Jocko Podcast - 43: Glory of the Trenches. Discipline, The Selfishness of Cowardice & Giving Up

Episode Date: October 5, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:22 - "The Glory of the Trenches", by Coningsby Dawson - Book review and analysis.  Leadership, discipline, cowardice, not giving up. 1:32:17 - Jocko Tea, Internet, Jocko Store, Onnit Stuff 1:59:28 - ClosingSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 43 with Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. All the lads have gone out to play at being soldiers far away. They won't be back for many a day, and some won't be back any morning. All the lassies who laughing were when hearts were light and lads were here, they go sad-eyed wandering hither and there, they pray and watch for the morning. Every house has its vacant bed. Every night when sounds are dead, some woman yearns for the pillowed head of him who marched out in the morning. Of all the lads who've gone out to play, there's some will return and some who will

day. There's some will be back most any day but some won't wake up in the morning. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. That poem right there is called The Lads Away and it's from a book called The Glory of the Trenches

by Conningsby Dawson and actually got this book, an original copy of this book. From a trooper from Jesse Trooper up from Canada. He sent me this book and like I said, it's the actual first printing beautiful copy. And it has that smell. Right. That old book, musty smell.

It's one of those books where you can actually smell the age and you can smell the lessons learned and you can smell the wisdom inside of it. And it's a different view. It's a different feel. And I found it to be very fascinating. And the intro to the book is actually written by Dawson's father. So the intro of the book, you know, Dawson is the guy that wrote the book. Cunningsby Dawson is the guy that wrote the book.

Well, his dad wrote the intro to the book. And he kind of kicks it off. And here's some of the highlights of that. He says, I've already stated the conditions under which this book of my sons was produced. He was wounded in the end of June 1917 in the fierce struggle before Lenz. He was at once removed to a base hospital, later to a military hospital in London. There was in grave danger of amputation of the right arm, but this was happily avoided. As soon as he could use his hand, he was commandeered by the Lord High Commissioner of Canada

to write an important paper detailing the history of the Canadian forces in France and Flanders. And he goes on to talk about how they came up with the name of the book. And they go through a couple different titles. And they settle on this title, The Glory of the Trenches. Lastly, we decided on the glory of the trenches as the most expressive of his aim. He felt that a great deal too much had been said about the squalder, filth, discomfort, and suffering of the trenches. Now, clearly, that's stuff that I've talked about. And so this should tell you, that's what I'm talking about.

This is a different take on World War I. Because he's saying, look, we've heard enough about the squal or the felt of this comfort. I'm going to talk about the glory of the trenches. He pointed out that a very popular war book, which we were reading, had six paragraphs in the first 60 pages, which described in unpleasant detail the verminous condition of the men. As if this were the chief thing to be remarked concerning them. He held that it was a mistake. for a writer to lay too much on the, too much stress on the horrors of war. The effect was bad

physiologically. It frightened the parents of soldiers. It was equally bad for the enlisted man himself, for it created a false impression in his mind. We all knew that war was horrible, but as a rule, the soldier thought little of his feature in this lot. The real soldier's thoughts were concerned with other things. He was engaged in spiritual. acts. And this is what I'm talking about. This is a different cut. He was accomplishing spiritual purposes as truly as the martyr of faith and religion. He was moved by spiritual impulses, the evocation of duty, the loyal dependence of comradeship, the spirit of sacrifice, the complete surrender of the body to the will of the soul. This was the side of war which men needed

most to recognize they needed it not only because it was the true side but because nothing else could kindle and sustain the enduring flame of heroism in men's hearts so he's looking at this you know it's called the glory of the trenches in this what happens in the trenches is like a is like a religion is like a spiritual thing which another thing that drew me to this is because you know I talk all the time about how there's the most beautiful things in war I mean there's the most horrible things, but there's also these beautiful things. And so I can see he's very focused on what those things are. While some erred in exhibiting nothing but the brutalities of war, others erred by

sentimentalizing war. He admitted that it was perfectly possible to paint a portrait of a soldier with an aura of a saint, but it would not be a representative portrait. It would be eclectic. the result of selection and elimination. So he's saying like on the one hand you get these books that paint this crazy, brutal side of war, the other side you get them painting soldiers as saints. And neither one is true, which I will totally agree with. You know, we do have a definite tendency to do that

in literature or people that write about war they want to write about, you know, they make everyone look like the best guy ever. None of us are. None of us are. We all have faults. Back to the book, the ordinary soldier is an intensely human creature with an endearing blend of faults and virtues. The romantic method of portraying him not only misrepresented him, but its result is far less impressive than a portrait painted in the firm lines of reality. So they do all this to make the guy look like a saint, but what's real is actually more amazing.

There's an austere grandeur in the reality of what he is and does which needs no fine gilding from the sentimentalist. To depict him as Sir Galahad in holy armor is as serious offense as to exhibit him as a Caliban. Which is, it's from Shakespeare. It's from the tempest. He's like the ultimate bad guy in the Shakespeare's play The Tempest. it's a total beast So you can't portray the person as Galahad You can't you can't you know

Again portray him as a saint Each method fails of truth And all that the soldier needs to be known about him That men should honor him is the truth War A hot new air Which men breathed Produced new energies and forms of thought

Men were rediscovering themselves, their own forgotten nobility, the latent nobilities in all men, bound together in the daily obedience of self-surrender, urged by conditions of their task to regard duty as inexorable, confronted by the pitiless destruction of the body. They were forced into recognition of the spiritual values of life. So faced with what they were facing in World War I. And we've talked about that over and over again. You're facing death. And these guys, these soldiers, are forced to look at their spiritual self.

In the common conventional use of the term, these men were not religious. There was much in their speech and in their conduct, which would outrage the standards of narrow pietism. So, hey, these guys are not goody-to-shoes. Traditional creeds and forms of faith had scant authority for them. But they had made their own a sure faith than lives in creeds. So what they discover on the battlefield is even stronger than what the churches say. It was expressed not in words, but acts. they had freed their souls from the tyrannies of time and the fear of death.

They had accomplished indeed that very emancipation of the soul, which is the essential doctrine of all religions, which all religions urge on men, but which few men really achieve. However earnestly they profess forms of religion. pious faith. That's pretty amazing. It's a pretty amazing viewpoint

that what you find out on the battlefield is spiritually stronger than what you find in the church. Back to the book, this was the true glory of the trenches. They were the cavalries of a new redemption being wrought out

for men by soiled, unconscious Christ's. So that's what the soldiers were. Soiled, dirty, unconscious means they don't even know it, Christ's. And as from that ancient cavalry, with its agony of shame, torture, and dereliction, there flowed a flood of light, which made a new dawn for the world. So from these obscure crucifixions, there would come to men a new revelation of the splendor of the human soul. the true divinity that dwells in man

but God made manifest in the flesh by acts of valor, heroism, and self-sacrifice which transcend the instincts and promptings of the flesh and bear witness to the indestructible life

of the spirit. That's heavy. Yes. That's just, like I said, this viewpoint is I can totally understand where it's coming from and it expresses a lot of the things that I think I haven't thought about it to this degree though

you know calling that basically is calling the deaths of soldiers on the battlefield crucifixions right and that God is made manifest in the flesh that these guys when they make these sacrifices it's like a glimpse of God these acts of valor and heroism and it's just very powerful. Now, that wraps up, you know, the intro's longer than that, obviously. But now we're going to go to the book itself, which again is written by this soldier, Dawson. And it actually starts with his training.

So, and he was from England and he lived in Canada. And, but he ends up joining the military because, you know, Canada was a, was a, supporting and helping Britain in the war and he'd actually traveled to New York he'd lived all over the place and but now he's he's going to boot camp and we'll take it back to the book when I had been medically examined past as fit had donned a uniform and commenced my training I learnt what the enduring of hardship was no experience on active service has equaled the humiliation and severity of those first months of soldiering We were sneered at, clean stables, groomed horses, road stripped saddles,

stripped saddle for 12 miles at the trot, attended lectures, studied till past midnight, and we're up on the first parade at 6 o'clock. No previous civilian efficiency or prominence stood us in any stead. We started robbed of all importance. I love that. We started robbed of all importance. So you know that thing? You have that's an ego?

Yeah, it's gone. Just get rid of that. and only gained a new importance by our power to hang on and develop a new efficiency as soldiers. You've heard me say that before. Like when I joined the military, that's one of my favorite things about it. It was like a blank slate. Like everything you did in your past, all the stuff you've been through, little trouble things you've done, it's all gone. What matters now is what you do here.

When men went sick, they were labeled skimshankers and struck off the course. It was an offense. It was an offense to let your body interfere with your duty. If it tried to, you must ignore it. If a man caught cold in Kingston, what would he not catch in the trenches? Very many went down under the physical ordeal. Of the class that started, I don't think more than a third passed. The lukewarm soldier and the pink tea hero who simply wanted to swank a uniform were eventually choked off.

