Jocko Podcast - 505: Lessons in Blood. General Greg Knight on Ramadi and Leadership

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

>Join Jocko Underground< 00:00 – Intro Symbolism and sacrifice behind the 228th Brigade Combat Team memorial.00:12 – Early Life & Coast Guard Knight’s unconventional path into military service and lessons in structure.00:25 – Joining the Guard Transition from law enforcement to Army Guard officer and active duty.00:55 – Ramadi Deployment Preparing for and arriving in one of Iraq’s most dangerous cities.01:30 – Hard Lessons Learned Complacency, casualties, and the importance of humility in leadership.02:12 - How to Stay on The Path. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 505 with Dave Burke and me, Jocker Willink. Good evening, Dave. Good evening. The 228 brigade combat team memorial is made of iron, symbolizing iron soldiers from the Iron Brigade. Additionally, it represents the history of Pennsylvania's iron and steel industry. Iron is also the most abundant element in blood, symbolizing the bloodshed by fallen warriors.

The obelisk stands 21 feet tall, echoing the 21 gun salute. The damaged steel represents the unique war, the living fight, and the fallen. Acting like armor, steel plates cover all four sides of the pedestal and hold the names of the fallen. Keystones made from different elements rest above the fallen. plates. One is polished steel and when one sees their reflection it represents the fallen warrior inside all of us. Another is ballistic glass that has been shattered to represent the conflict in which we were engaged. One is stained red wood to represent the blood we have shed. Another is marble to represent the strength and resolve and steady purpose of the

the 228 brigade combat team. Inside the obelisk dog tags for each fallen comrade are suspended from chains. From the base of the structure, a light shines skyward onto the tags and through the obelisk cap. The cap is made of shattered vehicle glass and acts as a window to which their souls will shine for eternity. As wind passes through the structure, the dog tags move. A wind chime suspended below them creating a subtle sound like the quiet whispers of the fallen as they continue to speak to us

Along with honoring our fallen warriors This memorial is a reminder that our country is the beacon of liberty Which shines throughout the world And those right there are words from a plaque describing the stunning 2-28 brigade combat team Fallen warrior memorial statue which is is at the Pennsylvania National Guard Military Museum located in Anvil, Pennsylvania. And the statue was originally built and erected on the ground in Ramadi, April 16, 2006,

by soldiers from the unit. So it was designed by soldiers from the unit. It was built from soldiers from the unit. And just a couple weeks after my task unit had arrived in Ramadi, they put this incredible memorial up. and by that time the battle-hardened units of the 228 were nearing the end of their long and arduous deployment. They had suffered significant casualties. They'd have over 500 wounded in action, almost 100 killed in action.

And a lot of times people find this interesting that the 228, who was on the ground fighting for months and months and months was a National Guard unit, made up a primary. of reservist soldiers from units all around the country, including Pennsylvania, Utah, Michigan, Indiana, Georgia, Kentucky, Nebraska, North Carolina, and Vermont. And I have had the honor of having the commander of that brigade, General John Gronsky, on the podcast twice, episode 235 and 302. And tonight we have another member of that unit here with us. General Greg Knight served with Vermont's 1st Battalion 172nd Armored Regiment, a National Guard

Unit that was attached to the 228 in Ramadi. And he had a non-traditional route of ending up there. And he learned many lessons along the way and many lessons since. Obviously, he did something right because he is sitting here as a general. And it's an honor to have him with us to share some of those experiences and some lessons learned general night thanks for joining us much appreciated honored and privileged to be here and it's good we have dave burke with us as well i know that you guys spent some time in the in the in the talk in the tactical operation center there in romadi together that's how you two know each other

and i'm sure we'll get into some of that but uh let's get a little bit of your background before we get into this where where'd you grow up where you come from uh born and raised in alexandria virginia army brat my dad was retired combat engineer i was actually born at duet army Hospital at Fort Belvoir. So pretty conventional upbringing. We never owned a home, lived in an apartment complex. So dad retired from the Army, and then he became the head maintenance engineer and ran the complex. And that was down in Virginia? In Virginia. And what about your mom? So mom was originally from Germany. Quick being yet about mom. She was born and raised in Wittenberg, Lutherstadt, home of Martin Luther. And at age 17 was a kindergarten teacher in Germany. Towards the

end of the war, she was conscripted and placed on a flack battery, running the cameras to try to record the altitude of the bomber stream. At the end of the war, she and her girlfriend needed to get out of there because it was Russian zone. There was no Berlin Wall, but there was barbed wire in Russian centuries, conscripts probably. And she ended up packing all their earthly belongings, and they went to the checkpoint. And if you got the red stamp, you went back to the east. If you got the blue stamp, you continued on into the U.S. or British zone. So they went there and they got the red stamp. Nope, yet, back you go.

Well, they're devastated. So they went back to the local village and they're in tears. And the women brought them in, waited until that night, took bread dough, and he erased the red stamp. And then when the sentries changed shift, they went out there with schnops and got the sentries hammered. And then mom and her girlfriend went out and got the blue stamp. Wow. So, I mean, the moral of the story is, you know, You know, were it not for snobs, I wouldn't be here.

Yeah. But she was an amazing, amazing woman, having lived through that. Hindsight, I probably should have spent more time learning about it. But as a kid, ignorant, didn't pay any attention to it. Yeah. What could your mom possibly know, right? What could you possibly teach you, of course? You're 15, you know everything.

Yeah, but pretty phenomenal. But yeah, it wasn't all roses, both of them. And then what about your dad? What was your dad's job in the Army? Combat engineer. And then was he in World War II? No, nope. He was, in fact, it was during the latter part, well, beginning of Vietnam, and it was actually, again, fortuitous. He had gotten transferred, I think, to Fort Belvoir, and his unit was then mobilized and sent to Vietnam, and they had a horrific casualty rate. But again, just pure luck that he ended up getting assigned to be, I think, an instructor at the NCO Academy, as opposed to going to Vietnam. We went to lightship in Penn. them all, something like that. But yeah.

And so then you're growing up, you're living in the, we live in the apartment complex with the, with your, that where your dad was the maintenance officer of? Yep. Yep. We lived there. I'm a good, it was a great place to live. I had lots of friends. I was never a big fan of school, like many of us.

It was tough. My folks, they were alcoholic and, you know, we had domestic abuse and verbal abuse, all the things, being a product of the 70s, nobody took it as serious as we do now. So my brother and I came out of it mostly normal. So I looked back at that and just like you learn. Just like being in leadership, you learn I'm not going to be like that.

So as you're going through high school, are you playing sports? What are you interested in? Partying. Uh-huh. I didn't, I did an intramural sports. I didn't do any JV or varsity sports. And I was talking to somebody about this other day. I didn't really fit.

I was just some scrawny long-haired kid. I wasn't a freak. I didn't smoke a lot of weed. I wasn't a jock. I wasn't a geek. I wasn't a preppy. That was a big time. Then it was all khakis and IZodd shirts

and everybody listened to Little Feet. But I looked back. I didn't really fit anywhere. I had got a job at, I think I was 18, and I worked at what was then the beacon butcher. So I worked at a butcher shop, breaking down hanging beef, hindquarters, sides, pork sides, all of that stuff.

You know, great trade to go in. to, but I had no plan. I was about to ask you what your plan was, and you just answered my question. There was no plan. What about the military? Your dad was in the Army? Were you not thinking at least I could go do that? Well, it was, you know, interesting.

I had looked at it and my dad said, hell no, you're not joining any army that I was a part of because it's not the Army that I was a part of. It had changed. It was post-Vietnam. It was tough. My neighbor, Alex Warden, was in the Coast Guard, like right next to our apartment. And I wasn't going anywhere. I had my 67 Mercury.

I was the only guy with a license. The only guy with a job. I was all my high school friends were hanging out drinking beer. And he got me one day. He said, why don't you just join the Coast Guard? And I did. And that was the beginning of where we are now. Just being in the military was the smartest thing I could have done.

I would tell anybody. I mean, it's, I just, I don't know. What do you tell you about the Coast Guard? You know, I don't know. It was just. Three hots and a cop? Yeah, pretty much. Good to me.

Yeah, I'm good. Get me out of here, you know. But I remember going to basic training at Cape May, New Jersey, and I thrived on it. I thrived on the order, the structure, the discipline. Didn't have that at home. It was just different. It was like putting on that pair of running shoes that you should have bought years ago.

It's like, oh, my God, this is awesome. It wasn't hard. Do what you're told. There's instructions for everything. It's the military. So that was the beginning of, to me, just an incredible opportunity. And what was your job in the Coast Guard?

So I was a yeoman, a personnelist. I did that. I was in the Coast Guard, Arnold Guard first. I can date myself. I feel like it was Reagan's second inauguration. Dang, okay. Yeah, on the drill team, the silent drill team.

It was a blast running around the military district of Washington, you know, doing drill team performances in Bristol, Rhode Island, Newport, Grand Haven, Michigan. It was just a great time to be a young, dumb kid, you know, spending a 1903 Springfield with a bayonet. could possibly go wrong. And then I went down to Elizabeth City, North Carolina,

and I struck, I don't know if the Navy had you strike for a rating. Yeah, you can do that in the Navy. Yeah. So you get OJT, you take the service-wide exam. I mean, congratulations, your third-class petty officer. When I got out as a Yeoman second class, and the last job in the Coast Guard, my last year was driving for the Commandant,

went back up to D.C., which was fascinating. I got kind of a glimpse of the big picture. But here I am in E-5, you know, what do I know about national-level politics? And, you know, there for the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Oh, okay. I got to go to Alaska with the Commandant. But I just, I love being in the Coast Guard.

So what made you decide to get out? So. How many years you do? Six. Six years? Yeah. Because that's a pretty good chunk of time. You know, you're kind of like moving through your career a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah. Hindsight being what it is, I'd have been retired 25 years ago if I'd have stayed in the Coast Guard. I'd been a retired Master Chief someplace, you know, Master Chief Yeoman, drinking coffee at the Chiefs Club. But that didn't happen. So my ex-wife and I came up to Vermont. I got a job as a Burlington police officer,

went into Vermont law enforcement. I stayed in the guard, which was, I had enough common sense to keep my foot in the door. So I was in the Air Guard for seven years as a security forces defender. I was a Burlington cop for four years, and then I went over to the Department of Liquor Control

to be a liquor investigator. So I'm real popular with the college kids. What are you doing as a liquor investigator? A lot of it's compliance. Licensing, you're basically doing background checks on corporations. You're doing the licensing program because in Vermont, we're a control state. You have to have a liquor license in order to do business, whether you're doing it as a restaurant or what we used to call a cabaret or as a store, a convenience store. My job was to license them. And then you're checking for compliance, overservice, underage drinking, you know, and there's all kinds of. What years is this? would have been 89 to so 93 to 2000

this wasn't the drunk driving you know no when people were started to really push against drunk driving yeah that wasn't that wasn't all the thing it is now yeah like I think I know guys that got pulled over

for drunk driving in like the 50s and 60s and it was like you know hey be careful the rest of the drive home you know that's what the cops would tell them like you're looking a little trunk yeah I'm sorry well be careful on your drive home you know so and there was some catalysts for that changing

and it was, I thought it happened in Vermont, but it was one of those kids who are underage, partying, and they were driving, and the law enforcement officer didn't do the right thing, which was detained the kids, called the parents at least, let them go, and then they were killed later, roll over crash, and then, of course, you do the math, it's like, wait a minute, you had hands on these kids and let them go. So that kind of changed the dynamic. And you were in the Air National Guard this all time? So tell me a little bit about the Air National Guard.

Is it the same thing as the National Guard, but it's like Air Force instead of, Army? Correct. Yep. So the National Guard is both Air Guard and Army Guard. All of us have different missions. We're fortunate. We flew the F-16 for 33 years out of security forces defender. So you're out there on the flight line. You're doing the law enforcement activity on the base. Base security, ground-based air defense is what we used to call it. So I did that for seven years. It's a small state. I was still an E-5 and you're waiting for somebody to die or retire. Because when people retention is great in the guard and folks would stay for a very long time

and our ear guard is they're fantastic love working with the folks that I work with there but I knew I had aspirations at one point to go to Officer Candidate School I had just enough college I didn't have a degree yet and it was the late Brigadier General

Mike Heston he died of pancreatic cancer after three tours in Afghanistan he was a state trooper I knew him from law enforcement he was also the OCS Company commander for the Army Guard. So we're having coffee after shift one night, and he says, hey man, why don't you go?

He was from Rhode Island. Nighter. Why don't you go to OCS? I'm like, Mike, I'm 34 years old, man. I'm like a late bloomer here. You've got to be commissioned before your 35th birthday. And he said, no worry about it. I'll get a waiver.

And he did. So I went over from the Air Guard to the Army Guard. So that would have been in February, March, April, May, June. So four months later, I'm standing tall at Fort Carson, Colorado, with what we call fast track, accelerated OCS. It was run by the guard. And you're 34 years old when you go to become a second lieutenant? And I get off the bus with all the other candidates,

and there was some terrain feature of a captain. I mean, back to this guy's neck look like a pack of hot dogs. He was giant. Former NCO had been to war. I think he was actually in Lebanon for some of that, some of the horrific actions. But, Mr. talk about somebody being up your backside with a flashlight. That was an eye opener.

Then they don't do that in New York Gardens. Like, why are you yelling at me? But it was, I've done a lot of different schools. We all have, but it was probably, I would consider it a capstone experience in my career. That was really the, truly the opening of the door of opportunity. And it was because of Heston, and I accursed him for nine weeks. Because it wasn't Buds, don't give me wrong.

But it was hard. It was hard enough. Yeah, and plus, you know, I went through Buds. when I was 18. And when you're 18, I mean, look, you're, you don't really care about anything, you know. But as a grown 35-year-old man, you know, with somebody people yelling and screaming at you, I'm sure that was a little bit tougher to deal with. Yeah, it was a smoke session. It was, you double-timed everywhere.

