, bro. And I'm looking at the, I'm looking at the platoons. I'm like, I mean, all my friends are in training cell. And so, and then I think you and I talk, because at the time, I think you had maybe started the, the comms program. Yeah, I kind of started. Yes, I had started, but I hadn't run like what the vision was.

Yes. But you had vision. Of course. Data vision, boy. So I think we talked about it. Look, we could do something, something big here. And I'm like, I'm all in. I'm all in.

So yeah, I came back. The, I think the leadership had just turned over in training. And we had good people in there. The guy from DLI was there. And so I already knew he was all. So I'm like, yep, let's do this. So we end up teaching a bunch of different stuff, but one of the coolest things that we did was we launched a calm school for the communicators at SEAL Team One. And it was a strong.

It was kind of hard to get the, I don't know if you remember this. The hardest thing about getting it actually proved was the amount of batteries it was going to take. The 5590 batteries that cost $64 each or something like this. and we're going to have to outfit 20 guys or whatever it was. And our initial answer was no. No. You can't have money for those batteries. Use the rechargeable batteries, which were the BA, what were they called?

BA 55 something else. And we were like, that's unrealistic. We'd never carry those by the only last ball. And we ended up fighting and our commanding officer, like we pitched to the commanding officer. He's like, all right, approved. And we got whatever it was, $4,000. to buy enough batteries to run this exercise. And we set up a freaking crazy FTX out in the field.

And, man, we weighed the guys. I remember we started off by weighing the guys to see how much equipment they had. And they averaged, average was what in their gear and equipment? 120 pounds? At least, yeah. So the guys are rolling out on a seven-day, two-man reconnaissance. and we've got how many teams you think we had on that first one six or seven yeah that sounds that sounds about right yeah yeah it was probably actually it was probably six because it was probably two guys

per six platoons at team one and so there you go yeah here we go rock and roll and we took those guys out and it was a ball buster yeah to put it lightly so uh i'm sure some of the guys probably had better terms for it. Oh, dude. It was harsh. So we did it up in the Southern California mountains. We had a really great target to observe. It's a military target. There was military activity at the target. And that was the key because I think when we went through our course, all we had, I think we're counting cars on a road or are watching something. And a lot of the training was, you're going to watch this missile site and it was a piece of PVC pipe and maybe somebody came out once a day But we had an active target where stuff was going on all the time.

And it was important because you knew, based on the reports, who was actually doing the work? Yeah. Because there were stuff to report. Yeah. It was good. And we set up comm shots all over the country. And so then the highlight of this first course that we ran, though, was these, there was one three-man pair for whatever reason. That always happens in the teams.

You end up in a three-man pair for some reason. So there's one three-man pair And we're monitoring everything We're not sleeping at all We're just not sleeping for seven days We're like we're just so freaking fired up To be running this thing And one of the

That three-man pair misses a calm window And so we immediately roll out there We're like freaking star-skiyed huts Like we got a missed calm window on Freaking Delta 4 let's go So we roll out there And and we get to their position

and bro we this was we just knew too much and I remember we said like hey you know why weren't you up on that com window and they said something along the lines of like well we tried but the other station wasn't up and you and I looked at each other like because we were monitoring

the station that what the frequency they were supposed to be calling on we were listening to it and we were close enough yeah yeah we would have heard it regardless yeah like we 100% would have heard it We didn't hear anything. So we were all out there, hey, why did you guys miss that comment?

They go, well, we tried. Lie, but the other group wasn't up. Lie because we got columns of the other group. So I remember you and I looked at each other. We just, I don't know if you said Isaac, we were like, let's separate them. Oh, we like, took us that way like, let's separate them. So we separate them. And we're like freaking, we're like freaking two Sherlock Holmes of this piece right here.

And so I remember I go and I say what kind of antennas do you guys set up? And he's like oh we had a long wire and you're asking we come back to you what kind of he says he says inverted dipole. This guy says long wire. They're liars. So we come back over and like all right you guys didn't tell us the truth and there's got to be consequences to that. So we start making these guys a walk and like up hills up the big hills with. all their gear and equipment. And they start walking.

And then when they would get to those points, we'd that call us when you get there. But we'd be waiting for them. And they still had to make their comm windows along the way. That's right. That's right. And the cool thing about this, they shouldn't lie and everything,

but they were good guys. Especially that one character. The one character is like, I'm sorry, man. We should have lied. It's my fault. We shouldn't lie. And we're like, yeah, cool.

But that's four minutes too late, bro and he was a new guy at the time too yeah so these guys were just hate in life they they knew they'd screwed up but I remember so we so we did get to a spot that we took like on the top of a mountain and we'd be waiting for him and they'd get up there and be like get out your map and they'd just have a look in their eyes because get out their map get out your map means we're going to sign you another spot so we'd put point to another top of another mountain and they'd be like Roger so we did that to him a few times Finally, we did one.

And we opened up the back of the truck, put the tailgate down. And I remember going, hey, you know, go back. It was actually go back to the mountaintop you just came from. And you could hear like a little bit of a, and I said, or you guys can just put your gear in the back of the truck and call it quits. And I remember that one character, good guy, Zach, he's like, no, no, sir, no, or he didn't call me sir, but he's like, no, Jocco, it's all right, we're going, we'll start walking. Good to go.

Fill up your water. fill up your water bottles. What did you tell me that guy told you? That was like the hardest training he ever did. Well, yeah. Talked to him a couple of years ago, a great guy. And he's like, yeah, man, I was still one of the hardest training. You should actually have him on your show.

I think he's still in. But, yeah, it was from his perspective. I'm sure he would think differently. But, yeah, it was good. Awesome stuff. Great training for those. those calm guys really and that was you know you and I were obsessed we realized the importance of comms we've over indexed the importance of comms to you and me it was

like hey if you can't get comms you can't get extracted you can't get firesport which is true yeah it's true but we were crazy about it kind of crazy yeah and passionate maybe that's a better term yeah I'm sure some people might call a passion some people call it psychotic but that's that's how it rolls um the truth hurts but lives hurt more. That was the lesson learned there. So then you ended up putting for a commissioning program, right? So when, so this was about the time that you left. And I was, again, I've been E6 for several years now and I was just, I was reading the tea leaves, you know, I, I would take the chief's exam on a job I didn't do, didn't know how to do. And so I thought,

okay, this isn't, if I got to wait another five, six years to be chief when all my friends are making chief, then I need to find another job or another career. This is the time, because I was about 10 years at that time. So you're actually weighing getting out. You're thinking about getting out? Yeah, I was like, yeah. This is what, 99? So there's no wars going on.

Yeah. You've kind of done what you could do. Yeah, yeah. There was, you know, in hindsight, if I knew we were going to go to war next year, I was, I would not even thought about it. But yeah, at the time, I was like, okay, at 10 years, if I'm, if I'm not going to stay, then I need to go and do something else. What did you think you would have done?

Uh, I mean, I hadn't an electrical background. You know, I was, I could get that job at AT&T you were talking about. Lay on wire. At this time, you know, I spoke Vietnamese. I mean, I had a, I knew I could find a job somewhere. I could do something. but or maybe go back to school and we had the GI Bill. So I had options.

So I go in to talk to the Mass Chief, same guy from DLA, because he's now the senior list of for training. And I talked to him. I go, look, you know, this is my situation. You know, I love this job, but I can't sit as an E6 for another five years while everyone else is promoting and just do the same thing. So he's like, you know, maybe he should be an officer. I'm like, fuck no.

And I go off on this tirade about, you know, I'm here to be a match. I want to do that job. You know, I enlisted because I work for a living. And no way I was going to be an officer. And he says after I rant for a while, he goes, look. And I, you know, this guy's very well spoken. And I can't say it like he did because I just don't remember it. In essence, it was, he said, GIF, everyone here has something to give to this community.

You just need to find the right medium to do it. And, you know, if the enlisted route isn't working because of outside of, you know, what you can do, I mean, it's a system. You're not going to change that. So maybe you just need to find a different way. And maybe being an officer is the right way to go. So I said, okay, I'll look at it. at least consider it. And you had just, I think, didn't you just get picked up?

I got picked up in, I left for OCS in 1998. Okay. And I had applied in 1997 and didn't get it. Right. And so I had to try again. Yeah. And I think he had mentioned that. So I looked at your program, but there was, I think I was too old.

You were too old because you were the same age and I didn't get it my first year. And I was like, well, I had some other career choices. I was looking at not, they were in the Navy. I was like, okay, well, I'll go to a different command. But I'll take one more crack at this to see if I can get it. And I got it the second time. But yeah, you would have been too old to get that program. I was too old.

So they had another kind of a legacy program, the enlisted commissioning program, that they were kind of phasing out because they were going over to the seaman to admiral. And, but it, the way you read it, I actually could apply for that. I was right at the line, but I could still qualify. So I thought, okay, I'll give one chance. I'll put in a package. And we had a guy from the command who, actually I did a platoon with who just got picked up.

So I talked to him about it and he kind of gave me some advice on the package. But I said, if I pick up chief this year, regardless of what happens, that's the route I'm going. So I put in the package and go through the whole process. and that year they took 300 packages and they accepted 150. So I had a 50% chance. I took the chief's exam that year and I think 6% advanced to chief in the Navy. So I had a 6% chance of being a chief or I had a 50% chance of being an officer. And I actually got picked up for the program that year,

but the chief results hadn't come out yet. And I was determined, again, if I got picked up for chief, I would just turn down the program. But I didn't make chief that year or so. I was like, okay, this is where I'm going. And then what? You had to go to college to get that program, get through that program? Yeah, so the unique thing about it, you had to have prior college to go. And the benefit, and I joined the Navy right out of high school.

I mean, I graduated on Friday that Monday. I was gone. But when I went to DLI, that-on-law, that was. of college. That was a, DLI is actually an accredited university and they have an accreditation. And while you were there, if you took a couple of extra classes at Monterey Peninsula College, you could actually get an associate's degree in foreign language. So, you know, you're already in study mode when you're there. So it's like, yeah, easy. I'll take a couple extra courses, you know, do a lab on a weekend or something. And so I did that. So I actually had,

two years of college on my record, and that's what I used to get in. Because they only gave you, you had to finish. Well, they only gave you two years, but you had to be done before 31. And that was the other problem. I was going to be 31. You had to be commissioned before you were 31. And I could only, I only had like three semesters. But I've been through DLI. I knew I could study. I was a Com guy, I can do this. So. You know what's freaking ridiculous? The program I did.

The program I did, I was an E5 at Team 1. I packed up my shit. I went to OCS for 13 weeks. And then I wasn't an officer at Steel Team 2. And that was the better program. It was the freak. It was ridiculous. It's the reason.

That's why it doesn't exist anymore. Because it was too good. It was too awesome. I agree. I agree. Like, by the way, I had zero. college. It was like, okay, cool. Yeah, go ahead. Be an officer now. I was like, are you, I was kind of looking over my shoulder like, are you serious? This is happening? Cool. Cool.

Right on. Yeah, it's, uh, I feel bad. You had to go and, you know, get your DLI done and now you had to go back to college and get a degree, man. Well, the bad, I guess the worst part about it. Now, were you guaranteed to go back to the teams? Yep. I wasn't. God. So I had, when I had, accepted it was and it was part of the interview process like well what if you don't come back to the teams because at the time you know again this is the 90s late 90s you know they they didn't have that that that you know opening so I now that you say that and here's the difference they took 50 people from the entire Navy for my program you know what I'm saying so like the chances of getting picked up from my program were next to nothing because there was at least at least a

thousand of applications of people I mean that's my guest that's not an official number but a lot of people applied for that program yeah because it was such a good program it was created and endorsed by the chief of naval operations like it was a big program and it was freaking hard to get picked up so I guess that's why when you look at a percentage why you not too many people got that program that I got I freaking got lucky. So for me, when, yeah,

by accepting the program, I was coming out of the community. They let me go to school. And, but when I graduated and got commissioned as an incident, they could have sent me to, you know, to SWO school.

