Jocko Podcast - 33: The Killing Zone (F. Downs), Male Psyche & Fighting, BJJ Frustrations, Talking about Yourself, Fear of Failure

Episode Date: July 27, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:0:3:13 - "The Killing Zone", by Frederick Downs - Book review 1:27:48 - Internet / Onnit Stuff  1:41:07 - Is Fighting ability the most overlooked essential stabilizer in the young male psyche? 1:58:01 - Frustrations of beginning Jiu Jitsu 2:11:41 - Checking ego while Talking about yourself in an interview 2:16:02 - Staying humble when you know you have better skills than others. 2:27:15 - When 2 leaders have Extreme Ownership have to go against each other. 2:35:06 - Overcoming Fear of FailureSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 33 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. People say there is a line. There's a line between good and evil, right and wrong, between light and dark. And that's a nice, clean way to think of things. but the line can be hard to recognize. It can get blurry.

It can get twisted by emotion and passion and by one's own ego. And in war, that line is tested. It's pressed. It becomes even more blurry. It gets crossed and violated and sometimes abandoned. And we can see that throughout history, and we've talked about it here in the Japanese slave camps in Rwanda and Nili. Those are a few examples, but there are thousands of them. And I've seen the line.

And I've seen men approach the line, driven, filled with fury and with hate. and that fury needs an outlet. And if it gets a purchase, it can become unstoppable. But it can also be controlled. Because there is a counter to all that

evil. There is the man that steps up and says no. No, not today. Not here. Not now. We will not do that. And the dichotomy of leadership and the dichotomy of war is so hard to balance. Soldiers are trained and tasked to kill. And yet they are also trained to be humane and fair and moral and good.

How does a warrior reconcile those opposing forces, that dichotomy? How does he know to balance? Thoughts rush through my mind as I tried to decide what to do. Women, old men, and kids, obviously non-combatants. But this is a free fire zone. There are not supposed to be civilians in this area. Yeah, but dinks occasionally ignore those warnings about free fire areas. Maybe they're the point element for Viet Cong or NVA traveling behind them.

Maybe they're supposed to give the warning if stopped it's happened before. In that case, some of my men could come under fire and be killed or wounded. Four-six killed that one dink last evening, and he had a Thompson. There was a whole squad of Kong in that group. There was some incoming fire when we made the LZ. A dink tried to cross the dike last night. These people look innocent enough. They may be carrying supplies for the Kong in the area.

and or ammo. It's a free fire zone. Everyone is supposed to be considered enemy. I'm responsible for my men. They'll get killed if I make the wrong decision. These dinks coming toward us mean nothing to me. My men mean everything. What if the dinks aren't innocent?

My men depend on me to keep them alive. I spoke softly to the men around me. It's a lick on them. When I give the order, open fire. I brought up the M-16 to cite in on the dinks. Spagg was standing to my right, his M-60 machine gun supported on his hip by a sling around his neck and shoulder. He reached over and touched my arm. His whispered voice reflected the agony of doubt in his face.

No, sir, you can't. Kids, women. He motioned toward the file of people coming towards us. I felt ashamed. Spag was right Wait one I whispered to the men around me I'll call for them to surrender

I felt relieved capturing them was the best solution If they were the point for a VC group I would just make sure none of us was exposed to fire When we captured this point The dinks were almost to the intersection I stepped through the brush with some of my men Dung Lui Dung Lui I warned

They were only 10 to 20 meters from us They all glanced at us standing with our weapons trained on them. We had them dead to rights. They had no cover and no place to run to. A perfect capture situation. Almost in mid-stride, they all moved with astonishing speed. The two boys in the points split up. The one ran past us heading down the trail, past the schoolhouse. The other boy, the woman, the old men started running back toward the bridge. Stop! Stop! Dung Loi! Dung Loi! I yelled to no avail. I could not order the men to run after them. It could be a trap. Neither could I let them get away. Why were they running? In the split

second, those thoughts ran across my consciousness. I gave the order to open fire. An irrevocable wave of death swept in front of us. After the initial burst of gunfire, I yelled cease fire. The two women survived long enough to cross the bridge and enter one of the hooches. Three of my men crossed over the bridge and threw grenades in the hooches. We hurriedly looked over the bodies on the trail since they lying in the open we had no desire to be caught exposed. The men reported that some of the dead had been carrying hand grenades in their ammo and ammo packs. I felt somewhat relieved. Those supplies could not have been for anyone but the Kong. I received a report from the squad down the trail. The firing had alerted them barely fast enough to fire at the teenager running

toward them down the trail. Someone hit him in the shoulder and knocked him down. Surprisingly the boy had jumped up and run past the squad to safety somewhere in the brush. I had no pleasure in reporting to Delta 6 that we had killed six dinks and one wounded. I knew he would ask how many weapons we had captured. I stared at the gray horizon for a long time before answering that the dinks were not carrying weapons, only supplies and grenades. I felt low. This putrid war.

I thought of so many ways I could have done it differently. so easy to think afterward. After all, now I knew there was no dink squad behind on the trail. This episode would be the darkest of my career. I called my men together for a march up the slight hill to Delta Sixth's position, forcing the dinks out of my mind. Now, that's from a book that we're looking at tonight. It's called The Killing Zone, My Life in the Vietnam War by Frederick Downs.

Now Vietnam, it was a hard war, obviously a wretched war for many reasons. And the Mili Massacre is almost the apex, almost the pinnacle. It almost seems like the essence of the war in many respects. At least it's viewed that way. And it did have a huge strategic impact. It was devastating to the war effort. and something that should always be remembered is that tactical operations can have strategic impact. Like Hackworth said, the Milai massacre probably did more to end the war and hasten our departure from Vietnam than anything our communist enemy did.

And in a similar vein, the war I was in, in the mistreatment of the prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, and the photographs that showed that mistreatment likely did more to fuel the insurgency. country than anything al-Qaeda did tactical actions can have strategic impact and that actually happens in business too one bad customer experience for a customer that's got some reach and there can really be a strategic impact and what the frontline troops do really does matter and what the front line troops do is based on how they are led and clearly in Milai, there was a total lack of leadership, especially from the moral and ethical perspective.

But this was not the norm. Not by any stretch. And like I said, it's viewed sometimes as the representation of what the Vietnam War was like, but it's not. And I said this when we talked about Mili. Yeah, America has done. monstrous things in our history. But we most certainly are not

monstrous. We are an amazingly benevolent nation, especially now, perhaps even to our own detriment. But that's why I wanted to talk about this book, The Killing Zone, to show the challenges of Vietnam War and how American troops handle those challenges and pressures on a day-to-day basis and how they sometimes

cross that line if only for a moment but then most of the time brought themselves back from the brink of darkness into the light now let's go back to the book here going to the beginning

when Fred Downs young lieutenant in the army is flying into Vietnam. At 23, 30 hours, the continental big bird with the golden tail DC8 dropped through the night sky into the landing pattern over the black landscape of Vietnam. 23 hours earlier, 165 of us had been crammed aboard the commercial jet at the airport

near San Francisco. I looked around the cabin at the officers and enlisted men who had come from all over the United States to catch this flight from San Francisco. How would they return? How would I return? I had graduated six months earlier from the U.S. Army's OCS program at Fort Benning, Georgia, and now I was soon to be leading men into combat. I was 23 years old, and I had been trained to lead.

Physically, I thought I was ready. Mentally, I was as confident of myself as any young officer could be. But underneath my confidence were the ever-present questions, worry and curiosity about war and my role in it. I was eagerly looking forward to finding answers. I would not have to wait long. So we've talked about that before. When you're stepping into a leadership role,

you're not going to, if there's a good chance, you're not going to feel 100% confident. And that's okay. So he gets to Vietnam. He gets assigned to fourth division. and he actually he hadn't heard of fourth division he hadn't seen it in the papers he kind of is asking hey why why why why haven't I see down the papers what are they doing and he said there's no reporters up there where they're working it's too rough for him and he's kind of saying you know I want to get I want to make sure I get it on and some of the old timers are telling him one of them says you'll get a belly full of fighting up there son if that's what you want so it's one of those be careful what you wish for scenarios and I thought this was pretty pretty interesting.

You know, we talk about Hackworth and the hardcore recondos as the salute and reply. The reply is no fucking slack. So here's what they had here. It was SOP to salute in the company area, but not in the field. When enlisted man saluted, he would say, golden dragon, sir. The officer would return the salute with right of the line. I asked about this. They told me that the 1st of the 14th, that's the division he's with,

the 1st of the 14th was an old infantry regiment steeped in tradition. During the box rebellion in China, the unit had fought bravely. Afterward, they adopted the symbol of a golden dragon. The other part of the salute came from some battle in the Civil War. Right before a large battle, a staff officer asked a general where to put the 1st of the 14th. The general had roared back, put them to the right of the line where they belong. The right of the line is where a leader traditionally puts his best men and units. This comes down through military history when a man fought with the shield and sword.

The right arm or sword arm was unprotected. The best fighter was put to the right to protect the sword arm of the man on his left. Only the most trusted and best fighters held the position to the right. legit so he's there in in the in the in the headquarters area for a little while and then he gets his

indoctrination and then gets flown out he flies out into the field into where he's going to be operating out of he gets up there and this is this is straight out of a movie right here bugs swarmed around my face

I swatted and looked at the men who looked right back at me it was my first view of American GIs who had spent several days in the jungle. I stood there in sparkling crisp fatigues, brand new boots, new rifle, clean-shaven, fresh haircut. I even smelled clean. My helmet camouflage cover didn't have a mark on it, nor did I.

The two men opposite me were filthy. Their fatigues were torn and they had scratches all over their skin, two or three days of growth on their beard and dark circles under their eyes. They look tired and they smell. smelled the high heaven. So that's, that's right out of a movie. The boot,

lieutenant coming in to take over. He's in his pressed cam. He's looking all squared away, and these guys look like they're living in hell. And they introduced the company commander. And this guy, you're going to see throughout the book, this guy, Captain Sells,

was an ROTC officer, 26 years old, son of a father killed in Korea. So that's, you know, the guy's dad got killed in Korea. and he's during the Vietnam War he's joining up and

leading men in a comedy. He's a company commander and if you remember from the book Platoon Leader where you remember he didn't even meet the company commander so his direct boss didn't even meet him for weeks. He'd been in the field

for weeks before he even met him and here's this company commander obviously much more squared away walks him around introduces him to everybody he's giving him a heads up you know this is the way it's supposed to be and you know he's getting told look

there's enemy all around. And you might have heard in that intro piece that I read, I was talking about Delta 6. And here's a little piece about that. He informed me that his radio signal was Delta 6. So that's the Delta Company commander's Delta 6. Lieutenant Smart, the first platoon leader was Delta 1-6. The second platoon leader was Delta 26. Sixes were the commanders of the unit.

And this is a tradition that holds true in the Army and the Marine Corps today. And it's pretty cool when you're in the field. you would hear someone call for the six, and that means we want to talk to the guy that's in charge out there. Their seconds in command were known as fives. For instance, Delta 1-5 was the first platoon sergeant. And this goes on to talk a little bit more about Captain Sells, who's asking him about his family, he's getting to know him,

and he's, you know, Downs had a wife and two little girls back in Illinois. And so, again, you're getting in the impression that Sells is a guy that's trying to get to know his people and learn about him, which is the way what a leader should be doing. Now these guys are out and he's talking again, this is

something straight out of a movie. Darkness quickly engulfed us. My hooched mace watched an astonishment as I pulled out mosquito netting and spread it over my poncho liner and air mattress. They were aghast that I carried so much extra weight. No, I answered. This is all the good stuff.

Their amazement grew as I revealed three changes of underwear and fatigue clothes. Wait until the next day, they scoffed when the sun and heavy pack will drag me down. The jungle would exact a toll for every ounce I carried. We'll see, I answered. Not a good answer. Lieutenant Smart said, yeah, you'll see. You'll see that the only change of clothes your carry is to be an extra pair of socks.

You'll learn to live in one set of jungle fatigues until they rot off you or, ripped too badly to wear. That's, that, that actually reminds me when we were in, uh, my, my first deployment to Iraq, we, we, we had, you know, three sets of camis and just wore them, rotated them. In Ramadi, that the op tempo was so high and, and the conditions of fighting, we had to order new camis within, within a couple weeks of being there, guys had destroyed, camis, you're run across street, they're getting, you know, dragging people and they were just ruining their, their camis.

So that was another indicator in Ramadi that we were in a totally different scenario than I was on my first deployment to Iraq. Back to the book. My first days on Combat Patrol introduced me to the vicissitudes of war. Ten foot deep pungy pits. Wait a minute vines that collected around the feet and legs until their combined strength stopped you and you had to say, wait a minute. While you untangled or cut yourself loose. The hot sun beating down on us as we marched around with 70-pound packs. the sweat pouring off us, the bugs so thick, around our faces that we sometimes inhaled them,

and the physical agony of forcing tired muscles to keep going. It was a search and destroy mission, which meant we searched all the hooches we found and then burned them down. Whether a single farmer's hooch or a whole village, all were burnt. The few Vietnamese we found in the area were women, children, and old men who had been left behind. When we started to burn their particular hooch, they would start wailing, crying, and pulling in our clothes. We didn't harm the people, but the orders were to destroy all the dwellings, so we did.

The first time I saw a Vietnamese family go into hysterics when their hooch was set on fire, I was unsure of whether burning their home would accomplish our mission. The mission was to deny the enemy use of the hooches, to destroy any food we found, and to teach the people a lesson about supporting the enemy. but I quickly got used to it and accepted that this was one way to win the war. And that's, you know, if you talk to anybody, anybody knowledgeable about true counterinsurgency, this is not a great plan to go in and basically abuse the populace.

Now, if you know that they're supporting the insurgents, sure you want to disrupt that, but oftentimes they're not supporting the insurgents because they want to. they're supporting the insurgents because they're fear for their lives. That's the way it was in Iraq when I was there. So back to the book, Sheldon Brand took the opportunity later that day to explain in this unit, everyone called the enemy and ultimately all outsiders dinks. So that's their word that they use.

And I found this interesting. He says ultimately all outsiders. And you've heard me and you've heard Leif and in the book, we talk about Moosh. That's what we called the enemy. We called the enemy moose. But what's interesting is here it says all outsiders, and that's exactly what we did. When we were getting resistance from up the chain of command, down the chain of command, guess what we call them? Muge.

We'd say, oh, the boss is saying this. I can't believe that Muge. So it became the word that we used to all outsiders. And that's unit cohesion. And there's some dehumanization of the enemy there, obviously. but the fact that you end up using the same slang word to describe anybody that's against you is is interesting back to the book it turned out that the enemy started calling us dinks first because it was an insulting or demeaning term that meant hairy man from the jungle

we had just turned the word around and started calling them dinks at least that was the story i don't know if that's true or not i never never read didn't do any research on that one I saw the face of the enemy for the first time. He'd been machine gunned down by one of our gun crews. The powerful weapon had thrown a halo bullets into the brush where we had spotted him. When we got to his position, I saw for the first time the death of a soldier. The machine gun crew had done a good job. The young soldier's green combat uniform body was riddled with bullets.