And in the end, when I flew home, we did seven weeks at Fort Carson for phase one and two, which was condensed. And then phase three was at Fort Lewis, Washington at the time. I had to go to the exchange to buy clothes to fly. home because I lost 22 pounds. Damn. You got your three squares. It's it.

It's calories in calories out. And you're way more calories out. Because, I mean, you get smoked to the point of failure. I mean, we'd screw up the PT formation. And then Captain Shuto, who was one of our attack officers would come out. And guys, like a triathlete, you know, 2% body fat. Hey, we're going to do the side straddle hop. We're like, yay.

Four count exercise, right? We're doing 100. So, Jocco, you're a fit, man. Have you ever jumped up and down 400 freaking times? And then go for a five-mile run. Yes, unfortunately I have. Yeah, of course, yeah. But my God.

So, yeah, no secret. Yeah, I probably should go back. But, yeah, I lost 22 pounds, but that was really, it was very well done. And are you starting to think, you know, what are you thinking about your job, your future as an Army officer? Are you starting to think maybe that's something you want to lean more into? Well, I will tell you this. So I liked being a cop. I always loved the idea of being a cop.

but it was never quite what I thought it was going to be, whether in uniform or working as a liquor investigator. It was a great job. Don't get me wrong. I mean, made my own hours. You're working every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night to do bar checks and things like that. But it's never like it's on TV. You ain't solving anything in 20 minutes, right?

It's just, it's compliance, and look, it's a great job. But, man, I love going to drill weekends. I became an armor officer. I went to the armor officer basic course for 17 weeks at Fort Knox. I love being on tanks, man. I just, most fun you can have your clothes on. You guys talked about it in the books. You know, you're calling in Main Gun Mike to do your work.

Hell yeah. Help you guys out. Yeah. So to me, I don't know. I just love being, I love going to drill weekend. And then I had the opportunity in June of 2000. Interviewed for a support platoon leader job. I knew Jack about logistics, but that's a job.

It's AGR. I could be in the guard full time. So I applied and was just incredibly fortunate to get picked up to be active guard and reserve. So if someone's listening right now and they, you know, I get a lot of questions like this. I get a lot of guys that are 28 years old. They got a kid on the way.

They're married. They got a good job. And they, but they never served. And they feel bad about it. They want to scratch that it for lack of a better way of saying it. And I always tell them, you know, going to the Reserve, going to the National Guard. When someone's that guy right now, 28-year-old guy,

what does that look like for him when someone joins? Join the guard. It's not hard. Truth in lending, right? So we've all heard the adage, well, one week and a month, two weeks a year. Okay, well, that's kind of true. You've got to get your training out of the way first. So you can do 10 weeks of basic training,

and then your advanced individual training is however long it is. Intel, you want to be an Intel specialist, could be up to a year, 10 months. something like that. Air Guard, very technical career fields, their Air Force specialty codes. Some schools are longer than others, but you can do both. Every state has different benefits. It is a time commitment. I'm not going to tell anybody is not. It's not convenient. It does add some stress to your family because you're not going to be home some of the times. We do get deployed, obviously, all part of the job. So for me, there's plenty of incentives.

There's plenty of reasons, plenty of benefits. But if you don't start with service, then there's no point in joining because it's going to take time. It's going to be a commitment on your part. To me, the payoff is at the end. Worked out for me, but I know a number of folks that started part-time and have a similar experience to me. And they love the guard. We've got great retention rates. But when you look at the educational benefits, the TRICARE, the dental, life insurance, all of those things,

if you're you're going into a critical specialty my granddaughter who I swore in just a couple months ago passes the ASVVV and goes into weapons

with the 158th fighter wing my air guard and she got a $50,000 bonus and my wife was like what are we doing wrong here I mean they were no bonuses when I joined but that's out there

but you're going to it. I mean, we're not just giving that stuff away. So that's why we have to talk to anybody. Come see us. That's probably the most important thing. I think we need to do a better job as a guard telling our story because there's a story out there that's simply not being told or not being heard, one of the other.

And that's why I think it's important and thank you again for having me here. I think there's a story to be told. One of the best kept secrets I was saying this before we hit record is that you can be a National Guard Special Forces soldier. So you can go to all the training to be a green beret and be in the National Guard. So you can, you know, carry on with your normal career if you have one or you can, you know, whatever you want to do on the, on the civilian side.

And you can be an actual green brigade. The SEAL teams doesn't have anything like that. You can't, you have to be active duty in the SEAL teams. And you're probably going to spend, you know, eight years before you, there is a reserves. There are reserve SEAL teams, but you have to be in the Navy active duty for a bunch of years prior to that. So the fact that you can just be a National Guard green beret. is outstanding. It's very cool. Well, and that's the other part of this, Jock.

The other element of the best kept secret. You know, I talk to a lot of young folks. I mean, I also do it to a farmer. But, hey, man, let's talk about the guard. You know, what are you doing working at coffee shop or whatever? And I will always ask the question. And you're not tied to a given state if you join the guard. Let's say your career takes you to California and you're in the Vermont Guard.

Well, that's a simple paperwork drill. The recruiters handle is called Interstate Transfer. Nice. And then you go to, and similarly, we can do a reserve component transfer. Let's say you pick up, you go to Q-course, you become 18 series. You love it so much you want to go active duty. Okay, then go active duty. I think the only thing you owe the guard, I think it's still true, was a year.

Post-training, you always a year. After that, you can go active duty if you want. Paperwork drill, we don't, I don't get in the way of that. That's opportunity for young folks. Yeah. Awesome, awesome stuff. So you end up getting selected for active guard reserve. Yep.

And so when you're active guard reserve, that means you're full-time, you don't have a civilian job anymore. Correct. This is what you're doing? Yep. And you did that, what, in the supply department? So I was an armor officer. Yeah.

And we will go into a branch immaterial position. So I'll support platoon leader as a lieutenant. And then I became an armor company commander. That's your part-time job. So my unit was in Enosburgh, Vermont, northwestern Vermont. But full-time, I was had become, I think, the assistant S3, the assistant operations officer. Oh, okay.

And then, you know, you kind of progress, and it's like any other military organization. You're going to do a little bit of personnel, you're going to do logistician work. You'll pick up your key developmental assignments, your company commands, your battalion, admin officer work, things like that that are kind of the things that you need to hit to move to the next level. And you can continue, by the way, I mentioned that time commitment, your professional military education doesn't stop. You've got to do your captain's career course. You've got to do your intermediate level education. You've got to do the advanced operations course.

And then if you want, if you want, you'd be competitive for senior service college. Chuck. Dave, what about Air National Guard pilots? Is that a thing? Absolutely thing. And what's the dealing with that? I'd say the description that you had and their version of that is almost the same. You've got guys that are AGR's full-time reservists.

You've got guys that are part-time that are full-time airline pilots, full-time other professions. But the version of what you just described, my experience, the Air National Guard is I don't know if identical is the right word, but very, very similar. I'm sure there are some other commitments on, you know, being current and things like that if you're an actual pilot, but the Air Guard integrates with the active duty units that I was a part of and they're all part of the same team. It's pretty awesome. Yeah, pretty seamless. So we mentioned that when you're part of the National Guard, you may deploy. Where are you and what's happening on September 11th? So I was standing on the front slope of an M1

Abrams outside my armory at a recruiting event for the local high school. And then my readiness NCO came out, Sergeant Wayne Pudva. He came out and he said, hey, a plane just flew into the World Trade Center. And I'm thinking, well, you're talking like a Cessna? What do you mean? He goes, no, no, like an airliner. And everybody in that armory knew, we knew the world was going to be different after that. It had changed forever.

And how long did it take? So now you're watching the wars. what does it look like as you guys are getting spun up to be activated? Yeah, there are lots of fits and starts, a lot of roomer innuendo. You know, you probably experience the same thing on the teams. It's like, hey, we're going here. I know you're not. Well, we're going to go here.

No, no, we're not. We're going to backfill the 11th ACR at Fort Irwin. No, we're not. We're going to go to the border of Syria. No, that didn't happen. You're going to go to Ramadi. And you get a warning order about a year out. Then you get your notification of sourcing,

meaning they turn on the money for your training and equipment. and it becomes really real. And I remember when they said, you're going to go to Ramadi with Second Brigade, 28th Division. And shame on me, I probably sold us short. I'm like, they're not going to, that's like the most kinetic environment on the planet right now.

They're not going to send, no way, that's bullshit. They're not sending us there. Oh, no, they did. And I do, if I had a regret, I think that's probably a guard is, and we do sell ourselves short sometimes. We were good. Our folks were just phenomenal.

What was the training like getting ready to go over there? So they spin you guys up, everyone goes on active duty. How far prior to deployment were you all now like, hey, this is where our job is every day? Yeah, so it was January of 2005. We went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. We were an 18-month mobilization with a year deployment. Five months at Camp Shelby. hindsight it wasn't they weren't ready I don't think they had 44 ranges 11 of them were

actually running one cruise serve range and we're trying to push a brigade through so the the knife fight trying to get to trigger time for your your gun crews was horrific um NTC was hard it was validating I was there I was I always go in the advance I got to know so I'm the assistant Ness 3, so I would go in the advance and you're in the logistic support area, drawn vehicles getting things set up. Two weeks in the box, which mostly sucked. Do you guys bring your own vehicles and stuff out there for that? I'm trying to, some of the stuff I think we would draw from their material, their

mates, because you're signing for stuff. A lot of our stuff is probably already on the boat heading to Kuwait, heading to Camp Buring. But I'll tell you about my perspective at NTC. Again, we're learning how to run a talk, and there's no handbook on how to run a talk. Every unit does it differently. But what I would tell you about Camp Shelby could have been better.

What it did is it helped us build relationships with our higher headquarters, with my colleagues at the brigade. And it was really important because that really smooth things out when we got to Ramadi. We did a warfighter exercise. You know, we've got the OCs there. We were all validated. Went to NTC.

One, to me, a shortcoming of NTC, there was, and again, my perspective at the time, it was a gotcha game. So I'm in the talk. I'm the battlefield manager, right? On the S3A, I didn't know how to do an air tasking order. And my OC, my OCT is sitting there, taking notes and talking into the caller, mic. So I'd go over and, hey, man, how am I doing? You know, anything, any point? you good. Well, no, it wasn't good. But there was no give and take. There was no mentoring, right?

That was just a construct at the time. And it was actually, I don't remember her name, but she was a Kayaoah pilot. And she came in and sat me down. She was, hey, man, do you know how to do an air tasking order? Because you got scouts out, and I want to help you. And I'm like, nope. Probably the most important thing I learned at NTC was how to do an air tasking order. She was great. And I just learned so much from that 10 minute conversation. Then she took the time to come in and say, man, let me help sort you out here. That was huge.

But then overseas we went. How did you guys, like, what was the morale of the troops? You guys know that you're going in Ramada. You know how bad Ramadi is. What's the, like, what's the, in the minds of the troops as you're heading out there? I think there was some trepidation as inherent with anything of that.

It's the first time we'd ever meant. You don't know what you're going into. probably a little overwhelming that this is actually going to happen. I remember going to Camp Buring, which is, you know, I'm pretty convinced that if you look at the solar system, it's the sun, Kuwait, and then Earth. It's a wretched place. But I'll never forget my experience getting on that CH-46. We had to C-130 from Kuwait to Takotam Air Base.

Corsescrewed into the middle of the night. Get off the plane. plane never turns off and they're out of there. And then a few nights later, you're on the CH 46, again, middle of the night. And I'm watching the crew chief. And it was like seven on one side. I don't know these people.

Different units. They were just getting on the plane. You're going to Ramadi. So we're facing each other. And I'm watching the crew chief in that semi-darkness, and he looks at the pile of duffel bags, kicks two of them off, puts up the ramp, says, let's go. That's how you gauge weight, I guess.

But that was sense. And I'll tell you, Jacco, there's things like for any of us, the things that stand out in your mind. I remember him, I can see the glow on his face from the MVGs. And he sat down and he charged the 50. I'm like, this is real. And then when we landed in the pitch black at Ramadi, and there was some Sergeant First Class there with a flat bed waiting for us, helicopter takes off. He says, welcome to Ramadi.

If we get incoming, don't worry about it. It's usually pretty inaccurate. I don't think, usually. Sure. Thanks. Right. And you guys get there in June of 2005. Is that when you're showing up?

And this is right around the same time when, you know, AMZ was declaring that Ramadi was going to be the, you know, the capital of the caliphate and whatnot. Yeah. So it's, it's on. It's game on. Yeah, they laid low. I got there early. I went on the advance two weeks early to facilitate the riptoe with the outgoing unit. So I went into their talk, and it was me and Doc Stevens, it was our PA, and we walked in, and they had in their foyer, there's an old field, our old air defense base.

So it was all concrete structures, you know, 22-inch thick walls. I remember walking into their talk, and on the wall we're 16, but the photos with the American flag in case of your death. 16 of them. And I remember saying to Doc Stevens, I'm like, holy shit, 16. I mean, that's a tough tour. And he was so matter of fact, he said, oh, we'll lose 16. And I'm like, how do you figure? How do you know?

He goes, I just think we'll lose 16. How he knew that, I don't know. But that was the end result. We lost 16. So what was your job? Explain to a normal person or a civilian what your job is over there? So I was a battle captain. So you're a liaison, probably most importantly with adjacent units with higher headquarters.