It was a test of pluck, even more than of strength or intelligence, the same test that a man would be subjected to all the time at the front. In a word, it sorted out the fellows who had guts. Guts isn't a particularly polite word, but I have come increasingly to appreciate its splendid significance. The possessor of this much-coveted quality is the kind of idiot who, When his legs are smitten Will fight upon his stumps And I actually was when I read this I was like man well is there some archaic term of idiot

Why is he using that word and there was none like he means That's what he means is like a guy and you we say this in seal training like if you're gonna be stupid. You got to be tough And that's kind of what he's saying like these guys will go and they will not stop And that's what guts is The Tommy's and that's not a slang word for the British soldiers, whom we were going to command, would be like that. If we weren't like it, we wouldn't be any good as officers. This artillery school had a violent way of sifting out a man's moral worth.

You hadn't much conceit left by the end of it. So what a, I can only imagine, you know, we have a very politically correct military system now and it's getting, I can't imagine. what these soldiers went through. I mean, just unleashing these veterans on them coming out and trying to get them ready for war, I bet it was brutal, and it sounds like it was brutal. And it sounds like it did a very effective job of getting rid of the week, of making your ego completely go away,

you know, getting rid of any form of conceit that you had. Now he continues on the book, but I'm gonna move a little bit forward here to where he's moving towards the front. And we'll go back to the book. After trudging about six months, Miles, we arrived at the camp and found that it was out of food and that all the tents were occupied. We stretched out our sleeping bags on the ground and went to bed supperless.

We had had no food all day. Next morning we were told that we ought to jump on an ammunition lorry if we wanted to go any further on our journey. Nobody seemed to want us particularly, and no one could give us the least information as to where our division was. It was another lesson, if that were needed, of our total unimportance. So these guys are looking to find where they're supposed to report to say they can go fight in the war. And people are like, hey, I got no time for you. Go figure it out. While we were raiding on the roadside, an Australian brigade of artillery passed by.

The men's faces were dreary with fatigue. The gunners were dismounted and marched as in a trance. The harness was muddy. the steel rusty the horses lean and discouraged we understood that they were pulling out from an offensive in which they had received a bad cutting up to my overstrained imagination it seemed that the men had the vision of death in their eyes towards the evening the thunder of the guns had swelled into an ominous roar we passed through villages disfigured by shell fire civilians became more rare and more more aged. Cattle disappeared utterly from the landscape. Fields were furrowed with abandoned trenches in front of which hung entanglements of wire. Mounted orderly splashed along sullen roads at an impatient trot. Here and there we came across improvised bea of acts of infantry. Far away against the horizon towards which we traveled, hun flares and rockets were

going up. Hopeless stoicism, unutterable desolation. That's was my first impression the landscape was getting increasingly muddy it became a sea of mud dispatch riders on motorbikes traveled warily their feet dragging to save themselves from falling everything was splashed with filth and corruption one marveled at the cleanliness of the sky trees were blasted and seemed to be sinking out of sight in this war-created slew of despondency we came to a brow of a hill and in the valley was something that I recognized. The last time I had seen it wasn't an etching in a shop window in Newark, New Jersey.

It was a town from the midst of whose battered ruins, a splintered tower soared against the sky. Leaning far out from the tower so that it seemed she must drop was a statue of the virgin with the Christ in her arms. It was a superstition with the French, and I remembered that so long as she did not fall, things would go well with the allies. As we watched, a shell screamed over the gaping roofs, and a column of smoke went up.

As we entered the streets, Tommy's more polluted than miners crept out from the skeletons of houses. They lent listlessly against sagging doorways to watch us pass. If we asked for information as to where our division was, they shook their heads stupidly, too indifferent with weariness to reply. for the next three nights we slept by our wits and got our food by foraging so we know i mean we know this is a world war one we know it's a night we know it's an absolute nightmare it's an absolute nightmare and it you know what was surprised me you know this guy's an officer and he has no idea what he's doing he's just walking around and people are so despondent from the war that they just

don't even care back to the book there was a headquarters near by whose battalion was in the line. I struck up liaison with its officers and at times went into the crowded tent, which was their mess to get warm. Runners would come there at all hours of day and night bringing messages from the front. They were usually well spent.

Sometimes they gassed, but they had, but they all had the invincible determination to carry on. After they delivered their message, they would lie down in the mud and go to sleep like dogs. the moment the reply was ready, they would lurch to their feet, throwing off their weariness, as if it were a thing to be conquered and despised.

Go ahead and read that one again. So these guys are dog-tired. They lay down in the mud. Somebody's preparing a reply for these messages. And then the moment the reply was ready, they would lurch to their feet, throwing off their weariness as though it were a thing to be conquered and despised.

I appreciate now as never before. appreciated now as never before the lesson of guts that I had been taught at Kingston. The other side of the town, the ravages of the war were far more marked. All the way along the roadside were clumps of little crosses. French, English, German, planted above the hurried graves of brave fellows who had fallen. Ambulances were picking their way wearily, turning with the last night's toll of wounded. We saw newly dead men and horses pulled to one sign who had been caught in the darkness by the enemy's harassing fire in places the country had holes the size of quarries where mines had exploded and shells from large caliber guns had detonated. Bedlam was raging up front. Shells went screaming over us, seeking out victims in the back country.

to have been there by oneself would have been most disturbing, but the men about me seemed to regard it as perfectly ordinary and normal. I steadied myself by their example. It's interesting because we're talking about this, and it sounds like hell, and they're not even in the front yet. They're not on the front lines. This is behind. That's something also we were talking about today.

Like, you can see these guys, whatever pain and suffering they're feeling, They're not showing it. And he knows he can't show it. And that kind of bolsters them all and makes them all stronger. Back to the book. About 7 o'clock as we were resting, the evening hate commenced. In those days, the evening hate was a regular habit with the hun. He knew our country better than we did, for he had retired from it.

every evening he used to search out all communication trenches and likely battery positions with any quantity of shells so seven o'clock at night the germans would just they knew all the positions because they had surrendered them so then they would just start dropping bombs dropping artillery on the known positions that they knew they knew of the trenches where they built them horrible his idea was to rob us of our morale. I wish he might have seen how abysmally he failed to do it. Down our narrow valley, like a flight of arrows, the shells screamed and whistles. Where they struck the ground looked like Resurrection Day,

with the dead elbowing their way into daylight and forcing back the earth from their eyes. There were actually many dead men just beneath the surface, And as the ground was plowed up, the smell of corruption became distinctly unpleasant. So these guys are buried. They're buried in, whatever, four or five feet of dirt. And these shells come in and dig them up. Presently, the shells began to go dud. So imagine this.

You're hearing these big explosions, then some shells hit and there's no explosion. You know what that means? It means it's gas. We realized that these. were gas shells a thin bluish vapor spread throughout the valley and breathing became oppressive then like stallions kicking in the stalls the heavy guns on the ridge above us opened up so now the friendly guns start to open up it was fine to hear them stamping their defiance it made one want to get grips with his aggressors in the brief silence as one could hear our chaps laughing so i want you to

imagine this this is awesome you're getting shelled You're getting crushed. There's dead bodies coming up from the soil. There's gas in the air. And here we go. In the brief silences, one could hear our chaps laughing. The dangers seemed to fill them with a wild excitement. Every time a shell came near them and missed,

they would taunt the unseen huns for their poor gunnery, giving what they considered necessary correction. five minutes more left old cock if you'd only drop 50 you'd get us so he's given corrections to the guns these men didn't know what fear was or if they did they kept it to themselves and these were the chaps whom i was to order so we haven't heard too much about that and you know tony's tony and layf talked about it you know being being get shot at and being it really close calls situations and like everyone's laughing and it's it does happen world war one don't hear much about it but here you go unbelievable and that's part of the way that military that you do not just

military but any bad you get a bad situation you know a little humor goes a long a long way a little humor goes a long way back to the book we entered a trench and this is by the way this is i'm obviously not reading the entire book i'm going to some highlights so there's a little bit of skip you know time here as they as they move towards more towards the front back to the book we entered a trench holes were scooped out in the side of it just large enough to shelter a man crouching each hole contained a sleeping soldier who looked as dead as the occupant occupant of a catacomb some of the holes had been blown in all you saw of the late occupant was a protruding arm or leg. At best there was a horrid similarity between the dead and the living. It seemed that the

walls of the trenches had been built out of corpses. For one, recognize the uniforms of French and the Huns. So you're in this trenches, and you're protected somewhat, but you've got to dig another hole into the wall of the trench. And some of those guys get buried and killed, and the bodies are just there. really i mean talk about hell you know hell back to the book the enemy shelling was growing more intense as was always the way on the soam so we're there at the song the bowel psalm when we were bringing in our when we were bringing out our wounded a good many of our trenches were directly on philade and if you don't know what that is enfilade is like if you can imagine a line of people

and you were shooting down the line of people and how much more exposed you are in that situation. So picture if I told you to shoot some of these tin cans and I lined them up in a straight line perpendicular to you, you'd have to aim at each individual one and you might hit it, you might not. If we put them all in a big line where they're parallel to you

or they go down the same gun target line that you have, you can, if you hit one, you might hit two, you might hit three, you might hit all of them with one shot. And so this is a bad situation to be in You never want to have the enemy They're basically on your flank and you're lined up for them to shoot at you It's a nightmare Shels burst just behind the parapet

When they didn't burst on it When they didn't burst on it It was about this point in my breaking in That I received a blow to the head And thank God for the man who invented the steel helmet So he's getting hit with some shrapnel Night came down And we found that our carriage had no

lights. It must have been nearing dawn when I was away and again I'm I skipped a little bit but here here we are obviously he's in a carriage it must have been nearing dawn when I was awakened by the distant thunder of guns I crouched in my corner cold and cramped trying to visualize the terror of it I asked myself whether I was afraid not of death I told myself but of being afraid yes most horribly he was most horribly afraid not of death or being wounded he was afraid of being afraid yeah this first experience in no man's land did away with my last flabby fear that if I was afraid I would show it one is often afraid any soldier who was searched the contrary may not be a liar but he

certainly does not speak the truth physical fear is too deeply rooted to be overcome by any amount of training it remains then to train a man in spiritual pride so that when he fears nobody knows it cowardice is contagious it has been said that no battalion is braver than its least brave member military courage therefore is a form of unselfishness courage is a form of unselfishness. It is practiced that it may save the weaker men's lives and uphold their honor. The worst thing you can say of a man out on the front is he doesn't play the game. That doesn't of necessity mean he fails to do his duty. Listen to this. That doesn't mean he fails to do his duty. What it means is that he fails to do a bit more than his duty.