They could, you know, you could be a pilot, you could be whatever. And you had to reapply to get back into the community, which meant I had to take the, that PT test.

you know from the all hands magazine i don't think it changed that much but we had to take that again there was a couple of other guys guys with me one i i saw last night but uh we yeah you had you had to reapply you had to put in your package and uh i remember driving up to dc to meet the detailer and not the uniform one but uh but the civilian one that really ran things and uh talking to her giving our package. You know, hey, we really want to get back. It was me and my buddy. And, yeah, but I mean, we had good scores because, I mean, my bachelor's degree after being

at DLI was a joke. And I mean, and when that's your only job is to go to college, because I was still getting my paycheck, not in any of the special pays or anything, but I was getting paid as 76. they yeah that's all you had to do was was handing your papers on time which you know I had done two three weeks early so but so we had strong packages we got picked up and picked back up to go straight in but there was one guy that was in our consortium that did not are you serious yeah was he not was he's questionable he did 71 sit-ups oh oh yeah one of them huh you called them out Bro, when I, so when I was at OCS, before I left, one of the Master Chiefs at Team One said,

hey, when you're getting ready to graduate OCS, and you talk to the detailer, as you just described her, the civilian detailer that actually runs everything. He goes, when you talk to her, tell her, when you want orders, tell her to look in her top left drawer for your orders. And I go, okay, Roger that, Master Chief. So I'm at OCS. I'm whatever. Three weeks from graduation, we can finally use the phone room. We got a square way or hers.

I called the office. I said, hey, ma'am, my name is, you know, Jocco Willink, and I'm about to graduate, and I was trying to get orders. I want to go to, I was hoping to go to Team 2. And she goes, wow, we have to, and she starts going off. Oh, you know, they're failed.

I'm going to have to look at it. And I said, and then I listened to her, and she was not sending me there. and then she go and then I said uh master chief so and so I said master chief so and so told me to ask you to look in your top left drawer for your orders for my orders and she goes oh where do you want to go and I go team two and she goes okay I'll cut your orders this afternoon boom done how's that versus of good old boy network activity that's so crazy right she was powerful powerful powerful powerful And she always took care of me And she took care of me And she took care of all of my friends

All my friends All my friends She was awesome No she was good to me too And when So when she When we found out that we were going We were getting back into the community

She's like All right so where do you want to go And before I could even say It's like anywhere on the East Coast Because I was Again You know I was wanting to go

Back out to the West Coast You know I speak Vietnamese I mean, doesn't that make sense? Is that because you went to college on the East Coast? I did because it was the only school that was kind of, yeah, I didn't say that. So I had to graduate in three semesters. And I wanted to stay on the West Coast.

So I applied for UCSD and all the local ones. Got accepted to all of them. However, they all said you have to do at least two years, two years minimum. I guess that's how they get their money. I don't know. So I was actually at a point. point where I didn't find any place that would let me go for three semesters. So I actually called the guy in charge of the program, he was civilian. And I said, look, I've tried everything.

I just can't, because you had to submit like a degree plan. And I said, I'm coming up short. I don't have anything. So I got to turn it down. He goes, hmm, he goes, call this guy. He's retired captain, 06 captain at Norfolk State and see what he can do for you. So I'm like, all right, call him up, start telling my story. And he like stops me halfway. He goes, look, just send me all your transcripts. Just fax them. Good old boy. Good old boy network coming out of you once again. So I fax him all, you know, all my, all my paperwork within 30 minutes, he faxes me back a training program. And they didn't get. They said, if you can do it in one semester, we'll graduate you.

Damn. And we'll get you commission. I'm like, all right. So I turned that in. I got accepted. But yeah, we had to move to Virginia to go to school. And then once I graduated, it was an East Coast team. So where were you when September 11th happened?

So I. What was your status? So I was still a school. But I was in my last semester. and it was a couple of months before graduation because I graduated in December. And I remember I was at home working on a paper and I was listened to the local radio station, the talk radio. And they came over and said, we're getting some reports, something happening.

I got up, turned on the TV, and that's where I was. And I remember that day I was getting phone calls on my cell phone from people from all over that I didn't know. And they were trying to call somebody else. But I guess all the towers were real screwed up. So calls were getting directed to people that it wasn't because they would, I'd answer the phone. It's like, is Scott there? You know, they're panicking. I'm like, he got the wrong number.

He goes, no, this is Scott's number. I'm like, sorry. I don't know anybody. and I got a couple of those. But, and then like every other team guy, you know, I'm looking, and I already had orders, so I knew what command I was going to by that point. And, but I only had a couple of months left. So, you know, I wasn't making calls.

Like, get me, you know, get me there because I knew I was going there within a couple of months. So I just had to finish that one semester, graduate, get commissioned. And, yeah, that day I got commissioned. the university, drove straight from Norfolk to Virginia Beach, and checked into a still team four. And then what was your role, Team 4 when you got there? So this was another one of the, I found out that kind of the issues of the program, that the day you graduate, I mean, new butter bars, ensign Gifford, is, and I'm now at day one. well all of my everyone at the team all the officers especially the joes you know they've been a jail for a year

and a half because they had to you know finish school go to bud go to jump school go to ask UT all that so I'm behind them technically by year and a half even though I've had 12 years in the community at this point I'm to them I'm just day one ensign and so all the platoons are filled and I show up and, again, this is right after 9-11, so, you know, everything's crazy, but things haven't changed enough yet to where they start deploying, you know, people differently. So we're still sending, you know, people to the different theaters. And I show up, and of course, I want to get an up a platoon, and I'm ready to go. And they're like, yeah, everything's filled.

So we're going to make you the training officer. and which I was okay with because having been in training, so I can run training. That's not hard. However, at that time, all the training had been taken away from the teams and centralized. So I was more of like an L&O from the command to the training department, which, again, wasn't bad. But also at that time, they didn't, they just do like the unit level.

training, but the training where you train with the people that you're going to deploy with hadn't happened. That was still at the team. So that was kind of my focus was coming up with a good ORE. And, you know, of course, at that time, the big thing was the, you know, the weapons of mass destruction. So we had to come up with stuff where guys were wearing mop gear and all that craziness. But so that, that was kind of my, my focus during that, that, that first workup. But then right before deployment, one of the JOs of the platoon that's going to Afghanistan gets fired. And ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, where am I? And I didn't have a job, you know, when you deploy, because the whole team deployed, I was just going to be an ops assistant.

But I'm ready to go. and so they ended up putting me in that platoon as the third O or yeah, yeah, third O at the time, which again is kind of crazy because, hang on 12 years. And I think the big learning experience from that was it was tough for a lot of the other JOs because again, we are still sending guys to South America to other things. to other theaters to, you know, because we still had responsibilities there. And here's me who's junior to everybody.

And I get the one platoon that's going to Afghanistan. And so I could tell in the J.O. jungle that I wasn't their favorite person. But, you know, again, I was a lot older than most of them, and their approval wasn't really what I was looking for. but but it was it was a great opportunity but there were there were problems there and even inside the platoon there were you know some feelings that uh you know why did the guy get fired uh i don't remember i wasn't really part of that it was yeah it was something internal i never really asked you know my when i showed up to the platoon my thing was uh you know i'm just here to to do what i

can to make the platoon better. You know, we're, we're going to Afghanistan. And at this time, that was right when Iraq was starting up. So a lot of the focus wasn't on Afghanistan. Everybody was kind of focused on Iraq. And, yeah, I'm like, I'm here to help out. You let me know how I can do it. But again, the hard part, and even for me, you know, I'm not a one-year incident. I have 12 years in. And I've done a lot of stuff. And it was hard for me at times. And this was kind of my first being as an officer in a platoon. Yeah.

I had a lot to learn of, you know, you're not, you know, the E6 anymore. Want to learn, want to hear when I learned that. So I'm at team two. I freaking have an awesome platoon filled with awesome guys. And we're going on a trip and we're building a pallet. And we already talked about palette building today. Like, hey, you're going to make a squared away palette. So I'm, I'm down there.

I'm seeing the pallet being built. And I'm like, hey, we need to move this box over here. We need to get to put these rigs over here. And I start building the pallet. And my LPO, who's a freaking great guy and a great friend of mine, Scotty Neal, Navy SEAL, who unfortunately passed away, but he was a freaking great LPO. And he looks at me and he goes, hey, sir.

And I was like, oh, damn. He goes, why don't you let me do my job and you go do yours? And it was the perfect thing to say to me. And I just was like he's 100% right. I'm down here trying to build a pallet. These guys, this is what they do. This is his domain, right? The LPO is going to run that shit.

And I was down there stepping on his toes. And from that point on, the switch went to my head that if I don't need to be giving my input, I'm not going to give it. If I don't need to prove to anybody that I know how to build a pallet, no one cares. They want to build a pallet is their palette. but they want to come up with the with the navigation route. And you know what? The hardest one obviously is like, oh,

they want to come up with the communication plan. If it's going to work, if it's a viable plan, we're going with their plan. And I'm not going to interfere with it. And that's the moment, the exact moment in time when Scotty Neal said to me, hey, sir,

why don't you let me do my job and you go do yours? I was like, Roger that. Part of me was a little bit paranoid, I think, too, of like, I want to show everyone that I'm a hard worker. Like, hey,

I'm here to move, move. And I would, continue to do that throughout my career of like, oh, if you got stuff to move, I'll move it. And I'll keep my mouth shut. Because I know you guys don't want to hear from me about how to build a palette, about where to, how to set up the range, about all that stuff. That's the, that's the, that's the, that's the E man's domain.

Yeah. And I didn't mess with it. As long as there was viable plans happening, we're going with the, with what the plans are. So true. And I had a very similar experience. I think it was even with a pallet as well. and I was very fortunate that the LPO was just so squared away, just one of the best people I've ever worked with, still a very good friend.

But because I was in his squad, you know, I dealt with him quite a bit. And we came up with a signal that if I was out of my box, so if we were at a meeting, he would like rub his forehead or something. And that was like, okay, shut up and just let us. let things go. Yeah. And yeah, just a phenomenal guy. And, and you need that. Because, again, it's hard for us that had that background to,

to step back and learn that. But yeah, it's amazing. When I had in my second platoon, I had the officer that got fired, and I had the legendary officer takeover. And he was super experienced. He was a prior senior chief. He was a prior senior chief. and he didn't put his,

he didn't tell us how to build pals. He didn't tell us how to do anything. He asked us. He put us in charge. He was awesome. And as soon as my LPO said to me, hey, want you go to your job,

I was like, man, that's what, that's what the best leader that I saw did. He did that for us, and I'm going to do that from now on. Good little lesson learned.

Yeah, no, it was, so what was that deployment like? So you're pretty early into Afghanistan. Yes. What year was this? Like 2003?

Yes. Yeah. So it was early, but more importantly, again, everyone was focused on our rack. So we were kind of a like a task unit light. So it was mainly a platoon with some supporting people, some headshed guys. And we weren't really established yet in kind of our operational sense. So we were just trying to find work. And we did a lot of special reconnaissance, a lot of driving around Afghanistan.

stand and non-armored up humvees and with the doors off. It was just too heavy. And so we did a lot of those missions. We did a couple of direct action. And it was a good deployment. Again, I learned a ton. I was with really, really good people. And, you know, we had our issues just like everything else.