You're a battlefield manager. You're making sure that you and your NCOs, your RTOs are tracking the battle. You're tracking it digitally. You're tracking it on a map because you have to have visibility on where units are all the time. Because if you're going to call in air, if you're going to call in indirect fire, you've got to know where your folks are. But it was down to you'd do a trip ticket. It was battle roster number of blood type, weapons nomenclature. you'd have their concept of operations, their con-up,

so you knew where they're going, when they're going to come back. Normally you'd communicate through the CP, their company command post, which was usually an E-4-E-5 on the radio. And if you had troops in contact, my job was to clear the air. I would usually bypass the company CP. I'd go to the platoon or company net, so I could talk to the leader on the ground, who's actually in the firefight,

whoever will hit by an IED, whatever it is. And then the adjacent unit coordination thing, in particular with higher headquarters, is pretty critical because they could give you things a phone call away. Like Chip would do. He was always a phone call away for us. Field artillery, mortars, QRF with the Marines. I think they had labs at Blue Diamond.

But that was pretty important. Building relationships, I think was critical for us. even with 269 armor to the east. Yeah, the amount of coordination that it took to, when you take a step back and look at the battle map of Ramadi and, you know, all these different adjacent units everywhere. And, you know, the enemy knows where those seams are. They try and operate within those seams.

They do their best to, you know, cause confusion and chaos out there. But yeah, it's like the ultimate leadership and management You know, like actual management of all these different people out there and getting them to not kill each other. You know, and, you know, I know we were talking about the book Extreme Ownership and the opening chapter of them, talking about the blue on blue that, that we had and just how, you know, that was, I always tell people there was like a blue on blue a week that got reported, not necessarily a casualty, but someone would say, oh, yeah, we were over here and we were

getting shot at. We were in this building. We were getting shot at. It ended up being this unit. Or, yeah, hey, did you guys have over there? Yeah, we had guys over there. Yeah, that was us. That happened like once a week that it got reported. How often it didn't get reported? We're just like, you know, some platoon sergeant was talking to another platoon sergeant. Hey, stop shooting over here. That's us in that built. That was probably almost every day. Yep, we had that in our area of operations. So we had Jazeera, just north of the Euphrates, Zangora to the west. and to me all very different.

Urban to rural. You were there, you've seen it. But we also owned the MSR. We had our eight OPs out there. We had tanks or Bradley's on the overpasses, and then we had roving patrols, and then we had other OPs that were off the shoulder of the road. And it was not infrequently.

And I don't recall a single time where a Marine Corps or Army unit convoy that would run it night, and they would never, we had billboards. This is Sabre Country. Go to this push and talk to us and let us know you're here. And I'm seeing, okay, I'm looking at the Blue Force Tracker. Who the hell's, who's this?

And why are they driving westbound and the eastbound lane? They're going to help smart the bad guy. Well, IEDs everywhere, pal. You can try. We had a couple of very close, God, and near miss, collisions because our guys are out there roving. or you had a patrol out and here comes this convoy bombing through

with some second lieutenant in charge didn't tell anybody and that's bad and then they shot at our Humvees I got pictures somewhere you know seven six two rounds embedded in a ballistic windshield that's another way that I explain to people

how hard it is so if you're an American soldier and you shoot at a Humvee like there is no more distinct vehicle pattern The recognition of a Humvee, that is a very obvious, it can be able, but Humvees would get shot by Americans. Tanks, same. Yeah. Yeah, tanks as well.

Yeah, I didn't realize the insurgents had M1s, but thanks for that. Yeah. So that, you know, when you're an 18-year-old kid and you're, you know, you're out on patrol or you're in a static position and you're scared and vehicle rolls up like you don't have time to think or you don't take the time to think or you weren't told someone's going to be there or no one gives you a head. heads up like they pull the trigger so it is very very difficult job that you had said they're trying to coordinate all this stuff it was complex I look back at it I mean you didn't kind of and me and we had only two of us at the beginning for the first six months you're doing 12-hour shifts which is that's a long time to be switched on I'm not telling you anything but that's just tough mentally and then we had a third battle captain that got added the last half of the

deployment which was immensely helpful but then you're still doing a longer shift because I'm going to work with the plans guy. You know, we're planning operations battalion level ops at times. I think one of the most important things is actually I met, I don't know who it was, a sea lieutenant came in. This was the latter half. I'm not sure when you guys got there. They were probably that spring.

We got there in April. Yeah. This was like just before you guys went home. So a seal lieutenant comes in with two petty officers first class. and I was floored because having been there for that long and nobody ever came in and said, hey, how can we help you? It was usually, hey, can you get us this?

Hey, we need a ride. We need your brads. We need, you know, that was the Army SF guys. I'll tell you about that one later. But I was like, gentlemen, how can I help you? And the lieutenant said, well, actually, how can we help you? And I'm pretty sure it was Chris Kyle that said, we want to bed with your snipers.

So, and I kind of, of validated that. I didn't put two and two together. I don't know seals. I don't know how you guys were operating. I'm just an army guy doing my thing. Finally after the fact, we were certainly fortunate to have you there because of the work you were doing. But I sent Sergeant Carol out. You mentioned Kentucky, Delta Company first, the 1-4-9th Infantry. Probably the most professional infantry company and command team that I'd ever had the privilege of working with. It was Captain Cole at the time. I remember his first name. You later died'll do. was a major.

But he sent Sergeant Carol over, and I sent Sergeant Carol out with your snipers. And I don't see him for three days. And he comes back in. This was out of Mike Charlie 1. And he said, you know, he comes in. He's dirty. He's got three days growth of beer to make,

Sergeant Carol, how'd it go? He says, sir, I can't carry that man's water. I said, what are you talking about? He said, I'd never see nothing like it. So I watched him in an abandoned tire warehouse, standing on a stack of tires, shooting through a loophole with a 300 wind mag, clipping dudes at 1,000 meters.

I'm like, wow, that's, wow, that's impressive. It wasn't until I got home, and there was a documentary on Chris Kyle. And I was sitting on the couch next to my wife, and I'm like, honey, I think that's that guy. And she's like, what are you talking about? I said, that's him. I met him, and that one,

I gave her the whole story. but just having you guys I would tell you this by far the most professional special operations unit I ever had the privilege of working with I can't say that for all of them

I certainly appreciate that I was my honor to be able to be there and help you guys out I remember you know one of the I think one of the best moments in my career actually was we had put

the 3-8 had suffered a massive IED up in Firecracker. And they had told us about it. And we said, well, we'll put snipers up there. And that was one of the earliest sniper operations we did. I put guys out up there right around Firecracker. And the first time I met General Groski, as I'm walking into the talk, they're reporting that the seals up by Firecracker just shot a couple guys that were in placing an IED.

And he looked at me, he said, of those your guys and I said, yes, sir, they are. And he said, have a seat. And I said, what can we do to help you out? We're here. And he, you know, then he immediately wouldn't, hey, we need guys out in the Malab District. But it was just a great way to, you know,

I didn't lead with my mouth. Yeah. I led with the actions of my guys that were out there making it happen. So that was very helpful for building that relationship out of the gate. Yeah. It was just tremendous. And like I said, I'm not throwing stones at anybody.

We were big on sharing information, right? And if I'm on the intel feed, because we had a very small S2 shop, so I would be on the intel feed. And you're developing things. I would see things as a battle captain. I could apply some perspective, some dimension to, hey, this is what I think. And some of it was pretty cheesy. It's like the watermelon is planted.

Gee, what could that be? But as an example, one instance, it was, I got the intel feed that the martyrs are prepared for the assault. And I was able to figure out that, holy shit, they're going to attack. Blue Diamond. And there's only one way to get to Blue Diamond, and that's from the East. So I got a hold of Chris Wilson, was the 1st 109th platoon leader, one of the platoon leaders. Bravo Company, First the 109th. And he took his Bradley Patoon, and he stayed off route duster, so he went cross-country. And his driver stops, and they're scanning, and the gunner punches

him in the leg and says, hey, sir, get on the site extension. There's some guy over here. He's all had youed up, and he's carrying an AK. So he gets on. He's okay, well, clearly that's a bad guy. And I'm paraphrasing, light him up, which is not a textbook gun, fire command, by the way. So that was like kicking a hornet's nest. And normally you see an intel for, you know, 200 brothers are preparing to the assault,

and you're doing Iraqi mass. That's like 12 guys. No, there was a lot of them. And it was one of those moments where luck actually has a role to play here. I called Pat Moore, my colleague at Brigade, I came in my came in, what did he got in the air? And they had a Super Cobra and a Huey gunship. Nice.

And there were no textbooks. No textbook solutions in Ramadi, because if something didn't work, you had to figure it out. So Chris could not talk with the Apache pilot or the Super Cobra pilot, but I could. Just weird. So I talked to the guys, where are you guys?

Hey, north of Duster by 500 meters, east of Blue Diamond by a client. Like, whatever it was, got it out. And yeah, it was a good day. Chris came in afterwards, you know, his eyes were like sausage. Like, I'd never seen anything like that. I'm like, well, good on you. Thanks for doing it.

But again, it's about relationships. Being able to call somebody and knowing immediately that you've got something that can help me, it's fantastic. Yeah. Like you said, you've got to figure out how to make stuff work. You know, we learned so much from you guys. And I know, you know, we were, again, talking about. about extreme ownership, but just the, you know,

Laif going out on patrol with the Marines completely overloaded. You know, he had a ton of grenade, just too heavy, you know? And he's like, you know, like the Marines, the three, eight guys were like, hey, this is what you need to do. Hey, here's how. They gave us so much information. And even, you know, with what routes were good, you know, working with you guys that have been there for, what, 12 months at that point or 11 months,

the amount of information and knowledge that you should. shared with us to make sure that we understood what was happening was just a total team effort. And yeah, if you don't do that, I can't even fathom what it looks like. I can't even imagine that kind of friction that you could, if you add additional friction onto that battlefield, it's just going to be a nightmare. Talk a little bit about when you're calling Aaron, because it was pretty hard. It was pretty hard to drop bombs in Ramadi. What did it take to drop a bond, Dave?

Well, that's an interesting question because, you know, on paper, it just required the ROE. But as everybody here knows, and I'm sure most people at the time knew, like, there was a lot of resistance to using bombs, especially in the city for the fear of the collateral damage. That was somewhat unspoken and unwritten, and what we had to do was prove that we could mitigate the risk to civilians. and really the Marine Battalion before us that was up north before 3-8 was 3-7 had worked really hard to try to convince that we could do it with low collateral damage and once we prove that

your team was the first team that really let us do that in earnest and that kind of opened the gates was hey we could things like hellfires really cool weapon off a rotary wing very precise hits a window in a building and really doesn't do much more damage You know, the people across the street are pretty safe relatively.

So once we figured out how to do that, you know, the ROE is never different. It was just demonstrating that we could follow the ROE and not have the second and third order effects that were unintended. Once they got the confidence that we were able to do more, but on paper, the rules had always been the rules. The ROE used the ROE didn't really change. You know, you mentioned those 16 pictures that you saw hanging on the wall when you showed up. How long was it before you guys, your battalion took its first casualty? What do you remember about that? August 23rd.

It was on shift. Mass. Sergeant Chris Chapin was one of our embedded trainers. So we had him, I don't remember who was 317 or 117, but he had come in, giving us the con-up for the day. He was out there working with the Iraqi units. And he was in Tameem. And this was before the constitutional referendum. And Mass.

Sergeant Chapin was happy in his work. Good soldier, he came in and talked to me about it. He told me he was happy. He felt like he was making a difference. And their mission that day was to go out and do some patrolling, but to hang posters encouraging Iraqis to vote in their own constitutional referendum. And 20 minutes later, he was dead, shot by a sniper. And, you know, I just, I was talking to somebody else in Vermont.

I'm doing some series on the radio there because 20 years later, and nobody's telling this story. How do you, you've lost guys. I mean, there are no words for it. And then you suppress it because you can't freeze up. You've got to be that calm voice in the radio, and I think you refer to it in one of your books.

You can't be emotional, push the resource when you can. And I think we all had a naive hope that, hey, let's get him to the aid station and the docs can save him. and then wasn't going to happen. And then it's just like a punch in the gut. But they watched us, the insurgents, they watched us. They patterned us.

They took their time. They got nothing else to do. They watched us for two months. Got there June and July. It's a probing stuff. So this is a couple months after you arrived. And meanwhile, you must have had, I know I had this feeling, which was, guys are getting wounded or killed every day, you know?

Oh, yeah. And so when you're for my seal task unit, it's like every, I don't know how. Like we had guys, there would be some element of seals in the field very often, you know, very, very, because we had, when we first got there, we had five different elements, we were broken up. So, you know, this five guys would be going out.

These six guys would go out. These four guys would be going out. There was almost, I wouldn't say almost always, but there was oftentimes there were someone in the field. So the feeling that, you know, you, you, you, keep playing the game and eventually your number's going to come up. And so for you as a battle captain, you're tracking not just your battalion, but you're tracking an entire brigade worth of people.

You're seeing these casualties happen. And for me, I felt like at some point, the numbers are going to come up. You know it's coming. And that's kind of that is always a stress there. You're hoping for the best. You hope it doesn't happen. But you know it's coming. You can feel the tension building.

And I'm not sure that folks who, if you look back at Ramadi, if you look at the scale of the stuff we're talking about here, in the course of that year, our battalion was hit by over 350 IEDs. Scott Matthewsson, now Lieutenant Colonel, was Staff Sergeant Matthewsson at the time, infantry soldier, really good at his job. He and his crew were hit by 20 IEDs. he's the only guy I've ever seen direct commission infantry

because he was phenomenal the insurgents hated him oh they hated him he came they called him he's a big he's a big guy and they called him the fat man and he'd go around and he'd pick up gray list and blacklist guys very clever

and boy he didn't like him and they he came into the talk one day after a debrief and he's like cap night they issued a they put a bounty on me it's like 20,000 dinar. I'm like, God, it's like 12 bucks, man. We ain't worried about it. You're going to be fine.