When a man plays the game, he does things which it requires a braver man than himself to accomplish he never knows when he's done he acknowledges no limit to his cheerfulness and strength whatever his rank he holds his life less valuable than that of the humblest he laughs at danger not because he does not dread it but because he has learned that there are ailments more terrible and less curable than death ailments more terrible and less curable than death and that ailment is cowardice until I became a part of the war I was a doubter of the nobility and others and a skeptic as regards to myself the growth of my personal vision was complete when I recognized

that the capacity of heroism is latent in everybody and only awaits the bigness of the opportunity to call it out different take different take and and obviously you know uh we've talked about world war one and unless i mean obviously he's not the only person that felt this way about things and if he if this wasn't at least a a fairly normal attitude to have there's no way that world war one could have continued on the way it did because people would have been saying no this is ridiculous ridiculous we just lost another 80,000 casualties we lost another hundred these these are battles where tens of thousands of people or casualties in one day and two days so if people didn't have this kind of attitude that this was their duty they

wouldn't have been able to maintain that type of that type of pace and I don't even know whether to say I'm impressed by that or disgusted by it or disturbed I didn't even not disgusted but disturbed by it disturbed by it and I'd say all the time you know this is the war that I I would not want to fight it

wouldn't want to fight it because this is the attitude is okay your duty is to go get killed when we call and it doesn't matter how good I say it's all time it doesn't matter how good your tactics are doesn't matter how good of a shooter you are doesn't matter how good of a leader you are because when we say go you're going to get your troops you're going to do what we say you're going to go over the top and you're going to charge machine guns and guys are going to get mowed down now he goes into a little bit more about some of the battle back to the book all this april high above the shouting of the

guns are larks the larks saying joyously the scarlet of the poppies the song of the larks The lamp shining on the altar are the only external signs of the unconquerable, happy religion which lies in the hearts of our men. Their religion is the religion of heroism, which they have learned in the glory of the trenches. There was a line from William Morris's earthly paradise, which is like a long epic poem. It's almost like a novel,

which used to haunt me, especially in the early days when I was first experiencing what war really meant. It reads as follows, of heaven or hell, I have no power to sing. I cannot ease the burden of your fears or make quick coming death a little thing. It's the last line that makes me smile rather quietly, or make quick coming death a little thing. I smile because the souls who wear khaki have learned to do just that. These guys, this fear of death that people have and this poem that says, hey, you can't make quick death, quick coming death, you can't make that into a little thing. It's going to be huge and ominous. Guess what? These guys are

okay with it. Back to the book. How typical he is of the days before the war when the people had only pinpricks to endure and consequently didn't exert themselves to be brave. A big sacrifice which bankrupts one's life is always more bearable than the little inevitable annoyances of sickness, disappointment, and dying in a bed. The burden of our fears has slipped from our shoulders in our attempt to do something for others. The unbelievable and long-covened miracle has happened at last to every soul who has grasped his chance of heroism, quick-coming death has become a fifth-rate calamity.

Think about that. Quick-coming death? Yeah, you're whatever. Whatever. You're no big deal to me. You're a fifth-rate calamity. Back to the book. In saying this, I do not mean to glorify war.

war can never be anything but beastly and damnable it date back it dates back to the jungle but there are two kinds of war there's the kind that a highwayman wages when he pounces from the bushes and assaults a defenseless woman then there's also the kind where you wage when you go to rescue her the highway man can't expect to come out of that fight with a loftier morality but you can our chaps never wanted to fight they hate fighting it's that hatred of the thing they are compelled to do that makes them so terrible he goes back and he's talking now about that wooden figure of christ that he had seen the wooden christ gazed down from them on his cross with a suffering which two thousand years ago he had shared

The terrible pity of his silence seemed to be telling them that they had become one with him in their final sacrifice. They hadn't lived his life far from it, but unknowingly they had died his death. That's a part of the glory of the trenches that a man who has not been good can crucify himself and hang beside Christ in the end. So you go out on the battlefield? and you sacrifice your life you will you're your your all of your sins are gone you're washed away and you you hang beside christ in the end god as we see him and do we see him i think so but not always consciously he moves among us in the forms of our brother men we see him most evidently when danger is most threatening and courage is at its highest we often don't recognize him

loud our chaps don't assert that they're his fellow campaigners they're too humble-minded and inarticulate for that so he's saying God's all around us I see it in the guys they're there they're his campaigners but but they don't even they don't say that they don't say we're doing the work of God they don't say we're living like God or we're living like Jesus Christ no they're too humble-minded and inarticulate for that they're where they are because they want to do their bit their duty. A carefully disguised instinct of honor brought them there.

Doing their bit in Bible language means laying down their lives for their friends. Doing their bit. That covers everything. Here's an example of how God walks among us. In one of our attacks on the Psalm, all the observers up forward were uncertain as to what it happened. We didn't know whether our infantry had captured their objective, failed, or gone beyond it. The battlefield, as far as the eye could reach, was a bath of mud. It is extremely easy in the excitement of an offensive when all landmarks are blotted out for our storming parties to

lose their direction. If this happens, a number of dangers may result. A battalion may find itself up in the air, which means that it failed to connect with the battalions on its left and right. Its flanks are then exposed to the enemy. It may advance too far and start digging itself in at a point where it was previously arranged that our artillery should place their protective wall of fire. We, being forward artillery observers, are the eyes of the army. It is our business to watch for such contingencies to keep in touch with the situation as it progresses and to send our information back as quickly as possible.

We were peering through our glasses from our point of vantage when, far away in the thickest of the battle smoke, we saw a white flag waving, sending back messages. The flag waving was repeatedly desperate. It was evident that no one had replied and probable that no one had picked up the messages. A signal who was with us read the language for us. A company of infantry had advanced too far. they were most of them wounded. Very many of them dead and were in danger of being surrounded. They asked for our artillery to place a curtain of fire in front of them

and for reinforcements to be sent up. So they're in their trench. They're the artillery guys. They're looking out. They see flag, which is one of the methodologies they had for signaling and communicating you do these different signals. You could spell out words. And so they're getting a signal back from this group that they might get surrounded.

We need some artillery support in here. We at once phoned the orders through to our artillery and notified the infantry headquarters of the division that was holding the front. But it was necessary to let those chaps know that we were aware of their predicament. They'd hang on if they knew that. Otherwise, without orders, our signaler was getting his flags ready. He hopped out onto the trench. He hopped out of the trench and onto the parapet. He didn't stand a 50-50 chance.

The Hun was familiar with our observation station and strafed it with persistent regularity. The signal or turned to the senior officer present. What shall I send them? Tell them their messages have been received and that help is coming. Out the chap scrambled. A flag in either hand. He was nothing but a boy. He ran crouching like a rabbit to a hump of mud where his figure would show up against the sky.

His flags commenced to waving. messages received help coming they didn't see him at first he had to repeat the words we watched him breathlessly we knew what would happen at last it did happen a hon observer had spotted him and flashed the target back to his guns all about him the mud commenced to leap up and bubble he went on signaling the good word to those stranded men up front message received help coming At least they'd seen him. They were signaling OK. It was at that moment that a whiz-bang lifted him off his feet and landed him all of a huddle.