But it was a good learning experience from that. But the main leadership things and the OAA, OIC and I had a couple of words sometimes. And it was, again, I think that, because he told me, there was a feeling that, you know, I kind of got lucky to be in this. And I think he made a comment like, you know, guys, some guys really earned to be here. And I was thinking, what do you think I've been doing the last 12 years? You know, all this, you know, when I was in my first platoon, you were still riding your Huffy bike

up and down the street. So I try not to take it personally. And, you know, it was a lot of growing for me too. Because, again, it was kind of a strange time. But, you know, we came back from that, didn't lose anybody. And it was a good first deployment to a combat zone because we got to shake a lot of stuff out. And we weren't really driving like, you know, like we were later or, you know, definitely what you guys were doing. Yeah, that that's such a nice, gentle ramp up.

And I had that to, like even literally when I got to Baghdad in my first appointment, my, the SEA, who's a freaking, like, awesome guy, his wife used to say that me and him were soulmates. But we just always got along like brothers. And but he was already on the ground. And so we showed up in the night we showed up, he's like, hey, we're getting mortared from this area. take your platoon out and go check it out. And so we're like, I'm like, okay, cool. And basically he just kind of made it up just to get us out there, shake out the

whatever's get, okay, look, you're in Iraq now, get over it. It's time. And then you came back and he's like, all right, cool. Now let's start looking at our first mission. But that's, and then that whole deployment was a nice ramp up of learning opportunities to learn. Going back to your point of like when someone says, you're lucky to be here. I was just talking about this on the academy.

training leaders and one it's such a good and we actually just talked about this on the underground just just saying like yeah yeah I agree and it's so disarming to people when you say you know I'm 100% lucky to be here absolutely and I wish I had that advice well we all wish we all wish we had that advice you know you're talking to the guy that was telling the instructor of our communications course that no it's Zulu time. Zulu is always Zulu. Zulu is always Zulu. I was 19 years old.

That guy was, what, 35? He was a senior chief. He was definitely a chief. He's a chief. Yeah, so he's a chief. So I'm telling a chief, hey, listen, chief, let me tell you how it is, bro. Jocco's got a word to put out, son.

So yeah, we all wish we could go back and maybe freaking check some stuff. But that's a good one. You know, like, hey, when somebody tells you something. And well, it's like, okay, yeah, absolutely. It's disarming. It's a good way to understand what their perspective is. It's a good move. It's a hard one to learn.

It is. Because that's a shot, right? You're like looking at him literally thinking yourself, are you kidding me right now? It was a total ego thing, and I fell right into it. But, yeah, it's, but, you know. What was your opt-tempo like on that deployment? It wasn't. Not too crazy?

Not too. I mean, we were doing, like, long patrols, like week-long, you know, eight days, days with resupplies, that kind of stuff. So, you know, it was tiring on the guys. It wasn't real strong kinetic. It was just long, long drives. And we just drive around and see what we could find. And we'd try to talk to people, try to get an idea.

And the 2000, the IED threat wasn't heinous yet. No, no. And again, we were in non-uparmored Humvees. We had the doors off. You know, so we could easily engage. engage. And so yeah, that wasn't, that wasn't big at that point. So then what'd you get what'd you do when you got home from that deployment? So I got home. I'm like, all right, you know, now, now I can finally do my AOC slot because that was really what I wanted. I wanted to start at the beginning

so you could, you know, do a good mentoring. And I get back and say, hey, I'm, I'm ready for my platoon. They're like, oh, you just did it. You just had your AOIC slot. So it was. It's on a fit rep. Yep. So now you've got to wait another two years because I'm still behind. So my year group is still kind of working their way through SQT at this point. But I've already had my thing. So the new CEO of the command came in and I talked to him.

And again, it was like, how am I going to be relevant? So at that time, a lot of people were getting the, going to the Army ASO schools because that was. So like advanced special operations stuff. Right. And so I'm like, right, that's what you need? Then I'll go it. And it was, again, nobody wanted to do it because they had to deal with the Army. And I knew why.

And because the one school was in Bragg for like three, two months, three months. It was a long time, probably two months. And it was exactly four-hour drive from Virginia Beach to Bragg. And it was, you know, one of those regular schools, you do it during the week, and then on the weekend you do whatever. I had to, in the beginning, I would drive home for the weekend and then drive back on Sunday for a class on Monday. And I had to, I stopped driving home because I knew if I went home, I wouldn't go back

because I hated it. bad. And it was just the... What part did you hate about it? It's just the way the Army ran it. You know, it was kind of the protector of the tab type thing. And it wasn't just me because there were just a couple of Navy guys and it was mostly Army, all SF guys.

And all great people. And I got along with everyone. And but it was, even they were getting frustrated from the silliness. And it was sillyness. And it was silly. And, you know, all of us had, you know, what, 12, 13, 14 years. I mean, these were senior guys and, like, you know, I still got to prove to you that I get to be here. Like, what kind of stuff were they making you prove?

Just, it was, a lot of the stuff was very subjective. And, you know, they would test you. So they would fail you on something to see how you, how you reacted. And some guys were like, screw this. I don't need this. And then, but, you know, they would just leave. And then, but, you know, they would just. just kind of wanted to test you so you have to do it again.

And it was a lot of just kind of administrative kind of stuff that. And I was a class leader, which, you know, so I had to meet with them every day. And, you know, they had to tell me how to take out the trash and all that, or whatever. Okay. Get some. Yeah. But, you know, I got through it. And it was good because the community was just, it wasn't something that we were used to.

And we didn't really have anybody quality quality. I think it's better now. But we needed that. And when we got on that next. deployment to Iraq, it was somewhat a benefit to have that type of skill. And the, so I had a, like a small cell of mostly chiefs, because again, all the platoons were filled, but you had guys that weren't in a platoon. So we all just got trained up. And then when we deployed, we kind of got farmed out to different units. And,

Our command had the PSD personal security detachment for the top five. So this is now, this is now 2005? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. It was that summer. Got it.

Pretty sure. Got it. And so we, my team of guys, again, kind of got farmed out because the army was kind of running that at the time. So I got put into an ODA house north of Baghdad and for about three months. And because their guy that did that job had to leave. Was it on a river? No.

I did some work up there. It was on the river. It's actually a crazy area in an awesome ODA team. Yeah. And I have to say that these guys were phenomenal to work with. And, you know, I get asked all the time. I'm sure you do too. You know, who's better, the Army SF or SEALs.

And, I mean, obviously we are. But the, but truly, I mean, these guys were professional, like, awesome professionals. And their concept of was a little bit, you know, they just did things a little bit different, not better or worse. But they were just a well-developed group of guys. And what struck me as the most beneficial and what I really admire them, the leaders, so the OIC and they had a senior enlisted. Yeah, they only had one officer. So I show up and, you know, they didn't ask for me, you know, are really, they needed some help, but, and I show up. And I talked to the OIC and we're about the same age.

and we, you know, talked for a little bit. And so they have a meeting of the group of the house. So they bring everybody in. And I remember, you know, they kind of introduced me to everybody. And, you know, they made a couple of Navy jokes, which was fine. But then the senior enlisted, who, again, just a phenomenal individual, he goes, so today Mr. Gifford is

part of this team and he is one of us and they call themselves the eagles he goes today he is an eagle and from as long as he lives in this house he is an eagle and you will treat him that way and from that whole time there

I felt like I was part of the team and I you know even though we didn't go through the same training or anything I, they brought me in and they were just a phenomenal, phenomenal group of guys. And how long were you up there working with them? About three months. What were you doing? So with this new skill set, which we'll say is pretty much intelligence, gathering intelligence

through various methodologies is what you're doing. And you were basically helping them gather intelligence. So I was the primary, like, report writer. So when all the information came in, I did the evaluation on it, write the report. and send it and send it out. The reason that we chose to do that by farming guys out was because of the PSD mission, they were really relying on intel heavily

because they were going out for public things and when there's a threat, they want to know about it. And there were all these units scattered everywhere. So we chose certain specific places that we figured there was some could, be some pretty hot intel that concern the top five and they want to be able to get that information right away. So by having kind of a liaison in those houses, if something came up, then we could get the information to our guys doing the mission very quickly. What were the living conditions over there,

right? It was awesome. So we lived in a house in the middle of town and then it was, adjacent usually to a Iraqi military base. And then so there we're like the deep inside perimeter. You had several rings. And, you know, at that house, we used to get hit maybe at least once a week, if not more. And, you know, we all just go up to the roof. We had stuff everywhere. And it was just, you battle until they stopped. You know, you weren't moving. So you just kept going. And, you just kept going. And, until it was over. And so, yeah, you had everything right by your bed. And as soon as the alarm went off,

because we always had somebody on watch that was, they would send out and everyone would just go up. And then we would run, you know, our operations from there. And then, and we did a couple of DAs. I did those with them. And they were good. Again, we went out to train. Did you guys have a partner force that you were working with,

were the Iraqis that you're on base with, or were you guys just doing hits kind of solo? We did have a partner force, but we didn't really use them that much. They were kind of on their own. I think some of our guys did some teaching over there, but if we did something, it was pretty much just us. And so I went to, you know, like I would go to the range with the guys, and they would kind of teach me some of their TTPs.

And again, not better or worse, just a little different, but total professionals. And I was able to work. with him he had that three months and it was it was phenomenal one of the best best parts of that tour but even on on the wide scale just to be able to work with guys from from that that ODA was yeah it was phenomenal so then what did so you're only there for three months what'd you do when you got done with that so after three months they they were switching out so they were kind of off cycle from us so they had about you know the same

a length of deployments, but they rotated out. That way all SF wasn't rotating out at the same time. So when they left, the new ODA that took over that house, had everybody they needed. Apparently Chris Gifford wasn't part of that team. Yeah, there wasn't, it was like, we appreciate it, but we're good. And I think it was kind of more of a headshed thing. and there's no way to force, you know, no reason to force it on them.

You know, I kind of explained to them, you know, this is what we're looking for. If you get this information, please just send it to these people. So I got brought back and there were two teams deployed at that time. So one from the East Coast and one from the West Coast. The East Coast team was doing the PDS. The West Coast was doing more connect type stuff. So they needed somebody. I think their ops officer had to go back or something, but they needed a spot filled.

So my command asked if I would just go down and work there for a month. And so I did that, and I was just in the ops shop or in the talk, running ops, getting all the briefs in, you know, the briefs in making sure. And then while they were outside the wire, make sure we were monitoring the, operating picture and everything. And that's when your old roommate was down there. Oh, right on. And, yeah, awesome. Yeah, it was awesome because, you know, now it's old team one guy.

Him and me got to do missions, man, together. Really? Yeah, and there was like a weird confluence of events that happened for a short period of time. And we were like out in the middle of Iraq together, just doing opposite. It was pretty freaking cool, man. Yeah, he, I did, we did one mission together. It was, it was kind of a circus, but it was a target that was like right outside the gate. And, I mean, you could almost see it.

If you looked over the wall from the, from the compound, you could see the target. I mean, it was pretty close. And for some reason, people came out of the woodwork to go on this up. So we had like officers and cheese. You mean strap hangers? I thought you were talking about enemy personnel coming out of the woodwork. I'm like, here we go. It's like, no.

No. We had strap hangers galore. We had a lot of people who needed to experience outside the wire. And so they were going to be on this thing. They're all looking at the con-ops. Like, hey, it's only, it's only 1,200 yards away. Let's get on that one. Yeah.