But yeah, but it was ugly. September was worse. September was bad. What was the morale like for the troops? I think for the most part, guys just, they buckled down and did their job. It was hard. And, you know, I think what probably humbles me the most

is knowing what's out there and knowing that, look, I got it good, man. I'm in a hard structure. I'm on the radio living through your actions. I push the resources when I could. I'm tracking the battle. I get you the help. But every day,

every day, they put under gear and they went out and they did their job. No hesitation. Not that they would display. Those are just phenomenal people. Where do we find people like that? That to me is probably the most humbling aspect of this. is even having losses, knowing the IED threats there, and how clever, I mean, the pressure plate IEDs,

they're building them into curbs, they're putting them on donkeys, they're putting them in vehicles, they're everywhere. And knowing that, guys still going out and doing the job. It's just phenomenal people. Yeah, I always complain about the fact that that vehicle graveyard, with, I don't know, 75 or 100 freaking wrecked Humvees and tanks and brads and allegedly mind-resistant vehicles,

That vehicle graveyard was on the right hand side as you rolled out of base. It was a very stark reminder of what you were getting into. Yep. What was the, as the, like the arc of the deployment, did you get into, you know, in the middle deployment where you're kind of in a pattern mentally where it's just like you're going through every day, just making it happen? Yeah. So there came, and it was almost disconcerting, it became so efficient, I guess.

In fact, it was our scouts. It was Jim Armstrong at the time, and Max Rooney was his platoon sergeant. They were on Route Jones heading south, the western-most-rout, north-south route in Temeem. And they were southbound in the northbound lane, and a caprice came out, a V-B-I-E-D, T-B-I-E-D, T-B-B-I-E-D, T-B-B-B-B-E-D, detonated. There's gore. It's been sprayed everywhere. dude's eyeball was in the grill.

The insurgent's heart hit the gun shield and was laying on the roof, and I get the call. Yeah, I just got hit. Hey, Sabre, he just got hit by the BBIAD. Yep, Roger that. Any WIA-A-K-A-A negative? We're going to R-TB, swap out vehicles. Roger that. That's about the extent of the conversation.

They come back. They go in through Trooper Gate or Ogden Gate. And who these young kids. the triple deuce, you know, fine young kids from Utah. And they stopped, of course, Humvees covered with gore. And the guy's heart and Rooney gets out and starts interrogating the heart. This is, I mean, you guys, it's dark humor. Dark humor, yeah.

His heart was in it. So it's awful. But, and they based swap vehicles and back to work, they went. And so it was actually Bunky Moore called me from Brigade. He goes, you kidding me, right? right now. He said 45 minutes to start to finish. You guys had a VBI and that's it. And I said, that's it. That's part of the battle rhythm. And you just, when you had your, when you got your battle drills down, my job was simply to facilitate the information. But our guys were good, man.

They were, they were good at what they did. What did the, the elections took place in like December of 05. What strategically, what did that look like to you? So, again, a humbling experience to to see the sheer volume of people that voted. I wish we had that in America. I don't, I mean, they were lined up down the MSR. Our job was, we provided security for the polling places. Didn't have that bigger turnout for the constitutional referendum, but for the actual election,

my recollection was that there was a tremendous turnout. Yeah, and it seemed like there was kind of a positive groundswell. You know, you see all these people with the ink on their fingers and all that stuff. it seemed like progress was being made. Yep. It certainly seemed that way. And that to me, again, just my perspective, that was kind of the beginning of the Ramadi Awakening.

That was when we started doing like police recruiting at the Glass factory, which one of them ended horribly tragically with a suicide bomber. But you could see it turning. And then it was outside looking in. Yeah, and that's actually a good point. You know, I'm sure the enemy saw it turning as well, and that's why you end up with a big attack like that at the Glass Factory January 5th.

That was 2006 January 5th, a massive attack because they see what's happening. They see progress being made, and they do this devastating attack. There's like 20-plus Iraqis killed. Of course. Lost Colonel McLaughlin there. McLaughlin, who is what they call him,

the shake of shakes, and everybody loved that guy. Yeah. Marine Corps Sergeant Adam Cann was killed and then my buddy Braxie McCoy got wounded bad. But again, one of those things where you're taking two steps forward and there's a step back, maybe two steps, maybe even three steps back. Yep. On that one. So I was listening to the economy of leadership and Leif brought up that very thing at OP 29 or 3 on Route Michigan.

We had set up that checkpoint. And I was in the talk and it was one, it's an incredibly helpless feeling. know what's happening. I know what's going on. We've seen it before. It was a complex attack. It was a small arms fire and then it was multiple mortar rounds to suppress everybody inside that compound. And then they rammed the dump truck full of explosives, ammonium nitrate, fuel oil, artillery rounds. I think they'd armored the cab. Yeah, they usually did. But it was Joe Proctor from Indiana, stood his ground, and Brian Litton, Marine Corps, I think he'd been in, he might have been in Ramadi 72 hours.

Yeah. And engage that vehicle because it was penetrating into the compound. And the Iraqi soldiers, brave soldiers pulled out Humvee up, armored Humvee, and tried to stop it from coming in, but just the mass of the vehicle. Yeah. And again, it's like the enemy's watching, because that was a, I think there was the military transition team, the oncoming guy and the offgoing guy. Correct. So they're, you know, they're getting ready to help the Iraqis take control and help them step up and the enemy did not like that. Nope. And hit with those massive, massive complex attacks,

which were not rare in Ramon. It wasn't rare. It wasn't like this only happened occasionally. And in fact, later on, they were doing those complex attacks, but they'd do four or five them throughout the city all at once. Which was devastating. Yeah, coordinated via cell phone.

I mean, and it was, again, I never sold those, I never sold the insurgent short. They were tactically and technically proficient. well-armed. We had one, and it was the stupidest place. I looked hindsight being what it is. We had that OP3 was on the MSR and then down below that on the old bridge, low-water bridge, was our OPE. There's no worse place to put. It's indefensible. And I don't know why, looking back, should have thought, move it. You don't need it. It's a redundant route. But we left it

there. And there was a complex attack on that one. We had a number of guys wounded. Part of that was made more complex by some complacency. But don't pay attention for a few minutes. Watch what happens. And then as the deployments, like you're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel for deployment, what did that feel like? Did you start to get more paranoid? I know one thing I did on two deployments to Iraq, but I never told my guys like, hey, this is the last mission tonight. I wouldn't tell them that. I would just be like, keep working, keep working, and then one day I'd say, remember last night? Yeah, that was the last one.

Like, that's it. We're done. Because I always felt like jinks, you know, superstitious. You send the guy out on the last stop and you know, everyone's got that in their head. I didn't want I'm thinking that way. What did it feel like for you as you were going through the deployment? I think you're personally, I think the level of paranoia would go up a little bit because you're, you don't, nobody wants to be the last person killed. Nobody wants to be that close to the end of getting the hell out of the place.

But you know it's coming because you're doing award ceremonies and you're taking care of our soldiers and making sure that all the evaluations, you're closing out stuff. And then you've got the incoming units. And this was, and again, I probably mentioned it up front. We were pre-surge. So we had started, we did it in Jazeera with what we called O.P. Foraken, kind of the sees hold clear, rebuild that you talk about.

We didn't have the personnel resources do at large scale. So God bless first AD they came in and did the right thing. I mean, that was the only way to do it. There was no way we were going to as a brigade or as a battalion go into southern Ramadi. No way. We made one run at that. It might have been with 3-8. They didn't get very far.

I think they'd hit double-digit IEDs before they'd gone a couple of kilometers. That was one of the main briefing points that I got when I showed up. I think somebody from 3-8 was like, yeah, we went down route. There was route sunset. We had 13 IEDs and 500 meters. It's like, okay. So. Yeah.

So, yeah. And so there was some discussion towards the end of our tour. It's like, hey, we're going to make a push into Springfield. Southern Marathon, railroad station, whatever. Yeah, no, we're not. That doesn't end well. We don't have the resources or personnel to do it. And to what end?

Right? You're not going to hold it. You're not going to build a, you know, a cop falcon or anything. You're not going to do that. But you know what's coming. Yeah. Yeah, what you guys just strategically, what we saw was you had gotten control of the outskirts of the city, you know.

The MSR is going in and out, set up good checkpoints along the way, mitigated as much, you know, traffic going in and out of the city. That's sort of like what I felt was happening when we showed up there and paid an extreme price to make that stuff happen. So, but as you're starting to think about going home, now it's like, okay, here's what we're going to turn over. How was the turnover? So Leif talked about it in dichotomy of leadership, and he was talking specifically about some of the, I'd call it arrogance, probably, kind of a dismissive, oh, those guard guys. So the bandits, that was not the case, because they, I think, had come from

Talil. And I remember, one of them was starting first class Thompson. I don't remember the other one's name but they sat down on either side of me and so okay man give it give all of it how do you do do you run your battle drills how do you track your iEDs how do you run your tripped i mean this is it was just sharing best practices here's what we found work i went around to two other units because i was kind of doing the round robin towards the end there one was a blue dime another one they'd taken our ao with three battalions and divvied it up um and i i just i i never forget it i went and I told him, listen, man, if you're on an O.P. And you haven't seen the dirt, don't drive on it.

Don't ever go, don't go east of Route Jones after dark. Whatever you do, right? And whatever, a few other pointers. And I remember going back in the next morning and asking this young captain how to go. And he goes, well, we lost this lieutenant last night and his gunner. Hit a pressure plate, flipped the Humvee, pinned the gunner. Scott Matthewsson actually stripped off his body armor, crawled into that hump, me to try to get the gunner out unsuccessfully.

Lieutenant was simply gone. It went off under him. Now, where were they? Oh, we were by the marketplace and Tamim. And what do what even say to that? I told you so? Well, that seems wrong. Damn, dude.

What else happened last night? Oh, we came off of OP4 and, you know, a tank hit an IED. What were you doing coming off the OPE? Well, they just came off and did a combat turn, you know, to check the surrounding area. Well, it was ammonium nitrate fuel on a free on can. Cracked the hall. Probably blew out to final drive. I don't know.

One thing I never want to hear again in my life is we got this. That's like the most arrogant, dismissive thing. Yeah, we got this. You don't have anything. I've been here for a year. I know a little bit about Ramadi at this juncture. When you're doing the rip with my units, you might want to pay attention, man. But yeah, that whole, I don't know.

I saw a couple of examples of that. It was kind of disheartening. And that's why I brought it up. I'm not going to throw stones. You all did amazing work. Our Army SF did fantastic things. It's just flow of communication between your team and us was vastly different than it was from our Army colleagues. I'd get a call on the DNVT, the digital non-secure voice telephone.

And he was like, hey, man, it's Steve. Hey, what's up, Steve? Yeah, we're going to go up route to Fiat. We're going to grab a guy. I'm like, I wouldn't do that. What do you mean? Well, Steve, it's a raised canal road. They will blow you up.

There's one way in and one way out. No, no, we're good. We got Bradley's. Oh, we got strikers. Yeah. Okay. So I called then-Lutnant Beams, my QRF guy, so get the 88 ready, get two tanks ready. And they went up Route Fiat.

I watched them on the Blue Force tracker. I didn't hear anything for half an hour, and then I get a phone call. Hey, yeah, Steve. Yeah, listen, we're mired pretty good up there. So now I'm going to jeopardy. my folks and put them at risk to come get you out because you know better than I did. Yeah, that stinks a little bit. If you just listen, we could have helped you, man.

We could have worked out, I don't know, an air assault. Yeah. If the guy's that bad, go get him. But don't drive there. Yeah, it's terrible. It's got to put your ego in check, man. You really do. Like when we roll up and to a new AO and, man, you guys have been there for a year.

It's like, I'll tell you what I'll do is I get out my notebook and take notes on what you're going to tell me. That seems to be the best possible course of action. But you know, it's a guardism, right? Because folks are in the guard and reserve both. We bring things to the fight that active duty doesn't. If I look at all the folks that we brought in, master carpenters, master electricians, law enforcement officers, school teachers, attorneys. Cops. cops, generator mechanics, Jocko.

I think we had Sergeant LaValley the only qualified generator mechanic. So you can wait for a couple of weeks to get KBR to come in. Or you guys in LaValleys. The Seals called me and said, hey, man, we got a platoon coming in and can we borrow Sergeant LaValley? Absolutely. And went over, he got the generator fixed. That's a guard thing. We don't wait, man.

We get things done. Yeah. These are tough stories that listen to you right now because I am there either next to you, next to your guys or in the talk at those, or on site for every one of those stories. Like literally every one of those stories. I can tell you the name of that lieutenant. I probably won't just on this podcast, but I know his name.

I know his wife's name because I looked at the SDI paperwork the next day with that battalion commander. Those are tough, tough days. It just, I'm thinking about Jocko Seals a little bit because I probably had six weeks on you guys. I'm late February, early to mid-April, something like that. So not a ton of time, a little bit of time, but not a ton. Um, but I showed up and you guys had been there.

I mean, a long time. And as a Marine, I'm really attached to the army as Anglica. That's my job is to be an army liaison for the Marine Corps. So I wasn't really close to the Marine Corps on the north side, which was 3.7 and then 3.8. I was close to you guys. And your, your guardsman taught me how to fight in Ramadi. Um, I showed up to relieve an Anglica unit and I spent maybe, we might have had a, uh, a, uh, a 36 hour turnover we just did not have a long rip they they were leaving and so I

probably got a day and a half of the Anglico rip in place with them so I didn't not no criticism of them but I just didn't have much time to learn from them I did maybe one mission left seat right seat with the with the Anglico fact I was replacing I got with you guys and right away all your frontline leaders your platoon commanders your your your in place leaders I mean they taught me how to fight in Ramadi I didn't know what I was doing the only advantage I probably had when it comes to like arrogance and complacency is I had none of that because I was completely paranoid

about being there as a fighter pilot on the ground. So I did not roll in with anything like the phrase we got this never came out of my mouth. Not not because I was like enlightened. I was literally just, I don't know what I'm doing. And if you can accept, if you can tell yourself you don't know what you're doing and say it to another person,

hey, I don't know what I'm doing, it is such a liberating thing because then the other guy's like, oh cool, here's what we did. And so I had this, this memory of getting there in this vision of, I'm gonna sit in the COC as the salt lead. I got 13 guys, I'll send a couple out on patrols. And when I realized the platoons

that were doing the operations, you didn't have enough help from the airplanes. And to me, it was just mind-blowing because I had hornets and harriers and cobras and hughies and I had full influence and control over them. I understood an ATO because I was a fighter pilot. And I realized very quickly, we could have used tan Anglico teams,

like easily put them to work. 10 Anglico teams. And I learned all these things from you guys. And when the SEAL showed up, to be totally honest with you, like in my mind, I had never, I'd never interacted with the SEAL.