His bit. It was what he'd volunteered to do when he came from Canada. The signal OK in the battle smoke was like a testimony to his character. So like I said, this had to be a common attitude. just hard for us to understand this. It's hard for me that was in the military for 20 years to understand this attitude that you know what it's your time to die now step up and go past this signaling back to them and I'm not saying that you know modern military guys don't take risks obviously take enormous risks and we've got taken drastic casualties but it is this is definitely

a different mentality there's no doubt about it I mean obviously it's a different mentality when you're losing millions of men, millions of men. Back to the book, and this is fast forward a little bit to kind of just giving a little more insight about what their outlook was. Out there in France, we used to tell each other fairy tales of how we would spend the first year of life when the war was ended. One man had a baby he would never see. another girl whom he was anxious to marry my dream was more prosaic but no less ecstatic it began and ended with a large white bed and a large white bath

for the first 365 mornings after peace had been declared i was to be awakened by the sound of my bath being filled water was to be so plentiful that i could tumble off to sleep again without even trouble to turn off the tap. In France, one has to go dirty so often that the dream of always being clean seems as unrealizable as romance. Our drinking water is frequently brought up to us at the risk of men's lives, carried through the mud and petrol cans strapped to pack horses. To use it carelessly would be like washing in men's blood. And here's another little paragraph about, again, giving me a little paragraph about, again,

some more insight. You wouldn't think that the men who would go to war to learn how to be kind, but they do. There's no kinder creature in the whole wide world than the average Tommy. He makes a friend of any stray animal he can find. He shares his last Frank with a chap who isn't his pal. He risks his life to die inconsequently to rescue anyone who's wounded. He's gone over the top with the bomb and bayonet for the express purposes. of doing in the hun

But he makes a comrade of the fritzy he captures You'll see him coming down the battered trenches with some scarred lad of a German at his side Now he as I said in the beginning of this we he gets wounded and at this point He's been wounded and now he's Heading to Blighty which we talked about this before on the podcast but blighty was slaying For going back to England Back to the book never in a my never in all my fortnight's journey to blighty did I hear a word of self-pity or complaining so he's

going with a bunch of wounded people he's not hearing any complaining on the contrary the most severely wounded men would profess themselves grateful that they had gotten off so lightly since the war started the term lightly has become exceedingly comparative i suppose a man is justified in saying he's got off lightly when what he expected was death i remember a big highland off who'd been shot in the kneecap. He'd been operated on and the kneecap had been found to be so splintered it had to be removed. Of this, he was unaware. For the first day as he lay in bed, he kept wondering aloud how long it would be before he could rejoin his battalion.

Perhaps he suspected his condition and was trying to find out. All his heart seemed said at once on getting back into the fighting. Next morning, he plucked up the courage to ask the doctor and received the answer he had dreaded. Never. You won't be going back, old chap. Next time he spoke, his voice was a bit throaty. Will it stiffen? You've lost the knee joint, the doctor said.

But with luck, we'll save the leg. His voice sank to a whisper. If you do, it won't be much good, will it? Not much, said the doctor. He lay for a couple hours silent, readjusting his mind to meet the new conditions. Then he commenced talking with cheerfulness about returning to his family. The habit of courage had conquered. The habit of courage which grows out of the knowledge that you let your pals down by showing cowardice.

So, took him a couple hours to adjust. Said, okay. Looks like I get to go back to my family. now we have another type of casualty here talking about men that have had major disfigurements to their faces and they they would wrap their whole faces up back to the book in these days that followed I saw several of these masked men the worst cases were not allowed to walk about the ones I saw were invariably dressed with the most scrupulous care in the smartest uniforms Sam Brown's that's the belt that goes over your shoulder polished buttons

shining they had hope and took a pride in themselves a splendid sign perhaps you ask why the faces kept the face cases should be kept in France so they the guys that had major facial disfigurement they would stay in France I was not told, but I can guess, because they dread going back to England to their girls until they had got rid of their disfigurements. So for two years, through their bandages, they watched the train pull out for Blighty, while the damage which was done to them in a fragment of a second is repaired. At a base hospital, you see something which you don't see at casualty stations, sisters, mothers, sweethearts, and wives sitting beside the beds. they're allowed to come over from England when their man is dying one of the wonderful things to me was to observe how these women in the hour of their

tragedy catch this soldier spirit they're very quiet very cheerful very helpful while passing through the ward they get to know some of the other patients and remember them when they bring their own man flowers sometimes when their own man is asleep they slip over to other beds and do something kind for the solitary fellows. That's the army all over. Military discipline is based on unselfishness.

These women who have been sent to see their men die catch from them the spirit of undistressed sacrificed and enroll themselves as soldiers. You discover the spirit of the man when you've heard him wandering in delirium. So he's talking a little bit of about. about the, obviously, guys that are suffering from shell shock is what they call it, what they used to call it in World War I, guys that are having some mental issues.

All night in the shadowy ward with its hooded lamps, he would be giving orders for the comfort of his men. Sometimes he'd be proposing to go forward himself to a place where a company was having at hot time. Apparently, one of his officers was trying to dissuade him. Danger be damned, he'd exclaim in a wonderfully strong voice. It'll buck them up to see me. Splendid chaps. Splendid chaps.

For the soldier, it seems that the war has always been and that they will never cease to being soldiers. For them, both the past and the future are utterly obliterated. They would not have it otherwise. Because they are doing their duty, they are contented. The only time the subject has ever touched on is when someone expresses the hope that it'll last long enough for them to recover from his wounds and get back to the line that usually starts another man who will never be any good

never be any more good for the trenches wondering whether he can get into the flying core the one ultimate hope of all these shattered wrecks who are being hurried to blighty they have dreamt of is that they may see service again We still hear that. We still hear that to this day. We still hear that. And I heard that. I talked about hearing that from Ryan Job, who was blind and he's back in America.

He's like, let me come back. My first guy that I ever had to get wounded bad. And I went to see him in the medical outstation. And I just went down to, like, shake his hand. And he was on morphine. You know, he'd been shot the leg. He didn't know if he's going to lose his leg or not. And, like, I went down and gave, you know, I, like, went to shake his hand.

And he, and he pulled me in. And he's like, let me stay. And I was just like, you, man, what an awesome brother right there. So this is not rare. This still happens. And, you know, you hear this all the time. And you know what? There's guys in the U.S. military that go back to combat with, you know, one leg, with one hand.

I mean, even Jody was like talking about, you know, when he woke up and found Jody Middick, who he did the podcast with, when he woke up and he found out that they took both of his legs, he was pissed. Because one leg, you can still go back on deployment, but two legs, you can't do it. So Jody, the badass was just like, no, look, how am I going to go back now? Yeah, yeah. Some of us will be back in the fighting and jolly glad of it. Others are doomed to remain in the trenches for the rest of their lives not the trenches of the front line Where they've been strafed by the hun but the trenches of physical curtailment where self-pity will launch wave after wave of attack against them It won't be easy

Not to get the wind up It'll be difficult to maintain normal cheerfulness But they're not the men they were before they went to war out there they've learned something their game they'll remain soldiers whatever happens so he's talking about these guys that aren't going to be able to make it back and he's saying they're it's going to be hard for him but he's saying that they're game and they're going to bring it because they're going to remain soldiers regardless of what happens now this is a pretty interesting piece

where he goes back to New York where like I said he had spent some time there and he's talking a little bit about what it's like in New York He says there's one person I've missed since my return to New York I've caught glimpses of him disappearing around corners, but he dodges I think he's a bit of shame to meet me That person is my old civilian self What a full-blownie egoist he used to be how full of golden plans for his own advancement how terrified of failure of disease of money losses of death of all the temporary external non-essential

things that have nothing to do with the spirit war in itself is damnable it's a extravagant wasteful use of resources a misuseuse of accumulated brain stuff of centuries. Nevertheless, there's many a man who has no love of war, who previous to the war had cramped his soul with littleness, and was chased by the bayonet of duty into the blood-stained largeness of the trenches, who has learnt to say, thank God for this war. He thanks God not because of the carnage,

but because when the wine press of new ideals was being trodden he was born in an age where he could do his share often at the front i have thought of christ's explanation of his own unassailable peace an explanation given to his disciples at the last supper be of good cheer i have overcome the world overcoming the world as i understand it is overcoming fear fear in its final analysis is nothing but selfishness. A man who is afraid in the attack isn't thinking of his pals, of his pals and how quickly terror spreads. He isn't thinking of the glory which will accrue to his regiment or division if the attack is a success. He isn't thinking of what he can do to contribute to that success. He isn't thinking of the splendor of forcing his spirit to triumph over weariness. over-weariness and nerves and the abominations that the huns are chucking at him He's merely thinking of how he can save his worthless skin and conduct his

entirely unimportant body to a place where there aren't any shells in London as I saw the work-a-day unconscious nobility of the maimed and wounded the words I have have overcome the world took an added depth all these men have I have overcome the world look in their faces it is comparatively easy for a soldier with traditions and ideals to get back to face death calmly to be calm in the face of life as these chaps are takes graver courage what has happened to them this attitude of mind or greatness of soul whatever you like to call it was learnt in the trenches where everything outward is polluted and damnable their experience at the front has given

them what in the army language is known as guts guts or courage is an attitude of mind towards calamity an attitude of mind which makes the honorable accomplishing of duty more permanently satisfying than the preservation of self. Like I said, when I kick this off, this is a different, it's a powerful angle to look at these things. And I've talked about this as well. And I don't know for you, Sam Harris asked me, you know, I was saying that, hey, war shows you a lot of beauty and it's where you get to see these incredible capacity of humanity. And he said, yeah, you know, you say that, but I've also heard you describe war as horrible. And, you know, I kind of gave him an answer about,

I asked him, I said, hey, if, have you ever known anything that survived cancer? And he said, yes. And I'm like, yeah. And when they survive it, a lot of them say it opened my mind. It freed me from being afraid and it did all these wonderful things. And I'm not, I would never wish it on anybody, but they don't, they don't wish that it didn't happen either. They learned so much from it. And that's how I feel about war.

And that's kind of what I read in a lot of this. is Dawson saying, look, you are so changed by this. And regardless of the horrors, the change is positive. And it opens your eyes in a way that nothing else can. Back to the book.