He was sprawled across his bicycle with his face toward the sky. At last I had before me the enemy I had been trained to destroy. He was a young man for whom the war and life had ended. One evening a jet was returning to base and needed a target to get rid of his unexpended bomb load. The captain called the forward air controller and gave him the coordinates of a sniper 300 meters away who'd been pestering us off and on for three days. As the jet pulled up after dropping napalm on the sniper's position, we could hear the pop-pop of the sniper firing at the jet.

The men talked about the gall of that sniper as I watched the napalm burn itself. out. I wondered what would drive a man to stand up to death in so remarkable a manner. Again, you're dealing with a hardened enemy. You're getting napalm dropped on your position and as you burn to death, you're trying to shoot down a jet fighter. Back to the book, Shaldon Brand was worth his weight and gold to me in running that platoon. He even introduced me to the platoon motto. It's a lick. A lick is a lick on a young man's ass, Lieutenant. You remember when you were a kid and you did something wrong or something got fucked up that you got the blame for? The old man would give you a licking with a switch or a belt.

Yeah, I sure remember getting lickings. Well, when something goes wrong, it's a lick on you. You see, anything that goes wrong will give you a lick. And over here, you'll get plenty of licks. My RTO was the other most important man to the platoon. His job was to carry the radio and stick to me like a shadow. The radio was our link with literally everything. outside our platoon from supplies to survival without a working radio and a good

RTO a platoon leader and the platoon were as good as lost in this war my RTO man a skinny kid five feet 11 inches tall was next to perfect for his job he loved to know what's going on and his job was akin to the central switchboard operators so that's the RTO that's what that was actually when I was an enlisted seal that's what I was so I I always had that same attitude. When you're the RTO, you always know what's going on. Because the officer's telling you, you're right next to him, you're listening to what he's saying, so you always know what's going on. And that was a real good education for me.

Growing my whole career, always being next to the guy that was running the platoon. Talking a little bit about the troops here. My squad leaders were first squad, Delcatol, cowboy type from Wyoming, second squad Porter, a slightly built black from East St. Louis. Third squad, Jose, a skinny, short, swarthy Puerto Rican, fourth squad Gallagher, a medium-built redhead from New England states. And, of course, there was the platoon medic, doc. The platoon makeup was whites, blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Americans, and an Indian. And a Japanese American.

All of them from 18 to 21 years old. In a combat platoon, we were evaluated by our peers on our ability to help the platoon survive and not on our racial backgrounds. A combat platoon pulled together and was tight with each other, with no room for the soldier who wouldn't do his share. So it's always good to just point that out. These are just people for the cross-section of America. And these are pretty stereotypical, right?

A cowboy from Wyoming. You know, this is stereotypical stuff. And that's one thing that the military is. So when I joined, I grew up in New England, right? When I joined the Navy and I got to California and I went to the Enlisted Man's Club on NAB Coronado, the Gator Gardens back in the day. I was 18 years old. And I showed up, you know, because there's a club. So it's a club on base, right?

And so I go, I'm going to go there. People are saying, hey, we're going to go to the club. So I go, okay, well, let's go see what's going on there. So I walk over the club And as I'm kind of standing outside I see two guys walk by with With jeans on With cowboy boots with big belt buckles

And cowboy hats and like a wrangler shirt And I was kind of thinking to myself Oh that's there was some kind of Is it Halloween? Is these guys getting dressed up for something? And again this is pre-internet man I mean And and then I see a couple more guys go by

And it turned out it was country what western night But at the club At the club But I had never seen a person in you know i come from a small town in in connecticut and there's there's there's just no cowboys up there and interestingly there's farms and there's people that raise cattle and there's people that grow you know have have farms but they don't have cowboy boots and they don't wear cowboy hats and so it's just that's what i that's what i was thinking about

when i read this is just how you take all these different people from all the place they had no idea. You have no idea what other people are like. And again, this is pre-internet. When I joined the Navy, we didn't get to Google. We didn't watch YouTube videos because you're exposed to the entire planet and galaxy

through YouTube. First time you saw a real cowboy, huh? Mm-hmm. It is. I thought they were I thought they were dressed up. I thought they were dressed up. Yeah. It is kind of crazy.

And then, you know, I ended up. I mean, in T.U. Bruiser, we had all kinds of guys from Texas, and there's all kinds of cowboys down in Texas. Like, I mean, Chris, Chris Kyle was like a legit whatever, rodeo.

Dude, in Laif. Lave's a Calibbean. Lave's an absolute cowboy, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's all kinds of cowboys in there. Yeah. So, all right, now we're going to advance a little bit, and this is the first time that Downs is actually in charge

he did a little turnover with the former platoon commander he takes charge of the platoon and he's doing security for the bridges for some bridges that are out kind of away from the main camp and they're out there to prevent landmines and gather intel and kind of set up a checkpoint and they're there they're actually staying out there

so they would set up by these bridges and as they're getting set up for the first time I'm going to the book an explosion ripped the air behind me followed immediately by a scream. My body instinctively threw itself against the sandbags as my mind shouted mortar attack. My eyes registered the scene of men frozen in shocked wonderment, their eyes

staring behind me. Man was directly in front of me and the track man were off in the background, crouching where they were when the explosions went off. So they're actually out there with some tracked vehicles. Quickly turning around, my eyes swept an awful catastrophe. One of the claymores had gone off, shattering forever the lives of the three men in front of it. Jesus Christ, was it a mortar? No, one of our claymores went off.

Get those men quick. No, no, wait, there's another claymore out there. What the fuck set it off? What about the other one? So, imagine this. You get to a position and you want to put out Claymore mines. And if you don't know what a Claymore mine is, it's a directional blasting mind that you set off by command detonation.

So you have a little thing that you squeeze. And when you squeeze this thing, it sends an electrical charge, down the wire into the claymore, detonates a blasting cap. The claymore explodes and everything in front of it's going to die. Well, they had set up the claymores,

and then they were going to put some barbed wire out. And as they were putting the barbed wire out, there was a storm, electrical storm, you know, thunderstorm, and the static electricity in the air actually set off. the Claymore. So it killed or it did some serious damage. Back to the book. Only a few seconds

had passed since the explosion. One of my men and I dashed to the other Claymore, frantically fumbling, unscruing the plug and holding the blasting crap, throwing it away from the Claymore. Then I rushed back to the radio. Two men were applying first aid. The other positions were covered by the men assigned to them. They had stayed in place during the action. Good training, I thought, as I fumbled with my map. It was folded in a plastic radio bag. All of us used to carry maps in. Delta 6, this is 1-6, over? 1-6, this is Delta 6, over. This is 1-6.

I need dust-off. There's been an accident resulting in three peanuts, over. We tried to say nothing over the radio that could be understood by the enemy. Thus, we used code words for certain things. A Kool-Aid was a dead soldier, and a peanut was a wounded soldier. This is Delta 6. What the hell happened, over? This is 1-6.

Static electricity in the air set off a claymore while three trackmen were putting out barbed wire. Over? This is Delta 6. What's your position? Over? Now, what would he ask me that for? I was on the bridge he'd assigned to me. Let's see.

We're here, so I read writing up real easy, just like all the training, so he's looking at his map, he's trying to figure out where he is. Of course, that was my first responsibility where men had been hurt, so maybe that accounted for what happened next in spite of training. Lieutenant, Lieutenant, you've got to get a dust off out here quick. This man's got a bad head wound, said one soldier as they brought the wounded over to me. Dirty black clouds with lightning crashing around added the confusion as the wind howled over from all directions.

huge range drops started to spatter down. This is one six. I'm at coordinates 298028. Over? I read them out. This is Delta 6. Are you sure of that? Over?

This is 16. Let's see. Yeah, that's it. All right, there. 16, you better check that again. According to what you gave me, you're in the South China Sea. Over? Oh, did he sound mad?

God damn, I've done this a million times. The thought ran through my mind as a sweat broke out. The wounded were groaning. the storm was reaching gigantic proportions and the track sergeant was demanding to know where that fuck that dust off was. Concentrate, Fred. Concentrate, I said to myself

while staring at the meaningless blob of colors, whorls, and numbers, so he's looking at his map, it's just trying to figure it out. Suddenly everything gelled in perfect clarity. Delta 6, this is 1-6. You're right, my coordinates are. 28-0-28.

I need a dust-off fast, over? 16, this is Delta 6. I know where you are. I just wanted to see if you could figure it out. I already called the dust off. So Captain Sells, that's who he was talking to, Captain Sells. That's Delta 6, the commander of the company. And even in this pressure situation,

he's trying to make sure that the guy is thinking. He's in the opportunity to think for the first time under pressure. And he already called the dust off, but he's still putting the test to him and seeing how he operates under that kind of stress and pressure. another following situation. They're kind of sitting in this location and they see a woman start to approach

where they had some equipment. And she looked like she was going to steal some stuff. And, you know, it's kind of no big deal. Okay, she's going to steal some, whatever, some ponchos or something. Well, then they see her what she picks up as a case of grenades. And they're thinking, wait a second,

now this just got really bad. Because if she was stealing a poncho, okay, no big deal. And if she's stealing grenades, that's stuff that's going to be used to come back and kill them. But again, because we have a guy with a conscience, you know, a guy that sees where the line of darkness is and he doesn't want to cross it. So instead of just shooting her, which he could have done, he loads a magazine of tracer rounds into his weapon. And he starts shooting him around her kind of warning shots. and then eventually start shooting, he's a good shot, he starts shooting at the little rope

that holds the case that she's holding on to. He starts shooting at that rope, shoots at it like five or six times, finally hits the rope, kind of hits her hand, she drops it, she runs off. Again, just trying to show the discretion that this guy's using as a real contrast to the Mi Lai episode.

Now, speaking of that, they've, a little later on, they roll up some prisoners. One is an old man and one is a young man and this old gray-haired sergeant starts going after him. So they got these two prisoners. They're captured and here's the sergeant. So you're the fuckers that zap my buddies in the tank, the old gray-haired sergeant snarled. Without warning he swung a heavy fist into the face of the old man

knocking him down. The other fist swung into the face of the younger man knocking him down beside the old man. The sergeant was screaming and bellowing as he pummeled the two men on the sand. They rolled into balls for protection, but were hampered by their tied hands. I ran from the road, yelling my two men to pull the sergeant off the prisoners. They grabbed him by his soldiers as he fought them to get back to the Vietnamese. He lashed out with his foot at the prisoners, catching one of them in the side. What the hell are you doing, Sergeant?

Those men are my prisoners, I exclaimed. His face was red with fury as he yelled back at me. You had no right to take those stinking con. prisoners. He smelled of beer that he had drunk. You should have killed those motherfuckers like they killed that other tank crew. Fuck! These men are tied up. We don't know who they

are. I yelled back. I was saved by the sound of Lieutenant Knutzen's voice breaking over the argument. Calm down, Sergeant. Go back to your tent. So the other lieutenant was the commander of the tanks. Again, I'm pointing this out. He's new in country. He sees

somebody beaten up a prisoner. They had just lost one of the tanks to of mine earlier and obviously the gray-haired sergeant's pissed that he wants to take it out on these guys but you know calmer cooler heads prevailed in that situation now speaking of minds minds back to the book minds continue to be laid in the road at irregular intervals it was a fact of life but the terror of an explosion never failed to send a shiver through our guts no matter how many times we heard them whatever we were doing our our heads would jerk around.

It was as terrifying to hear the explosion, see the ugly gray and black cloud as it ripped into the air, see dark pieces of metal, canvas, machinery, and human beings flying in the blossom of death out from the center of destruction. And this one big mine happens,

and he's going to check it out. It hits a truck, hits a vehicle. I approach the twisted wreck. It was very disheartening to see the smoking wreck, which had once been the carrier of human beings. There were whips smoke drifting upward from the Hulk. As we approached closer, we saw parts of the driver's body mangled beyond recognition in the cab and on the ground. The main portion of the driver was only

recognizable because we knew that was what it was supposed to be. My men ran toward the still living being huddled in the rice paddy, mulling over and over that his leg was gone. The scene of desolation brought about the true impact of the Vietnam War to me. There was no enemy to fire at. There was no nothing to retaliate against. At a distance, the traffic of vehicles and Vietnamese watched. All that remained was the messy job of cleaning up while thinking that this could happen to us. A small part of our mind tried to retain its sanity by reminding itself over and over that it would never happen to us.

It can happen to everyone else, but it would not happen to me. With that in mind, we started scraping up what was left, preparing it for the plastic body bag. Now, eventually they go from guarding the bridges to where they start doing patrols out in the jungle, and ambushes out in the jungle, and direct action missions out in the jungle, and at this point, they're out in the jungle, and I'll go to the book, my platoon and I had not shaved for three or four days. Delta 6 was a bear about shaving. Combat Patrol or not.

Just because we lived like animals didn't mean we had to look like them. It was his way of thinking. Throwing my fatigue jacket across a bush, I grabbed my shaving gear and told Spag and Visanor to accompany me. We would guard each other as we shaved. So the company commander's coming out and they're unshaven. And they're like, okay, we got to shave real quick. but again you can see that Captain Sells has a real influence

and you can see that that discipline it carries over and when you let it slacken but then you go visit your troops and they have to get back in line it brings them back to humanity it makes them reminds them that thing because think about it that shaving is something you do in the military every single day so when all of a sudden you're out in the field you start losing that you start slipping away from that and other things start slipping away as well.

They get into some firefights out there, and at one point he gets wounded, and I'm going to the book. After Holmes had finished bandaging my arm, I put on my fatigue jacket and lit a cigarette. I felt good. I had only been in country a few months, and I had my second purple heart.

The first one had been from a wound received in October, To top it off, I had been wounded twice in one day, shot in the ear in the morning, and hit with a grenade shrapnel in the afternoon. Luck was with me. All three wounds had been slight. Now, you can say luck when you get shot in the ear, and you are lucky for sure. But that's a real eye-opener indicating that you realize how close you were to die. And I had guys get shot in the helmet. and they didn't like it one bit because that's real close someone got real close to

getting you now going forward more there's a there's a battle going on and the company's out in the field and they're not directly involved in the battle so they get told okay you we want you to go set up where the where we think the the VC is going to run to where we think they're going to run you guys set up a blizzard blocking force so that way when the VC runs into you, you ambush them and take them out. So they're kind of maneuvering to go set that up. His platoon is maneuvering to set that up.

And we'll go to the book. After 15 minutes or so, we were approximately halfway down the ridge. The captain gave me a call. Dragon Six had decided it would be better if I halved my platoon marching the two elements in opposite directions in order to cover a larger area. I was dead set against this.

My platoon was below strength and dividing it would be asking two reinforced rifle, was to defend hundreds of acres of jungle against a foe of unknown size. So Dragon Six is above the company commander. This is now the battalion commander. And so now you're getting an order from the battalion commander. So it's, you know, you're a young lieutenant, platoon commander, and you're getting told to do this, and he doesn't feel good about it.

Back to the book. But orders were orders, especially from Dragon Six. I passed back the ward for Shaldon Brand to come up. I was pouring over my map and compass when Shaldon Brand reached me. The battle was full, full blown. It sound provided background noises. I briefed Shelly on the situation and our orders. Shit, I don't like it, sir.

I know I don't either, but it's a lick. You got your map and compass? Good. So there's all kinds of reasons why they don't like this idea. Obviously, one that he already stated was that, you know, you take your platoon and you cut them in half, that's, that's just, you don't have the same fighting capability at all. I think they had one, one heavy machine gun in each squad. So now you got basically they're down to two squads because they were under strength.