And so we're, you know, the op, we get out there and it's just a clown show. because people are running everywhere. So I look over at our friend, and he looks at me, he goes, come with me. So we go to like this barrier position, you know, we're kind of on the edge as a, you know, blocking position because we're away from everybody. We're like, we're going to sit this one out. We're going to sit right here until all this is over. And, you know, it was a dry hole or whatever.

But it was, yeah, it was funny. he's he's like a real life Sam Elliott with his attitude definitely just like well we're not doing that you know just like just a freaking classic and then and so you were done with that but that's still you still have more on the deployment right so a couple of months left I go back to the PSD mission and we just help out you know we still have liaisons to some of the outside units of course all the OGAs and all that so I spent two months just kind of

bouncing around and just helping out in ops there just to try to get everything out. I don't think I did any more missions or anything. Most of that was that first three months. So it was just, and then, you know, of course, right before you leave, now all the rewards, all the awards have to be written. Oh, yeah. And all the, you know, fit reps need to be done. So I, I was part of that officer crew.

And then what did you do after that? So we got back. from that deployment and I'm still not up with my year group so I talked to the CEO

and and he recommended but he's like why don't you go to Germany for a couple of years that you can do the CEO had been in Germany before right?

Oh yeah you know who he is yeah he's like freaking awesome one of the top yeah definitely awesome yeah definitely one to the top five. But he, he's like, you know, you should go out there. You'll enjoy it. And

I remember he told me, he goes, if you live on base, I will come out there and punch you. Because he's like, you need to get out in town, live amongst the populace. The populace. And experience living overseas like you should. I went to his house when he was living overseas in Germany. and it was absolutely freaking epic. I wish I had taken pictures. I wish I knew the name of the village of the house because it's still there. It was like one of these postcard villages.

And he had this crazy like old house that was completely like gutted and modernized inside. It was freaking awesome. Yeah, it was freaking badass. Yeah. So him's and by the way like everything that guy does is like all dialed in. Yeah, I remember I was going to his house and he's like, hey, you need to wear a shirt. I'm like, bro, I don't, I go, I'm wearing a shirt. He's like, no, a shirt like a shirt, not a freaking jujitsu t-shirt, you idiot. I was like, I was like, I don't have any shirts. And he goes, all right, come. And he opens up his closet. His closet is like a room. And he's got no kidding hanging up just buttoned down, whatever really nice shirts in the color of like the rainbow. Like starting with what is it, red, orange yellow, green blue, blue,

purple with with freaking nine shirts of red and it goes all the way through and I'm like bro are you freaking James Bond or what I don't even have a shirt much less 49 shirts of varying colors but yeah that was all in this completely dialed house overlooking this green lush valley it was crazy beautiful yeah yeah and again a phenomenal person and and for what he's done for the community and yeah Just a great guy. So he convinced me this would be a good place to go. And he was right. It was probably one of my best tours.

Because you move your family out there, and you're part of not the war necessarily because it's not in that AO, but you're still doing really good stuff. And at that time, Africa was really starting to pick up. So I was able to be there as that was kind of starting. And again, with my background and, you know, all these, these Intel type schools, it was a very good fit. So I worked in the, as a task officer there at the unit.

And we were moving guys down to Africa. So we would send guys, you know, they would basically check into. the unit in Germany and then move straight to Africa for four to six months sometimes. And, you know, working through embassies. So that was my experience of, you know, starting to deal how the State Department works and how all these other... Good times. Oh, oh yeah. Yeah. That was, you know, when you retire and you know what you don't want to do, that was one of them. I knew I did not want to, state department wasn't in my, but they're good people. They do, they do a hard job. They really do. So you, you wrap up, that's what's that a two year billet? It's a two year billet.

And I was there exactly two years. We left almost, I mean, exactly two years. And now it must be time for your platoon commander tour, because you already knocked out your AOC. Yeah. So my, everything, now I'm aligned with, with the rest of my year group. So, so I get sent to Team 10. to do a platoon commander. And the, because I came from, I think, because I came from Germany and I understood how the Africa-com and U-com work. I can see where this is going. That, they put me in that task in it.

And again, I was fine with that because, you know, I'm here to support the effort. Nobody wants to do it. Then, you know, I don't have anybody breathing down my neck trying to get my spot. So I'm finally getting my platoon commander. and I'm just stoked about it. So I show up to Team 10 and I get in the task unit and I kind of get an indication pretty soon that all the guys that just came back were in, I think was Iraq. Yeah, I think they came in from Iraq.

Maybe it was Afghanistan. But they just come back. They had a really good deployment, high energy, intensity. and but now they're on the U-com. And we had a bunch of, you know, new guys who never hadn't deployed yet, and they're on U-com, and they're seeing all their friends getting ready to go to Afghanistan, Iraq, because I think we were still sending people to both. So, yeah, there was that kind of idea that, you know, that's where we want to be,

and, hey, I get that. But as our mutual chief used to say, you know, orders aren't invitations. They're orders. And this is what you're given. And you need to, it's our responsibility as the leadership to make sure our guys are ready for that. And that's what I was doing. But there was a lot of, you know, if we're, if we do really well, then, you know, we'll get move over to here. Somebody will get fired and, you know, we'll be able to take that mission.

and again, there's always that chance, but there's also the chance you're going to do what they, what you were assigned to do. So we really need to focus on that. And there was a big, I guess, kind of rub between, you know, me and the leadership, and especially being in Germany for two years. I saw platoons come out all the time. And you could tell the ones that were ready to do the mission and accepting,

and they did a great job. And then the ones that are like, hey, we're just, just sitting here until we get the word that we're going in. And guess what? The word never comes. You know, I mean, again, they may take ones or two because somebody gets hurt, but, you know, we have a mission too here. So there was a big leadership challenge on my side. I need to keep the guys motivated and arrested in this job. And I would tell them, you know, there's good stuff going on. There's really important stuff. And for the most part, I think the guys accepted that. Some Some didn't, but yeah, it's a tough thing to work through.

I remember one thing that always stuck in my mind. There was a Master Chief Fackety. So, Master Chief Fackety, who died in 2017, but he was a huge, had a big impact on all of us, a team one at the time. But I remember him telling me a story that there was a Vietnam guy that had come home that had done like a pretty heroic deployment in Vietnam. And that guy was facts like LPO. And they're out in the desert, doing the desert warfare training.

And that guy who was like the combat vet, he was like, they're out on patrol and he had his like rifle up over his shoulder and just kind of like walking like it didn't matter. And he just, and he was. I think he was the platoon chief. And you could see the just disappointment as FAC was telling me this story. And it was one of those things that, again, he probably told me that when I was 22 or 23.

I never forgot that fact, not only of, hey, don't be the guy that's like been there, done that. I don't need to be fired up for training anymore. But also what an impact that has on everybody else. and you don't want to be like that. Then fast forward however many years, I was now at Trade at West Coast Trade at,

and I had a guy that's a great guy, and he was in Ramadi with me as a new guy, and now he's in his second platoon, and we're out at the Mount facility, and like, you know, we're training's hard, kicking ass and blah, blah, blah. And I talked to him about, whatever but I remember him saying to me he says I'm kind of getting burnt out and this

was during mount training in his second platoon and I'm like I just I go hey bro you remember when you and I were in a workup together and he goes yeah and I go that was my seventh workup and he was like he just got that look on his face and he goes Roger that because I was fired up in my seventh freaking time to go let's rock and roll like every taking everything seriously and that's just what you want to do so that infection can spread and it's a hard pill to swallow team guys want to go to combat just what they want to do and when they don't get the chance it hurts and but like you said you got to pick it up okay this is what we're doing let's do it to the best of our ability and and the only thing you can do is just keep going on deployments

like the god of war is going to do what he's going to do and hopefully you get blessed by him and if that happens great and if it doesn't happen keep working because he's watching that's the way I look at it yeah and you and you saw you know guys would you know kind of have to get through that that rotation but then the next one they they go back or you know they get another shot at combat and you know we all knew eventually it was going to down anyway, but nobody knows when and you don't want to miss it. And I really felt for the new guys because, you know, all they're seeing is their friends that are going and they didn't do anything wrong.

And that was really a big kind of complaint that I had about how it was perceived is, you know, we're waiting for, you know, if they get into trouble, then we get into that spot. It's like, well, so are we here because we got in trouble? You know, how do we end up here? And are we hoping that our teammates are screwed up? Yeah. Because that's not a good attitude. So we get that spot.

So my thing was, look, again, the war is bigger than just what's going on in Sinkcom. We have a mission to do. It's a good mission. It has value. And thinking back, you know, maybe I could have done better on certain things. But, yeah, I mean, it was what it was. And we actually had a good deployment. I took a crew of people to Africa, and we were there for several months, and we did good stuff.

And I like to think that we moved the needle, hopefully a little bit. But it was, yeah, you know, I think, and I think most people that were with us kind of got that after a while. And then what did you do when you got home from that deployment? So I got home, and so I'm looking at T.U. commander and but I didn't want to stay at Team 10 for different reasons but

but those positions were already filled so it's like okay I need to move on and so now I'm caught up to my year group but it's still a little bit different because I've had all these other experiences and because of a lot of the victim of my own success a lot of the schools I went to kind of put me on a little bit of a different track, which was fine. And so I,

I ended up taking an ops tour at another command there in Virginia, which was great. And again, great experiences and everything. But it's, it's kind of where I was. When that was coming to and in they uh i met with the detailer so now i'm at 21 years 21 and a half years and uh i met with the detailer and i wanted to take over east coast training the CEO of that kind of what you did but on the east coast and i knew the guy that had the position good friend and uh i talked to him about it he's like oh yeah he would do great here and it it lined up and uh so i talked to the detailer and and he goes, you need more joint time. I'm like, oh, okay.

Which means, you know, you get orders to probably Tampa and you move your family there and at least at the time, then you deploy overseas for a year or so and write reports for others and work on your JMP and, you know, all that. And your family sits there because it's a PCS move. And at the time, you know, my wife had a great job in Virginia. She was working for the governor's office. And, you know, she wasn't really wanting to move. So I was thinking, okay, you know, maybe I can do kind of a bachelor kind of thing.

And but then I thought, you know, it's, I had 21 years then. I think maybe this is time that I find something else. And I was very fortunate that maybe it was great to me. I got to do everything that I wanted to do. I had a great career, and I felt like I had closure, and I don't put it on the detailer. I mean, he's trying to fill these billets. And for an officer at 10, 11 years, that is a great move. And, you know, that's going to set you up for your exotour and, you know, probably another staff job and CO.

But, you know, I wasn't an officer at 12 years. I was an officer at 21, 22 years. And I just felt it was it was time to retire and try something else. And so I went home and talked to my wife about it. And she's like, I was like, yeah, I'm thinking about retiring. She's like, okay, whatever. Go in Monday, drop my, put my paperwork to retire and went back and I'm like, okay, I did. She goes, what did you do?

I like, I retired. She goes, you did what? It's like, yeah, yeah, I did it. How long was it between when you dropped your papers and when you actually retired? Probably about six months or so. You know, you have to, I had a lot of, you know, leave built up that I needed to get rid of. And I had made Lieutenant Commander, but because I wasn't doing the full time, they didn't commit, you know, or go to that next step. And I just retired as a lieutenant.

Oh, those savages. Well, you know, they're like, you know, you have to do another three years. And honestly, I did the math. Yeah. And going from 03E to 04 is not that big of a jump than going from a regular 03, especially when you have 20-some years. And the math, I think I would have gotten maybe an extra $100 bucks on my retirement. And it just wasn't worth another three years.