That's the kind of peep at God we got on the Western front. It isn't a sad peep either. When men die for something worthwhile, death loses all its terror. It's petering out in bed. from sickness or old age that's so horrifying. Many a man whose cowardice is at loggerheads

with his sense of duty comes to the front as a non-combatant. He compromises with his conscience and takes a bomb-proof job in some service whose place is well behind the lines. So he's saying like, okay, a lot of guys, they're like, hey, you know what I'm kind of scared. I just want to, you know, just give me an easy job.

Just, you know, I don't want to get killed. Back to the book, doesn't stop there long if he's a decent sort having learnt more than he ever guessed before about the brutal things that shellfire can do to you he transfers into a fighting unit why because danger doesn't appall it allures it holds a challenge it stings one's pride it urges one to seek out ascending scales of risk just to prove to himself he isn't flabby and flabby is actually another word that I looked up there's an old kind of capture what the real meaning is and there's the definition another

definition is lacking strength or determination now this is this is classic the safe job is the only job for which there's no competition in fighting units you have to persuade men to be grooms or cooks or batmen if you're seeking volunteers for a chance at annihilation you'll have to cast lots to avoid the offense of rejecting all of this is inexplicable to civilians and again this is something I saw with my own two eyes and I talked about this in my retirement speech in Ramadi where I was like okay we need volunteers who wants to go over and live in this hellhole in eastern Ramadi and go out on operations where we're going to be taking casualties,

it's going to be a nightmare, and I can promise you nothing but blood, sweat, and tears. If you want to go on that, if you want to go there, not for one operation, but I'm going to put you there for six months. So, you know, if you want that, put your name on the board. Every single guy does it. Every single guy does it. And that's exactly what he's talking about here. As a matter of fact, I hooked up with this trooper down in New Zealand,

Jiu-Jitsu player and We were talking to you he was in the using the row in the commandos in the Royal Marine commandos 40 commando and He was gonna get moved to being a cook for his go four-year duty as a cook is what he was gonna get tasked with And he got out got out of the Marines got out of the Royal Marines because you know what? He said I'm not gonna be a cook You know I'm a warrior I want to go and get after it so it's like you see a that in this modern day you know I'm talking about how different it was back then but maybe it

wasn't as different as I think it is yeah because we still got troopers that are just willing to step up all the time and that's that's one thing that's awesome you know what again from my experience in the in the in the seal teams you know when I went it went in there was no war going on I kind of thought that there was but there wasn't but these guys these kids that come in now they know where they're going on they know there's a war going on they know they're going to get after it and they're lining up. I know, man. It's crazy how many people I see their reason to join is to go fight these bad guys.

It's not because I don't have anything better to do or not. It's like, no, I want to quit my job and go fight. Yeah. There's no doubt about it. No doubt about it. Now, I like this because we start hammering on some philosophers a little bit. No offense to Darryl Cooper and Margar made because he's a big philosophy guy. I know where you're at, Cooper.

I'm going to agree with Dawson on this one. So here we go. Back to the book. If civilian philosophers fail to explain us, we can explain them. In their world, they are the center of their universe. They look inward instead of outward. The sun rises and sets to minister to their particular happiness. If they die, the stars would vanish.

We understand. A few months ago, we too were like that. What makes us reckless of death is our intense gratitude that we have altered. We want to prove ourselves in excess how utterly changed we are from what we were. in his secret heart the egoist is a self-despizer can you imagine what a difference it works in a man after years of self-contempt at least for one brief moment to approve of himself ever since we can remember we are chained to the prison house of our bodies we live to feed our bodies to clothe our bodies to preserve our bodies to minister to their passions.

Now we know that our bodies are mere flimsy shells in which our souls are paramount. We can fling them aside any minute. They become ignoble the moment the soul has departed. We have proof. Often, at zero hour, we have seen whole populations of cities go over the top and vanish. leaving behind their bloody rags.

We should go mad if we did not believe in immortality. We know that the physical is not the essential part. How better can a man shake off his flesh than at the hour when his spirit is most shining? The exact day when he dies does not matter. Tomorrow or 50 years hence. The vital concern is not when. civilian philosopher considers what we've lost. He forgets

that it could never have been ours for long. Giving up the self. There's some Zen, and I'm no Buddhist monk, but there's a lot of Zen philosophy in there, too. You're completely surrendering yourself. Yeah. And that's a powerful, powerful thing. You look like you really like that last part there.

It's heavy stuff. And here he kind of goes down, the same vein because he's comparing civilian life and he just was talking about civilian philosophers and now he's going to go into just talking about the civilian even even how how civilians spend their life and how he used to spend his life so here we go back to the book we probably caught a train every morning the same train we went to a business where we sat at a desk neither the business nor the desk ever altered. We received the same strafing from the same employer,

or if we were the employer, we administered the same strafing. We only did these things that we might eat bread. Our dreams were all selfish. Of more clothes, more respect, more food, bigger houses. the least part of the day we devote to the people and the things we really cared for. And the people we loved, we weren't always even nice to them. And then he breaks and he goes into what it is being a soldier. He says being a soldier is doing a man's job,

doing it for someone else and unafraid to meet God. And now he's about to go in and discuss where this comes from. Nevertheless, it is true. It isn't natural to be brave. How then have multitudes of men acquired this sudden knack of courage? They have acquired it through discipline and training. When you have subjected yourself to discipline, you cease to think of yourself. You are not you, but part of a company of men.

if you don't do your duty you throw the whole machine out you soon learn the hard lesson that every man's life and every man's service belongs to other people of this the organization of an army is a vivid illustration take the infantry for instance they can't fight by themselves they're dependent on the support of the artillery the artillery in turn would be terribly crippled were it not for the gallantry of the air service if the infantry collapse the guns have to go back if the infantry advanced the guns have to be pulled forward this close interdependence of service on service division on division battalion on battery follows right down

through the army till it reaches the individual so that each man feels that the day will be lost if he fails his imagination becomes intrigued by the immensity of the stakes for which he plays any physical calamity which may happen to himself becomes trifling when compared with the disgrace he would bring upon his regiment if he were not courageous now i'm about to read a piece that's it's just a story he tells it's a story within a story and we'll go right to it a few months ago i was handling over i was handing over a battery position in a fairly warm place the major who came up to take over from me brought with him a subaltern and just enough men to run the guns within a half an hour of their arrival a stray shell came in and caught the subaltern and five of the gun detachment it was plain at once that the subaltern was dying his name must have been

written on the shell as we say in France we got a stretcher and made all haste to rush him out to a dressing station just as he was leaving he asked to speak with his major i'm sorry sir i didn't mean to get wounded he whispered the last word he sent back from the dressing station where he died was tell the major i didn't mean to do it that's the discipline he didn't think of himself all he thought of was that his major would be left short-handed and he's about to tell another story that is well I'm just going to read it last spring

the night before an attack a man was brought into battalion headquarters dugout under arrest the colonel and the adjutant were busy attending the last details of their preparations the adjutant looked up irritably what is it

the NCO of the guard answered we found this man sir in a communication trench his company has been in the front line for two hours he was sitting down with his equipment thrown away and evidently has no intention of going up the adjutant glanced coldly at the prisoner what of you to say for yourself so you understand this so there's a they found this soldier he was his troops were up been fighting on the front line for two hours. They find him. He's got his radio strewn about and they say, are you going to go? Fight with your men? And he says he's not going to go. So the adjutant glanced coldly at the prisoner.

What have you to say for yourself? The man was ghastly white and shaking like an aspen. Sir, I'm not the man I was since I saw my best friend Jimmy with his head blown off and lying in his hands. It's kind of got me. I can't face up to it. The adjutant was silent for a few seconds. Then he said, you have a double choice. You can either be shot up there doing your duty or behind the lines as a coward. It's for you to choose. I don't care.

The interview was ended. He turned again to the colonel. The man slowly straightened himself, saluted like a soldier, and marched out alone to the front. that's what discipline does for a man who's going back on himself and like I said I'm not even I'm not even sure how I feel about that story I actually don't know you know you got a guy and you know Hackworth talks about this Dick Winners talked about this where you get guys that they're broken and you got to give them a break and you know what had this guy been through God only knows you know obviously saw his friend get killed I'm sure he was near death over and over again

And The colonel just says you either get out there and die or you die back here as a coward It's it's You know I'm kind of There's like a part of me that is that that is filled with admiration because the guy obviously overcomes his fears and there's also a part of me that's a part of me that's filled with admiration Because the guy obviously overcomes his fears and there's also a part of me that's filled with horror because he overcomes his fears and to give that to give that final order and for the soldier to give that final salute it's just all of it the bravery and at the same time the

callousness and at the same time the fear and at the same time the courage and the dedication to duty and yet it's dedication to madness And again, it's a window into human nature. And what people go through and what people will do and won't do and what it takes to get them there. One of the big influences that helps keep a soldier's soul sanitary is what's known in the British Army as spit and polish. Directly, we pull out for rest, we start to working, burnishing and washing.

The chaps may have shown the most brilliant courage and self-sacrificing endurance. It counts for nothing if they're untidy. The first morning, no matter what are the weather conditions, we hold an inspection. Every man has to show up with his chin-shaved, haircut, leather polished, and buttons shining. If he doesn't, he gets hell. So, I mean, clearly we've talked about this since day one. The discipline and maintaining the discipline. These guys coming off the front lines from the trenches.