So everything I thought that I knew about SEALs was like either from a movie or from a secondhand story or that these are big tough guys that were probably pretty complacent. And so when the SEAL team showed up, I didn't know who they were, they want to do a mission with your guys and me.

And I'm like, we'll see about that. I'm going to roll into the seal platoon or the seal task unit space, and I'm going to watch them brief because I'm pretty sure they're going to roll in with the attitude if we got it. So I took myself and put myself in the very first mission with task unit bruiser, not knowing what to expect, but pretty sure that they were going to be like that. And you'd said they're the most professional seals you'd ever seen or special operatives they ever seen. I walked into that brief. I'm at the top gun standard. I know exactly how brief should be. I've been in Ramadi for not quite two months, but enough time to see what's going on.

and Jocco Seals were, it was the most professional, articulate, cogent, well-coordinated brief I had ever seen from a ground unit period. It was remarkable. And very quickly, my, you know, thoughts of what they were like was completely evaporated, which these are just, these are professionals that just want to take their capability, which none of us had, and contribute. And I have this really cool spot where I was the linchpin between your aging out at your year. We had a little bit of, we had some time, two months together. and I got to take a lot of what I learned from you and help with Laf's platoon of, hey, this is how I did it with these guys.

And there's this little link between my Anglico team and all the guardsmen that are there, the 5,000 guardsmen, and then the 1180 that came in, I sat right in the middle of that. And for me, it is such a huge honor to be so closely connected to all the things you did and sacrificed and learned.

I was really the vehicle to help pass some of that on to Jocco's team, who got the really, as you guys were leaving. And then you made a comment about 137, the bandits. And you described them extremely well. They're phenomenal. Just unbelievable. Colonel Tedesco, just that whole crew.

Two gun Tedesco. I was just so, so lucky to be in the middle of that. And to hear the stories of the contrast between the professionalism of Jocko Seals rolling in with a ton of capability and a ton of ability with all sorts of humility. No arrogance, no presumption. And then you told some of those stories. and I watch those as well and those are heart-breaking stories

being in the talk with some of those and being on site for some of those. Anyway, just my little narrative of getting sit between your guys and your guys and what that experience was like for me was unreal. No, we definitely took advantage of that. I mean, it was real obvious

that you had, in those two months, learned a lot, and we were definitely all on board for that. And, you know, I was kind of saying this before we hit record, but I wrote the forward to Dave's new book. Dave's got a book coming out. And one of the things is,

you know, I met this Marine. He was, you know, how can we support you? And we said, how can we support you? So it was like great out of the gate. Like, no drama whatsoever, no friction of any kind. And at that time, you know, I thought, I didn't even know what kind of polity was. I might have asked you. I don't know.

But I didn't really, quite frankly, I didn't really care. But I didn't really get. I wasn't concerned about it. You know, he's like, oh, I can help you with your, with your air to ground. And I said, well, cool. If you can do that, then I can take my seal JTax and they can just do what a seal is supposed to do and not have to worry about air to ground, which you're probably better at anyways.

And then later I found out that, you know, he's a, you know, top gun, top gun instructor, top gun senior instructor. It's okay. You know, the whole nine yards. But at the time, I didn't really know that. Here's the other funny thing. And I didn't find this out until later.

I was like, probably six months ago. I said, Dave, when you got to Ramadi, like, when you got put in your Anglico unit, when was the last time you had shot an M4? You know, because he'd been in a, F-18 for freaking 10 years. And so now he's over here. He hadn't shot an M4.

Like, what was the deal? 12 years. He hadn't shot an M4 in 12 years. Is an M-16 A2 at the basic? Yeah, yeah. So when he says he was not thinking he knew, you know, he had an open mind to learn from the boys on the ground. Yeah, well, that'll clue you in when you're like, wait a second,

charging handle? What's the, what's the need action draw on this weapon right here? So that was pretty, pretty awesome relationships across the board. And that was really critical. And we try to milk as much as we could out of your guys on the ground of like just gathering Intel telling us what down to what gear, what routes, how to run the roads, like everything we just wanted to absorb what you guys have learned. And you know, you get it without question.

The turnover we got from you guys from three eight, there's no doubt we, we saved our lives. Literally no doubt about it. There was roads that we were going to go on missions on. your guys were like, hey, do not go down that road. We're like, hey, Roger that. Not like, well, maybe or, well, what if? No, it was like, your guys say, do not go down that road. We're like, got it.

We will not go down that road. And we watched other people go down those roads and get blown up, take casualties. So we really appreciated the lessons that you learned. I know the lessons were learned, you know, in blood. And you saved us blood from those lessons. And we won't forget that. Glad to be a part of it. I just wish, looking back, that I didn't know what to ask for.

I don't know if any of us, here, this is what you got. I knew what an Anglico was. I didn't know we could have one. Didn't know we had options that were riverine units, Navy or more than. And again, you know, sometimes it's just luck. If you go back to American sniper, the search of the white apartments. So mostly accurate depiction. I actually planned that Operation Old School.

I planned that on my bunk after I got off shift. It was us, first to one-tenth, first of the 125th, our Iraqi units. We probably dragged in a couple of marine units, our ETTs. But the catalyst, a part of it was I'm walking through the Chowall Hall in Marmadi. And I see a guy in a Navy flight suit. I'm like, what's the Navy doing here? What are you flying? It was the proller, the A6B.

And I'm like, really? Mind if I sit down? So he was the, is it the electronic warfare officer? There might be another term for him. That's it. But yeah, he was an EW. And I said, okay, so tell me about this, this aircraft. And what does it do?

And he goes, well, if you want us, we'll come work for you. And you let me know what you want. We'll figure it out. We'll put on the right pods. and was preceding that battalion plus level operation. I want to jam cell phones. Suppressing ideas. I want to dab.

I want to jam sat phones. And they flew over that mission for the duration of whatever it was, five or six hours. It took to search those apartments. It was just having the curiosity to sit down and ask the guy, what are you doing here, Navy? You know. But little chance meetings like that, I had a, I got somebody called me on the DMV. He was a master sergeant, Air Force. master sergeant.

He goes, hey, Cap Knight, you guys want to use J-Stars? I'm like, what? I said, you're a theater asset. And he goes, yeah, well, nobody's using us. And you guys are probably the busiest battalion in the AO. How can we help you, man? And this became the catalyst for what we did in Mike Charlie won. I said, well, I know 269 armor is getting messed with because they're bringing

ordinance across from that dip in the Euphrates. So he said, tell me what you want. And they flew it that night. And by my shift start that next morning, I had everything they had recorded. And it showed boat traffic, as I thought, a dozen different things coming across, bringing ordinance over to north central Ramadi.

I'm like, really? And then we sent the scouts out with Gunny Burkart. And the OD team, Massartin Tacus was there or not. but I think it was the second largest cash site that anybody had found in theater. I mean, it was, it took them a week to excavate it. And that was all because one curious master sergeant called me and said, hey, man, can we help?

Again, come back to your point, can we help? How do we help you? I didn't even know I had, I'm a battalion, why would I use J-Stars? But just a lesson learned, man. Know what you got out there and reach out and ask the question because if you don't ask the question,

the answer's always going to be no. So now you're getting the turnover. What was your last day like there? I mean, what was it like the final getting on the bird to fly home? I think all of us are just happy to get out of there. And there are, we've been on lots of helicopters, been on lots of aircraft. That was a flight, I will never forget.

middle of the night getting in a Chinook and we took off and we flew right down the Euphrates and the pilot drops the ramp and I could see the full moon shining off the windscreen of the Chinook behind us and it was you know just flipped off Ramadi and said

see you yeah it was that was memorable but I remember all of us were sitting there were all keyed up it's like I may just get the birds here let's go because you're you're sitting at the at the LZ you're waiting You're just a big fat mortar target

Because we got mortared and rocketed Over 260 times in a year That was acquired by the radar You know the small caliber stuff that came in Under the radar fan you don't know Yeah That was a memorable evening Yep

And then how was it getting home Kind of anticlimactic It was disconcerting At some level Because It's Vermont And I think I remember getting

home and everything was just so normal. And so I go, hey Greg, welcome back. How was it? I think I went to the freaking beach? How was it? I was pretty high strong. Nothing, I didn't do anything like you guys. I wasn't kinetic. But when you're living it vicariously on the radio, to me that brings its own level of stress, right? You have to eat it. You can't get excited. You have to do the call for fire. You've got to be the calming voice. Send out to QRF, send out to Medev, whatever is you're going to do.

But I got home and I remember thinking, this is just wrong, man. You folks don't even know. You're still going to Walmart. You're doing your Costco thing and everything's just so normal. It's not. And I would tell anybody this,

Jocko, nobody comes back the same. And we, I personally, have made it a point in particular in my role now, go get help, man. it's okay to not be okay, right? Not to sound cliched, but I wasn't. I was, and I'll give him credit, Doc, Colonel Coffin at the time, he was our, the guard state psychiatrist. And he came down to Camp Shelby, and we were there.

And, you know, it racks in you, man. Literally, you're blowing your nose a week later, it's brown. You're wiping your skin, it's brown. You know, you're hacking up all kinds of crap. And Colonel Koff, and he brought us in, and he did a, he loved soldiers, man. He did kind of a group, several group debriefs. Nobody's saying anything, man. We're not talking.

Because I'm not going to spill my guts in front of my RTOs. They were there with me. That's what it was. But he told all, he said, look, man, keep tracking yourselves, five or six months. If it's going to manifest, it'll be in five or six months. And here are the things that you're going to look for. And man, I was text. I was angry, short-tempered.

I didn't have tolerance for bullshit what I thought was stupid. Because you go from a kinetic environment and you're back to Garrison, back to the usual. You know, hey, your cyclic inventory is late. Okay. You know, oh, God, no, not that. But my kids saw it, my wife saw it, colleagues saw it, and I went to the vet center. I got my head checked. I just don't think there's any shame in it.

Well, go get fixed. It's really not that hard. What did they tell you when you went to the vet center? What do they talk about? So people understand, I think everybody's got vet centers in their different states. It's run by the VA. But it is not anonymous.

It is confidential. And I don't think it goes into the VA system unless they prescribe you on meds. But the vet center to me was my counselor for the first two years of going there. was a two-tour, 25th ID Vietnam Vet. Sure. So I'm like, okay, well, I'm pretty humbled now

because I can only imagine what you saw and here you are taking care of guys like me. But it was interesting because I would see some of my folks would be there. And I'm sitting in the waiting room and I'm like, oh, hey, sir, what are you doing here? Same thing you're doing, man. No secret.

I'm not right that I'm going to get right. I wasn't what I was. I'm going to get back some semblance of that. But I've messaged that to anybody. who will listen to me. Just go get it done, man. And so, oh, well, you know, it's going to, it'll ruin your career. Really?

Is that right? Apparently not. And that has to be, you know, very difficult. You guys come back and you have soldiers that are going to go back to their civilian job. Correct. Like, how do you keep them on track? Like, I mean, I had active duty freaking seals. That literally worked for me.

that I had a hard time keeping out of trouble. I can't imagine what it was like, you know, you got some guy that goes back to work at his, you know, job as a plumber or teacher, whatever. How does that work? So that's the tough thing, Jocko. The guard is, is, there's some continuity there because you see folks, but oftentimes we've got guys that have been in the same unit for decades,

working with each other. The challenge is you're only seeing them one weekend a month, two weeks a year, normally, outside of deployment. So you go from having a habitual, literally combat relationship with them. And then you get home, and that ends. So now you're trying to help somebody when you really only see them about 7% of their life. And what's more concerning for me, and again, I message this, unless somebody is following us on social media, unless somebody is paying attention, if you're a veteran and you get out, we don't track you.

we lose track of you. Unless you're using the, like in our case, Vermont Veterans Affairs. Most states have a Veterans Affairs within their military department. They will track how many veterans there are in the state. I don't know if they're enrolled in VA health care system. I don't know their specific experience.

I can't make them go do anything, but I can at least get the word out, but the problem is I can't reach out direct to them. So I've really, in my role in this job, I've really leveraged the media, public affairs, social media, but I talk about it. I don't make it any secret. You know, it's, if we're serious about doing something with PTSD adjustment disorder and certainly suicide, well, somebody needs to help me share this story.

We work with our congressional delegation, Senator Welch in particular on getting the PACT Act passed into law, and they actually accelerated it. And what did that do? So it provides more resources sooner to veterans, and it's incorporated kind of spins off of the exposure to burn pits, open air hazards. But they can enroll and register, and I just don't know if we can reach veterans

because if you think about it, somebody separates from the service. And in 10 years, they end up with some aberrant form of cancer. Are they putting two and two together? I can give you a dozen names off the top of my head. It was pancreatic cancer, here in Vermont and Pennsylvania, pancreatic cancer, lung cancer, metastasized colon cancer, metastasized prostate cancer, two instances of glioblastoma. Way before anything like that should be happening to anybody.