I felt like I could do something else. So how was the transition? What did you do next? Well, so it was a lot harder than I thought it would be. because, you know, again, this, we grew up in the SIL teams and we all, I mean, that's, that's, that's, that's what we knew. That's what we did. And, uh, even, even to this day, I tell people, I still have dreams that I'm still in uniform. And, uh, you know, I'm at some command somewhere and I'm talking to, to people, but I'm, I'm still somebody just called because one of the guys got in trouble. Yeah. Like I always have got to, oh, God, someone got arrested. We've got to be live. Like, here we go. I got to go yank somebody out of jail.

Whatever. So, so it was, you know, I have to have a new focus and, you know, a new mission. And so my thing was I want to learn about business. I've been in government since I was 18, 19. And, you know, I've been in leadership positions. And I think you would agree. The leadership's not different. There may be some different terms, but it's,

It's all the same. But there's other things about business that I didn't really understand, like what is marketing and what is, you know, social media was a big, you know, it was starting to be a big thing. And, you know, at that time, we couldn't even have any accounts on social media. And I think, I think it's changed now. I think it's a little bit better because it kind of hurts guys getting out that don't have that presence because that's how a lot of business is done now on LinkedIn and stuff. So I felt I need to learn business. I need to get more informed on that. And I still had half of my GI Bill left.

So I thought, you know, I could go to grad school. But I still want to learn a little bit more about how it runs first. So I make sure if I go to grad school for a business degree, that's really what I want to do. So I looked for just a way to get into business. So one thing, I had a friend who, a pilot friend that got out kind of the same time, he was starting a consulting company. And he asked me about coming on as a kind of like a 1099 contractor. Excuse me.

So yeah, that's fine. I'll work with you and we'll do that. And as I was doing my transition, you know, the transition. classes the what they call it the they call it tap i didn't do it yeah i didn't do any of it so i did tap i just said later yeah it was it was mostly a uh i want to say it's a waste of time because it is it had some value to it but they had like this entrepreneur class which was an hour it was during your lunch hour so instead you ate your lunch at a table and somebody talked about it so they said if you want to start a business just find something you like and

start a business. So I'm thinking, what do I like to do? What, you know, what would be fun? I knew I did not want to do government. So I didn't want to work for any of the alphabet soup. I didn't want to do, you know, stay on at any of the commands or, you know, work as a GS. I just want to do something totally different, real business. And I thought, you know, I love music. I've been playing music on my life. I'm going to join a band. Somehow we missed this whole story. What freaking music did you play? I played an upright bass.

Well, actually, when I was at, like, team one, I was, I played saxophone. That's right. I remember that you played saxophone. And I would bring it on the trips, the little alto. Now I remember that. Yeah, I forgot about that. And I would blowed up that saxophone. And I was not that good.

I was actually. I remember that. Yeah. Yeah. I was not good. And I played, you know, through high school. and and and but I was never really good enough to to do it but I always liked the bass it was always something that I really enjoyed did you play it when did you start playing oh so you just liked it yeah

okay but but I had enough music background that that I could I can figure out so I just bought one started learning how to play you say bass are you talking bass guitar or are you talking stand-up bass no so at that time it's electric okay base yeah bass guitar and uh And for some reason, it just came like it was natural. Easier than Vietnamese, apparently. Very, very much so. And so I kind of took some private lessons and, yeah, I just kind of took to it. And then after doing that for a while, as I was getting out, trying to find bands.

The market was pretty heavy with bass players. It's, you know, probably, you know, a lot of guitar players that don't play that well-play bass. I'm not sure if that's true, but that's what they told me. So, you know, I need to find how to be, how to stand out. So I was like, you know, I'm going to learn how to play upright bass because nobody wants to do it. It's a big instrument. You have to have a car or a truck. You have to have a van.

And it's fretless, so, you know, it just scares people. But I'm going to learn it. So I bought one. How much is a stand-up bass car? cost, like for your starter model that you get. So I knew that this is what I wanted to do. So I didn't really kind of bypass the starter. And got a nice kind of pro model, an Englehart.

And so it was about 2000, around 2000. That's it? Yeah. Dang, bro. That's actually way cheaper than I thought it was going to be. But, you know, it's a plywood. It's not like a car, you know, 200-year-old. I have electric guitars that are way more than that.

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. More than that. A ridiculous amount of money because I'm stupid. But this, you know, it's a new, it's a new one. It's not a classic, but it plays really well. And so I worked on that. So when they don't have a fret, how do you know where to hold down?

So I do have markers on the side. It's like the dots that are on a guitar. It's the same. And but you have to listen. And it really forced me to listen to what the rest of the band is doing. and make sure I'm, you know, got the right tone. And, yeah, I just, I worked on it. I took six months of just.

How many hours a day? Oh, two, three hours. And I would take a break and go back to it. And, yeah, just worked on it. So you mean five to six hours a day? Not that much. Okay. Probably, yeah, about two or three hours.

But you retired at this point? This is when you retired? Well, no, I was, I was still kind of, you were wrapping up your career. Wrapping up and going through terminal leave. Three or four hours of bass a day. Yeah. And then when I felt comfortable,

I started looking for bands to play in. So I go on, you know, where else would you go? Craigslist. Yeah, there you go. And just typed in upright bass. And sure enough, this guy posted that he was doing an acoustic blues thing. And he was looking for an upright bass. And it's like, yeah, I'll do that.

There's only one. you got the job well so i called him up and uh our message team or whatever and he said you know show up to this open mic night learn to play in front of a real live audience and he he didn't tell me what we were going to play or anything and uh so i showed up and he's like all right you know we're playing in this key and i i was all over the place i mean i was i was nervous this it was it wasn't my first time playing live, but, you know, I was just trying to follow what was going on. Yeah, because you played sax live in eighth grade at the eighth grade freaking student council meeting. It wasn't that bad. But yeah, I played a couple of songs. I was like, yeah, that really sucked.

And afterwards, he goes, okay, yeah, let's meet next week and do another three. I'm like, okay. And by that time, now I knew kind of what he was looking for. And we did it. And then we're like, yeah, let's start a band. Brought in a friend of mine that was a drummer and eventually a sax player. And we created the band. And my intent, again, was not really to be a musician or an artist, really. And I don't really consider myself an artist. I'm artistic and I can, I understand, you know, how to do it.

but I wanted to run the business. So I wanted to manage the books. I wanted to work on the marketing. I wanted to learn how the social media worked and how that worked into getting us gigs. And then we got into recording and writing, and I helped write some of the songs and we recorded a couple of albums so we could sell

because that was a big thing. When you were gigging, you know, it's great to get that money for the night. but if you have merch, right? Merch. Get the merch out there, then, you know, we saw things go up and we could show, I could show each year, you know, we were making more money and we were doing better. How often are you gigging?

So, you know, the first year, probably about 30 or so gigs. Dang. But by the third year, I mean, we were touring, so I would do a two week. So now you're out of the Navy completely. Yeah. And you're going on tour and your blues band and playing a stand-up base. Yep. And Herbie D and the Dangerman is the...

Are you still around? No. So I'll get to that in a minute. But the... So by the third year, we're playing probably 180 gigs. Making money. Making money. Yeah.

Playing how big a show? Clubs? Yeah. I mean, we would get a couple of festivals. We would get, you know, mostly bars, you know, that kind of scene. What do you make a night in the bar? It depends on where you are, but, you know, 400 bucks, 500 bucks. And how many people are in the band?

A four. Yeah. So from a business perspective. Yeah. I mean, but it. We're thinking to try something else. No, no, not at all. So it makes you really look at the, the business model.

And because all businesses have the same, all successful businesses have the same concept. You got to make it for a dime. You got to sell it for a dollar. You got to make it have it for me. if you don't do that, you're going to go out of business. Now, you can supplement it with outside income, but eventually it'll fold. You got to make it for a dime, sell it for a dollar, and make it have it for me. Did you make that up right there?

No, where's that comfortable? I learned it when I was in my MBA program. No one taught me that, by the way. That was basically my MBA in those three sentences. That was two years of grad school. But it makes you, especially in eventually, like that, it really makes you look at your cost. You know, are you really making it for a dime or are you spending 90 cents?

And of course, the numbers are arbitrary. But if you're not, then how do you cut that down? So as we were touring, you know, in the beginning we were getting hotel rooms. Of course, we were all staying in the same room because, you know, there were four guys. But eventually we're like, okay, how can we cut that down? So we, like one of the things we got on couch surfing, have you heard of this? Yes, I have. So we.

When I was 19. Yeah, exactly. Well, we had a band profile as, uh, uh, for, for couch surfing. And as we were, as I was making the tour, I would say, okay, we're going to be in this town. We would submit, you know, hey, this four piece band is coming to town. Could we stay at your house? And surprisingly, a lot of people. let us do it. And it's free. And it's free. And, uh, and, of course, we would, we would

try to do special stuff. So we, of course, give them a CD or a t-shirt or something. And, uh, and if we were there for a day or two, we'd break out the instruments in their living room and, and just give them a little concert. And it was, yeah, it was, it was, it was great. And what was really nice about it is because we stayed with them, we told them where we were playing that night, they would usually come out and bring some friends. So that would, you know, butts and seats. That's, that's a big part of it. So yeah, make it for a dime. You got to get your cost down. And, uh, and we learned, you know, like buy your water, not at a gas station, buy it at Walmart before you go because it's cheaper. Yeah. And all these little things to get the,

the price down. And then you look at, are you selling it for a dollar? You know, are you really getting the top price? And you don't set the price. The market sets the price, you know, supply and demand. And so that's what, you know, we're focusing on. Where can we get the best bang for our buck? You know, if we play at a, at a festival or something, you know, the focus isn't on the money you get to play. The focus is on the merch. So having the guys actually push the merch, you know, put the CDs in your hand as you go around and talk to people because they see it in your hand. They want to buy it. and you don't just sit back and wait for them to come to you, you got to get out. So are you, you know, making that price?

And is there enough of a profit margin there that the business is actually going to survive? And then the most important part, as you know, you've got to make it habit forming. You know, if somebody just watches you once and are like, hey, that was great. And they don't follow you, then how are you going to sell them, you know, the new album when it comes out? Or, you know, your new, you know, the new song or whatever. got to get that that that fan you know down the the the funnel to uh to get them from interested to fan to real fanatic of you know the super fan or they're going to buy your stuff as soon as it comes out um so that's what i learned during that time you know how how do you actually physically

do that and so we did it for four years and uh had was that your job for four years yes so i was doing a bit of the consulting on the side. And there were other like 1099 type jobs that I was doing from here to there. But, you know, again, I was very fortunate that I married up. So my wife was making good money. We don't have any kids. So, you know, I'm not putting anyone through college. And I have a good retirement. So I was able to do that full time. So what happened at the end? Well, it's like any business. You know, you have that arc. And There comes a point where you got to pivot or perish. And we have been playing kind of the same material for...

How many albums did you make? Two. Well, one EP, one LP. I watched a couple of your songs on YouTube. Yeah. I thought it was pretty cool. The guitarist, I think this was like a thing, right? There's a song where he's playing a guitar that only has three strings.