So we're talking one heavy machine gun. And by the way, if somebody gets wounded, you know, you got your wounded guy. And if you're going to carry that guy, it takes two or three guys to carry the guy. So that's four guys gone. So you could very easily be outnumbered, outmaned, and outgunned by the enemy. So he doesn't like this idea. On top of that, I will tell you, he doesn't talk about it here. When you split up in a situation like this, it becomes very difficult to do command and control.

And now you've got two elements that are weaker size and you're no longer able to support each other. That's the premise of cover and move. Cover and move means you want to be close enough that you can support each other. You don't want to split far apart where you can't help each other if something happens. Well, that's what they're getting told to do. They don't like it. and but they do it and maybe he should have protested more but he's getting he's getting orders from the battalion commander and he says okay let's do it and of course within a couple minutes of

doing it they lose radio contact so now they can't they can't hear each other and they're starting to march apart finally they get radio uh they get connected on the radio again they get calms again and it sounds like this one five this is one six have you figured out of where you are yet. This is 1-5. Negative. So Shelly with his squad is lost. Doesn't know where he is. Okay. Now, the lieutenant's all set up, though. They're in their position where they're thinking the enemy might come by. They're set up to attack them. And here we go back to the book, Lieutenant Porter whispered as he reached my side. We hear noises to our front. Men are moving across in front of us in the jungle. Hold on a second.

porter one five this is one six the sound of the battle should be on your right if you're going in the right direction where are the sounds over this is one five negative on the right the sounds are on the left over one five did you just say the sounds are on your left i was squeezing the handset so hard my knuckles were white affirmative affirmative jesus christ won five i hoarsely whispered intensely into the mouthpiece you're heading in our direction i could hear the sounds of men moving through the jungle below us. I whispered to Porter, get back down there and tell the men to hold their fire. That may not be dinks after all. Hurry. Porter had heard the conversation with Shelley and quickly turned to carry out my order. He couldn't yell because the sounds were coming from the dinked

soldiers. His yell would put us in jeopardy. As Porter started toward the crew, the machine gun crew opened fire. The harshness of the guns, multiple explosions, ripped across my thoughts as it sound echoed through the handset I was holding next to my ear. The sound of American swearing and screaming rebounded from the jungle below and from my handset. Cease fire, I screamed, ceasefire, so he can actually hear his guys getting shot by his own guys. We have a blue-on-blue. Porter and I were running to the gun crew, both of us yelling, cease-fire, cease-fire, the sound of their gun blanketing the screams in front of them. Abruptly the gun quit firing. I yelled into the jungle. Shelley, is that you? Yes, yes. Stop firing. Don't fire. I was answered by many voices.

I stood there an instant. The horrible realization that I had fired on my own men swept over me like a wave from an ice-cold hell. The gun crew looked at me, their faces filled with shock. I ran leaping and falling down to the brushline where my men were asking the question, anybody hit for Christ's sake. Gallagher yelled back as I burst into a small clearing one man the point man so there you go blue on blue another reason why if you don't have to separate your forces you don't you don't separate your forces unless you have to and when you do it you do with extreme caution and we we've i think every book we we talk about blue on blue it happens in all these books it happens in my book and some of these descriptions right here i recognize those

a hundred percent when he says the horrible realization i'd fired on my own men swept over me like a wave from an ice cold hell yeah i totally recognize that and the fact that he says the gun crew looked at me their faces filled with shock when i when i explained to my guys in the field like that was a blue-on-blue their faces were just complete shock if you're in the military if you're in law enforcement be very careful when you split your forces it's if it just multiplies the challenges sometimes it is necessary but you've got to keep control over it and now we go to where he's calling for a medevac for his wounded guy

Delta 6 this is 1 6 over This is delta 6 over this is 1 6 I need a dust off for a peanut We run into a little action over This is delta 6 what do you mean a little action What's going on? What happened over? My knees felt weak and my stomach was sour This is 1 6

We had a little difficulty with the terrain And uh I ambushed 1 5 over What? How the fuck did you do that, one six? You mean you ambushed your own men? What kind of outfit are you running up there? That's the most asinine thing I've ever heard of. You get your head out of your ass, one six, and get that platoon straightened up.

You got that. Over? This is one six. Affirmative, over. Ah, one six, give me your coordinates. The dust off's on its way. How bad is your peanuts? Over?

This is one six. Not too bad. He'll lose a couple of toes, but everybody else is okay. Over? All right, one six, settle down. Out. He was more gentle with the last transmission because I'm sure he heard my voice and showed the strain I was feeling Whatever the reason I welcome the sound of his voice

Perhaps he understood better than I thought what had happened So he comes at him real hard He realizes that the guy feels horrible and then he kind of backs off and says settle down He also knows he's got to stay in the game He's got to get him to stay in the game and there's a nightmare of a video on YouTube of a And there's actually, it's from a documentary, but there was a really bad blue-on-blue in the first Gulf War where Apache gun ship lit up, I think it was a Bradley, some kind of APC. I saw that. It's a nightmare.

But you can hear the one guy that fired, they're saying, hey, you've got to get back in position, you know, hold the line, basically. And he's like, I just killed my own guys. I want to come back. And they're saying negative. And so that's basically what this, what Captain Sells is doing here, saying, hey, listen, okay, I'm pissed. But guess what? calm down, settle down, get your shit together, and he says out. And by the way, for those folks that aren't military, over, when you say over at the end of a

transmission on the radio, it means you expect a reply. When you say out, there's no reply expected. So like when we end this podcast, I say out because it's over. Don't say anything back to me. It's over. I don't say over. And sometimes you'll hear people say over and out in the military. You don't say that.

It doesn't make any sense. So when you hear that in a movie, know that they are cheesy. Is that kind of like when they hang up the phone on the movie, he goes, and you hear the dial-toe? Yes. That doesn't really happen. That doesn't really happen either. I trudged back to the book.

I trudged back to my position, 1-5 in his men following. Man handed me a can of coffee. I chain smoked my cigarettes and drank coffee while the platoon expanded into a larger perimeter. I stood facing the mountain. The battle still raging on. one five walked over to me still shaken from his experience he told me how he was sorry that he had gotten to me in such a dutch with a captain and we discussed the operation going over his mistake while we attempted to figure out ways

to keep it from happening again if we were ever split up Shelley and I had been through too much together for me to blame him for what had happened I told him so and we let it go at that we had been lucky besides I blamed myself for what had happened the responsibility for any unit's actions ultimately rests with its commander. The leader got the glory when things worked out, and he took the blame when they didn't.

That went with the job. When it came right down to it, the men were my responsibility, and I had failed them today. A little bit of extreme ownership. If you read the book, Extreme Ownership, that Laif and I wrote, the opening chapter,

that's what it's about. Blue on Blue and doing exactly what Lieutenant Downs did right there, taking ownership of what the mistakes were made in the battlefield. back to the book there's a couple guys well actually not yet they're they link up with another with another platoon and now they're having a conversation uh downs is having a conversation with another officer named anderson a dink was lying next to us as we talked he had a black ace of spade stuck onto his fist hey anderson what's that all about that's so the dinks know what outfit fucked them up over here look around most of the dinks got those in their hands

sure enough the dinks were all holding an aces spades that's a good idea but where did you get all the aces one of the guys moms works in a card store so he wrote home asking her send her a couple packs of nothing but the ace of spades why did we want to kill dinks after all we had mostly been law-abiding citizens back in the world and we were taught that to take another man's life was wrong somehow the perspective got twisted in a war the government told us it was all right and in fact a must to kill members of another government's per people, then we had the law on our side. It turned out that most of us liked to kill other men.

Some of the guys would shoot at a dink as much as they would at a target. Some of the men didn't like to kill a dink up close. The close to the killing, the more personal it became. Others in the platoon like to kill in close. A few even like to torture the dinks if they had a prisoner or cut the dead bodies with knives in a frenzy of aggression. A few didn't like to kill it all and wouldn't fire their weapons except to protect their buddies. Mostly, we all saw it as a job and rationalized it in our own way.

Over it all ran the streak of anger or fear that for brief moments ruled us all. My job as platoon leader was to control the spectrum of emotions, to guide the men towards survival. I didn't believe in torturing or in allowing a dink to die a lingering death. In the jungle, we never took prisoners if we could help it. Every day we spent in the jungle eroded a little more of our humanity away. Prisoners could escape to become our enemy again, hence no prisoners. The philosophical arguments in favor of man's ability to resist the slide into barbarism sound noble and rational in a classroom or at a cocktail party.

but when the enemy is bearing down on you, bent on taking your life away from you, it's not his country against your country. Not his army against your army. Not his philosophy against your philosophy. It's the fact that that son of a bitch is trying to kill you and you better kill him first. That's a reality right there. Now, going back to tactics a little bit, back to the book, there was a spot about midway down the mountain marked in blue. meant something bigger than a stream. If I were an enemy commander, that would be a perfect spot for a camp.

High mountains on three sides, a good water supply, thick jungle growth, and escape path in any directions. If he decided on that location, the enemy commander would be counting on attack from the valley up towards his location. He would have his back guarded, but not very heavily, or so I reasoned. I just like that because you can see he's getting his mind in the mind of the enemy. He's thinking about what would do, while he's looking at the map, he sees stream, he sees valley he sees good good covered positions from three sides he's thinking okay this is what the enemy must be

thinking right here now the the fighting continues and as always you know i'm burning through book i mean this is a this is a 250 page book and i'm reading you know what maybe 20 pages from it so there's so much action going on and and so many good lessons to learn obviously i can't cover them all that's why you can buy this book yourself as you should. But here we go. I'm going to a point here where they've been in a firefight. They got three wounded. One of the guys lost an arm.

One of them's unconscious. And they're getting, they have a helicopter that's come in, and the helicopter's lowered down a cable, and they're lifting the guys out to get him to a medevac situation. Back to the book. The signal was given, and the cable pulled him off the ground. About halfway up, he waved to all of us, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Blood dripped on us. It was a picture I shall always hold in my mind, a man dangling from a cable, holding a stick fastened to a tourniquet on the stump of his leg, waving at his comrades with the other hand, a cigarette dangling from his lips. One six, this is getting hairy up here. We're starting to take fire, the pilot reported. Hold on, just one more. Spag and I lifted the unconscious man up while he slid the vest onto him. Someone had to be the cable which I hooked onto the ring. The unconscious man was winched upward dangling like a limp doll at the end of a cable.

Spag and I stood underneath watching this final exodus. As the crewman reached out to grab the man, something went wrong. The man had become unhooked and somehow fell through 50 feet of sky towards us. We'd jump back as the man fell in a heap at our feet. The medic and I pulled the man over. Fuck. He stopped the breathing. He goes on to say, the attrition rate on our side was terrible on our morale. Although we killed and wounded many of the NVA, we never knew how much it hurt them.

It seemed there was an unlimited number to take their places. But on our side, when we lost a man, we all knew, and it wore heavily on our minds. The constant marching and fighting demanded two things of us. strength and absolute reliability. Now they're moving out on another operation and there's one of the soldiers named Yoder. Yoder was the point man.

He was experienced and full of good humor due to his promotion to door gunner. A good man to have on point any day he was aggressive and unafraid. Even though he was going in soon, there was no question of putting someone else in his place on point. It was his turn and he would not have have it any other way. So he's getting promoted

to doorgunners. He's going to get pulled out of the field. He's going to fly around in the helicopter. You know, relatively safe compared to being in the field. He reminded me of a hillbilly with his coarse language, mannerisms, and humor. I was always asking him when he was going to get that front tooth replaced.

That missing tooth made him look more like a hillbilly than anything else. He always laughed and said, fuck, sir. I ain't about to let them fucking army dentist work on me. Shit, no, that would be a lick on me. So they continue their patrol, and they're coming up on this kind of flat area, and Yoder crept forward in a crouch.

Looked back at me and grinned. I grinned back and nodded my head. Yoder stepped over a tree root, holding up part of the small gully bank. At that moment, all hell broke loose as a Chikon machine gun strafed the point element. Yoder was hit in the body and fell forward into the gully. The machine gun acted as a key. which triggered a complete ambush. We walked into a classical U-shaped ambush

with the machine gun being at the base of the U. So we used to call this a fire sack when you get ambushed and you're completely surrounded by the enemy. And that's where they are. Starts with this machine gun hitting yoder and then just breaks out. Explosions, machine guns, and rifle bullets ripped through the air and ricocheted off the ground

and trees around us. The noise was overwhelming. Men were screaming and yelling, trying desperately to get cover or screaming when they were hit or thought they were hit, which was almost as terrifying. We still had not seen any of the enemy in the thick growth around us. Most of us in the point played dead.

I lay trying to get my thinking organized as to what to do. So you're just taking massive ambush, and you're laying there thinking, what am I going to do? I could hear Yoder crying on the other side of the route where he'd fallen. He cried out for me to come and get him. Lieutenant, I've been hit, I've been hit bad, I'm dying. Please come and get me.

Please come and get me. I turned my head in his direction. Twigs and bark from trees were falling like snow all around us. As the terrible shrapnel and firepower ripped through the jungle around us. I was terrified. So they're pinned down and he actually ends up going to try and help one of the other guys first, a guy named Bell. and he gets to Bell under covering fire

and he says Bell was able to help me but couldn't see anything he limped and crawled I pushed and swore as we continuously fell in our flight back up the hill as I pulled him up the hill one of my feet was shot up from from underneath me I'd been shot in the heel of one of the bullets knocking off a piece of my boot heel and then and the force had knocked me down I got up again

and felt a tremendous blow to my hip knocking me down hit again I thought finally I got Bell behind a rock Doc was there and started working on him. I lay on my back looking up at the sky through the jungle canopy, not believing I had actually made it down there and back. Yoder was still down there, and although I had witnessed the bullets hitting him, I didn't want to leave. I had to be absolutely sure he was dead.

I would never forgive myself if I pulled back and he was still alive. I was ready to call artillery in on our position if we were overrun. And that's like the ultimate, the ultimate game over move. we're going to be overrun by the enemy, okay? Here we go. I'm going to call all ordinance on my position. Drop. But luckily, the fire subsides, that one of the

other platoons had come to their help, and now that other platoon shows up, and the enemy's pretty much gone and it stopped shooting. We all stood up. A couple of of my men and I ran down to where three-six's point was standing over Yoder. I leaped over the edge of the

goalie and stopped at Yoder's body. Kneeling down, I turned his body over. He had died with his head lying downhill. His face was a dark blue from the blood which gravity had pulled into the downhill portion of his body. There wasn't much blood on his body, but numerous bullet holes were cut into his fatigues covering his stomach and chest. His eyes were closed. I looked at him for a moment, my thoughts running back to our many conversations in the past. Once we had discussed whether we would go to the aid of one of our fellow soldiers if he was in trouble. I had told him I would always be. I would always be. I would always

respond to one of my men if they needed help. He had replied it would be a lick on me. I wondered if he had known that I tried to get to him. He was the first man under my command to die. I looked up to see some of my platoon and Three-sixth's platoon standing over a dink body in the gully. Three-six had an Indian

his platoon, and I had an Indian in my platoon. They drew their knives and slashed the enemy's body in frustration. This was the only dead dink the men could find one lousy dink for all that pain and suffering. At least we could take our hate out on that son of a bitch. They had also taken one prisoner as well, the other platoon head. And so now he starts thinking.