But I don't know are they in the VA health care system. So I tell anybody who's listening, if you're a veteran, whatever your issues are, validate it, man, because we didn't break you. The Army did. Or the service, right? And our VA and we're fortunate in Vermont. Our VA is great. Probably not true in every state.

But, man, you've got to take care of yourself. And what happens if folks aren't leveraging the VA, if they're not getting a service-connected disability because they were exposed to burn pits or what other types of talk? I mean, how much stuff did we eat or drink? in Ramadi. You go to the palate and I'm sure that's all PBA free water bottles out there in the palate in the sun. Oh sure. And that talcum powder fine dust, you know, I mean, but man, go get yourself taking care of because if you don't, you're leaving benefits on the table, right? You're leaving benefits potentially for your family, Tricare for life, for instance. Talk to

Somebody the other day about this, if you are a temporarily 100% disabled vet, your dependents can't access the VA's dependent education benefit. If you're 100% permanently disabled, you have access, and your kids will get, I forget what, the amount of $12 or $1,500 a month to go to college. While how many folks linger in a permanent or a temporary status get no benefits, and I've seen it happen twice. Two good friends of mine. Mike Heston was being one of them, and his wife, June, was,

she's pretty sharp, she figured it out and worked with Senator Leahy to get his status permanent. He was dying of pancreatic cancer. So now his kids at least had access to that program. But how long do these folks, if you've got a terminal condition that's, quote, unquote, stabilized, I'm not quoting chapter and verse here, until it's permanent, you get no benefits for your kids? Well, who's in a hurry to help you get to permanent?

a huge backlog. But again, you go to these places and you're exposed to pretty horrible things. I think it's okay for them to give those benefits to your kids, especially if you have a terminal condition like pancreatic cancer, brain cancer. Both of these gentlemen, they fought it for two years. Could have been two years of their kids getting benefits. So that's the kind of stuff you do in this job at the national level. You're advocating for change.

Before you got there, this job that you're currently in, so you can't. get home, what's the next, what's the next job for you? So I went, uh, got home. I was six months at my old unit and then went down to the southern part of the state and become a battalion, um, A.O. Admon officer. And then in 2008, they moved me to the recruiting battalion command, uh, which was a great job. Where were you doing that? Right at Camp Johnson, right at the head, state headquarters. And then when you're in charge of recruiting, because I, I see recruiters at, uh, wrestling tournaments. I go to a lot of my kids all wrestled. So I would see a lot of recruiters at the wrestling tournaments.

Where do you go to recruit kids? So we have a challenge getting into schools. I don't know if that's a Vermont specific thing. It might be. I think we're getting better. There's some reluctance to get my recruiters in the school. That's weird because I will say a lot of people that I've had on the podcast when I ask them like, oh, how did you end up in the military?

they will literally say, yeah, some guy was in the chow hall, what do they call a chow hall? Cafeteria. And he was handing out pamphlets for the Marine Corps for the Army. And I said, oh, it looks cool. It's better than what I'm doing right now. Yep. So it's not universal.

I've been in all fairness, I think there are some schools. Like the tech centers are great. They know that a lot of the work, the hands-on work, you're doing the guard, crosswalks into the civilian sector. Diesel mechanic, hydraulics, avionic technician, airframe power plant. All of that stuff, we train you, and then you can get a job in the surveillance sector. Great stuff.

We tell you the narrative, I think we're working to change it. I talk to a lot of kids about joining the Guard. I go to North University, our senior military college, they have a future leader camp that they do every summer. They did three of them this year. Probably the largest one they've ever done, but these are groups between 75 and 100 kids. These are all rising seniors with aspirations to go to Norwich University.

So this is their experience. I talked to my recruit sustainment program, soldiers, they are either just back from basic training in AIT or getting ready to go. But I asked the question. So, hey, did you talk to your school counselor before you decided to join the Guard or have aspirations to go into military? And a number of them did, and the theme hasn't changed much. So what did they tell you?

Oh, you can do better. It's dangerous. That's a really bad idea. My favorite one was, why would you throw your life away? Good Lord. So I about came off the, yeah, I'd come off the ledge on that one. But I was like, okay. And the other one, just a few weeks ago I went down, because I speak to these kids about the Guard.

And here's my experience. And here's what happens when you join the Guard or the military. I joined as an E1 with no college. And fast forward. And here I am with no college debt. I'm not the sharpest tack in the box, but I can figure that out. And one of these young ladies who wants to be a future leader, who wants to go to North University, the guidance council said, you're an idiot.

Damn. So I don't say it's universal. I'm not pointing the finger at all educators, but I'll tell you you need to get yourself educated to understand the opportunities that come to service to the military. Yeah, I'm no doubt about. That's the worst advice I've heard in a long time.

Yep, I would agree. That's another very common theme. In fact, I'd go so far as it's like 90% of the common theme of people that come on this podcast and talk to me, the military is what, you know, squared their entire life away. You know, they were knuckleheads and they join the military, okay, take the knucklehead energy and put it into something positive.

Next thing you know, they're doing great things. So for a counselor to sit there and tell that to a young man or young woman, that's ridiculous. Totally ridiculous. And if you back out a little bit and open the aperture, if somebody ever put it in perspective, right? And I do this at different times. Go to the National Guard Association meeting or whatever

and we'll do an evening event sponsored by the New England states. And if you ever been to National Guard Association. It's it's a party. But I do it's just a hollerback, right? They make a mistake and they give me the microphone. One or two things is going to happen, right? I'm going to do the hollaback. I'm going to sing friends in no places because you can't screw it up. It's the bar anthem, but I ask the question. It's a rhetorical question. Hey, listen, man, when you have a pandemic, who do you call? National Guard. When you have wildfires, earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes.

Who do you call? National Guard. You have an insurrection at the nation's capital. Who do you call? We move 25,000 National Guard members in about a week

to the Nation's Capital after January 6th. There's no other organization on the planet can do that. None. We did it. So it's who do you call?

It's the Guard. So we're like Flexio, man. We're just good for everything. Slap some National Guard on that thing. That's right. So I think we get

the nation's capital right now. That's a whole other conversation, but that's what folks need to understand about the guard. We have a dual mission. We have our domestic response mission. You know, we did flooding in Vermont two years consecutive. I had soldiers with their LMTVs that saved 19 Vermonters and their pets. And they were working with swift water rescue teams and facilitated the rescue of a hundred, I don't know, a couple hundred more. That's your guard.

And to your point, and then we get that done. Hey, good work, and we go back to worker school. And, yeah, they're your neighbors, man. And then sometimes we go to war. Sometimes we do okay. What was it, war college you went to after that recruiting tour? How'd you end up going to war? And you went to the Naval War College.

Yeah. Was that your choice? Was that the one you wanted to go to? Not really. How did you end up there? So I had made 05 Lieutenant Colonel, and I was like, I'd never thought that was going to happen. No wait.

I'm good, man. So I kind of saw the writing on the wall, and I started my Masters of Education at Post University. And it was probably two weeks after that. It was the late Brigadier General Mike Heston called me, my Rhode Island colleague. Nader, you're going to apply for War College. He was a deputy adjutant German at the time. And I'm like, hey, sir, I just started a master's. You're not hearing me.

You're going to apply for War College. You're going to put Naval War College on your 4187 resident as your first choice. I do that, sir. So I did. Just completely, again, lucky, got selected. One of my colleagues, he couldn't do the resident course. He would have been first in the queue for resident. He had just gotten back from deployment as I can't leave my work again for another year.

So I backed into it. Probably one of the most phenomenal, probably the most phenomenal education experience I've ever had. Some high praise. I'm telling you. I just, well, it was a, it was a, Really great set of grand trimesters. It was joint military operations, national strategic decision making, and then policy, what was it, policy, strategy and policy, S&P. The professors were phenomenal.

But what was truly humbling for me is to be around that talent, that brainpower. All services, every letter agency was represented. We had international students. it validated to me America it validated what it was to be a part of something like that it really kind of reset things it was hard what year was this

15 15 to 60 it was hard I got a B which was pretty good we'll take it absolutely and actually I got dinged on an exam and I was mad because you know when you do good work and you know when you do good enough

well I knew I had Christ This is a 24-hour exam, right? You get it at 8 in the morning, and you will turn it in by 8 the next morning. So, I mean, I crushed this thing. And it was something that was like on the Iran nuclear deal or something like that. Something fairly complex. I thought, I got this. I got the place, Matt.

I got the rubric. I'm going to crush this thing. And I thought I did. And I got an 82. I'm like, what? I was mad. So I called the professor, and he goes like, well, you can appeal it. I can't change your grade.

He says, you're probably right. but you have to go to the dean. I knew what that was going to. So I did. So I went to the dean. I think I got an 84. So I called Heston, who was a Naval War College graduate. I'm like, hey, sir, this is BS.

This is, this is, I was mad. Goodnight, or listen to me. I graduated second from the bottom. He said, don't worry about it. Your job is to just get the diploma. Don't worry about it. Get to degree. Don't worry about it.

He was right. Did they have any rationale behind you getting an 82 or then an 84? It was a matter of everything you wrote was third person, except for this paper. And this paper was first person. This is what's your opinion, and you had to support your opinion. Here's what I'm going to tell you. I tell you, here's what I told you. Very basic, right?

But this is why. I thought my argument was sound. Like, well, I nailed this, man. I went by the rubric. This ain't hard. Yeah. Somebody had a different opinion. Yeah.

What came after that? So went back to work, became the deputy chief of staff of personnel, which was a great job because you're helping soldiers and retirees. You're doing a lot of, you know, in the weeds policy work. But you're taking care of soldiers and veterans and retirees, helping them get their pay sorted out, help them get their medical stuff sorted out, all the personal issues, personnel issues that you're going to be dealing with. that was very comfortable for me I really love that job

and then again Heston calls me downstairs he says yeah call me down the hall gonna move you to HRO and I didn't want to be the HRO you're not hearing me

you're going to be the HRL I didn't want to be the HRA that's a shitty job I didn't want it's awful nothing good happens with HRO because it's technicians it's AGRs it's managed level of resources it's budget it's bonuses it's incentives

it's incentives. And he told me, and again, we've all had this person. You've been this person for somebody, as have you, Chip. He had a vision for me that I didn't have for myself. And he said, this is a joint billet. You need to learn the blue side. Like, fine, Roger, that's her. Still, I didn't have any idea with what he wanted to do.

So you have somebody like that pushing you into the job that you don't want. Somebody pushing you into a job that's probably going to make you struggle a little bit. but you learn and he did and it was because of him and then I had some other senior leaders that were mentors pushing me to do more

because they always saw something in me that I probably didn't see in myself and sell yourself short but it was Heston Heston's a reason I'm in this job and then how did that come about so I was the HRO and he called me down

and I thought I'd screwed something up right I was waiting for the ass chewing And I came in and he closed the door. And at this point, he was ailing pretty badly from pancreatic cancer. He had lost a lot of weight. He was probably my size, and he'd lost 70 pounds. And in Vermont, if you're going to become the adjutant general, it is done by legislative

election. It's the only state that does that. Everybody else is appointed by the governor. Which is unique. So this job means you're the senior guy, the senior military guy for National Guard, Air National Guard and National Guard. Army Guard and Vermont. Both. And so this is very strange.

So you're going to this position, which the entire military, you get promoted through the ranks. Every, the entire military, the entire U.S. military, you get promoted through the ranks. But there's one job for the Vermont National Guard to be in charge of all that. You get elected. Okay. I am now a politician. It's awful. That being said, there's some uniqueness about it.

I think it's kind of good because, let's face it, climbing those ranks, through the military channel, you have to do certain things that may or may not be honorable to move up the chain of command. And so for you to kind of, it's like an opportunity to take an outsider or someone that didn't,

maybe isn't a perfect candidate from the military side that's got some other aspects to them that would be beneficial. Yep. It's a, it's very Vermont. It's kind of a colloquialism. At the time, I didn't appreciate the process

because I mean, I'd lost 14 pounds I wanted to vomit every day because it's stressful, man. I was active guard and reserve, so I had to get an exception of policy from then, Secretary Esper. And the response from their attorneys was, yep, well, Colonel Knight may be a candidate, but he may not campaign.

But what? Retire. Violation of the Hatch Act, right? Okay. So we have to send him, you know, my JAG sent a note back saying, hey, this is how Vermont does this. He has to be able to engage with legislature.

So what they settled on was, okay, he may speak with legislators, only him. No lobbying, no campaign committees, no social media, just Colonel Knight speaking with legislators. So I took a day of leave every time I had coffee with a legislator. Anytime I met with a committee, anytime I met with a caucus. What's interesting about the way we do things is, and what I like about it now, hindsight being what it is, our soldiers and airmen have a voice in this. So if somebody's running, you all have senators and representatives and you can email, you can call and say, listen, this is who I want to be the next senior leader of our guard.

I've worked with this person, whether me, whoever it is, it's running for office. I don't think mine wasn't contentious. I got along great with the other candidates. There were three other folks running, which was fine. That was collegial. Some of the sniping from the sidelines was not. Knight's going to ruin the air guard. Do I even know you? I even met you? How do you know me? Pretty horrific, but it was all Heston's fault. You know, he called me down to his office, and he was ailing, and he said, yeah, obviously, I was going to run. Just a wonderful man, the most loyal friend you could ask for.

I knew him for 30 years. And he said, obviously, I can't. I need you to run. And I about fell out of the chair. I'm like, oh, hey, sir, what? That's not on my to-do list, man. That is not even a thing. I'm good.

I'm going to get my high three. I never thought I'd get here. And he said, I understand. you'll be fine. And he would always say that, you'll be fine. Whether it was pushing me to go to OCS, whether it was making me whatever job, G-Wan, war college, you'll be fine.