Yeah, GGB is what we call it. Yeah, that was pretty cool. And you think, okay, well, he's got some, like the white stripes, he's got some constraints around what he can do. and it's going to make him kind of push a little bit. I thought that was pretty cool. It is. And that was kind of the,

you got to break away from the humming and stroman, the normal stuff. You've got to keep updating, especially in the entertainment world because there's so much competing with your attention. And so after about four years, we needed to kind of change some things. But the league guy was, you know,

he was kind of comfortable where he was. And we could have kind of gone. a little bit further. But the sax player wanted to do some other stuff. So he left. And we tried to bring in some other people. And then I was like, you know, this is the time to make a difference. We got to totally change because if we try to keep doing the same thing, we're going to start

losing people. And that's what happened. We didn't really change enough drastically that we started to lose fans. And by that point, you know, I've been out of the. Navy been retired for about five years, four years. And I had enough of a grasp of, okay, this is the things I need to work on that I was like, okay, I'm going back to grad school. So I still played a little bit on the side. We did some, some duo stuff, but now I was, I was focused on going back to grad school for my MBA. That's why I did. And how was that program? It was good. I did it

at Old Dominion University there because it was close, you know, it was easy to get back. A lot of people in that area went to ODU, so, you know, we had, you know, planned to stay there for the long term, so it made sense. And, you know, the GI Bill covered it, so, you know, the cost was low. I was a dime, and the return was hopefully a dollar. And it was good. So it, yeah. And did you do anything with that degree?

So, yes. So I, uh, once I got, actually while I was in school, uh, I had talked to a couple of business owners that needed someone to help do kind of due diligence on some, uh, some business stuff. So it was small companies that were expanding and looking to, to do some different things. And I actually still work for them today. But, um, they would, so I, I would. you know, do like the analysis on it. You know, is this the right thing to do?

They're a developer, so they would buy property, and then they would say, okay, what business can we put on here to make money, and then we'll turn it over? So I would do kind of the analysis of, you know, if we do this, you take out a loan, here's all your initial costs. If you can keep your fixed variable cost, all that,

then you can make a profit over a certain period of years, and then they would say, okay, let's do it. So, yeah, more of a kind of a business analysis, yeah, kind of work. And it's good work. And when you actually see something, one of the projects we did, and it made great money. And so I got to see all that develop. And so, yeah, it was really interesting, especially to be able to kind of say, this is what I think is happening.

and then you look at how close it actually did. It's not perfect, but it was good. It was a really, it's a good thing. And does that bring us up to present day? Yeah. So, well, when I was in grad school, my wife got diagnosed with breast cancer. And yeah, that was, it was good being out of the military, although the teams were great about that stuff.

But because I was home every day, It was good that I could be there and kind of work because it took like two years to go through it. From the time she was diagnosed, she had three or four surgeries, and then the chemo, and then the recovery from all that took about two years. And so I was home for all that. I was still going to school, but I could manage it because most of the stuff was at home. and so she went through that and when we kind of got through that it was still in the recovery stage we kind of got into a rut of because she just didn't have any energy so we're staying at home all the time watching TV just you know eating three meals a day or whatever and just wasn't

a lot of activity. And at one point I was like, you know, we need to break this cycle. And so we bought a small 16 foot camper. And I was like, we're, you know, we talked about this is we need to at least once a month just get out of the house. We didn't have a TV in it. It was, you know, just, just a nice, it was an airstream base camp. Okay. And we're like, we just need to get out of the house at least once a month, just kind of get back, even if we just go walk around a little bit, and there was a campground right there in Virginia. So we did that for about two years as she was recovering, just going out, just getting into nature and just trying to get past that. And after doing that for two years, we were like, why aren't we doing this all the time? So we decided that about,

This was about 15 months ago. We said, hey, let's just sell our house and get rid of all the extra cars and the extra furniture and stuff we have laying around. Let's get a bigger camper because 16 feet is not. That's small. How big is your new one? 30. We have a 30-foot airstream. Yeah.

And so we traded that in, got the 30-foot sold our place. It was a good time for the market. And so, yeah, for the past 15 months, we've just been touring around. North America, just going from place to place, trying to hit a lot of the national parks. And America is just such a beautiful place. And, you know, growing up in the Navy, we traveled all over the place. But never really got to see a lot of the U.S. Even on training trips, you don't really get to see much.

So, yeah, that's what we've been doing for the past 50 months. I still, she retired totally after her chemo. she lost a lot of, a lot of that drive. So we decided, you know, why don't you take some time off? And I still do part-time work. It's all remote. They send me emails when they need stuff to do. Sometimes I take a business trip before, you know, I'll fly someplace and come back.

But yeah, we've just been doing that and seeing people like, you know, opportunity to be here and to use one of the big benefits. And did you see any end in sight? No, not right now. Just going to keep rolling. Just keep doing it. Every place we go, we say, hey, would we come back here to live? And, you know, there's some places we really like. What's the top of the list right now?

We really like Denver, Colorado. They have a really good blue scene. So I have my upright base with me. Takes up half your freaking vehicle. It does take up a lot. But I have like my little space over by the bed. I can keep anything I want. And that's my music room.

And, but we, yeah, when we go to these places, I look up blues jams and show up and get to play with some phenomenal people. And yeah, it's just part of the, just traveling around, meeting people and seeing really friends and family. I got to see some family in Texas that some on her side that she'd never. I'd never met before, and we've been married over 30 years. Friends, team, you know, guys from the team that now live in all kinds of places. And, you know, we stay connected and say, hey, I'm going to be in from this time.

If you got time, I'd love to see if not. You know, I understand. And so, yeah, it's been awesome. It's been awesome. And you're tracking this whole thing on the gram, on Instagram. Yeah. My wife runs most of that. It's Taking Leave underscore RV.

and she, you know, post every day because you know how important you got to, for social media, you've got to be consistent. Are you playing any bass riffs on your Instagram? Yeah. I think the people are going to want to hear that. Yeah, she records it live and then, you know, post it later.

But yeah, when we go to these jams, I'm up there playing, so. Jack. Well, that's outstanding. Hey, probably a good place to wrap it up. Echo Charles. Yes, sir. Do you have any questions?

Yes, sir, I do. So you ran back. Let's go back to high school. school or yeah oh okay track do you do cross-country have you been saying this question for freaking two hours and 45 minutes that's correct you know my school didn't have cross-country i think some of the other districts did uh but my my school was very somewhat in an urban area so we had track and most most of the guys were sprinters so uh the so we didn't have cross-country but we had long distance on the track was just, you know, going eight circles.

But cross country would have been your jam, though. Yeah, I would have loved to do it. And of course, I ran a lot outside of just track. But, yeah, like today, another thing I try to do as we travel, I look for great runs, you know, running places. And I've been kicking around a YouTube video because I carry a camera with me. And I kind of film little parts of the run. And then when I get back, I, of course, upload all that and then put together these four to five minute videos of, you know, this is all kind of the data of the run. You know, this is how far it is. This is the elevation. You know, is a lot of hills? Is it straight? What kind of turf is it? You know, where do you park?

You know, here's the address you want to use to get to a parking area. Is there going to be a bathroom there or what. And so I've gotten about 30 runs done with the raw material. I just started kind of putting them together. I've got four completed. And I've got my process down to about four hours. So the first one took about a couple of days because I had to figure out the format. That's like echoes pace on making videos. So now, yeah, I can get five, six minute video done in about four to five hours. So again, it's make it for a dime, sell it for a dollar. If it takes me a couple of weeks to do one video, it's because you've got to be consistent, as you know. You've got to post consistently to get a good following. Would you say that you're, as far as what you'd

prefer as far as runs go? Do you prefer the two mile, one mile or 880 or 800 meter? Yeah. So the half mile is not a distance run. I don't know who, that's a sprint. I mean, the guys that are doing that are sprinting. And I don't know why it was like this, but I remember at the track meets, like the first run was the two mile. Then it was the one mile. Then the last one was an 880,

so I've already run two races, and I'm more out. And now you've got to sprint the 8.8. So I like the distance running. And the runs I do now are anywhere from five to 12 miles long. What's your fastest mile? Back in the day. So when I was running,

back in the day when I was running marathons then I could get down to a good around seven minutes a little over seven minutes for a marathon for yeah for a marathon what about like when you were competing in track or whatever

yeah that got down I think about a six and a half somewhere around there but I'm not doing that now Now I'm more long for the ride I want to look at the things And yeah Hey talking about YouTube One last thing I want to talk about Or just at least explain

You made a really cool video About your grandfather That was pretty cool That people might want to check out Yeah I attribute that to Really to you Jocko You know listen to this podcast One of my favorite things is when you have

Guys from World War II Korea The Vietnam And just the story that they tell and everybody's got a story. And when I hear that, I remember my grandfather, actually both of them. Both served in World War II. And, but my one grandfather was just a very introverted

and he was in the Army. He was in the mechanized in tanks. And he went over as a reprimanded, replacement for for the was the 81st tank battalion and but he never talked about it when when I was growing up I would spend summers working on the farm with him and he never mentioned it and at that time you know I didn't know what it has for you know tell me about the the war and but he didn't like it's just me he'd never talked about it was just me he'd never talked about with his kids or his family. It was just a part of his life that was kind of in the past and just never

talked about it. So, and he passed away in the early 90s. When a couple of, about a year or so ago, my aunt brought me his, like his old photo albums from that time. And it also had all of his military paperwork in it, which, you know, you think of our feel. jackets are pretty thick. Back then it was like a page or two. I mean, there wasn't, wasn't much at all. Like go to war, cool your home. Yeah, that's it. Exactly. And, you know, so because of my time, I was able to look at these and kind of understand, all right, so he was at this unit at this time, and he was actually in the fourth calf back when they had horses. Damn. So, you know, to think about that time of when your main asset was a horse.

I, you know, this animal that has its own personality and, you know, you think of what we drive today. And, but, but that, you know, that's, that's part of your main thing. So, so, so I was able to come up with the timeline of where he was, what units he was in. Then I spent some time just reading books on it. So finding books about that unit. overall reading it, reading about that time, reading about the operations to kind of get a better idea of what he did or what he may have done because I don't know for sure, I never, he never told me. But I was able, especially on the internet, I was able to find some after action, like their monthly reporting from that unit when he was, when he was over in, in Germany as they were

pushing to the Rhine. And, and of course, I've written. plenty of after-action reports. You can kind of read between the lines sometimes, but it had great data. And I was able to kind of take all of his pictures that he had in his albums, digitize him, and then go kind of walk through the store using all these external sources

and say, okay, this is where he would have been during this time, this is what happened during that time. So he was probably on this, this, cavalry march or he was probably in the tanks when they got hit on this so i kind of found the one day that he probably was in combat for the first time where they first took casualties and again i don't know for sure but but i was able to kind of create a timeline so i created a video of all his pictures so when i'm doing the voiceover and i'm telling the stories they're showing pictures of kind of that period of time, and so you kind of get an idea. And I totally just did it for my family

because they didn't have really any stories from him. And yeah, I set kind of a deadline to have it by Veterans Day. I missed it by a little bit. But I want to do it before the holidays. So when they were with their kids, they could watch it with them and kind of understand who their grandfather was and where he came from. And so, yeah, that's what you saw. What's the YouTube channel that that's on? So it's on my personal channel, but his name is Everett Weiss. I think the name of the the

file or the video is Corporal Everett Weiss. So if you... Spell Weiss, W-E-I-I-S-S-W-E-I-S-S. W-E-E-S-E-S-E. Oh, okay, so it's German, but it's a complete, W-I-E-E-S, yeah, Everett W-E-E-S-E. Yeah, I mean, one of our mutual friends

sent that to me and told me to check it out. It's very cool, awesome stuff. If there's one thing that I could say that I found that I don't like about this is, or the nomad lifestyle. The nomad, yeah, is the vagabond. It's, it's because you're traveling around so much, you're moving, you know, we move every two weeks to a month, you really lose that kind of connection to a community. And for example, like for chujitsu, for the, before we did this, I was training, I'll be it, I was, you know, white belt, no stripes. But, and if I could, I give a shout out to coastal BJJ.