Back to the book, this is it, I thought. I'd been wounded four times in battle. I had done my job. Captain Sells had asked after my third wound if I wanted to be sent back. Anyone with three wounds was do that. All it took was two wounds to get you out of the field. Surely four would let me live with myself. What was I trying to prove?

But I answered my own question. The men depend on me. It's my job to keep them alive by giving them good leadership and looking after them. They need me. Yeah, but shit. What did I owe myself? I had a wife and two little girls who needed me. The $10,000 in insurance money wouldn't do them much good.

Where did my duty lie? I was still shaking. I couldn't go through this again. Reluctantly, almost against my will, I started walking toward the captain. Captain? Yes, Fred. You asked once if I wanted to go out of the field if I'd been wounded a third time? He turned and looked into my face.

Yes? Well, I think, I mean, would you think I was letting you and my men down if I did? I stammered? No, I wouldn't. You've done your job. I could get you a job, get you a good job with us to you. intelligence back in the rear. I think I want out.

I don't know if I can do this again. Maybe I can't cut it. That's nonsense. You're a hell of a fine officer and the men will understand, but you think about it. Okay, I will. Let me think. A little bit of confidence returned at his words. I handed Yoters things to him.

I wandered back to the packs thinking I should find Yoters pack. Bell had stood up and was coming toward me when he saw the blindfolded dink. In one motion, he swung his fist into the dink's face. He hit him again and again, knocking the surprise dink down in a burst of fury. Bell started kicking him. It was obvious Bell was going to kill him. The other men and I stood smoking and watching. We were going to let Bell kill the dink.

Bell had the right. Captain Sells yelled and ran over to us, pushing me. out of the way and pulling Bell off the dink. Here, what's this? What's going on? We are not going to have this in my company. This man's a prisoner. Lieutenant Downs, what are you doing just standing there? I looked at him in surprise.

Bell was killing this motherfucker. What's wrong with that? I retorted. You know goddamn well, what's the matter with that, Lieutenant. This man is defenseless and our prisoner. Now let's get this prisoner back to the LZ. I wanted the dink dead. but the captain was right. So you can see there, obviously Captain Sells has a great head on his shoulders.

And there's something else at play. The other thing that's at play is that by function of the way the battle went down and by function of being one rank above the platoon commanders that are in the firefights, guess what he is de facto, he's detached. He's detached. He didn't, I mean, Bell's, the guy was pinned down, almost got killed, right? He's the guy that's emotional. And guess who pulled him out, risked his life, lost the odor, that was downs.

So these guys are emotional. They want to kill this guy. They captured him. He's VC. Let's kill him. And Captain Sells is detached because he wasn't in that firefight. He wasn't directly there. So he's able to maintain enough mental detachment to,

to make a hard decision, but also hold the line. And this is something that, you know, when we go through the Mili Masker, this could have happened over and over again. This could have happened to anywhere along the way. Someone could have said, hey, what are you doing right there? Stop. We don't do that. And that's exactly what Sells does.

And I think another thing that's important from a leadership perspective, also, well, before I go to that point, you notice that when he's having a personal conversation with Lieutenant Downs, he calls him Fred. But when he's screwing up and he needs to kind of put him in his place, he's Lieutenant Downs. On top of that, from the leadership perspective, from Captain Sell's perspective, he's got to always remember that what is happening, that they are emotional, that they did just lose their buddy. He's got, he can't just, you know, be so on the straight and narrow that goes, oh, I'm going to

court-martial you. He could court, he could court-martial bell, right? Hey, you abused a prisoner. You're, you know, I'm going to court martial with you. And he doesn't do that because he understands their perspective. And that's why, you know, again, throughout this book, Cells really impresses me as a, as a very squared away good, solid leader. As does Downs. I mean, Downs, obviously right here, he's emotional and he's lost it.

He's crossed the line, right? But all it takes is cells just telling him, get back over here, buddy. You cross the line, come back, and he says, the captain was right. So that's all it took. Just a little snap, just to get him to detach a little bit from the emotions and move away from the darkness. Back to the book, I walked over to the bodies. Yoder's eyes were partially shut and I leaned down to push them close. Not that it did any good, but for some reason I thought it was better that way.

I stood there with one hand on my aching hip, smoking and thinking. Yoder's face was all muddy from the numerous times he'd been dropped in the mud. It was a trickle of blood at the base of his throat. This is the way it will always end, I thought. Men being killed in the jungle, other men dragging their bodies out, putting them on choppers, and the rest of us going back to the fighting. When they left on the chopper, it was as if they had never been. Man's beginning and man's end would always be attended by only a few. Those that bore him at birth and those that bore him at death.

The only important thing was what he did in between. Good or bad or indifferent, he would touch those around him in some way and then be gone. I wondered if a salute would be in order, not necessarily in the military sense, but a salute from one who had known him and who would never forget him. I decided it was, and I raised my hand to my forehead in a farewell. Now the birds coming in to pick him up as after he gives that final salute to Yoder. Smoke was popped and the large chopper swung in towards us for his landing. The doors were pushed back and I saw the door gunner on the side facing me looking around, anxiously searching for the ominous, for the omnipresent enemy. Good man, I thought, not trusting a goddamn thing even with an American infantry company surrounding the LZ.

I just love that. He's noticing that this door. Door gunners coming in, the helo's coming in to pick him up. And instead of this guy cutting corners and be like, oh, there's an infancy trumping there. There's no rounds being fired. I'm just going to relax. No, this guy's in the game, opens the door.

It doesn't, what does he say? He says, uh, not trusting a goddamn thing, even with an American infantry company on the LZ. Many thoughts were Chris costing my mind. Above everything else ran the thought that I could not abandon my men. I felt this shame that I had asked Captain Sales to pull me out of the field earlier when I was still shaken. What would the men think if they found out I was doing such a thing?

Worse, what would I think of myself? Now they continue to do operations and eventually they get pulled out of the field for the final time on a helicopter. Back to the book. The machine carried us away. I looked over my men sprawled along the sides of the chopper. They had removed the magazines from their weapons before boarding and now was. holding them close to their bodies the men were dirty and unshaven their clothes in various stages of disrepair jungle boots worn and torn with clods and mud between

the cleats there were dark rings under their eyes and their faces were drawn and tired some of those faces were new men sent out to replaces the faces that started the operation and were erased we had experienced the worst of life and the most challenging we had survived The platoon I took back was not the platoon I had brought out. Now, they're on yet another operation. If they go back, they get reset, and they're out on another operation, doing a patrol, and I'm going back to the book.

About five meters past the gate, the two men turned to me and waved me forward. All clear, sir. Let's go, Rudo. I passed through the gate. My right-hand grasp, my M-16, my left held. my cigarette. I was humming the blue tail fly as I mentally ticked off the positions around the saddle where I would set my men. I noticed the time, 0.7.45 hours. My foot slipped backwards a fraction of an inch, hitting the trigger mechanism of a mine. I never heard the explosion.

Black powder and dirt flew by me. My eardrums ripped. My body was flying through the air. I threw my arms in front of me in a reflex motion to bounce. my eyes registered the horror of a brilliantly white jagged bone sticking out of the stump of arm above where my left elbow had been ragged bloody flesh surrounded the splintered bone my mind cursed as utter helplessness and disrepair or and despair overwhelmed me another part of my body coolly calculated what it caused the explosion it had been a landmine but what kind would blow off my arm instead of my legs of course it had to be a bouncing betty

a mind that flies up to out of the ground after being tripped and explodes waist high. That would do it. My M-16 had been in my right hand. The rifle was shattered. My hand was mangled. I stared in horror at what remained of my right arm. The flesh had been ripped away exposing two bones in my white forearm from wrist to the elbow. The bones looked like two white glistening narrow rods buried in raw, bloody meat.

thinking my God, my God, my God, I felt told defeat of my life as I landed on my feet five yards from where the mine had exploded. After landing, I staggered forward two or three steps and then collapsed. My legs wouldn't work. The mind had gone off about six inches from my left hip. From the waist down, my body was mutilated and torn, where large chunks of flesh, muscles, blood vessels, and nerves had been ripped away by the hot exploding shrapnel. My buttocks were blown away. The back of my legs were ripped to the bone down to my heels. I rolled over on my back, being careful to keep my stump and right arm out of the dirt and sand.

My body was sending so many pain signals to my brain that it overloaded like an electrical circuit. It caused me to feel a racing, humming, numbness. I lifted my head to view a scene from hell. I watched a couple of men run by me to the wounded point man. They would only glance at me sideways. as I lay there holding my bloody stump in the air. They seemed nervous. Some of my men ran toward me,

then turned suddenly away at the sight of my torn body. They stood near me but hesitated to come too close, as if their movement through the air would make it worse. Spag asked me to turn sideways a little bit so he could pull my gear off. There were tears on his eyes as he worked over me. With a grunt, he pulled the belt out from under me. Is there anything I can do for you, Spag?

Yes, run over there and pick up my arm and bring it back to me. I don't want to leave it in this stinking village. I told Marley to get my squad leaders. Go take care of the other men, Doc, they need you. I looked up. Marley and my squad leaders were standing in a rough line along my right side. I asked who was hurt. I was feeling weaker and weaker.

It was so goddamn cold. As my body fought for life, my thoughts ran to my man in my platoon. I felt I was cheating them by leaving them when they needed me most. When I had joined the platoon as their leader, they had taught me the ways to survive in combat, a second lieutenant who was new in country, and they were old timers, 18, 19, 20,

but old to the ways of combat and death. As I gained experience and confidence as a leader, I became an old-timer, having to make decisions that put me in the position I was in now, wounded and maimed, facing death. My men were still up there looking at me, despair on their faces, their invulnerable leader had been,

and brought down. Marley? Yes, sir. I want you to, your men to get the dink who planted that mine. I want him dead. Get him. We will, one, six.

Don't you worry about that? They looked at each other, then back at me. The gray haze of the day was strong. I pushed it back to look beyond my men. It was colder now and harder to see. I was thinking of my grandma Downs and her farm of the woods and fields of Indiana.

much. If only I could walk them one more time. I'm only 23 years old and I'm dying. What a waste. There are so many things I had meant to do and say, but I hadn't. Now I will never get the chance. So, obviously, although he thought he was going to die, he lived. He lost his arm. He ended up with severe wounds, got discharged from the army and you know that's one of the things in the story he had actually got picked up for a pilot program so he's going to be a pilot in the army

he was going to stay in the army become a pilot and obviously that was gone because he didn't have an arm anymore luckily they were able to save his other arm but you know severe wounds real long rehab and eventually he ends up going back to college and

here we go back to the book. In the fall of 1968, as I stopped at a traffic light on my walk to class across the campus of the University of Denver, a man stepped up to me

and said, hi. Without waiting from my reply to his greeting, he pointed to the hook sticking out of my left sleeve. Get that in Vietnam? I said, yeah, up near Tam Kai

in One Corps. Serves you right. As the man walked away, I stood rooted. too confused with hurt, shame, and anger to react. Ten years have passed. The hurt, shame, and anger still flood over me with the memory. But one thing I am certain.

None of the men I knew who served in Vietnam deserved to die or be maimed either physically or mentally. I think it is necessary now to give Vietnam, to give another view of Vietnam, that of the day-to-day life of an infantryman on the ground. I have always been asked what I thought about Vietnam, but never what it was like to fight in Vietnam. This is the way it was for us, the platoon of Delta 16. And in the afterward, he talks about why he wrote this book.

In writing The Killing Zone, I had two goals. I wanted future young infantry lieutenants and non-commissioned officers to learn from my experiences both good and bad. Some actions I took as a combat officer had worked out well and some had not. The time had come to deal with both. Perhaps some would learn from my mistakes, especially the lessons that combat, especially the lesson that combat does not go by the book. I also wanted to show future generations that the American soldier in Vietnam was a good soldier. In 1978, the anti-war, anti-military feeling in the United States was pervasive in the newspapers on television among writers and movies and in colleges.

I had started college at the University of Denver in the fall of 1968 while I was still on active duty in the military. The students for a democratic society, the weathermen, and other anti-war groups on campus targeted anyone in the military as fair game for their anti-war stance. Such hostility was not pleasant for me or other Vietnam veterans. It was hard to be denigrated for serving your country. Many veterans have never admitted they were in the service for many years after Vietnam. Angry at the anti-war faction, I wanted to set the record straight by proving that the men I served with had fought and died with honor. And here are the men

that died and made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and for their brothers in arms from Delta Company first battalion of the 14th infantry, third brigade, fourth infantry division. PFC Donald Lawrence Glover PFC Norman Charles Kissinger. PFC Robert Wayne Seton. spec for Gregory Thomas Iding spec for Charles Irwin Edwin Doc Hoffman PFC James Garrett Miller spec for James Strong Yoder PFC William Henry Harf Speck for Stephen Richard Anderson spec for Lewis Charles Nelson second lieutenant William Dwight Ordway

PFC Paul James Miller Spec 4 Jose Cortez PFC Charles Peter Torliott and second lieutenant John C. Martin So Fred Downs second lieutenant asked us to do two things in this book

first learn from his experiences the mistakes the lessons and that is what we do here we read and we study and we think and we learn and the second thing he asks is that we remember the men who fought and died with honor and that's something that we need to do and we should continue to do each and every day remember and that is one thing about this podcast that is a

has a lot of meaning to me is the fact that people are listening to it and the memory of these types of men and the challenges that they faced it will be remembered they will be remembered so once again

the book is called The Killing Zone My Life in the Vietnam War by Frederick Downs it's a fantastic read it's a fantastic book it's a fantastic

dedication and it does an incredible job of honoring honoring these men that fought so hard in a very unpopular war and buy the book and read it

you will you will absolutely get a lot out of it. Echo Charles. I believe we can move on to the next sector of this podcast. And again, if nothing else is delivered through this podcast, you know, let's let it be these couple things, these couple ideas of learning lessons from other people's experiences and remembering other people's sacrifices. That's definitely one of the driving forces behind my will to do this podcast.

And we're going to keep doing the podcast. Echo, get me out of here, please. Get me out of this situation. I'm in that zone right now. I need to send up a red star cluster. You know what that is? So in the military, when you need help, it's a red star cluster. It's a flare.

You pop up and it's a big way. It means you couldn't communicate with anybody and you need some help. So there's my red star cluster. You need to jump in and say, hey, Jocco, speaking to the podcast. Here's how we can support it. So talk about that while I get over here and get myself under control before I start smashing things. Yeah, if you want to send any reinforcements to support Jocco and our podcast here. While supporting yourself with supplementation.

by the way. Good idea. Go to onit.com slash jaco. So Onit has like these supplements that we take. Supplements for your joints, krill oil, boom. Shroom tech for performance, hard stuff, you know,

CrossFit, Jiu-Jitsu. If you're trying to go hard, you know. Hardcore. In the paint. Yeah, Shroom tech, boom. Also, if you do your shopping at Amazon, which I think we all do. Go ahead and click through our website.

We have a little link there. You know, and you can support it that way. That's a super easy way. All you got to do is remember to do it before you shop. That is helpful. Yeah, very much so. We also have a new tool. Because can you make the remembering part a little bit easier?