Don't worry about it. So, love the guy. God rest of soul, because he's one of those folks. And he's having a last laugh right now watching he's doing this every day. Yes, he is. And there's still more good days and bad. I mean, it's when you really grasp

the scope and scale of the job and the things you can impact, helping veterans, getting legislation passed that helps veterans, that's kind of a big deal. Because it's a unique thing, and this is for all adjutants general in most cases, we all kind of straddle that that sieve-mill relationship

because we work with our governors, we work with our legislatures, but we also work with the congressional delegation. So at this juncture, even as an elected official, we've all heard this. You've certainly heard it. Well, you know, the military is apolitical.

you're not. Not even close, man. You're nonpartisan, because if I go to the State House a lot, and I will testify to committees, I don't care what your political stripes are. If you can help my guard, if you can help my soldiers and airmen,

oh man, we're going to get along great. And that's always been my pitch. So that's a uniqueness. It's a unique thing about, and I have to be close to them because they elected the adjutant in general. How could you not? The smartest thing I could have done

was six years ago, if you look back at the we were not in a good spot we had some challenges it was ugly when I got the job I mean you talk about you'll pardon the expression being handed a bag of shit it wasn't the fault of the previous adjutant

general there were some things behind the scenes that had not been addressed because he simply didn't know and they all percolated up and I'm like oh boy this is not good so you start to rebuilding first thing I did 2019 I asked for an organizational assistant assessment. So it was Office of Complex

Investigations and the JAG team came up from National Guard Bureau. And that I know of, I was the only adjutant General to ask. They had done several in the past, but it was a governor asking. And if the governor's asking, you ain't got a job. Yeah, that's going to be a problem. You just got shit canned. Probably the smartest thing I could have done.

So I talked to Brigitte General Chris Raffrona, who was Guard Bureau's JAG. And I called him, I saying, how do I get one of these things? And he said, well, you sure he want to do this? As you know, releaseable to the public. I'm like, that's the problem. Exactly. I got it. We need to do this. So we did it. And it was painful.

Hard to read. 113 pages of, oh, that was painful. I didn't get quite what I wanted. I would have liked to have had specifics, but I got enough themes out of what we had put in there. Here's what I'm looking for. Hazing, bullying, sexual assault, mal-treatment of others, all of the things that we can't abide. I got enough themes to start putting some things in place. So when I got the report, I sent it to the governor, sent it to my folks, the guard, sent it to the legislature, and then I released it to the public. And then it was, yeah, sky is falling, catastrophizing, good old boy network. We were getting raked over the coals.

But I had to do it. Yeah, well, that's how you get things fixed, right? You got to say, here's our problems. And it was actually, Dave Baldwin, when he's former adjunct general here in California, he actually texted me, goes, because I say, at every other tag. Every other adjutant general. Hey man. This ain't just Vermont.

You all got similar problems. And I was getting responses like, well, yeah, we got some problems, but not like that. And I'm like, sure about that? Really? Yeah, you're getting, you're getting insulated here. But Dave, a good friend of mine, he's since retired, but he sent me a text. He was probably the bravest thing I've ever seen. He just put it out there, man.

Can't get any worse. So. Well, that's one of, you know, you wrote a paper about leadership. when you're at the war college, the paper was called, good or effective leadership, is there a difference? And here's a quote from that that I really liked when I read that paper. It says, quote, there is a difference between effective and good leadership.

One can be effective probably throughout an entire career without ever becoming a truly good leader. Alternatively, I find it difficult to characterize someone as a good leader who isn't effective. In the military, assigning personnel to leadership positions presumes ability and results in rank commensurate with the position. Those who best exemplify the traits of a good. good leader do not necessarily receive these assignments fitness reports may capture

their being effective but are they good leaders there's a time for directive or transactional leadership where the nature of the mission or situation does not allow for inclusiveness and decision making I believe those times are limited the period interceding is where leaders should strive to not only be effective leaders but good ones learning from their subordinates and placing the agenda of the organization above their own this is what delineating it's good from effective, good from effective organizational leadership by good leaders cultivating the respective subordinates through listening, asking for advice, mentoring,

and keeping them informed when making decisions, we may find and develop those good future leaders we are looking for. I was speaking with a company the other day and, you know, that idea that you have in there, like the idea that occasionally you got to say, hey, this is what we're doing. Hey, everyone, this is what we're doing. a lot of leaders think that that should be the majority of the time. You know, they think it should be 99% of the time. You know, this, when you say times are limited, for me, it's like, there's such a small number of times where I actually have to say, hey, everyone, lock it up, I'm making the call,

this is what we're doing. The amount of times that you should have to do that as a leader should be so, so few. It's ridiculous. But a lot of people's heads, that should be the norm. The norm is everyone's shut up list. to me. And that should not be the norm. That doesn't matter of fact, if that's what the norm is, you're making all kinds of mistakes as a leader. Because if my team isn't making things happen without me telling them what to do, I'm doing all kinds of things wrong.

Fact. So there's been this recent resurgence of mission command. And I hear senior leaders throwing it around and I'm like, okay, do you actually know what it means? Because you're saying it. And I don't recall them off the top of my head, but there are seven tenets of mission command. command. But first and foremost, for me, Knight's version is its trust. And I've expressed this to my subordinate commanders, to my assistant adjutant general. It's simply assume risk on their behalf, if it's prudent. But trust them. Give them the guidance. I mean, Patton said it, right? Don't tell your soldiers how to do things. Tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their ingenuity. Go back to Specialist Bettet in Ramadi coming up with the Pope glass. Yeah, that's a brief us on that one

real quick. So the insurgents. Because I don't know how many people were alive today. Yeah. Because of him. Yeah. So we get hit by a lot of IEDs. And at the time, it was a line of sight. They would use the base station with the long-range cordless telephone. And then they get up and run. And while you cannot run the 50s, so our gunners are clipping these guys, which was upsetting to the insurgents. So they started, and of course, as you noted, I think in one of your books, the old-style turret, the gunner's heads exposed. So you're protected on three sides unless your head's up. And the gunner's head has to be up because you're checking shot holes for IEDs.

You're looking for threats. And they started packing those IEDs with ball bearings and screws and nails, anything they can get their hands on. And I've got pictures, I know of, at least on my shift. I know of five instances where I've got photos where the Bedet, our specialist, had welded the, spare ballistic windshield to three sides of the turret, and they put angle irons on the corner, so snipers couldn't shoot through the gap. But I've got pictures of those, you know, shrapnel, nail screws embedded where the gunner's head would have been. That would have been a nightmare to have a Humvee disabled and their crew captured, and the next thing, you know, they're getting their heads,

you know, cut off on, on, looking Al Jazeera, whatever. But that soldier, what he did, translated to not just our battalion. It went to the brigade. It went to the Meph. It went to your team. And I tell my basic leader court students this, man, don't let your rank dictate your contribution to the organization. That guy's a specialist, an E4, part of that specialist mafia.

And he had an idea. And he implemented it. And the idea was just to catch everyone up, like, was to take these extra pieces of bulletproof glass and formulate. We ended up, what do you? Pope glass because you look like you're in the Pope mobile, which was after the assassination attempt on the Pope, they surrounded him

with bulletproof glass. And so the turret gunner, instead of being totally exposed, it was like, okay, now we got some protection for this guy. And like you said, it spread throughout the whole A.O. Yep. And your point is valid. How many lives did this the actions of this 1E4? He just had an idea.

Didn't ask for permission. And he just did it. And now, I mean, I can tell you how many lives you saved in our battalion that I know of, but how many across the theater? Hard to say. All that from a good idea that nobody told them to do as an E4. That's just phenomenal to me.

Yeah. And that's what you're looking for, you know, now that you're in charge. This is what you're trying to implement. This is what you're trying to inspire throughout your organization. How do you do that? Well, yeah, exemplify it. Seek innovation. Give them, if they have the idea, man, run with it.

I think as an army, certainly as a guard, and this is I call it the GWAT hangover, we kind of spoon-fed training. You will do X. And you took away the latitude of the command teams. They don't have any creativity. You know, how you train is how you train. Are you meeting the standard and go forth and meet the standard? But it became very, very cookie cutter.

And we had a team that would actually go around and didn't make sure of that. But we saw that at Camp Shelby. But let people lead, man. Get out of their way. It's really not that hard. Have some trust that they're going to do the right thing. And if it's time for a tune-up, okay, then you do a tune-up. And you think I haven't been scuffed up?

You think I haven't... You got my ass handed to me on a number of occasions, you know, by one of those senior leaders. Like, you know, hey, come here, Jack Ash, and like, oh, great. You take the ashto and like a champ and learn from it and drive on. But yeah, I mean, all the stuff that you've identified in extreme ownership, it's valid, man. I mean, I'm not telling you anything. But it's, I learned that probably in Ramadi.

I was, again, being the voice in the radio, I would go out enough to maintain situational awareness, but very dynamic of fluid. I mean, come on, man. It was such a dynamic environment. If a patrol leader is telling me I ain't going there, I'm not making them go there. That's your call.

You're the guy on the ground. If somebody gets in a firefight, and this is early on, and Chip, you'd mentioned ROE, I think we were timid for the first couple of months to pull the trigger. Because it was just like this, this is odd. I'm about to take somebody's life. Very simply, if we articulate hostile intent, then you're justified in your action. But I'd get a phone call, a request permission to engage. I'm like, dude, I ain't there, man.

You'll ask me. Yep. You're going to come in and give me the debrief and I'll write it up for you, but you're the one making that decision, not me. Yeah, and by the time they get that call back, yeah, your approval, that person's gone, you know. No, the only time, this was actually the first time, First Battalion, 172nd, Armour fired a main gun round in anger. It was actually, O.P. Jones was getting mortared right at the confluent,

or the intersection of Route Jones in Michigan. And mortar rounds are impacting, and they're jocke in the tank around so he doesn't get hit. And they're scanning, and they see probably, I don't know, click down the road up on the roof, three insurgents. One with binoes, one on the cell phone, the other guy's doing whatever he's doing. And, you know, I got the call. It was actually Tom Combs, who's now retired First Sergeant, works out at the range force. He said, he may request mission to engage. I'm like, weapons free, man.

you see what I see you see I don't you can articulate it and the next thing I heard because it's just outside of Camp Ramadi was the you know that crack and then then I called me much of BDA and he goes yeah they're gone but that's the closest I ever came to pulling a trigger like weapons free man I don't know what to tell you you just got to have faith that your folks are going to do the right thing yeah yeah and that's a you know that's why you train them that's why you got to make you understand why they're doing what they're doing what the strategic goal is

You know, it was a huge thing with me was, you know, we had the, I don't know what it was, nine slide ROE brief. And I would tell my guys, you have to make sure that the person you're going to kill is bad. Like, if we go out, you know, you go out in a Ramada, you kill a mom or you kill a teacher or, you know, whatever. It's like, it's going to be a nightmare. It's going to be, first of all, it's going to be terrible for all of us. They're going to be at the gate tomorrow morning protesting. It's going to be a huge strategic downturn for us impact.

So we have to make sure that people were killing our bad. And how do you do that? Well, guess what? It fits right in with the rules of engagement. I'm reasonably assured that this person is about to commit a hostile act towards us. Yes, that's a bad guy. So you have to trust them because, you know, what's the sniper, see a guy for half a second, four seconds, three seconds?

You know, it's like they have to be able to make that call. Correct. And who am I to second guess that? You don't have time. You know the luxury of time. You see it. You know it for what it is. Do what you have to do, man.

You come tell me about it later. Yeah, you know, that's the thing with leadership is just allowing the guys in the front lines to make things happen. And they'll make things happen, you know? That's exactly right. And I think, Jaka, there are so many vignettes in this conversation and listening to your books. It brings back things. and some of them are at some level tragic, but in a dark humor kind of way, they're,

they make me laugh because they're so odd, inappropriate perhaps, but odd. And we had sent our snipers out, and I got another story about our section leader. But one of our soldiers was up in a hide, third floor of an apartment building and overlooking a shot hole. And that was, you know, the technique.

You'd drive by, and you'd drop it out of a car. Either cut the bottom out of the trunk and drop it, or in this case, blue opal pulls up and the insurgent gets out of the back of the opal with two what turned out to be 130 millimeter rounds. And he drops and goes to drop it in a shot hole and our sniper takes a shot.

So he got staggers and he falls back into the opal and they take off. And half an hour later was a Marine Corps ECP, which was just into our AO, on the bridge across the dam before you went into Ramadi from Tamim and some Lance Corporal called

called the talk. Oh, they rolled the guy out. So, hey, sir, did your sniper shoot a guy? I'm like, yeah, about a half hour ago. And this young Lance Corporate he's like, yeah, they shot his junk off.

I'm like, excuse me? Well, yeah, sir, you know, like his package. I'm like, are you shitting me? And so I sent our sniper and his guys went out and they, you know, positively ID the guy. And it was my RTO specialist in North Carolina. He's like, damn, sir, that's like controlling tomorrow's insurgents today. So, yeah, stuff like that.

But there's an element here. And again, it's a guardism. I talked about it a little before of what both the guard and reserve. if you've got folks that have jobs outside the military. And I would tell my basic leader course students, I have the good fortune to be able to talk to our entry-level NCO course that we run one of them in Vermont. And I'm talking to these young soldiers, E-4s and E-5s,

and there's so much experience in the room, even at a relatively young age. And you mentioned earlier, you mentioned some. I think folks are actually joining a little bit later in life, mid-20s. So they've got some life experience. And I've talked to these kids, and they've got, I mean, I've had young soldiers, thoracic surgeons assistant, nurses.

I've got, in my air guard, I have a doctor who works building bombs for the F-35 because that's what he wants to do. So we're in Ramadi, and our sniper section leader comes in, one of our staff sergeants, and he was from West Virginia. And he talked like he is. and I'm thinking, okay, you're a mid-grade NCO sniper from West Virginia. And my presumption, you've got to be a tradesman or something, right?