They're in Virginia Beach. Phenomenal gym. They were awesome, you know, a guy, white hair coming in at 50. They, they, they took really, really good care of me. Nester and the guys down there just, just awesome guys. And so I was training with them and it was that community, but by doing this, you got to leave that. And I talked to him before I left. I was like, you know, what do you think? You know, can I just go to another gym and start working?

And he said yes, but what I found, especially with COVID, it's tough to kind of show up for just a couple weeks. And, you know, nobody knows where you've been. and, you know, I think a lot of gyms, especially like this, because it's such close contact that, you know, they kind of stay in their own. And it's tough to kind of be part of that community. And I think we're going to change that as we go through this lifestyle. We're finding that the first year and a half we've been jumping around so much that we kind of need to home base a little bit more. have a property down in Florida. And so our plan is for the winners. We'll probably be there and spend about five, six months there and then be kind of part of that community. And then for

the summer, pick a place like I think this year we're going to go all the way up to Maine. We're going to hit those areas. And then maybe the next year go out, maybe back out to the West Coast like we did this year just to see people. Farmington, Maine. Go up to the origin factory. You know the deal. You. You're You got people to train Jiu-Jitsu with. Come to the camp. We have camp in August. Okay.

It's freaking awesome. Actually, I might be there during that time. Come on up, man. Okay. It's awesome. I mean, it's so cool. There's several hundred people there from all over the world to train Jiu-Jitsu, hang out. It's great.

Now, again, I'm white belt. There's all kinds of white belts there. It's no factor. All right. No factor at all. Come and get it. All right. That'd be freaking legit.

I'll look for those dates. Right. Any other closing thoughts, man? Yeah, thanks to my wife that supports all of this, this crazy thing that we do. And she's just, I mean, she's my best friend. And we've been married coming up on 31 years and just no one else that I'd want to do that, do this with. So really appreciate her. Right on, man.

Well, thanks for coming on, man. Thanks for sharing your stories. Thanks for sharing your lessons. thanks for your service to the country, to the Navy, to the teams, and thanks for being someone I'll always be able to call friend, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right.

So Chris, he's gone. He stepped out. You may have heard people say there's no standard day in the SEAL teams. That's absolutely true. You don't have, hey, this is just a normal day. But what I think this highlights is there's just a single day. there's just no kind of standard career. There are so many different directions things can go that you're just going to have a different experience.

And what's cool is you can have some control over that experience. You have, you get, you have the capability of adjusting. I mean, you look at Giff and I very, you know, came in at the same time. We're in the same buzz class. We kind of like the same, same, we're on the same path. And yet, you know, he's speaking Vietnam. We both became radio men, but he's speaking Vietnamese. Just all these different things happen.

He ends up like doing the advanced special operation stuff. It's just different things happen. And you just get different experiences. So it's that, to me, is a benefit to joining the military. And I can only really say this with 100% certainty about the SEAL teams because that's where I spent my time. but most of the military, everyone I talked to, it's the same thing. You have, it's like a choose your own adventure book.

The chances that somebody else chooses the same adventure as you is very small. Yeah. So awesome to talk to Chris and, and hear his, because he's a friend. This is the other thing about the SEAL teams. Like, your friends come and go. And you may not see a guy for, like, when I saw him downstairs, I don't think I've seen him for probably,

15 years 15 years We we and we he hit me up Like God is my number whatever and he's like hey Hey John come in town I'm like oh cool you want to come hang out You want to be on the podcast? You'd be oh yeah That'd be awesome I listen to it all the time

So just but no no like well how have you been no Because it's a shared you have this shared Common background yeah and then with that shared Common background your friends you're like cool I have friends I don't talk to if I saw him tomorrow be like Hey well you know no factor like no factor There's no one May I

There's no hey you didn't call me No one expects you to call me Don't expect me to call you I'm not calling you You're not gonna call me cool But if you need something call me Call me You don't have to call me

You don't have to call me You don't have to keep You have to send me birthday cards Whatever You need me? Cool I'll show up Or you want to you got You're in town

Give me a shout We'll go roll We'll see what's up You It does go to show too How like it's almost like if you put into perspective where you have people with such different backgrounds

and then they kind of converge on this Navy SEAL journey. They get washed up and filtered out and then they get kind of spit out into their common interest for sure and common goals, but in such different ways. Like if you talk to you know how you say like Navy SEALs don't

have a stereotype or they think they have a stereotype. You think they do what they don't? But they don't, yeah. This is like a really good example because I'm talking to him. He's like a super nice. kind of introverted person and then now talk to you you're like no way that they were like kum pods in the team like it doesn't make sense and have the exact and had the exact same job yeah hung out and did stuff together and then so like i'm trying to imagine you know like every time

everyone talks like when they tell their story i always try to kind of put myself like i wonder how they were you know like what they looked like i see him in front of me now but what did they look like the young version you know what gif looked like he looked exactly like that man he looked exactly the same. Just darker hair probably. He had darker hair, but he looked the same. You know, there's almost the same build. I mean, I'm bigger than I was. Like when we went through Buds, when we started Buds, I was 174, you know. I'm 230 right now. He probably weighs somewhere in the neighborhood. Well, I don't know what he waiting buds, but he looks about the same, you know? And sure, does he have a couple more wrinkles? Whatever we all do. But it looks about the same.

Yeah, so you imagine him like just functioning, you know? I can't imagine him yelling at nobody. To me, he's just like this super friendly person, but I'm sure he was like getting after it the way everyone else was. It's weird. That contrast is real weird. Yeah. Interesting.

It is. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. It's always good to talk to your old friends and see where they're at, see what they're up to. And maybe there's a chance they're playing stand-up bass in a blues band. What? But every the actually I'll say this in a second what I did kind of what did hit me at one point

You know when you're talking about um when someone one of your superiors was like if you're really hardcore you're gonna go what with no no ground pad or whatever all you're gonna bring is a poncho and a poncho Yeah so and you just felt worst advice ever well or was it or well yeah in a way it was like it was it fulfilled itself right as a thing the no ground pad is a problem by the way after that, like I never go in the field without a ground pad. I never go in the field without a wool beanie. And I did have a wool beanie, but that saved me. And I never go in the field without my Gortex jacket.

Because worst case scenario, you put on a Gortex jacket, a beanie man in a ground pad, you're going to be able to like last a lot longer with a lot more comfort. If you don't have those things, you're screwed. So you learned your lesson. Lesson was learned. Was it that experience that made you? Ground pad? 100%.

Okay. So to me, what was funny, I mean, good. And that's good for sure. But what struck me the most, what stood out is, like, you know who you're like? You've watched Back to the Future. Yeah. I mean, I know the movie, but I can't say I know the plot. Because I'm not a freaking dork.

So Marty McFly, right? The main guy, Michael J. Yeah. His weakness was if you call him chicken. He'll do the dumbest stuff. All you got to do is call him chicken. And that's like a theme throughout all the, you know, that in fact, like, later on, that's, like, why he, like, ruins his career. So someone questions might be in hardcore.

Yeah, you're the exact same. You're Marty McPly. But instead of chicken, it's freaking hardcore. Yeah. Well, I would say, especially when I was. Well, you're still like that, right? You're still like that. True.

If, in fact, now you're smarter, though, I think, I'm assuming. But so, like, if I were to be like, hey, jock. it would be like, hey, Jocko, like, do this. If you're hardcore, like, you would do this, right? Something that you maybe didn't want to do or you said no to or something like that. If I said it that straightforward, you'd know what I'm doing and you'd figure it out and be like, hey, I'm not going to fall for that. But if I just hinted at it. If you use the indirect approach.

Indirect approach, maybe took a couple of days to maybe, you know, like plant seeds and stuff like that. I think I could get you fully to do some stuff. I don't know what. There's nothing wrong with getting people to do stuff. I like it. I appreciate it. bit of peer pressure in a positive way let's go with it you know have I ever told you about the cliff on quiet on Shibrek speech no actually I think I'm you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna

retract what I was about to I was about to say I could get you to jump off that cliff but yeah you probably you'd probably jump off that to me it's not yeah I'm jumping off how how many feet is it it's not it's put this way it's high but not super high so is it over 100 feet no no no okay it was like okay so the last time I jumped was last time I went and I hadn't jumped for like a long time probably like eight years maybe it's like when you're young you jump it's fun it's a little bit of a swim maybe a hundred meters swim back

give me an estimate on the height 30 35 maybe put it this way I went to jump me I know I know that's what I'm saying but I'm saying if no if you haven't jumped there it's like it can be intimidated and people jump off there because they see other people because everyone on the beach

can see you jump the cliff kind of wraps around and the beach is literally like a like a audience yeah perfect like spot sure so when you jump everyone watches you right so what this does so so Tulsi used to do that tells you used to go to jump off that beach where she was a water woman oh yeah she just put the cape on back in h i sure this is unquiet by the way so when you go up there does two things one it makes you want to like jump when you see other people it's like oh that's fun that'll be an adventurer right you go and but Another thing that it does is when you go up there and you said at the edge, everyone's watching.

So you can't turn back and walk down because you're going to be like, oh, you're the guy who walked down. Yeah, you're going. So we went. I went with my 15-year-old nephew. And he was like, I want to do it. I want to do it this time. So I'm like, cool. And he jumps.

But before we jump, there were these people up there. They didn't live there. So they're like, oh, you guys going to jump? And we're like, yeah. They're like, okay. Kind of like it was a bad idea. So she was like, oh, our friend is. is still in the hospital because he broke his back yesterday jumping off.

So I was like, dang. So it's high enough to break your back, but it depends on who you are. It also depends on what you hit. I mean, this person that broke their back hit the bottom? Is it not deep? So they're not breaking their back from just a regular jump if they're a normal person at 35 feet, bro. That's, there's some other. There's some other elements into this story that we're hearing.

Here's what he was, they said he was 50 years old. Okay. I'm 50 years old. I'm not breaking my back jumping. No, I believe 100% you're not breaking your back when you can. But you're not the average 50 years old, the year old person. And if you land a certain way, like, oh, yeah, you can break your back, I think. And then not the kind of he broke his back and he was like done.

He like, you know, had a fractured one of his vertebrae in this way. He's in the hospital for more than a day, though. So. Well, weird things can happen where it comes to injuries. That's true. You can't take that into account. I don't want to be talking too much smack over here. Plus, you got to be careful.

But in your case, I just call you not hardcore. and you'll do anything. Whatever. Yeah. Well, everyone, thanks for listening. Thanks for hanging out with the good old GIF. Giff and me. If you want to help us out with supporting what we're doing,

check out joccofuel.com. We got some tasty goodness on there, which is a weird thing. You say first thing people think about when they think of supplements, they're not generally thinking like, oh, tasty. Sometimes they even don't think tasty.

The first thing I said was tasty. Why? Because more. It's a front runner. Because milk is a frontrunner. It's a frontrunner in food to take into your body and enjoy that process. It's true. Oh, man.

They're going to help you. Remember the freaking protein shakes back in the day? They were so bad. I was on an argue platoon on a ship. And we had the latest and greatest. And everyone had it. And it was so, it tasted so bad. It was vanilla.

I remember I used to have to hold my nose. because I was on the train, right? We were doing this stuff. We're trying to get jacked. I would hold my nose and do it like I'm doing a shot of tequila. So that's how, that's not what we want. No. Have a good taste.

Or remember the old school freaking mega mass five million or whatever, you know, the one of the big dog food bag or whatever, that tasted good. But I think it had like boatloads of like sugar. Yeah, it was just straight up just like that stuff. Like technically had more protein or whatever. Well, they were also like, hey, this is for gaining mass. So we're literally just going to give you sugar, fat, protein, just whatever.