Yes. So, you know, you figure, hey, I got to remember to go to the website before I shop, Amazon sometimes I'm in a hurry, whatever. Maybe I'm thinking about other stuff. I'm not thinking about Jocko's podcast every single day all day. I got to buy some cleaner,

some duct tape, whatever. Here's a way, so it helps you remember and or makes you not have to remember. It's this little tool called the Trooper Tool. Jock Podcast Trooper Tool. Thanks to Brady for that one. Brady, props. It's a cool little thing.

It's like this small little thing. It's pretty cool. You click on... There's a little link on both the website. So you click on the thing. It asks you if you want it. You click yes. It puts a little icon there on your browser,

and it basically directs you to the affiliate Amazon link automatically. Perfect. So you don't got to think. Yeah, it's dope. That's a really easy way to support the podcast. Yeah. And the... It doesn't cost you anything.

Yeah. It costs Amazon. on something. It seems to me like Amazon can afford to kick a little bit to the podcast over here, right? Yeah, and it really, it does serve its purpose because, you know, Amazon, you know, like Amazon, they're a good company who provides good stuff, good service and all that, and they're trying to get the word out. And, you know, they partner with people who can get the word out. Yeah, and there's people that are going to go, oh, you know what, I want to support the podcast, so I will buy this instead of buying it through some other website, they're going to go to the store that's going to support something that they,

enjoy or something that they get value out of hopefully from this podcast so yeah that's an awesome way to support we appreciate it and it makes it like it's kind of this little tool is kind of cool because it kind of makes it official you know like if you're i mean if you're one of the people that that listen to this and really talk with us and stuff it's it is a cool way to kind be more part of the group i guess it seems like it when i put mine up there i'm like hey you know i'm like a fish i don't know i felt like that yeah echo charles is in the game and we dig that So it's a really cool tool. You don't have to, it's safe.

It's not like this. You just put it on. If you don't want it on there anymore for whatever reason. Right click it. Right click. Because you made a little video that shows you. Go to the Jocko podcast YouTube channel and Echo Charles made a video a very high speed instructional video on how to do this. I wasn't trying to waste anybody's time.

It's really easy. You are not playing around with the instructional video. I think that was very impressive. And by the way, subscribe. do me a favor Troopers subscribe to the YouTube channel

the Jaco podcast YouTube channel that way when Echo because I've been I've been hacking on Echo to make little

outtakes and other little conversations and videos and he's like well you know we got some subscribers but maybe you know

if we had some more maybe I'd be more so we need to motivate Echo Charles just a little bit because so we could get some

outtake videos some other other interesting videos I wanted to do a little pre video today of what it was like when we're getting set up because we have a little ritual

that we go through when we're making some beverages, you know, some alpha brainy. And we have, you know, so I was like, I'd be pretty cool if you shot a little video

and he's like, well, you know, maybe one day. Are you trying to imitate me right now? No, I actually am imitating you. So subscribe to the,

I don't think it doesn't, I mean, just go to the Jocko podcast channel on YouTube, subscribe. Yeah, yeah, I think it's YouTube.

com slash Jocop podcast. And also, what's cool about that is, When you do that, then you get little emails that say, not like you just get an email and says, hey, Jocko podcast just uploaded a new video. I get those. And I'm always like, oh, yeah, cool.

Now I can watch the video. And even that's optional. Oh, okay. You can opt out. But yeah, that's a good, and I have, remember that one, that one child's book idea I had? Yeah, you probably forget because.

No, you need to remind me. I got a lot of ideas. Anyway, I have that. I have that on video when we're talking. Oh, oh, yeah, that'd be funny. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm a post. Some of some things you got to understand.

So I have a certain stand. I'm not talking to you. I'm talking to people that are listening right now. I mean, you're here too, so I guess I'm talking to you too. But people got to understand that there's a certain expectation in my mind of what the podcast is and what it's supposed to be. So when something happens that's not quite there, I'm like, you know what? I don't really, hey, you know, I don't want to talk about that on the podcast. But this is like for instance

Before we hit record We're recording but before we go Before I open the show We're talking about something Right we're always talking about something And sometimes those conversations are 20 minutes Half an hour

We're talking about real stuff We're talking about legit things But we haven't even Introduced the podcast yet So that goes in the scrap pile Right now some of the scrap mile material While it might not be In March

Marching step with what the podcast is, it does perhaps have a life that it could live and could guide people in a certain way and stuff that people might be interested in. So that could be a YouTube download. You know, YouTube just post it on this. That way people get a little taste of other things around the podcast, which I think people would dick. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So like, you know, if you free your mind, echo Charles, free your mind. Yeah. You're totally right. Well, thank you. Thank you.

Once, for once. Yeah. Yeah, because you know how, if you listen to it on iTunes, you're like, why am I going to sit and watch Echo and Jocelyn talk to each other? You know, I listen to one and I got to look at them too. You know, a lot of people might not be interested in that. There's some moments. You know what I do is I, well, I watch certain moments of the podcast on YouTube.

Yeah. Like, when I know I was feeling intense about something, I go and see what it, see what that looks like. See, like, okay, what does that look like when I'm feeling that? Does it look like, does it look like from the outside, what it feels like from the inside? Because even today, I was getting pretty fired up. Like, I mean, you're talking about heroes and young, man, man, 18, 19, 20 years old that said, okay, this unpopular war, I'll go fight it.

I'll go fight it. You know, I'll go risk my life. I'll go out there in the jungle and live in, you know, I was, I was out this week in the field, right? Camping. I kept putting it in quotes on Twitter. I was putting in quotes because I was like, I can't call this the field. But, you know, it wasn't the comfort of a house, right? It was in, it was, and it was, you know, bugs and ants.

And I'm like, thinking to myself, you know, this is nothing. And I was thinking back to the forgotten Highlander. And remember the bugs were just eating those guys alive. And, you know, you just, you just can't, you can't compare. So these guys that, that just stepped up, fought, I just want to, I just want to always, you know, that kind of thing will get me fired up. So when I go back to the videos, sometimes I go, man, what was I looking like right there? You know, a little self-assessment. And I wonder if

You know, because when I'm feeling that way I'm like okay, you got to attach a little bit because you're starting to get a little bit fired I'm gonna start breaking I'm gonna start getting like really emotional about something And so I got a I got a little red flag goes up I go to you get a back off a little bit here We don't have to edit the video if I break down So I got to just back off and sometimes I got to see what does that look like? Does it look can you tell? Am I looking you know? So that's the kind of thing that I like to go back and look at the YouTube videos and say you know what does this? What does this look like? Yeah, there's some value.

There's a lot of value on YouTube that we're probably not, you know, capitalizing. I don't know, whatever. For people who care. And it's weird, too, because the interesting thing about all this is you use the word capitalize, right? And the fact of the matter is, we aren't really capitalizing on this at all. And I keep getting told by a variety of different people what to do to you, to do that right there, to capitalize. Yeah, I meant it just capitalized, not for us to come. I mean, for everybody, you know, people listen.

But what we want to do is we want to maximize the effort that we put in here, want to maximize so that people get the most out of it. Yeah, that's what it. I know that's what you meant. I know you didn't mean, like, let's run the cash machine, because we're doing it for the passion of doing it. That's what I'm sitting here for. Sitting here so I can tell this story right here about these guys.

Yeah. And I know, you know, I hear from all kinds of cops. I hear from my SEAL buddies that are still in that are listening to it that are asking me, texting me questions going, hey, man, what's going on with this? Hey, what would you have done differently here? Hey, those are my buddies that are in that are getting ready to deploy overseas right now. And I get texts and emails and Twitter things from guys that were, guys that are active duty in the Marine Corps and the Army. So I know that we're getting the word out there.

And that's what I'm sitting here for. Yeah. Yeah. And you make a good point with, you know, there's a lot of people. who don't watch the video, of course. That doesn't make sense. I mean, I don't watch podcast videos. Right, right.

I mean, why, you know, the reason podcasts are so convenient is you can be doing something else. You don't have to dedicate, you don't have to dedicate all your senses to it. You only have to dedicate two of them, your ears and your brain. Yeah. But you don't have to dedicate your eyes. You don't have to dedicate your ass to sit down in a chair and watch something. You can walk around.

You can do yard work. You can drive. You can do what you got to do. Yeah. But I think the shorter little YouTube clips where you go, hey, check this out. This is when Jocko and I were discussing a kid's book that Echo was talking about. Good idea, by the way. Yeah.

I'm going to post it. Yeah, post that thing up. Yeah. And it's interesting because a lot of people apparently don't, I mean, are surprised that I look different than I sound, I guess. Oh, yeah. They think you're a skinny white hipster. Or, yeah. That's what they think you are.

Maybe I am at heart. Maybe you are at heart. You're just trapped. Maybe you identify as a skinny white hipster, even though you're a 220. I don't know. I don't identify myself by my physical characteristics. It's what's in my heart and my mind. The content of your character, as we like to say.

Yeah, I think the YouTube is a good idea. We'll post more. I have a lot too, man. So many outtakes a lot. And you've done some really good outtake videos in the past. Yeah, yeah, they're pretty, yeah. From when we were filming commercials and stuff. Oh, right, yeah, those were good.

All right. Anything else? Jock you in. Jocco store Did you talk about that? Yes. Go to the store Buy some merchandise

Somebody hit me up on Twitter the other day and they're like Hey you should set up We got to ask this a bunch of times Set up a Patreon Patreon is that what's called? Patreon

Patreon where you can donate to the podcast A certain amount And I just said Hey man Go buy a t-shirt You know that supports us

Just as well And you get a t-shirt And just that's a good way To support the podcast Buy some merchandise Buy some gear Right Yeah the Jocco store

That's a good on T-shirts coffee mug stickers those are kind of cool. One of my friends saw two Jocko stickers in the wild. In the wild. Or maybe just over the weekend here. Here, San Diego.

Everyone in San Diego, we know everyone in San Diego. It doesn't count. I don't know. I want to see it in Cleveland. It counts. But yeah. Awesome. That's good.

So now we get to those questions from the interwebs. First question. Chaco is a minimal amount of competent defensive ability self-defense essentially

the most overlooked essential stabilizer of young male psyche so this question this actually came across the interwebs as a as a statement

an opinion and I kind of rephrased it just a little bit to make it into a question but it actually came across someone was saying look

he believes this person believes that they knowing how to fight you know, competent defensive ability. I call that knowing how to fight and he thinks it's the most essential

stabilizer of a young male psyche. I agree with this statement. I think that yeah, I completely agree. I think that learning how to fight and knowing how to fight gives you real confidence

and security, not just in the form of being secure, but as in opposition to, insecurity, right? Because when you know how to fight, all of a sudden you don't have anything to prove anymore. And this changes something.

I wish I would have learned how to fight and I'm watching, we fought all the time when I was a kid. We fought, we didn't know how to fight. So what do we have to do? Prove that we knew how to fight. If we actually knew how to fight, we wouldn't know how to prove that all the time. So I absolutely

agree with this. And that's why I'm constantly trying to get people to get into jihitsu. You know, get your kids into juts. Get your 13-year-old boy. Your 10-year-old boy. Get him into jiu-jitsu. Your girl, too.

I mean, your girl, too. Because your girl is going to use it for defense. Girls don't have the constant tension of fighting that guys have. It is part of who we are. When I shake someone's hand, I don't care what kind of mood I'm in. I am thinking about taking them down. I am thinking about what I'm going to do to him in a fight. It doesn't matter if I'm meeting Sanchez.

a cloth. I'm thinking about doing a double leg. I'm thinking about what his weight is. Does he have cauliflower here? That's what I'm doing. And guys do that. Guys do that. And it's real. And I mean, especially in the environment. I grew up in the SEAL teams. I mean, everybody's got that constant like test between the evaluation. It's the evaluation. So if you don't know how to fight, there's only one way to figure out where you are. And that is to fight. And so you end up doing stupid things, stupid things to prove your manhood, and I hate to use that word,

but you end up doing stupid things to prove your manhood. So my recommendation is, well, I totally agree with this statement. I think it is a huge stabilizer of your personality and your psyche as a man. So

get those kids to learn Jiu-Jitsu. They're going to understand. They have things you understand violence. You respect it. Because you know you've got choked out. You know it's happened. You know that is a horrible feeling. It's a horrible feeling when another human being can control you 100%.

You know what? Physically, it doesn't matter how smart you are anymore. I'm sorry, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how smart you are anymore. When you are getting completely physically dominated by someone, it doesn't matter that you're smarter than them. At that time, there's nothing you can do about it. You could, what are you going to challenge them to a spell?

be it's not going to help you you're you're under their control and that's a horrible horrible feeling yeah and so i think it's uh you know and i felt that you know when i was a kid you know i got bullied just like everybody everybody gets bullied at a certain point you know you show up to high school you're 13 years old i was i was a young whatever however that works when you are born that was born september so i was a young scrawny kid and i didn't get bullied to some crazy extent but you get picked on you get picked on you get picked on you get into little scuffles and you get thrown around by a kid that's that reached puberty when he was nine and he's now you know six feet 220 and i'm showing up at school 13 years old way in a buck

45 you're gonna get you're gonna get physically controlled and it's not fun and so i didn't know how to fight i was trying to figure it out and there was no no one knew how to fight back then unless you were a boxer maybe a wrestler um but yeah so definitely This is a huge piece. It helps you with... I think kids that know how to fight are going to get in less street fights. They're going to do a lot less stupid things

to prove themselves. Because guess what? They already have the essential, primal, animalistic characteristic of physical domination. And that goes a long way. Yeah. And we talked about this before.

Back to the girls thing, getting your girls into it. You know how when you get into it any kind of physical situation, even if you're in a crowd, and someone starts shoving someone else, not even you. And boom, you feel the force of somebody or someone's just all like on you, or even if someone like, I don't know, tackles you or something like that. It's like this kind of imposed physical situation. And when you're into judici, that's every day. So you get used to that real quick. And in fact, you get real comfortable with it. But as a girl, you're not

trying to like win fights now. You know, I know jujitsu. I'm going to try win fights and beat up guys. That's not really what it's for for girls. It's more for knowing how to function, knowing where to be, where not to be. Because, man, if you don't know, you just simply don't know. And also being totally right. And then also being inoculated to the physical conduct when it happens. And I'll say you can't win, I mean, not looking to win fights.

Go watch YouTube. There's all kinds of videos of girls just working over guys. And I mean in street fights. Yeah. There's one in particular where this girl's just triangle, arm lock, Just choke, just crushing this kid. Yeah, well, I mean, the truth is, if you learn Jiu Jitsu, if someone knows Jiu Jitsu, someone doesn't,

the chance of the person knowing Jiu Jitsu, winning the fight is very, very, very, very high. Yes. Even if you're a girl, it still applies to you. Of course, the girl's at a physical disadvantage because she's smaller, weaker, or whatever. But, like I said, Jiu Jitsu is just this huge jump in, you know, ability as far as fights go.