All right, cool. Tomorrow morning we're having inspections. So get your gear together and polish your boots. Back to the book, there's a lot in it. You bring a man out from a tight corner where he's been in hourly contact with death. He's apt to think, what's the use in taking pride of myself? I'm likely to be done in any day. It'll all be the same if I'm dead.

But if he doesn't keep clean in his body, he won't keep clean in his mind. The man who has his buttons shining brightly and his leather polished is usually the man who is brightly polished on the inside. Spit and polish teaches a man to come out of the trenches from seeing his pales killed and carry on as though nothing abnormal had happened. It educates him in an impersonal attitude towards calamity which makes it bearable. It forces him not to regard it. anything too tragically if you can stand aside from yourself and poke fun at your own tragedy and tragedy always has its humorous aspects that helps we were sometimes we were in the somme for several months the mud was up to our knees almost all the time we were

perishingly cold and very rarely dry there was no natural cover when we went up forward to observe we would stand in water to our knees for 24 hours rather than go into the dugouts They were so filled with vermin and batten flies. Wounded and strayed men often drowned on their journey back from the front line. Many of the dead never got buried. Lives couldn't be risked in carrying them out. We were so weary that the sight of those who rested forever only stirred in us a quiet envy. Our emotions were too exhausted for hatred.

They usually are unless some new hunnishness had roused them. when we were having a bad time we'd glance across no man's land and say poor old fritzy he's getting the worst of it that thought helps and this is a piece where he talks about when somebody's not holding the line when somebody's a quitter when you come to consider it a quitter is always a selfish man it's selfishness that makes a man a coward or deser if he's in a dangerous place and runs away all he's doing is thinking of himself. And he goes on to say here,

I've been supposed to have been talking about God as we see him. I don't know whether I have. As a matter of fact, if you asked me when I was out there whether there was any religion in the trenches, I should have replied certainly not. Now that I've been out of the fighting for a while, I see that there is religion there,

a religion which will dominate the world when the war has ended, the religion of heroism. It's a religion in which men don't pray much. With me, before I went to the front, prayer was a habit. Out there, I lost the habit. What one was doing seemed sufficient. I got the feeling that I might be meeting God at any moment,

so I didn't need to be worrying him all the time, hanging on to spiritual telephone and feeling slighted if he didn't answer me directly when I ran. him up. If God was really interested in me, he didn't need constant reminding. When he had a world to manage, it seemed best not to interrupt him with frivolous petitions, but to put my prayers into my work. That's how we all feel out there. I've learned discipline and my own total unimportance. In the Army, discipline gets possession of your soul. You learn to suppress yourself. to obey implicitly to think of others before yourself you learn to jump at an order to forsake

your own convenience at any hour of the day or night to go forward on the most lonely and dangerous errands without complaining you learn to feel that there is only one thing that counts in life and only one thing you can make out of it the spirit you have developed in encountering difficulties your body nothing it can be smashed in a minute how frail it is you never realize until you've seen men smashed so you learn to tolerate the body to despise death and to place all your alliance on courage which when is found at its best is the power to endure for the sake of others closing out here the religion of the religion of the trenches is not a religion which analyzes God with impertinent speculation so so in this religion in the

trenches God is not standing in some kind of authoritarian judgment it isn't a religion which takes up much of his time it's a religion which teaches men to carry on stoutly and to say i've tried to do my bit as best i know how that's The simple religion of the trenches as I have learnt it. A religion not without glory. To carry on as bravely as you know how and to trust God without worrying him. And the last line I'll read from the glory of the trenches.

Dawson says, it's funny. You go away to the most damnable undertaking ever invented. And you come back cleaner. spirit again I will tell you that from my perspective and from what I've been through which by the way I want to say that what I've been through in my military career is absolutely nothing nothing compared to what a soldier in a World War I lived through but what I did go through I will say this I don't think war took anything away from me or impacted me in a negative way.

I think war made me better. I think war made me a better man, a better person. And in the words of Dawson, I think it absolutely cleaned my spirit. And I am thankful for that. And I guess that the question becomes, how can we clean our spirits without war? How can we do that?

And I think the answer again, and this is something that I, something that I think, is that it comes from discipline. That's what I talk about all the time. It's about setting aside comfort, setting aside weakness, setting aside fear, and having the discipline to endure, endure the challenges and the hardship and the pain in order to become better. to suffer the glory of the discipline to become stronger and faster and smarter and and and now from a leadership perspective is to then put put others before yourself

to try and do some good in the world for others to lead them down the right path not not for you but for them and while war certainly taught me those things and ingrained those things into my mind if they weren't already there i don't think you need to go to war to learn them but i do think that you have to discipline yourself and you have to get outside your comfort zone and you have to push yourself beyond what you thought you could ever do to get Heavy one. And again, thanks to Jesse for sending me this book. Outstanding old copy printed in 1918.

And I actually typed it all out so I didn't have to mess up this beautiful book. I learned a lot from it. So I appreciate it. And Echo Charles. Hi. Save me and talk. talk about something more light for instance yeah but like for instance people just listen to this and maybe they want to listen to more of it sure how could they help that occur in the world

help move that process along yeah we could or we could just talk about jaco white tea for like 10 minutes we could definitely talk about jocco i wasn't really that into oh actually i was i'm into tea every once in a while i actually noticed that a lot of the tea from the office is now missing. But you know how like you're like, oh, you know, it's a mellow night.

I should just call it and go to bed or something. Then I'd make like, you know, what's the, the mellow one? Camomile, whatever.

Yeah, I'm not into tea, like I said. So I was like, all right, well, hey, you know,

Jocko tea. It's cool. I'm cool. Yeah. How's that working out when you're trying to go to sleep? No, I didn't,

it was like a random Saturday. Uh-huh. And I was like, Hey, I'm going to do like how you do, put it on ice and see if I can't get my refresh on, you know, outside or whatever. And so I put it in, I put in this tint, oh, it was nice, man. I was like, ooh, I think I might be into tea a little bit. Sarah comes out. She has hers, too.

It was nice. It was cool, man. We are going through it very quickly because my whole family is getting after it right now, my younger kids. But, yeah, and you know what's awesome? I don't know if you've gone, go on to Amazon. and read the reviews that people are writing. I'm actually going to have to bring out some of those and read them. Because they're awesome.

They're funny as hell and they're great. So everyone that's writing reviews for Jocko Tea, Jock White Tea, I appreciate it. It's awesome. And gotten a lot of good feedback as well about, you know, everyone likes it. It tastes great and it makes you feel real good. It makes you feel it's a little glory, a little glory. a cup. A little goring up iced tea. So I was looking

over like the instructions. So let me, just in case you don't read the instructions, I think they're pretty straightforward. I think if you've ever had tea, people know. But if you took the time to read the instructions, this is what you would read. Brewing instructions. Boil 8 ounces of the water.

Pour water over one bag of Jock white tea. Brewed for 3 to 5 minutes. Enjoy over or enjoy hot or over ice. Get after it. So get after it is part of the instructions And what's funny is people are are it's real like you will really like have to get after it When you get done and so that's what that's what's funny is people are saying

It's real it's real. There's some real stuff in there and when you get it in your brain You'll be like oh I'm gonna go knock out some projects maybe do a little Metcon Maybe go get on the mat whatever you know it's just good or I might just cruise by the pool no we don't do that that's not getting after that that makes one of us I was getting after it in the pool how about that well I guess I're approved approved yeah no it's good man I'm um like I said I'm it may be even more into tea because there's like you it's like you get into well I did I'm not going to say this is what happens but I'm saying you're like okay I like this tea I like the brand you know so you and then you appreciate the

experience when when it goes down you know you're more familiar with it now Now when I see people drinking tea, I'm like, yeah, I can dig it. Yeah, and some people have been like, well, some people emailed and said, well, is it really like Jocko made this tea? I'm like, yeah, yeah. I went through, it took like, it took a few months to make. Because they kept, I'd send back, oh, no, make it a little bit more of this, a little bit less of that. And eventually, when I got the, the right combination, dang, then it was, okay. And they're like, okay, well, for marketing, what do you want to do?

And I go, oh, it's, oh, here's the marketing. I'm, I'm Mr. Marketing over here. Put it in a black box. Oh, what should we call it? Oh, I think of a good original title. Jocko T. How's that? Okay, so we got Jock O.T.

Good. There it is. And that's my marketing strategy. Hey, hey, man. No, I like it. I want you to do is maybe hire a marketing company to come in and do an assessment of our customers. Guess what? Our customers are out to kick ass.

They don't want all this crap. They want something that's going to make them crush the world. And so there you go. We don't need to put any, you know, images of whatever on it. Yeah. Doing some kind of demographic studies on what kind of interests and, you know, who's the target market?

The target market, I don't care. I know who the target market is. The target market is my people out there that are getting after it. There's the target market. There you go. I just hope, you know what? I just thought, I hope this doesn't fall into the wrong hands. What if criminal, criminally minded people or people that are, you know, have evil thoughts?

Maybe if they start drinking white tea, we might be in trouble. Yeah. We might have to bolster up and drink more white tea. Yeah. Or they could switch over to the old discipline

equals freedom kind of situation and you know, I'm just saying, theoretically that could be something. Yeah. Now you did good. This is good, man. It looks good.