We're just going to throw it in there, make it taste good. Hey, more power to you. If you're a hard gainer, remember that back of the day? You got the hard gator coming in hot. And then what's the two three body types, right? Mesomorph, ectomorph. What's the other one? Endomorph.

Yeah. Right, there you go. So they'd have those little graphs. You know, maybe you need to do this over there. Is that a real thing now? I have no idea. I think it is a thing. but I don't know what determines that thing.

Oh, yeah. Because I don't know if it was, you know what, let's face it. There's some truth to it because there's some dudes that I know that would just eat pizzas and whatever and they're lean. Yep, that's true. So they might be the hard gainer. Yeah. And then some people, doesn't matter if they lift or not, they're kind of jacked. Yep.

You know, I've known people like that. Yeah. And I know some people that work out like crazy and they don't look like it. And they can even be strong. Yeah. And even be fast, but they still look like kind of dumpy. Yeah. That is true.

So I guess the thing is a thing. Yeah. So we've got to watch out for that one. Yeah, that's true. I literally know someone like immediately comes to mind for every single one of those. That's interesting. All right. Well, you got to watch out for that, of course.

So know your body type. Yeah. Right. Also, speaking of taste good, the energy drinks, healthy energy drinks too, but. Which is a rare thing. Very rare. Kind of a unique thing. Get some of those.

And you can get this stuff at joccofuel. You can get the drinks at Wawa. You can get all the stuff at vitamin shop as well. Well, so check that out. Also, if you need some Jiu-Jitsu gear, which you probably do, go to origin USA.com. And what's cool is we started with Jit-Tor gear, but now we're making just straight gear for your life. Jeans. T-shirts, hoodies, boots, whatever you need.

We got it. So check some of that out. The jeans, and I don't know why these ones struck me so hard or whatever. It's the new jeans that they're coming out with. They're like green or something. The one that Pete said, the next one is going to be Camel. The work, their work pants, yeah. Yeah.

I don't know if I do the work that requires. Actually, I'm not sure which one I know you're talking about. I'm pretty sure. I know you don't do the work that's required. He's called work. But I do want the pants. You're disqualified for work pants across the board. Yeah, if they got any padding in the knee, let's face it, that padding is not going to get any, any action.

No use for my work. That's for damn sure. But nonetheless, for people who do work, these are both functional and aesthetic. Man, I'm looking at them and I want them, you know, just for the look alone. And I know they're probably more functional than they look good. So it's saying a lot. OriginUSA.com.

Go and get yourself some gear. And by the way, support an American company that's rebuilding American manufacturing and helping American communities and workers. That's what we're about. Because if we weren't about that, guess what would be doing? Hiring some slave labor overseas. in China to make everything for us and make a little bit more profit

make a little bit more profit we can stuff a little bit more money in our pockets over here to rip it out of the hearts of the American worker we're not doing that that's not what we're doing so origin USA.com go check it out there you go it's true also when you're

when you're in the mood to represent on this path hey look we're we're capable which kind of reminds me you know how like and some some of the guests will have this where they'll talk about like their background or whatever and then you know they went through this they went through that they already had this certification or this you know

it like makes you think man those certifications and there's a lot of them available by the way like certifications yeah like Giff mentioned he who's a paddy diver yeah before he even joined the Navy maybe yeah and he wasn't even really I never dove on scuba gear until I was in the Navy yeah see and that's one that I always was like man that'd be a cool because I grew up diving yeah I grew up dive yeah I grew up

scuba diving? No, never. So snorkeling. Free diving, we call it. Yeah. Wait, wasn't, who was it? Micah, right? Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. And we didn't even go into that. He was some kind of world-class... Bro. My younger brother, Yata, Charles. He is heavy, not so much anymore he has kids and all that stuff now, but he's heavy into free diving, spearfishing, all this stuff. Really good, too.

One of his friends, I think... Did you know who Michael was? I don't know. That's why. I want to kind of ask him. Check Yopta. Yeah, man. And one of his friends, actually, I think, still holds the record.

of the deepest free dive. If I'm not mistaken, I could be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure. He showed me the video is freaking crazy. Nonetheless, I know a little bit about free diving. And scuba diving has always been kind of like, oh man, that'd be a cool one to have. You can just stay down on that and breathe.

You know what I'm saying? The kind of dive rig that you eventually end up using in the sale teams, which is called a rebreather, a rebreather. And it has no bubbles. Yeah. And when you're down there, it just like quiet, it's like, oh. Yeah.

It's not like a normal, a normal, when you're scuba diving with a normal, what's called an open circuit rig. He's like, oh, it's all noisy, there's bubbles everywhere. You don't like that. And I don't like it at all. And I've just spent way more. I've probably spent a hundred times more in my life on Drager. What's true? Drager's the rebreather.

Then open circuit. Open circuit, you basically do it in buds. You get qualified. And then as soon as you're done with that, you go on closed circuit. And that's where you dive for the rest of your career. Maybe every once in a blue moon you dive open circuit. I can't, I think I dove open circuit on a ship one time to like clear some, some seaweed out of something or something like this, but.

But have you ever gone scuba diving in any capacity after you retired from the no? Would you, like is that your jam? Like, if I could get a rebreather? Yeah. Yes. Like just to go or what? If I was like, let's say we were, went back to Hawaii and we were just going to go diving

and I could use. a rebreather, I'd probably look into it, maybe do it. Are rebreaters, like, available? They are, but I don't know what the rules are, you know. They're not available. They're like plutonium. No, they are available. I've looked like, you can buy one, $5,000 or $6,000.

Oh, damn. How much is a regular scuba rig, like a middle of the road? I would guess $1,500 for the whole thing if you went over to the dive shop and hooked it up. Yeah. But that seems like, to me anyway, that seems like a cool little just certification you can just decide to go get. It's good people to know how to know. Just like even like the guns thing, like, you know, how to, you know, those kind of certifications just have more capability overall.

You just choose. Yeah. And there's people that chase those little qualifications, right? Yeah. And I dig it. Yeah, yeah. But I mean, of course, just like anything else, it's like, you know, if you don't want to do it for nothing, they got to be applicable, I would think anyway.

Yeah. But it's better to have the capability and certification than not. Let's build capability is what, is what we're saying. You know which one I randomly got, it's not random. It's for a reason. But it seems. But it seems like you would never just think to go get it. But once you kind of think about it for a second, it's like super duper useful is CPR.

Yeah. I'm CPR certified. Dude, did you put that on your resume for this job? I'm just saying if you black out or something like this, I got you, brother. That's what I'm saying. Dude, I didn't know. I'm dealing with a highly qualified, highly qualified individual. I told you, I told you it's small, but it's one of those things you can just get and it's better to have.

I cannot believe that brought that up. Bro, I'm just saying it's one of those things. What did you like apply to college? You go get that degree in CPR? Check. All right. So, uh,

there you go down. If you go down, remember text, Echo Charles, he'll come and give you CPR. He's qualified. It's like a 15 minute class, bro.

Brad, don't even know why I tell you these things. I don't know why I tell you anything. I don't know why you do you. That's rindonculus. Either way. Yeah. If you want to represent while you're on the path,

CPR certified or not, go to jocco store.com. You can get your discipline equals freedom, shirts and hats. There's a lot of good stuff on there. Check it out. If you want something, get something to represent.

Don't forget, we got some other podcasts too. We got the Jockenravelling with Daryl Cooper. We got the grounded podcast. Warrior Kid podcast. We got Jock Underground. That's a huge way to support. There's people getting banned.

You got, what just happened? Neil Young told Spotify. Get Rogan off. Oh, yeah. Get him off. Straight up ultimatum. And guess what happened?

What? Did you see the outcome? Uh-oh. Neil Young's off Spotify. We should do, we should say we want Joe Rogan off Spotify. Uh, yeah. Or you're going to have to get this off. They'll be like, who are you?

Uh, but listen, that's a scenario that happened. Yeah. Luckily, Spotify made the call to keep Joe Rogan because Neil, young cool I don't know if that happened to Crosby still is Nash and Young as well I don't know if he screwed over all of his old bandmates too you know who knows what happened there good old Neil Young but

you jacked it up son so we don't know what's going to happen we don't know if somebody's going to come on on the Apple and we don't know if some big band if Neil Young's going to go on Apple and say hey take down Jocko podcast because I don't like what they're saying about CPR calls so we don't know if that's going to happen

so that's why we have Jock Underground so if you want to If you want to get on board there, you want to help us out. It costs $8.18 a month to come, and we have a podcast that we do there. A little bit of a project to pass more information. If you can't afford it, it's okay. Email assistance at jocco underground.com

so you can be in the game. Check out our YouTube channel. Check out flipside canvas.com with Dakota Meyer. Check it all. I wrote a bunch of books. Check them out. I would say especially check out the kids' books. Most people know I've written some books,

but some people don't know I wrote kids' books. kids books keep them kids on the path and also we have echelon front which is our leadership consultancy if you want to have us help you with your leadership go to extreme ownership dot com and a online training platform so look a few years ago if someone said hey you know i really want to learn about leadership uh do you can you help me i'd say yeah i just listen to my podcast man and they'd be like oh okay cool thanks and they'd listen there's good information But now there's 300 plus podcast. And they're about war and they're about atrocities.

And so the leadership lessons are strewn throughout. So this is one thing that we've done to sort of, hey, let's get these things into a consolidated curriculum where you can literally learn from step A through step Z. There you go. Go to extreme ownership.com. A little story about the word strewn. So I got two, I got three daughters, the two older ones. They're very, they're very, you know, articulate. Well, they also get hostile, you know.

Sure, that too. Okay. And they shared room for a long time. And they still share a room when they're home. But one of them wrote, the older one wrote a message to the younger one that said, you know, something along the lines of, listen, I just got home. I've been out all day working and I just got home. And as soon as I walked into a room, I could barely get in there because you had your, clothes and your stuff strewn about the floor and I would really appreciate it if you come home and clean this up

and my middle daughter replied strewn that's all she wrote back so I thought that was pretty funny strewn so now it's a joke and inside of our family if there's something been left out then it's been there's then it's strewned about and then the response is just straight up strewn and if you want to help Service members active and retire go check out Mark Lee's mom mama Lee she's got an awesome charity organization if you want to donate or get involved go to america's mighty warriors dot org and if you need more of us for whatever reason we're on social watch out for the algorithm i'm not trying to draw you into the algorithm where that thing grabs a hold of your soul and drags you down reading into comments and feeling bad about yourself and scanning to another

screened and another one. I don't want you to do that. I don't want you to do that. I'd rather you not do that. But if you feel like, oh, I got a question. I want to see what's happening. Cool. We're on the gram.

We're on Facebook. We're on Twitter. Echo's at Echoes at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink. And once again, if you want to hang out with Chris Gifford and his wife, Julie, go to Instagram, taking leave underscore RV. There you go. That's Julie and Chris.

Who knows what they got going on out there in the world in an airstream? What did I say 34-airstream? Yeah. That's a nice ride right there. Yeah. Nice ride. And speaking of Chris Gifford, just want to say thanks once again to Chris on his travels. He was nice enough to stop by.

He was a silent professional in the teams and a pro. And I appreciate it. Appreciate your service. And thanks for coming by. And to all the other vets out there, both. The vets, and also the folks that are still active duty manning the watch worldwide. Thank you for your continued service. And to our police and law enforcement of firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

correctional officers, border patrol secret service, all the first responders. Thanks for manning the watch here at home. And to everyone else, to everyone else, remember what Chris did with his life. He set a goal. And then he went out and he achieved it. And then he did that again and again and again. And that is a good plan. So go out there, come up with a goal and execute by getting after it.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.