And you know something else? from a pure self-defense perspective, if you, a lot of times, let's say a girl's not able to physically, let's say she's 100 pounds and she's a guy attacks her that's 200 pounds. She might not be able to put him to sleep. She might not be able to finish him,

but she may be able to survive, fend the guy off for a minute and 30 seconds instead of two seconds, instead of four seconds, instead of eight seconds. So that's what it takes for someone, to hear for someone to see so every second counts and if you know jiu jitsu i guarantee you it's it's really hard to subdue somebody that knows some jiu jitsu if you don't know anything you are going to have a hard time getting control them they're gonna they're gonna they're gonna be

and even if you're stronger than them you'll be able to get a hold of them maybe eventually if they're a lot small or a lot weaker than you but it's going to be a fight and a lot of you know you read a lot of stories when in self-defense situations if the girl puts up a decent fight the guy's not going to have any of it you know he's going to realize that that he's not looking for that. He's not looking for a fight. He's looking for something else. And so the fight begins. He backs off. So yeah, absolutely. It applies for

girls as well. And there's just a certain level of confidence. Yeah. And I've seen that. You know, my son's had a couple little scuffles, a couple that I've witnessed too, where you know, he just was like not trying to, not trying to have a problem until someone just grabs

him and is obviously going to try and do something to him and then that person's getting launched. You know, like, hey, perfect. judo because you're going to get you know how hard is it to judo throw somebody that doesn't know any judo jih Tutsu it's so easy so you see a kid fly through the air hit the ground you see my son you know just good like there's no guard passing because the person doesn't even know what the guard is there's just straight to mount and then once you're in mount the person has no idea what's happening and and they're completely controlled and they're getting put to sleep that's it it's as easy as that

yeah it's so funny how you this is kind of the part that i forget actually every once in a while where how you brought up when you shake someone's hands you're always thinking about it or whatever. So that's the thing, too. That's why it's almost like if you don't know jujitsu, or for real fighting, there's not many out there, man. There's not many. But we'll just say, if you don't know jujitsu,

you might fall into this trap by thinking, well, you know, I might, you never know. He's not on all the time, or he might not be ready for this or, you know, I'll surprise him with like this punch or something like this. And though they won't give it its due credit. But the thing is when you learn jiu-jitsu, bro, that's all you're thinking.

about you're like oh fucker take this guy right here 100% of the time you you can be laying in your in your bed with your wife and she'll be like hey give me a hug and you're like on that under hook there yeah exactly the whole time so you can't really to surprise the guy who knows jujitsu to surprise them is super hard like you got to do from behind i don't know even if you seek up from behind like you know what to do from behind you know it's you got to like i don't know hit him or something really hard knock him out one punch yeah yeah yeah and it's really hard to knock somebody out with little punch for beyond so yeah but that's so funny because um that that is how it is even as like a like a high level guy you're still like it's always on your mind like it's like you're

walking around with this big powerful like gun or something like you're like okay who wants to get shot not that you want to shoot people specifically but it's like this radar that's like okay who wants to get shot kind of thing because you're just ready you know you're just ready to do it every yeah and to me honestly it's so instinctive at this point. Yeah, yeah. It's just part of every movement that you make is thinking about that. And you know, you ever had somebody that doesn't know jih Tutsu?

Like, maybe you haven't seen someone in a while. I've had that happen. I've seen someone for a while. Yes. And I mean, 20 years. So they have no idea what jih Tjitsu is. We've gone a completely different paths in our lives.

And they, like, grab hold of you as if it was the old days and you were going to have a tussle. Yeah. And it's just a four-second, you know, spirit-crushing. maneuver of death. Yeah. And you're happy to do it too, you know? Because as an adult, like, you know, I think anywhere past 26, 27 years old, it's hard to get away with, like, getting into a wrestling match in public or, you know,

somewhere outside of the match. That's interesting. You might not have known that. But I don't know. I think I speak for more people than just myself, but there's a part of your mind that kind of helps it. It happens just with your friend, you know, or something like that. Just so you do it.

It's like always on your mind. Always hoping for a scrap. You know what? Ironically, back to the part where I was saying, it's kind of hard to surprise the jujitsu guy. Ironically, the easiest time to surprise the jujitsu guy is on the mat if you're another jiu-gitsu guy. What you do is you play like, oh, we're just going light right now.

And then you go hard, you know? So you can't really surprise them in the, like, in public. You got to like, you got to learn jiu-jitsu, go on the mat, go with them, make them think you're not rolling hard. They didn't surprise me. And, you know, I think that's part of it is you become moral, Where you're just talking, what you've been talking about the past couple of minutes is awareness. And when you have jih Tzu in your brain, then, and it's true with boxing too and Muay,

when you have that stuff in your brain, then you can't help but be aware of what's happening around you because it's in there. It's like knowing that the color of the table is brown. Like you, you know what that person's body position is. You're looking and seeing that their stance is off balance. So you're seeing an underhook exposed. You know, so you can't help, you can't take it away. So your awareness increases you also are aware of what problems can occur really quickly. So if you start, you know, if you're a girl and you say, oh, wait a second, now I'm back into a corner where I can't get out.

I don't like this feeling. Yeah. It becomes, it increases your awareness as a human. It makes you more aware of your surrounding. So there's so many benefits. Yeah. It's kind of ridiculous. Yeah.

And you kind of have almost like one level up from that. awareness that you're talking about because like how you're saying it's part of that even if you don't know how to fight it's still kind of on your mind you know you like all guys have that kind of sort of sort of evaluation especially if the guys close to your close to you yeah who you are you know whatever the age size whatever whatever the scenario even like if you're a scholar and no one else is the scholar then another scholar walks in this evaluation you know so that's how it is naturally how smart this guy is yeah yeah so well so as a guy just naturally you're going to have even more it's like you know what the color of brown is or whatever,

but just instinctually, you're always looking for brown. That's kind of what it's like. So now you, when you're doing these evaluations that are going to happen anyway, your jiu-jitsu mind is right there at the front. Ready. The whole time.

Yeah. Interesting. But that's not to be confused with like, you're aggressive and want to fight. That's the weird thing. It's like you don't want to actually fight with people because you don't feel the need to like, oh, I got to, I don't know,

prove to this guy. That's where this whole conversation started off. And also, now you not feel like you need to prove anything. But I literally am like, oh, do I really want to get to fight with this guy? I'm going to get my knuckles. You know, I'm probably going to rip my t-shirt, this guy's going to grab. This is really, no, I fight every single day. I don't need, I don't care about this guy.

This is a two-second thing where I got to scuff up my knee on the pavement, and he's probably going to rip my shirt, and that's going to be a pain. And then I've got to deal with the cops if they show up. It's just a big pain. Whereas if you don't fight and you have that opportunity, maybe you've got that thing inside you, you know, no. Right. The payoff of the fight, right, if you don't know, or if you're just insecure, whatever,

the payoff of the fight and hopefully winning is bigger than all the detriments that you got to pay. I used to tell my platoon guys when we were overseas before the war started. Hey, you know, so guys are overseas, what are you doing? You're drinking, you're out in bars, you're causing problems or whatever. And, you know, before you go out, I'd be like,

hey, guys, if you feel like fighting tonight, come find me. Because if you want to fight, Come find me and it'll be all be good. You know, we'll fight. And it's all good. You won't get in trouble. You won't get arrested.

You won't get hurt. It's all good. Oh, you'll get in trouble. You're not going to get trouble with the law, though. You know what I mean? You're not going to get in that kind of trouble. You're in your situation and your positioning is going to be troublesome. So, yeah, it's better to fight amongst yourself than to fight against the outsiders

who are going to sue you, pull a knife out and stab you in the throat, whatever, right? Don't do that. Stay out of the street fights. Not worth it. All right. I agree with it too, though. You agree that it is the stabilizer? Indeed.

It is. Because if you don't know, you don't even know how much you don't know. It's funny because we get a lot of people that have started training Jiu-Jitsu. Good move. Yes. But they'll come on Twitter or on the Facebook and say, you know, hey, it started training Jiu-Jitsu. Oh, my God. I can't believe.

I need to train this all the time. I can't believe I got control. They always say how humiliating. And sometimes they say humbling, but sometimes I think even when they say humbling, they actually mean humiliating. Because they, that's the weird thing.

When you're walking around on the earth without the knowledge, you think, you look at other people and you think, you know what, this guy knows Jiu-Jitsu? I heard this guy knows Jiu-Sit-Soo. It doesn't matter.

I'm strong, I'm athletic. Hit him in the neck. I'll just hit him in the neck. Or even, you know what, I'm just strong enough. He's not going to get my, how's he going to get my arm over there? Yeah.

It's not going to work. I'll just pull my arm back. And you get on the mat and you go, oh, my Lord, I have no control over this situation. This guy is effortlessly making me submit over and over and over again. And that's when the reality hits. The reality hits, doesn't end on the first time you tap. Because on the first time you tap, you go, oh, I'm going to, I'll just, I won't do that single movement again. I won't stick my head over there.

Okay. So then you get your arm locked. Yeah. And then you get your foot locked. And then you get your knee locked. And then you get commured. And then you get deatine again. then you get rid of so you all you just a lose lose lose lose lose lose lose and then you go after usually

for me it's like three to five times with somebody that's never trained jitza before three to five times before they realize like oh the i will never because you know when you tap a guy once that's never trained before and he comes at you so hard he in his mind he thinks oh this time i'm gonna get him and they don't even come close they don't even realize so yeah get on the mat man and learn learn the jihitsu yep please cover the over or please cover overcoming the frustrations of beginning jujitsu and this is coming from a 54 year old

by the way but not quitting good good for him that's awesome glad you're picking up the jiu jihitsu at 54 years old okay so how do you the frustrations of beginning jihers and it is absolutely if you have the wrong mindset it's viciously frustrating

because of everything we just talked about you think oh I'll just do this and I'll just go a little bit harder and I just won't put my arm there and then I'll be able to win you're not going to win you are going to lose you're going to lose over and over and over again to people that are smaller than you weaker than you not as tough as you are literally not as tough as you are not as tough as you are you know jih Tijuana has a faction of of nerds for lack of a better word straight nerds and no offense to the nerds out there but you know people that are not physically active and then for some reason

they fall into jizu at some point and and and then And all of a sudden they've got a guy that's, they're not tough, but they'll know the moves. And they'll finish you. So those are the people you're going to lose to. And it's a long, long, slow journey that takes a long time. Now, that being said, if you train for a month and someone's trained zero, that journey is not that long. You'll beat that guy. Yeah.

You will beat that guy. I mean, you know, again, you take two people. one of them knows Jiu-Jitsu for a month and one of them doesn't. That guy's going to win. I mean, you know, basic weight, same weight, basic same, you know, you can't have somebody that's completely weak. But in six months, you're beating anybody that's untrained. You're beaten 95% of, maybe even 99% of people that are untrained.

But as far as, like, you think you show up and in six months you're going to be beating a blue belt, it's not happening. Yeah. Yeah. It's not happening. beating a purple belt is not happening. You're not going to catch a purple belt in your first two or three years.

Unless you got just somebody that doesn't. Or he lets you. Yeah, of course. And like Glover, Jeff Glover, he'll let people put him in all kinds. I mean, he does that in competition. You just saw that at Meta Morris. He lets all kinds of crazy things happen.

So yeah, can that happen? Of course. But as far as legitimately taking someone down, yeah, it's not going to happen. And so that's what I'm saying is a long, slow journey, especially, too, because everyone's on that bus. We've talked about this before. Everyone's on the bus getting better. So that blue belt that you started six months behind or a year behind, so he's a blue belt,

you're a year behind him. He's not stopping getting better. So as you start to pursue his game, his game is evolving and changing and improving. So you're not going to get there. And then on top of that, when you do learn something new, it takes time. to incorporate into your game. So if I taught you echo a new move tonight, I said, hey, here's this cool.

Here's this new setup for the arm lock. And we drilled it 10 times. And you went now and started to apply that. It would make your game worse. Because you'd be trying to apply a move that you don't know 100% yet. Like you've got some good, solid moves that you do, and those work really well.

So when you start incorporating this new move, you don't know it well. You don't get it all together. So you're going to fail out it a hundred times. It's not going to work a hundred times before you get it. And by the way, every time you tried it on me, I got on top and then I smashed you. So you're sacrificing and it's every time. So you're actually going backwards a little bit before you can go forward.

So that's problematic and that's very, very frustrating. Occasionally you might learn something that really improves your game dramatically, almost instantly. That happens from time to time. Someone will say, hey, put your arm in position here or hey, you know, whatever the case may be. but generally when you incorporate something new it can take some time you're going to get injuries you're going to get little injuries you're going to get big injuries you're going to be sore you're going to so yes you will be frustrated

so how do you counter all that you just got to embrace it you've got to embrace all those things you got to enjoy all those things and I hate to be cliche here but you got to enjoy the journey you got to enjoy getting tapped out by somebody that's most be amazed by that you know say dang how did that just happen That is impressive. Yep. You know, say, hey, got a little war scar on my face.

I got, you know, split the eye open. Okay, cool. Chicks dig scars. You know what I mean? Just going to go, don't, don't look at all that stuff as negative. Look at it as, you know, it's like, don't rush to the end. Don't rush to the end. Don't mean a rush to get there.

Take your time and enjoy the sights that you're going to go for. Also, I've said this before. Select your training partners carefully, especially like you're 54 years old. You don't want to be rolling with a 20-year-old steroid freak that's going white belt trying to kill you. You want to be rolling with a cool, mellow, purple belt that wants to do jiu-jitsu and train. And finally, I would just say, remember that jiu-jitsu should be fun. It should be all those other things, all those frustrating, all those challenges, all those things, all that humiliation and getting humbled. But it should be a good time.

You should have fun when you're doing jih-too. I know I do. Yeah. Yeah, like a video game, right? I mean, I was out of town for a couple of days, man. And I came back and I had a little injury that I figured out. It took me a little while. I got my jacked up finger.

And it took me a little while to get the right apparatus to splint it properly and protect it. But tonight I trained. And I was so happy. I was so happy going and getting on the mat just saying yes. Yeah, that is how we're all the junk parts that come with. that were quote unquote jumper you know like the the bitterness yeah the i got choked out or whatever that's all part of the game seems obvious right yeah it's all part of the game but be happy that that's the game you're in you know so i mean jiu jitsu basic i mean if you don't do jiu jitzu

this would be kind of kind of an inside basically all it is you go if you go to a class you go in you may or may not warm up you learn a move whether it's a mission move or just a move you learn a move You learn a move, two moves, three moves, sometimes four moves. And then you cut to... Rolling. Straight up. You guys are fighting. No strikes.

That's it. You're fighting. No strikes. If you, whatever moves you know, go ahead and do them in real life against this guy. That's it. If you don't know it, if that's your first day and you learn one, two, three moves that first day, you better try to do those moves. That's it.

So, of course, you know two, three moves that you learned once, by the way. And you roll with someone who, even if he's still a white belt or whatever, he knows those moves, and then, you know, three, four more, and he's practiced them in, you know, in real time or whatever. Of course he's going to get you, you know, that's just how it works. But keep in mind, the more you go, the more you do the moves, the more moves you learn, the more you practice them in real life, the better you get at them. And, you know, let's go ahead and just apply this to life as well, because jih-jitsu is such a great metaphor for life.

Whatever you're doing, whatever goal you're trying to achieve, if you're letting those frustrations when you hit those obstacles, if you're letting them control you and get you down, that's the wrong attitude to have. Look at it as a learning opportunity. Look at it as something that's good that's happening. Look at it as a chance for you to try something new. Look at it as the journey that you're trying to achieve. And by the way, anything that's easy to achieve and you don't hit any obstacles, well, that's not worth it, right?