Yeah. Yep. Yep. And it tastes good. Yeah. All right. Cool. Jago.

YT. Yeah. You can order on Amazon.com. After you click through. Click through. Yeah. Yeah. Which,

you know what? There's a whole tale behind the click through right now. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of... And we have to make sure, because that's one of the main ways to support the podcast,

is to click through. But if in the past, you saved... First of all, if you had the trooper tool, the trooper tool is null and void. We got shut down by Amazon. It was... Let's just say they didn't really like it that much. They didn't like it that much.

Because I've been proven wrong in the world. This is one of the times I've been wrong. There is such a thing as getting after it too much. And apparently we were getting after it. Troopers were getting after it too much with the trooper tool. So they shut it. down the trooper tool okay so if you're still have the troop tool I don't know if it's still work but if it if you still have it and you think you're using it you're not you're

not supporting the podcast so what you have to do and also if you have your old link saved that would click you into Amazon and you thought oh I just use this and I'll just save the what's that called a favorite if you made it a favorite before if you bookmarked it then you got to erase that bookmark you've got to go back to jocco podcast.com or back to jocco store com and you've got to make a new bookmark that has the new click through to amazon so we can get amazon back in the game supporting the podcast again it's not costing you anything all it's going to cost you is that short period of time to click through and that way we can support the podcast that way we can buy more knives for the table yep you know and that's what we're

looking to do yeah and amazon's not mad at us they were just like hey the trooper tools too heavy it's too heavy it's like when uh what was it What was that book we just did where the Germans were mad that the Americans were getting after too much? Yeah, yeah. This is unethical. Like, theoretically, from Amazon's perspective, like the Nazis, they thought, man, these guys are getting after too much. Yeah, this trooper tool. This trooper tool thing is too much.

We need to rest. So there's no more trooper tool. Go save a new bookmark, Chiboha, from jaco podcast.com or from the jacquist.com or from the jacquistore. All right. So that's good. That was a, man, that was a really good analogy right there, by the way. The Germans. The Nazis?

Yeah. It's good. I'm not trying to say, I'm not trying to say it was fascist in what Amazon did. No. Because it wasn't. You know what? They're, it's a great, it actually really is truly a great program. Yeah.

It really is a great program. It's very supportive of us. And it's cool for Amazon because people are ordering stuff through Amazon. I love buying stuff and doing it through our, our website. Makes me feel good. It's like another excuse to just buy more books. I'm buying books. at a ridiculous rate right now.

It's actually, it's almost embarrassing how many books I'm buying right now because everybody recommends me a book. And I used to say, well, maybe I'll take a look at it. I don't have time to do that anymore. Now I just order it. You know, just bring it to me. Amazon.

I want it today. Yeah, yeah. How cool is that? Amazon Prime, same day delivery. Bring me my books. You know what else is cool? So I was going to mark up the book, The Glory of the Trenches,

but I didn't want to mark it up, obviously, because it's an old, beautiful copy. So I bought a new one Okay now when you when you buy these certain books from Amazon They're they print them immediately Oh right right yeah And so this book got printed on the 22nd of September

For me and then I just ordered it so I could mark this one up Yeah yeah yeah It didn't arrive before I went on my trip So I did it on another coffee so anyways Yeah they they will print a lot of these books that we're bringing out That are rare books that are old books that are out of print books They just reprint them yeah So you can get a book printed.

Now bring it, the ones out here on the, on the West Coast are printed in San Bernardino, California. Sam Burdew. There you go. And what? You order it. They drive it down that day. Boom. Yeah.

I don't know what, man. I don't know. It's awesome. Yeah. It's a good deal. But yeah, yeah, if you want to support this podcast in that way. Which is a great way. And we really appreciate it.

That's awesome stuff. It's, it definitely helps us do what we do. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks. but yeah it's on jocco story.com and joccopodcast.com click through what other ways can people support this podcast well obviously the obvious ways subscribe to it on on um on iTunes right if you haven't already and then and also the

youtube again and i say this all the time putting more videos on there it's cool because i'll put little excerpts you know where because people on Twitter and stuff they'll be like, hey, can you just isolate this one excerpt of, you know, the Mark Lee speech, the, you know, just random ones, they'll say. Or they'll be like, hey, release this excerpt, I want to make a video, you know, and you can get the videos from YouTube and stuff. So they'll be like, hey, episode, I don't know, 40, you know, the last closing thing. Anyway, so I'll put stuff, not just excerpts, but other videos, other than the whole episode

of the podcast. And when a lot of times when you do those, sometimes, they're just excerpts but sometimes there's other things happening in those excerpts sure I mean sometimes you make full new video like the good video where does this one come from

yes yes and I think just I'll speak for the voice of everyone else myself included and everyone else that's listening to this podcast that's not named echo I think we all want to see more videos that's me and I'm trying to you know I'm trying to make that hint to you

I think I've been making it to you for a while I know it's hard work. Yeah, you're flanking you for sure. We're just trying to let you know, we here on, you know, the listeners and the troopers here, we all want to see a little bit more activity. Yep. And I think, I personally think that the more people are subscribing to YouTube, the more motivated you're going to get.

Yeah. Yeah. And I hate to see you relying on motivation. No, no. Because I don't. I rely on discipline. And I wish you were like, hey, you know what? My discipline is, I'm making, you know, one video every two weeks, but I haven't seen

that kind of discipline yet. really from you. There you go. All right. Well, hey, we're one step closer. Yeah.

And, you know, expect it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But I'm on it. I'm on it. I like that.

Speaking of being on it. Oh, look what you did there. Nicely done. Nicely done. Be on it with yourself. Um, okay. So on it,

these supplements. We all know that. A lot of people, a lot of people don't think that I work out just because they don't, they don't see me. They hear my voice. They're like, oh,

Echo obviously doesn't work out. But Jaco obviously works out. Jocko does take supplements. So people are like, oh, what does Jocko take? Jock takes krill oil. Jocko takes strong bone.

And Jocko takes alpha brain. There you go. Strong bone is from on it? It's from on it. Okay. Yeah. All right, there you go. So, yeah, these are actual supplements.

I take the exact same thing. Not the strong bone, except for the strong bone. I left one out. What? Shroom tech. Shroom tech sport. Okay, there you go.

Yeah, Shroom tech is good. And I actually, we train today. It's Sunday. We trained today. We trained today hard. I did not take Shroom Tech today. And I didn't feel like I brought my A game the way I wanted to. So.

Apparently it was good enough, but you know what? All right. But I felt, you know. Like I was breathing harder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good roles today. Yeah, good. Taylor, for sure.

Yeah, he's, when does he compete? Next week. Yeah, yeah, that's right. He's good, man. Yeah, this early on too, even if he wasn't this early on. Anyway, we'll talk about Taylor soon. Yeah, we'll talk about Taylor. But yeah, yeah, okay, Honit has best supplements.

We all know that. All legit, because a lot of supplements straight up don't work. some supplements rely on the placebo effect literally rely on that like that's its effectiveness that's why it's effective because of placebo effect not on it you can find out about this stuff on the website but if you want 10% off those supplements that you're going to get on it dot com slash jaco 10% off boom i like it so yeah do that man support yourself at the same time that's what i like to think and then how about those I want the Jocco store

Jocco store has some new items So here this is weird If you look on Instagram You posted a picture today I did I did yes Now today is relative Because when this podcast comes out

It won't be today Yeah See some other time October 2nd Oh people are going to attract the date Okay That's my dad's birthday by the way today Happy birthday Echols father

Happy birthday BC William Charles Jr.: Bravo Charlie goes by BC on Kauai happy birthday dad love you. So on my dad's birthday, Jocko posted a picture on Instagram, October 2nd. And one of the comments I just read it a little while ago, it says, hey, where do I get that good shirt? Or where do I get a Jocko shirt?

Oh. That's an interesting question, right? Yeah. Because. There's only one place in the world you can get that shirt. Yeah. And we say it a lot. But nonetheless, no one's obligated to listen to me, talk about it.

about chocolate store yeah really do people fast forward when they get to you talking about stuff I would that I'm not surprised if people do I'm not surprised are they missing some nuggets they're missing some information I think they're missing some information I think they're missing some good times too potentially sure yes so how they're gonna know it was BC's birthday today yeah yeah yeah see yeah yeah great point yeah so I would say so don't fast forward through these but do what you like You know what if you're on your way to go do some pull-ups or something and you're like the book's done we're done with the book And then do some pull-ups

Then that'd be cool You know what's weird that when you listen to other podcasts Well specifically like if you listen to Joe Rogan's podcast Which I which I do Sometimes they're just straight talking Yeah Which is which is what we're doing right now Right we are talking about it is enclosed around some subject matter because we're talking about

ways to support the podcast. So, yeah, but it's still, like I said, there's some nuggets in there. Sure. Yeah. That are important. Yeah. And even if they're not important, what's funny is, even if they're not important, they're in there, right?

They're the, they're the, this is what I think is cool is when I, when I go, I like travel a lot and I've been traveling a lot and I'm starting to meet just like troopers everywhere. Yeah. Everywhere. I was all over the world, all the way from New Zealand to the East Coast, up and down the East Coast. I meet meet troopers everywhere. And when I meet people, all of a sudden, it's like, it's like friends that you have inside jokes with. So like everybody I meet, you know, they make cracks about this and, you know, about that.