That's not going to get the full satisfaction that you want out of that. So in life, as in jiu-jitsu, don't get frustrated. Embrace those challenges because those are what is making this goal. worthwhile. Yeah, man, and I'm telling you when you, let's say you, well, back to the, um, avoiding frustration specifically, um, it does, how you were saying training partners, that does make a big difference because sometimes every once in a while, like I've, I've heard of, um, people where their schedule doesn't allow them to catch, like, the beginner

class, for example. So they're like, hey, I have no choice. I got to do this more intermediate or advanced class. So they're the only white belt and the next, you know, guy even close to him is like an advanced blue belt. So that's going to be a steep learning curve. It's going to be tough because how are you going to practice your moves in the wild? You won't get to work your offense.

Yes, really. But here's kind of the good thing. You get to work your defense. So when you do get the opportunity to exercise, like, your offense, whether you get another class or it just comes but just takes longer or whatever, but you know how good your defense is going to be? Yeah, and I actually, so from training with Dean for so many years, you know, he's just got some positions that are brutal, brutal positions.

And, you know, for instance, his mount is outstanding. When he gets the mount, when anybody else that I've ever trained with in my life has mounted, with the exception, I guess, of Hicks and Gracie, I felt like, oh, well, it's not Dean. This is not, you know, this is not horrible scenario. Right. And not that I'm not that worried. I'm not trying to degrade people I've trained with. But that is a grip.

Dean has an incredible mount. And on top of that, Dean kind of knows my escapes. So whereas if I roll with a random other really good, you know, world class. black belt they might not know the particulars of my escape Dean actually does know those and he's good at and he's good at it so so you're right in that the more you train with people that are better than you your your defense is going to be come very good because like when you mount me I mean you got a good solid mount but I'm not I'm like I'm like okay cool I'm gonna be out of this in a short period

of time with with no real threats keep telling you and in the re you've had I mean I'm sure it's the same way you've had Dean mounted on you I mean my mount because I don't have a great mount. My mount is nothing compared to Deans. Nothing. Yeah. Yeah. Fully.

Yeah. And that's absolutely true. And at the same time, though, so if you fall in, and I don't want to say it's like a small, because it's a pretty big chance where if you enter a beginner class, there's going to be a guy who's just as much of a beginner as you. And that's where you can really flourish because you can practice moves,

your new moves, which, I mean, for lack of a better term, your junk moves on junk. people. I will say this, though. Whoever you roll with, whether they're worse than you, the same as you or better than you, you're going to get a lot out of it. Of course. All three of them.

So you should roll with all three of those types of people. I have a tendency to want to usually roll with guys that are, you know, like good. And I should spend more. And I do. I mean, I definitely, I train with everybody that we got at the gym. I'll train with everybody. But I always prefer, of course. I guess I shouldn't say, of course, because there are people that are like white,

belt hunters that want to go out there and be bullies. I'm not like that. I'd rather get bullied, right? I want to get, I want to feel the, I want to get after it, you know? Yeah.

But you definitely get benefit from training with people that are better than you, worse than you, and the same as you. Because you practice one of them, you're practicing defense. One of them, you're practicing pure offense and someone that's equal than you. You've got to start practicing your setups

and your approaches and you've got to learn how to defend and do offense and defense at the same time. time so it's all good. Roll. Yeah. That's basically the concept here. Roll.

Yeah. Consider that scenario. You're talking from an ideal standpoint. Roll with people better than you, same as you worse than you or not as good as you. For a beginner, that's not really the option. The worst than you guys, that's not an option for a beginner. Yeah. Really.

There's no one that's worse for them. As far as overcoming the frustrations or whatever, it is a good situation where you can get in with guys just as beginner as you. and hope that they hang around after a certain amount of time those guys who aren't as new or who are... I could see where it could become frustrating

if you were the guy that you were talking earlier let's say a guy that's, you have to work late and you can only go to the advanced class and all of a sudden you think Jiu-Jitsu is just getting crushed and destroyed all the time.

And I can't learn this really. You know, it's like I'm getting good. So I guess the distance to understand but yeah, that's a good point. So keep in mind that if you're in that situation, it's okay. You're gonna, you're gonna, when you eventually,

get to roll with people that are more your skill level, you will be, you'll be that much better off. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And watch the first time you tap someone out with a move that you learned. Celebrate that, did you? Yeah, that's a good time for everyone. Next question. Jocco, how do you balance the idea of checking the ego while in an interview scenario where you need to talk about yourself?

okay so good good question i i would say in that situation and that's something that it's not just an interview situation where you're going to need to do that i mean you're dealing with your your superiors you know throughout the course of your career whatever that may be you're constantly interacting with people and you're going to want to make an impression uh so i i think one of the best ways to do this is instead of you speaking about why you're so awesome just state facts of let's say accomplishments and let them speak for themselves in other words you know you wouldn't want to say you know I am the best project manager in the entire world right that's not that sounds ego centric you know

instead you'd say you know I got this a we had a 13 million dollar project got it done on time under budget ahead of schedule and when I got done with that when they moved me to another project that was off track and we got that one back on schedule and back on track as well so that that's the kind of experience that I've had and I'd love to bring that here to this company right so you're not you're not you know there's a hint of hey this is what I did I can get some stuff done but you're not saying listen I'm better than the people you currently have so you should hire me because I'm the best because you don't want to do that

and you know so so yeah just build think about it you know before you go in how what what experience that you have represents the good qualities that you have so then you can say if they say you know how are you at meeting timelines you don't say i am perfect i'm never late i'm dope you just say you say well you know as far as meeting timelines here's a bunch of projects that i got completed on time the only one that I missed was one that we had to roll back because whatever that way you're actually showing a little bit more humility you're saying hey here's what happened you're being logical about it and you know speaking of that I actually got a good question that's similar to this one um about what's the best way to interview people to see if they can be in a leadership position and this is really hard this is really hard because it's really hard to interviews and working I work with all kinds of different companies and everybody always says you know hey what's the best way to interview and man I interviewed this guy and he seemed so great. I interviewed this woman and she seemed incredible and her paper looked great. You know, she looked great on paper and we hired her and she's a disaster or he's a disaster or

whatever the case may be. Because there's people that are very good interviewers, right? I mean, there's people that can interview well. They have the gift of gab. They can BS their way through anything and make themselves sound good. So it can be really hard to identify if someone's good is actually going to be fit for a leadership position or really any position. So one of the things that I always tell people to do is when you go into these, when you want to ask interview questions, ask them scenario-based questions and say, okay, here's what's going on. You've got these three people in your department, and one of the people has come to you and said that they think there might be something illegal going on with the other two.

What actions do you take? and you know have a scenario built out that you can actually talk through and see where they go and see what their mindset is and see what they're going to develop as a plan and see how they would execute plan so it's a great way of figuring out how people think and then you know even that's not a guarantee because there's people that can can navigate those type of answers as well so you know one thing you can do is hire people on a little bit of a trial basis and that can be difficult in some situations where people are walking away from one job and to another job and they're not going to do it on a 90 day trial. basis. But when you do have that opportunity, it's a good thing to do as well. But hey, so going back to the first question about keeping your ego in check in an interview, like I said, be confident but not cocky and let the facts of your experience speak for your abilities rather than beating your own chest. Yeah, so it's almost like, I mean, correct me from wrong here. So you essentially, even if you're talking yourself up, you just simply state the fact.

That's it. You just state the fact. Don't say your opinion about it. No. Just simply state the facts. Yeah. Here's what I did. You know, we turned this project around.

We got it on track and on budget. And that's the type of experience that I have in those situations. Right. Just like how you're saying, even if someone had got like an award to be the best, whatever. Sales end of the year. Right. Sales me the year. The best whatever of the year. And then, like, to say that in a factual way would be, I was recognized as the best guy in the world. Instead of saying, I'm the best guy in the world. He was my award to prove it, you know?

So it's like you're seeing the fact that you were recognized. You know? Not so much the fact. That's a very good way of doing it. Stick to the facts, right? Just the facts. Just the facts. Yeah, sure. Next question. How do you stay humble when you know you have better? skill sets than others, you seem humble with all that you've accomplished. Well.

This is just what? Like in general, just how do I be humble? Yeah, how do you stay humble when you know you have better skill sets than others? And then he's saying that I seem humble with all that I've accomplished, which is, which is actually, it's funny when I read that. Like, it's not, I'm sure that for the dude that's asking this question, he's thinking I accomplished all this stuff and it's not, I don't feel that way. Like, first of all, there's always somebody that's better than you.

That's, I guarantee it. There's someone that's done more than you. There's someone that's had better experience. There's someone that's accomplished more. And if you are truly the master of some thing, whatever one thing you're a true master of, there's going to be people that are a lot better at other things than you. So you might be the master of one,

particular thing, but are you, you have to respect the fact that people are going to be masters at other things or better than you. I mean, so if you're super strong, that's great. Let's see you run a marathon. If you're super flexible, awesome. How much can you deadlift? If you're, if you're smart, that's great. You're smart academically.

Let's check out your common sense and see where all that's at. You know, so, so you're, you're going to be good at one thing, but you're going to have failed in other areas or have weaknesses in other areas. And so you just have to keep that in check. And I'll tell you, like, I recognize why I've been successful. You know, for one thing, been surrounded with great people, for other than being lucky in certain situations that I've been in certain times. And, you know, going back to Jiu-Jitsu a little bit, it's a good example because just

because I can beat someone in jiu-jitsu, it doesn't mean that I'm a better person. Yeah, it does. It doesn't mean that I'm a better person. What it means, basically, is that I happened to get into this random fringe sport before they did.

And I spent more time on the math than they did. That's what it means. It doesn't make me a better person. And I'll tell you what, it goes with, you know, if you feel like you're smarter than someone, it's probably because you've had the opportunity to study a subject or you've had a bunch of education on something. You've dove into some subjects so that might make you seem smarter.

Whereas if they applied themselves in that particular, but guess what they were applying themselves to something else? So, yeah, you've got to stay humble with that. And also, when we talked about this, when you, oh, you know what, I am smarter than this person. Well, guess what? There's still something. they're better than you.

And what is it? You might be smart of them, but guess what? Maybe it's the guy we talked about earlier, where I'm smart as I can be, guess what, this person can physically take me down and dominate me, and that's horrible. Or they're better at whatever, better athletically, or some people are really good craftsmen with their hands. I mean, there's so many different things that you can be skilled at. And if you start thinking that yourself, that you're better than other people,

you're going to have issues because in the long run, you want to stay humble? Just stay alive because life will humble you. Life is hard. And if you're pushing hard and you're driving hard and you're trying to achieve a lot, you're not always going to win. I don't care who you are.

You're going to get humbled. It's going to be hard. So many people that are successful, they've got some hard luck stories along the way of things that they had to push through and overcome in order to get there. humbled and if you're winning every single time then you're you're not your goals aren't high enough so step those up so you know I appreciate the the kind of comment but man it's not

hard to be humble when you know you need to take like maybe someone I you know people always think oh oh he's a Navy seal or whatever you know there's A lot of SEALs that are more badass than me, that done more deployments that have gotten after it more than me. And I know that. That's awesome. I mean, good. Good for them. You know, they got after it.

Good. So I don't feel like, oh, I did more than everybody. No, there's no one like that. There's no one like that. Even, you know, Mikey Thornton, who was SEAL that won a Medal of Honor, awesome guy of, you know, just to just a, you know, he's a hero. But if, you know, he gets interviewed, I've watched a bunch of interviewed,

heard him talk. He's like, you know, he's like, oh, you know, you, you got the Medal of Honor. He's like, it's not mine. It's my guys. You know, it's a guys I was with. It represents all. So there's a guy, like who's going to be,

if there's anyone in the world that needs to, that could not be humble, maybe it's Mikey Thornton. But guess what? Mikey Thornton, he's as humble as they come. Because you know what? He also has been humbled by combat. Because he realized there's things that he tried to do that he didn't get done.

There's lives he tried to save that he couldn't save. So you're going to, there's no doubt if you're living the right life, you're going to be humbled by it. And there's always, always, always going to be somebody that's better than you, that's done better than you. So just stay humble. And by the way, what does being cocky get you anyways? What does that turn you into? I talk about something. What does overconfidence get you?

You start cutting corners. You start slack. I mean, it's just ridiculous. So you've got to stay humble, you've got to stay hungry if you want to stay in the game. And believe me, you want to stay in the game. You want to stay in the game. Do you think that, like, and I can't, I mean, I don't know if maybe this is where this, even the question is coming from. But if, you know, when you're insecure and, like, you're just, like, everything's a competition.

Like, just in life. It's like, it goes beyond just. what you're into. It's just like, if someone's better than me, it makes me mad, it makes you uneasy or whatever. It's like this insecurity kind of thing. So when you do, it's like if you look at everything

as just this big life competitive, like I got to beat that guy. I got to be better than them. So when you are better than them, it's like you're still looking at this competition like eh, you know, like you're not on my level so you don't deserve to be treated.

It's kind of like, maybe this is a good analogy, maybe not, but like in jiu-jitsu where if you roll with a white belt, you don't go hard. You don't get satisfaction or whatever. So in the jujitsu competition arena, you're not giving them the respect. You're not going all out like you would.

You know, you're not respecting his arm bar. You know, if you are, you're smashing him, no satisfaction. You know, whatever. It's in that specific competition setting. But if you're just an insecure person where you think that all life is like just one big competition. Oh, you've got to smash that person. Yeah. And if you're not worthy of my smashing, it's like I don't even treat you like you should be on the mats with me kind of thing.

but I mean do you think that maybe that's where some of that comes from? Like if you're having trouble like being humble It's kind of like I'm better than you in life Yeah, it's probably just just driven from insecurity But there's also a there too because man I like to win Like no doubt about it I like to win And the dichotomy of it is is that I also don't literally don't care Like if I get beat I'm like okay well

what can I do to get better? It's not, I don't feel this despair because I lost. Losing actually kind of motivates me more. Right, yeah. As opposed to getting angry and the worst thing that happens is people decide they're not going to compete, right? They're not going to compete in the game of life because they didn't win or they don't feel like they can win. So they go, ah, you know what? I'm just going to, I'm just going to back off.

I'm just not going to participate in the game. But get in the game. Get in the game. Yeah. Theme. So maybe it comes from not understanding what that means when you win and stuff. I guess, I guess that could be. You know, like, let's say like back to the fighting situation where about, you know, being a secure part of the males balancing a male psyche.

If you know that you've achieved these skills, have these skills to win people, you know, who don't have your skill set, you don't want to fight them. So you're just like whatever. But let's say like you have a better skill set, yet you're still blowing your horn about your skill set. You know, you're not humble about it. It's like it comes from maybe, I don't know, some of insecurity. There's no doubt. There can be some insecurity that charges, that makes people super competitive beyond healthy competitiveness. Right.

Just like in life, you know, no matter what. Which, again, there's people that are that way. self-included. And, but again, the dichotomy is... I don't think you're like that. No, no, I, I know I am. Well, okay. I know I am.

Remember echelon front. Remember the logo? Yeah. Right? And I'm going to post this on Twitter, too. Jocco made the original echelon front logo. This is like a long time ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And you're like, hey, you know, this is the logo, something like this. And then basically, but you didn't care that it was junk? No, no, but all I wanted to do is get you, the idea. You weren't competing with me. But you drew and I drew, but like someone who's competing in everything in life, like if you draw something and I draw something, you're like, I want to make my better. No, no, no, but

well, see, I wanted to win with the idea. Not with the skill. The idea. I wanted to win the war. Not the short-term battles, like, who can draw this thing better. The war was who comes up with a strategic victory, which the icon and the symbol

for Eschelon Front is the one that I drew. I liked it. So yes. I didn't care that it looked like junk because I'm not, I was, did it well, you should post that because it's pretty fun. I did it on PowerPoint with like a crayon.

It looks like a cram. Because I didn't want to take much time with it. I know, I knew that that thing would take you 15 minutes to make on your, what is it, AI illustrator. Yeah, man, that was long to add. I don't know. I was like, that might have been. Don't be mad at me.

That's probably the first logo I've ever actually made. Maybe. Hey, there you go. It was very successful. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Thanks for trusting me. Next question.

What do you do when you have two extreme ownership believers that have to go against each other? Ooh. Sounds like a big challenging question. But it actually shouldn't be because if you think about this, if you truly think about this, this should not be an issue. And here's why. go against each other against each other so what are the goals

are these two people on the same team I'm assuming that they're on the same team right they're on the same team so if they're on the same team and we want to win we have the same goals we want to win but we won't work together because if the goal is to win and we both want to win

why would we be going against each other we are not taking actual extreme ownership because if you and I were had opposing ideas but we had the same long term goal I'm going to take ownership and say

all right echo we've got to come to terms here we're going to work this out and if you were doing the same thing you'd be like yeah absolutely let's sit down let's figure this out let's figure out what's going to be the best let's take it to market let's do market says we're going to figure out a real solution

because we're taking ownership of it so what's the little nugget that's getting into the system here and screwing things up it's ego 100% and I will say this occasionally the idea of extreme ownership can be very poorly and very incorrectly interpreted as micromanagement and egomania meaning like i'm gonna own this i own this this is mine right

we're not that's not what extreme ownership is at all it's you you've got to own everything but you don't you don't feel the intrinsic need to do everything right? Because you own, it's like owning the outcome and owning the progress and owning the steps along the way and owning the responsibility

of mission achievement. It doesn't mean that you own each individual step and you have to make it your way. That's not extreme ownership. That's micromanagement. So extreme ownership is about leadership and

decentralized command and using indirect tactics to make things happen and owning the outcome. So that's why if you have two people that were truly about like, hey, I'm going to own this,

I'm going to have the attitude of extreme ownership, if you and I have the attitude of extreme ownership, we're not going to fight over anything because we have the same long-term goal. And if you come up with a better idea of how to get there, I'm going to say, oh, echo, awesome job, that's a

great way. We're going to get to where we want to go. We own that outcome. We're going to make it happen. Boom. I'm going to support you. The only time it's going to be a problem is if I have an ego and then you have an ego, when we both have an ego issue.

And usually one person with a big ego, that inflames other people's ego. Because if I say, hey, Echo, I got a great plan for how to do this. We need to execute it my way. There's a little bit of ego coming out. Because now your ego was down, but all of a sudden you're going. What do you mean your way? Wait a second. Just right there.

Now we've got a thing. Now we've got some kind of issue going. Now we're working against each other instead of working together. So that is absolutely problematic. And I guess to say, to put this in a nutshell, the, If you're using the principle of extreme ownership, the most important thing you need to take extreme ownership of is your own ego and put that thing in check.

Yeah, it seems like the extreme ownership, as far as owning it, is essentially take responsibility, like at all costs kind of thing for more like the bad stuff that happened. Oh, absolutely, the bad stuff. Absolutely, the bad stuff. But you know, but you're going to take, because absolutely if you and I do something great together and I was the leader I don't go yes that's right I was the I'm you know you say hey first of all this is mostly on echo he did most of the work he did all

you know that's what I'm going to say I'm not going to say no this is mine but when something goes wrong obviously I don't say no is that goes fault now I say hey this is my fault this is you know I should have done double check on the audio before we started the podcast because you know we wanted to make sure that thing was recording right I don't say no echo drop the ball yeah I don't do that I say hey you should have double checked so that's if you truly have two people

that have real ownership and they put their egos in check this is literally not an issue right so they yeah this isn't even a question for that right because they don't go against each other they're going with each other and so what are the chances that you as a person that's really

put your ego in check and you're exercising extreme ownership what are the chances that you work with another person that is exactly with the same mindset, taking ownership, but no ego? What are the chances that? They're actually pretty slim. This is not easy to do. It's simple, not easy, right?

So that means you have to be even more proactive in helping adapt to their ego scenario that's happening. And when Echo says, hey, we need to do this my way. I'll be like, hey, you know what, Echo? let's take a look at it absolutely you've always come up with great plans let's take a look at what this one is here and all of a sudden i've disarmed you a little bit you're feeling good about it you're like oh yeah that's right jock was going to listen to me because it's it's great that's exactly what i want you to think it's exactly what i want you to think so you're going to have work to do

you're going to have work to do that's that's what that's what it is it's a challenge it's work but when you have the basic principles i shouldn't say basic when you have the fundamental principles, they are going to work well for you. And when they're not working well for you, don't get mad at the other person and blame their ego. Look at your own ego because you can adjust and adapt and maneuver and get that person disarmed and you can flank them and then you're going to win. That's so interesting that how this question is like that. It seems like when when I first read it, I was like, oh, shoot, that's a good question. You know, when they're, and it is, but in a different way, because this question is essentially what it does is it, like, what do you call it, like a strainer or whatever.

Like, it shrines out the guy who's not doing extreme ownership. See how it says if they're both exercising it? But if they're going against each other, that means there's some extreme ownership not being practiced somewhere in here. We didn't know. But we're going to, we can find out, you know, who's going against who kind of thing. If they're both going against each other, well, maybe they both have it, you know? But there's always going to be one person. Well, not always, but there's usually going to be one person.

that is got it that understands it and that's going to be working and this guy is just so good and so smooth and so tactical and they're going to win

and that other person that's like that's right you know why we're winning because I got extreme ownership going on and I took ownership of this project and you know what the guy says the real the real leader

is like absolutely man you did a great job with that and meanwhile he knows he just he just manipulated and flanked him and made it happen to the best of the best for the team. You know, just keeping the train going.

That's good. Yeah, indeed. Interesting. Okay. I think we got. Last question. Yeah, just maybe one more. Maybe.

Jocko, can you talk about fear of failure and how to overcome it? Fear of failure. So, obviously, fear of failure can keep you from taking risk. and it can leave you just sitting there paralyzed into not taking any action at all and obviously that's bad

but I don't actually want you to overcome the fear of failure I want I want you to be afraid of failure fear of failure is good

fear of failure will keep you up at night, planning and rehearsing and going over contingencies. Fear of failure will keep you training hard. It'll stop you from cutting corners. Fear of failure will keep you working and thinking and striving and relentlessly trying to be more prepared for so I want you to be afraid of failing I fear failure but more important I want you to be horrified I want you to be terrified of sitting on your ass and doing nothing that is what

I want you to be afraid of of waking up in six days or six weeks or six years or 60 years In being no closer to your goal, you've made no progress. That is the horror. That is the nightmare. That is what you need to be truly afraid of. So get up and go. Take the risk. Take the gamble.

Take the first step. take action and don't let another day slip by and I think that's all I've got for tonight

and if you got something out of the podcast tonight you want to hear some more well then maybe you should go ahead and support the podcast and echo how can the troopers out there best support the podcast well one of the or the initial way is to support yourself at the same time.

And that is to supplement. On it, On it has the best supplements. You know, it's one thing to say, they have the best supplements because I like them, but they have for real have the best supplements. Like to legit, you read all the stuff about it.

It's straight up the best. Anyway, if you want 10% off there, so support your wallet as well. So you're supporting podcasts, yourself and your wallet, 10% off. Onet.com.

slash jocco. Yep. Sorry. Also, if you want to passively support, you can do the Amazon, click through. You go to one of the websites, jocoppodcasts.com, or the jocco store. There's an Amazon link on the top.

Now we have international. Every once in a while, like people are overseas or, you know, international. Hey, what about this? Because it's a long story, but unless we have that now. But it's not everywhere overseas. It's Canada, England. I started the ones that people have actually

hold me. Like, hey, we're here in the UK. We want to be down with the thing or whatever. And, yeah, so I did those. And so those are up on both the websites as well. Thanks for hitting me up with that, by the way. Overseas support. Appreciate it.

Yes. So dope. And also, speaking to Amazon, the new trooper tool. That's a cool little tool. Thanks again, Brady for that one. IT genius. and Jiu-Jitsu student, by the way. Boa.

Nonetheless, like this tool, you just click it. There's a link to it on things called the called the Chalk Podcast Trooper Tool Chrome extension. That's what it's called. Awesome. You click on the thing. You just, like, you clear them thing.

If you want it, you click on the thing, it shows up. It's a little icon, Jaco's head. And you can even hide that if you don't want it on your browser or whatever. You just hide it if you don't want it there. But it looks, I think it's kind of cool. It's up there, whatever.

Anyway, it helps you go to, it makes you go to, Amazon, it helps it go through the affiliate link. So you don't have to go through the website anymore. It does automatically for you. I think it's say some time. Right. You know?

Also, you know, of course, subscribe to iTunes. And YouTube. I think we're going to pump some more value in YouTube. Put some outtakes on there, I think. I like that. I like where you're coming from. Yeah. Subscribe to the YouTube channel.

That would be cool. So we know that you're out there and you're going to receive these things that Echo's put together. Yeah. And then also the the Jocko podcast store. Yeah. If you like shirts.

If you wear shirts. It was it Jocco store? Jocco store.com. Jocco store.com. Some cool t-shirts. I still have, I still have yet to see one in the wild,

not someone I know. So I'm looking forward to seeing that somewhere in the world, somewhere on planet Earth. I am thoroughly enjoying the picture. that people send. Yeah, they're awesome. You know what's funny?

The heather gray, right? Yeah. The gray. It's like that's the kind of shirt, like, you know, a lot of lighter colored shirt. They get real, like, dark if you sweat in them or whatever, you know?

So there'll be like pictures where, I don't even know why I think this is funny, but it's interesting because the other one is charcoal gray. That's a dark gray. So they'll be like, yeah, I got my discipline too. And I see the bottom like looks like a stripe. I'm like, wait, what, that's weird how the lighting is. There's a stripe on the bottom of your shirt.

But it's not the charcoal gray one. You know, they were getting after. It's an indication of getting after it. Yes, very much. So, anyway, I don't know why I thought that was funny, but it's, it looks funny. Not funny like I'm laughing at them, but it's interesting how it looks like a shirt, and it's like an optical illusion. Anyway, jocco store.com, there's some other shirts on there.

If you like them, coffee mugs and stickers. Awesome. Bumper stick. Also, if you like the podcast and you want more of this information, there's a book that I wrote with my brother Laf Bab and it's called Extreme Ownership. You can order it through Amazon or you can get anywhere books are sold. It's available in hardcover digital and audio format. And the audio format, Laf and I actually read, so get some of that.

If you want to talk to Echo and I, you can find us on the interwebs at Twitter. Echo is at Echo Charles. and I am at Jocco Willink. We're also on the Facebookie and some of that Instagram. I got a Snapchat thing. I signed up for it or whatever, but I haven't done anything with it yet.

I've got to explore that, but man, the social media stuff takes some time and I can't, if you want me, find me on Twitter. That's the best way. Ask your questions on Twitter. Hit me up on Twitter. That's the most common thing that I use. I do check Facebook.

I mean, everything that has ever been sent to me, I've read. I might not have responded to it because I can't, literally can't respond to every single thing that gets sent to me, which is what's nice about on Twitter. I can just hit that I like it, you know, so that people know like, oh, he read it, cool.

On Facebook, I read it, but there's nothing to press to say, I read your thing. So maybe I should figure something out. like that but anyways you're solid untweet you like you get back to people and stuff which is cool because there's some people you can tell it's not them it's like their their social media yeah well it's me and i was just out where where i just was there was very limited internet so i was able to get like a tweet out in the morning a couple tweets out in the morning but when i'd go to start responding it was you know taking three minutes to get to to look at the tweet for somebody so

I'm backed up right now for like five days, four days behind or something like that, five days behind actually. Yeah, but see, even you're saying that like that you're like backed up, it means like that you're, you know, your engagement and that's good. Yeah, but even then I was reading and I do, man. If you send me someone on Twitter, I'm going to see it. I'm going to read it. I might not respond to it directly, but I might. Well, I've had a day, actually more than once too, but I'm remembering a very specific time, a day where I wasn't going to go to Jiu-Jitsu. I wasn't going to go.

I was, you know, today's rest day or what, I don't know, whatever. I wasn't going to go. We call that weakness. Maybe. Call it what you want. Nonetheless, when you see pictures of, I saw, I don't know the name of the specific person, but I saw a picture. Oh, first day of jiu-jitsu. And I'm like, you know how you get that feeling when, like, let's say you weren't at jiu-jitsu.

And I took a picture of me on the mat saying, I'm here without jaco. I'll do that every once in a while to like my friends. I'm here without jaco. You kind of like you have this feeling like dang I wish I was there right now just to whatever I kind of got that feeling that weird competitiveness you were talking about earlier It's more like I want to be there with you maybe maybe a little bit oh by the way I don't know if you knew this You know like guys would be like hey I want to come visit you at the gym or whatever right and to me it's like a guy showed up when I was out of town Yeah and you know I say the days like I go on these days typically and whatever so just hit me up whether it be on Twitter or whatever if you're in town and but he did

The reason that's significant, one of the main reasons is what I said, too. Where was he from? Arizona. So, Arizona's name's A.B. A.B. The man showed up, rolled money. Yeah. Because a lot of people in life, I'm not saying just on Twitter, I'm just saying in life,

they always will be like, hey, oh, you do you see. I'm going to come by, and you can show me, or all roll or whatever. And I would say a good 95 to 99% of the time they don't come. Yeah, well, a lot of times they're hitting you up from a place or farther than the way. than Arizona. No, I'm even talking about, like, before the podcast and stuff. I'm saying, like, your friends, you know. Oh, just, oh, yeah, yeah.

Whatever, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'm going to come check it out. Sounds cool, you know. And they never come back. Had this dude rolled before? Abby? A.B., yeah. Was he a J.J.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a. Yeah, he was like a three straight white belt or something like that. Dang. He's coming up. Yeah. A. He was cool.

What's up, A. A.B., the man. Thanks for coming. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and obviously I just want to give a shout out. We talked about some soldiers today, but I want to give a thanks to all the police out there.

I hear a lot from police officers all over the country, and thanks to you guys for doing your duty to keep us safe. Same thing for the firefighters. I've actually heard a lot from fire. There's all kinds of firefighters. And all you guys are protecting us on the home front, obviously much appreciated and then

of course the military folks out there especially those that are deployed right now taking the fight to the enemy be aggressive and crush them and we'll see you when you get home and finally to all the

to all the Jocko podcast troopers out there thank you for the support across the board with all this we appreciate it And what we really appreciate more than anything is you out there in your life, taking ownership of your world and getting after it. So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.

Out.