And it's all from the podcast. So that's kind of cool. It's not just, hey, get on here and get educated about life, leadership, business, war. You know what? Let's have some inside jokes that we can laugh at each other at when I show up at, you know, your your whatever you work to do some work myself yeah yeah when people come to the gym they'll tell me good evening even if it's daytime oh yeah at least um a quarter of the reviews for jaco white tea we start off with good evening echo yes good evening uh i don't even know

what started that i mean obviously i said it i think you started it no i absolutely started it but but at some point, I mean, I don't know how else to introduce you. Right. Other than to say, good evening. Yeah, you just kept, you sort of just kept doing it. Yeah. Yeah. And your response is now standard too.

Well, what else would say, you know? I guess you don't, can't say much. Good evening. It's not. How's it? Hey, man. I can say, how's it? I'm going to stick with good evening, I think.

I like that. There it is. But to answer that question, let's say someone else had that question. where do I get a jaco shirt? I'll tell you where you get a jaco shirt. Jocco store.com. That's again, love the marketing on that title for that website. We've got creative unknown.

It's a store from Jocko. It's online.com. Chocco store.com, yes, we have shirts there. We have travel mugs, you know, the kind you can you bring with you. They're not the show of this. Oh, this kind you can put your jaco white tea. Sure. Yeah, if you choose to, yes.

exactly and some some bumper stickers that are kind of cool they're on jocco store com as well there's some other sticks on there are cool we have patches okay here's the thing about the patch about patches someone online said hey get the Velcro patches and man I'm just not as familiar with the Velcro patches we already had these other two patches one is the Jiu Jitsu patch the other one is the Jiu Jitsu patch but it's all-purpose patch you know you can iron it on but you sew it on it's four inches by three inches the Velcro patch, I'm like, that's a good idea. The Velcro patch, let me get the same thing.

It's four by three. It's a Velcro patch. So it's cool for that. But you explain to me, those Velcro patches are interchangeable. The standard is three by two. Yeah. Three across. So just understand the Velcro patch currently right now is four by three. Did you get two by three ones ordered?

Yeah. So I got to, you know, I didn't finalize it, but they come in pretty quick. So just know, just be aware. of the dimension of the patch. If you want to do the interchangeable one, I guess technically, you could put the 4x3, but we're not doing that. No, we'll get the 2 by 3. Don't encourage that kind of thing.

Please. Nonetheless, they're on Jocco store as well. The Jiu-Jitsu Patch is there too. Like I said, rash guards are there, big time, all on the Jocco store, somewhere on back order. But they're there in full effect for sure, and they're good. emails today saying they felt the 19% increase in performance allegedly. There's no alleged about it.

Straight up. How can you say that's alleged when people factually felt the difference? Well, that it's just what they said. I wasn't there to witness it. Oh. But why are they going to tell you they had a 19% improvement if they did not? They alleged it that it was an allegation. I don't support you on that.

Technically. We're falling out of grace here, man. When somebody tells me they got 19% improvement with the rash guard. Take it as fact. Yeah. Why would they lie to you? Yeah, you're right. Otherwise, they'd be saying, hey, give me my money back.

I didn't get a 19% performance increase. Good, but that's two very good points. And we have women's tank tops. I understand. It's fall. We're going into winter soon. Tank tops. Okay.

For our southern hemisphere people. Sure. Yeah, the West. Yeah. Because it's summer down there. It's going to be summertime soon down in New Zealand and Australia. in South America. Yeah.

And the Hawaii people as well. From Kauai, we don't know about that kind. And that's why you're where you're saying, you don't understand what a hoodie is. Yeah. From Kauai, like we kind of, we know what a hoodie is. Yeah, you know what a hoodie is.

We don't know, yeah. So we're making hoodies. Yes. So we made it with consultation from Jocko and some New England people. We got hoodies on the way as well. And women's T-shirts. as well.

Yeah, I was explaining to echo that in New England, like a hoodie is, is like something you wear every single day for nine months out of a year. You wear a hoodie. Yeah, oh, I'm waking up and putting on a hoodie. Yeah. That's what you do.

Yeah. So we're going to make them awesome so that people will be fired up and representing with their hoodie and they'll be toasty warm. Yeah. What's interesting. for lack of a better term my wife is one of those hoodie people you know the kind

words she wears a hoodie every single day even when it's not cold she'll be like oh it's like a comfort zone thing you know yeah it's just a bunch of them like I don't even know how many she even took Greg trains victory hoodie oh and she uses out that was like one of her many anyway that's a good hood that was that those are good hitties yeah yeah I agree so um yeah so yeah so there it is we're going to have that coming out that should be within the next two to three weeks. I think that's a fair amount of time to say and be accurate.

So yeah, there it is jocco store.com in the event of you wanting to support this podcast in that way, get some stuff. Get one thing, two things, whatever you want. Once again, appreciate all that support. Also, if you want, if you don't have a book that was written by a guy named Leif Babin, my brother and myself, we wrote a book.

Called Extreme Ownership, if you want to pick it up, you can pick it up. You can get it on Amazon or, anywhere else that they sell books and get we get so much good feedback on it it's awesome appreciate all the positive feedback you know people read it and they say this really helped me you know not just with the way I'm doing my business but like with the normal stuff in life and the other cool thing is when people buy it for their team you know or they even buy it for the boss sometimes so pick up extreme ownership we did the audio too if you want to

read it if you don't want to read it because you don't have time you just want to listen to it while you're in the traffic jam, then just buy the audio book and you'll be good to go. So appreciate that. And then also, if you dig that extreme ownership, you dig that concept, you can come out to a little something we're having here in Southern California in San Diego

called the muster, the extreme ownership muster. We're gonna be talking about leadership. We're gonna be talking about how to take the lessons that we learned in combat, which have been proven in combat, and how you can apply those same lessons doing leadership in business, leadership, in life. So we got a bunch of you are coming to this.

And it's awesome. So, and I had somebody email me the other day. And it said, hey, listen, I just wanted to let you know, I'm coming to the muster. But in the event I don't get to meet you there, then, you know, I just want to let you know I really appreciate, you know, the podcast and the book and all that. And I didn't even respond yet. I don't think because I get a lot of emails. But let me tell you something.

If you come to the muster, we're hanging out. It's not going to be one of these gigs where, you know, I'm back in the green room waiting to go out getting in character. Well, no, this is my character and I won't be backstage. I'll be sitting at a table with you. I'll be talking. I'll be, and Layf's going to be doing the same thing. So that's one of the major differentiators we want to have in this thing is that, because, you know, Laif and I go to these events all the time because we speak at them, you know, leadership events and conferences and all that. The biggest differentiator that we want to make is we want to be, we want to have.

the contact we want to have the face-to-face so if you're coming not only you're going to meet me we're going to kick it we're going to be hanging out we're going to be having dinner lunch we're going to be going to be going over problems when we talk about solutions so don't think that I'm going to be and that Laif is going to be all hiding in the background no we're going to be there I'll be meeting you we'll be doing a workout also some people want to try if you train that Jiu-Jitsu and you come out here come out here a little bit early or stay a little bit late and we're We're going to go to the gym.

We're going to go to Victory MMA, and you can challenge Echo Charles to a deaf match. Gee or no game. We'll be there, we'll be there, rolling. So, you know, if you stay Friday, if you stay Saturday, if you stay Sunday, I will be there. Friday night, I'll be there. Saturday day, I'll be there, Sunday day, and we'll be getting it on. So come on out for that, for that muster, and that'll be awesome. Also, if you can't come out to the muster,

but you just want to kind of kick it and keep these things going on and you want to join the crew, then all you got to do is get on social media, which I didn't really understand social media a year ago. You know, I didn't know what it was all about. But now what I know is I get to talk to people and I get to get to grow my knowledge from other people who can communicate things, who ask really good questions that I got to get research or I know an answer to and then they ask me something else. And so that's awesome and funny bunch of people post all kinds of funny stuff

So I'm getting entertained and we're getting you know a crew and having a bunch of people there that are like-minded and is is is is fun to have and so I appreciate it if you want to find us on social media Echo is by the way he's at echo Charles and that's on Instagram that's on Twitter That's on da Facebook key and I and I am also on social media and I am at Jocko Willink on Twitter on Instagram on the Facebook I am also there and I guess that's about it for this week we don't think we have time for the Q&A we'll push that and in the meantime you know again I know I know I know I I'm meeting people all over the place. And thank you all for supporting this podcast.

Thank you all for doing what you do. Meeting firefighters, working with firefighters. Meet police officers, working with police officers. The military folks that are emailing me, the guys that are overseas right now, fighting terror. Thank all of you, all you uniform folks for what you do for holding the line, overseas and here at home. And for everybody else that I'm meeting, I'm meeting people from all kinds of businesses.

All of you have goals. You're trying to make things happen. You're trying. You're not calling us up. You're not calling Laef and I up unless you're trying to dominate. So we love the fact that we get to go to places where you've got people that are out there trying to kick ass, trying to crush it. And that's what propels America and keeps our country strong, keeps our country free. So thank you for what you're doing in all those jobs, all you in the workforce.

It's awesome. We appreciate it. and there's one thing we want back from you and as we want to make sure that you keep getting after it. And so until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.