A farmer, you've got to work in the trades, masonry, electrician, whatever. And he'd come in for the debrief, and I'd always ask him. I called him Huckleberry because he's from West Virginia. Huckleberry, had to go, and he'd say, you know, sir, there weren't no killing, but it weren't for lack of trying. And now sometimes they were successful. They got one of the more prolific bomb makers one night putting in, he was in placing a pressure plate IED, but we're there about six months.

And he came in for a debrief from Huckleberry. What do you do in West Virginia? He says, oh, I'm a financial manager for GE Capital Management. I got a staff of 45 in Charlestown, West Virginia. And I'm thinking, God, who's the Huckleberry now, right? This guy, probably making mid-six figures, he wanted to be a sniper. Yeah. That's the guard, man.

We've got that. And that opportunity is out there for anybody who wants to pursue it. You got to show up. What was the deal with the strike we just did on Iran? So, little known secret. It is one Air Force. It is one Army, right? Folks don't understand the National Guard is the primary combat reserve of the Army and the Air Force.

The Army is 40 percent. Army National Guard is 40 percent of the Army. And I think the Air Force, we are probably, 50 or more percent of air mobility command capability, the gray tails, the C-17, C-5, C-1-30, those are guard. We are about, I think, 30 percent of the fighter fleet, something like that. But that raid on Iran, midnight hammer, yeah, 50 percent guard. Damn. Pilots in command, 50 percent guard.

The guys loading the bombs on those aircraft, guard. And they went back to work. I mean, these folks, and they're like you said, Chip, they're probably flying commercial airliners. I'd take a few days off and put the hammer to Iran and then go back to work. Hey, what did you do this weekend? Yeah, you know, not much. Yeah, 36 hours, right? 36 hour evolution?

Yep. That's epic. Does that get us up to speed? I think so. I would tell you that there's so much opportunity out there in the military. folks will just give it a chance. The Guard in particular, you can, you made the point earlier, you can do both. You can have a dual career track.

You can be in the military, do all the things you want to do through the Guard, through the reserves, and have a civilian career. And derive benefit from both. And the best way to go about it is just going down to the recruiter. Come see us. We're not a secret anymore, Jock. I mean, I think we've been a best kept secret for just way too long. If you got the desire, come ask questions, man.

We're transparent. We're not going to stick you in the neck with a tranquilizer dart and take you to enlistments. I mean, it's, come see us, man. It's really, it's your guard. It's your neighbor. It's somebody that you know who's probably in the guard. Yeah, and it's just a lower level of commitment for a young guy.

When I enlisted in the Navy to get the program that I wanted, which would give me the opportunity to go to Budz, it was a six-year commitment. I was 17. Six years is a long time. Yes, it is. So, but this is like, oh, you'll be back, you know, at the end of the summer or you'll be back, you know, like, it's much lower level commitment and you still get a taste of it. And if you like the taste of it, there's all kinds of opportunities.

If you don't, cool, you carry on and you can get out in four years or six years or whatever, but you're, you know, you haven't been in gone the entire time. So I think it's a great iterative step on how to figure out what you want to do with your life. And, you know, I mentioned that some people come ask me questions when they're 28, 29. But if you're 17 years old, 18 years old, why not make some money? Why not get some benefits? Why not get some money for school? Why go into debt, you know, trying to pay for college? Why not learn a trade that you can put the work out there immediately?

Like there's so many benefits and you get to do the military thing. You get to know what it's like because, you know, when people ask me, well, I want to go to college. I want to join the military. I want to do this. I want to go in the military. All the other things in life are going to be there. The military, like you're a rare breed to get it done, get OCS done at 35.

You know, get it done while you're young. Get it done because it does disappear. And there is an age limit. And you will get to a point where there'll be too many other things in your life, whether it's family, whether it's work commitments, whatever. Get it done while you're young. Go in there. Get the experience.

You will have a mutual respect with everybody that you meet that served. And what a noble thing. There's, you know, everybody in America goes, oh, you're in the military, thank you. Like that's what you're gonna get, and that's what you deserve. So if you got the opportunity, go down to see your recruiter,

and I'm gonna tell you, like you and me, best thing I ever did was sign that piece of paper and get my, get on track, get told, hey, this is what you gotta do is to be successful. The civilian world doesn't have that. Hey, you know what you need to do to be successful in the civilian world? There's a bunch of different paths you can take.

There's confusing. It's, it's chaos. There's, you win some, you lose some. No, in the military, you do this thing. You're going to get your paycheck. You're going to get promoted. You're going to be on track. You're going to have a good life.

So go down there and check it out. Come see us. I'm telling you. We're doing this coming week, September 7th. That's our weekend. And on Sunday, we're going to do an open house, both air and Army. F-35s are kind of sexy. So we're doing it over at the Air Guard.

So last time we did this was, I think, three years ago and we had like 6,000 people go to our base and we ran out of parking. It was, yeah, we could have done better. We figured out the parking this time, we think. But what that shows me that there is at least a curiosity about who we are. And that's what I would tell anybody, you know, come see us, learn about the guard and what comes with it. Not convenient.

I ain't going to allow to anybody. But man, the opportunity is there if you want to take them. Yeah. Yep. People can find the guard. Instagram and Twitter X, VT National Guard. So that's Vermont National Guard, VT National Guard, Facebook, Vermont National Guard.

And the internet is vt.public.NG.mil. Yep. So that's where we can find you guys. Dave, any other questions, comments from you? As soon as I got to Ramadi, the first thing I did was sign over custody of all the Anglico gear. I was the senior Anglico guy. I signed over all the gear.

you know, the radios, the weapons, everything. They lay everything out on this big, huge thing in the ground, and we just signed for it, turnover custody. And part of that custody was three Humvees. I had three Humvees for the three teams. And I'm there, I don't know, 72 hours. I signed over custody, these Humvees. And I don't know who or where.

I have no idea, but somebody's like, hey, if you drive these Humvees down to this, there's like a warehouse, a couple of streets up on Camp Romadi. They'll put bulletproof glass for your turn. I kind of look over at like Corporal Speller, one of the drivers. And he's like, okay. And I'm like, go, I didn't even like, just go try to find this thing. It was like a kind of like a word of mouth.

And he goes and he comes back like a couple hours later and he's like, all right, the first truck's done, we'll get the other two done. I'm like, oh, Roger that. No idea what it is. And that saved my truck gunner's life. And that's a function of my experience is if I want to give credit to who, you know, who taught me how to fight in a war, it was the guardsmen that were on the ground in Ramadi

for almost a year when I got there. That had all that loss, all those casualties, but all those lessons learned, and they just freely handed them over to me. And I thank God it, it listened. But that is my connection to you and to your guardsman was everything you had endured you gave to me. And I maybe helped a little bit with Jago's guys

and ultimately trying to pass it on, but that's my recollection of, of your men and the people involved in that was trying to help me out and they did and I didn't piece it all together now until you're telling that story about the Pope class but that was what you guys were doing and it was awesome and I was the beneficiary of that so I'm happy to be here and I wanted to say thanks well we appreciate having you and again I wish I'd have learned about you six months prior if we could have done some good work together indeed general any sir any any final thoughts well yeah actually I've been thinking about this and I found some things and

And since we were there at the same time and for both of you, and I've got one, got one for Leif as well. Leif was talking in dichotomy of leadership about the BBIAD at OP 293 where Brian Leibrand and Joe Proctor were killed, they got that bad guy. They went and they found him. And I remember listening in a car and he was describing the incident. I'm like, I'll be damn.

So I've got something for him if you see him. or if you can mail it to him. But I found some, if you have one, if you don't, that's just wrong. These are our task force saber coins. Very few left. They are vintage. So Operation Iraqi Feedem O5-07, First Battalion, 172 armor, but it has all of our units represented on the back.

Mississippi, California, Kuwait, Iraq, and that's where we were. What am we give you that one? Outstanding. And then Chip, obviously, got one for Leaf. as well sir but also to give you my coin which is a small thing um token of appreciation one thanks for uh having me on uh there's a story to tell and i just appreciate the opportunity being able to tell it appreciate your service and what you continue to do uh for us for veterans and for both of you um you're just phenomenal but on the front of the coin is a symbol of office

for the adjutant general in the back of the coin it has our o six command represented and it's presented for excellence. But the top of the coin is the first part of the order issued by General John Sedgwick, who was a commander of the six U.S. Corps leading up to the Battle of Gettysburg. The Corps was in Marshfield, Maryland, 37 miles away from the Gettysburg battlefield, and the scouts came in and told General Sedgwick, there's a big one coming, you got to move the Corps, which meant a 37-mile forced march. And it was then the General Sedgwick, knowing Vermont's reputation for hard marching and never running from a fight, issued the order, put the Vermonters ahead, and keep the column well closed.

So thank you both for being a part of it that matters. Part of the story. Keep telling it, man. Sincerely appreciated. Outstanding. Outstanding, yeah. Thanks, sir. Yeah, outstanding stuff. Gentleman. General Knight, sir, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for sharing your stories, you know these lessons learned most important thanks for your service you know not only the coast guard which thanks for your service and the coast guard but the service of you and your guys the 117 2 in romadi that you guys set conditions for us you guys taught us how to fight and you made incredible incredible sacrifices to achieve victory in that city and we'll never forget to you guys what your battalion and what the brigade did thank you much appreciated jaco god bless yes sir

And with that, General Greg Knight has left the building. Echo's back joining us. Dave was in the seat for that one. Pretty awesome to link up with him again, huh? Yeah, that was awesome. Man, it's, you know, we spend another probably hour on either side of the podcast just reminiscing and stuff. And, you know, you think about all the service and sacrifice from those guys.

It's just, you know, heroic. heroic group of people so pretty awesome to have General Knight on here to talk through some of that and just bring back a lot of memories so

definitely appreciate General Light showing up here yeah and if you want to support what we're doing here and you want to support yourself too at the same time check out Jocko Fuel what's up with the creatine right now

Dave Burke? I have I have I've learned the the cognitive benefits of creatine, which I did not fully understand. How did you recognize them? What made you recognize it? I didn't know that it was contributing to that.

I was always under impression like... You thought we're getting smarter? No, what I was saying was I always thought creatine was really just like a recovery for lifting and all the physical benefits of it. But as I've gotten more education on that, the point behind is my wife is a full-time creatine user now. So we have both converted to the daily jaco creatine.

But it's more than just like, hey, you know, we're working out. We're recovering faster. There's a cognitive benefit to it that's undeniable. And kind of in her world of, you know, health and wellness and things like that, like we're total users of that. How many grams a day are you doing? I am varying between five and ten. She's five straight up. I'm like seven and a half trending towards ten.

Echo Toronto's ten? Where are you at? Full ten. Morning night? No. Two in the morning. Yeah. Crete.

Hydrate water. morning. That's the system you got going on. Well, whatever you need for that stuff, check out joccofield.com and you get that stuff. Good for you. Really good for you. Also, it's available now at high V,

which is awesome. And a bunch of other places around the country. So joccoffield.com, get your protein. Get your energy drinks. I'm on my second energy drink of the day. And I'm feeling very good about that one. I agree. Also, origin, USA.com.

It's where you can get American made products. We're just up at camp, Jiu-Jit-Tam, and it was cool because they have a store there, and you just walk in and you're surrounded by freedom. Surrounded by freedom. Everything made in America, jeans, boots, geese, just everything. And when you get to hold stuff, this is a hard thing for an online clothing store, online clothing company,

which we are, is, you don't get to hold it, right? You look at a picture, you look at a bunch of different pictures, 360 spin view, different models, you like all this stuff, but you're still like, well,

how would it actually fit me? You know what I mean? But when you go into the store, you're like, all this stuff is awesome. It's just awesome stuff. OriginUSA.com. And we got, like,

if you do buy something, you need to return, it's no factor. It's real easy. Print out the shipping label. It's like, we got that stuff down to a science too. And it's all made 100% in America.

So check out Origin USA.com, as they say. It's true. Also, jocco store.com we're representing Dave Burke. Good deal, Dave, representing the independence. That was a hot commodity when it came out. I got both. I'm very happy to see that you have that. You got the version, version five?

Well, the discipline equals freedom. Yep. Zero, zero five. I learned that from you, by the way, the three digits. Just like an anticipation of hundreds of versions over the coming decades. Yeah, you know, you never know. But yes, yeah, those are five, five colors or four colors, by the way. Or what would they call them?

Colorways. Oh, come on. Come on, the color way, bro. Color way. I just learned that too. But the two that are, what do you call it? They're like not as obvious, but really good when you put it on. What is it?

The white and white and the black on black. Called Black down. And in the clear. By the clear. By the way. Bro, in the clear is a great expression. It's a great expression. That was one of my platoon chief when I was at.

seven he would just be like oh he said that in the clear yeah classic stuff oh yeah those are also shirt locker subscription scenario new design every month yeah yeah there's some good ones coming up i got a Halloween one coming i gotta put it this way if you like metal as in as in the music yeah you know you know what have you as a know maybe keep yeah yeah you know Keep your eye. But anyway, yeah, go jocco store.com. If you want to click on the shirtlock, you can kind of check it out,

see what it's all about. But it's on there. And then, yeah, a lot of discipline equals freedom. Good. Oh, there's a new good shirt coming out too, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Version 3.0.

There you go. Jocco store.com. Yeah, true. Books. Dave Burke sitting here. Good deal. I'm sitting here looking at your, this is the galley copy of your book.

The galley meaning it's like a pre-adanced readers edition. goes on sale October 21st. You ready for it to come out? I'm ready. You ready for it to rock? I wrote the forward to it. It's probably the best part of the book.

It's my forward. Somebody pointed out that on the cover, you've got, what, two F-18s, an F-22, and an F-35. And an F-16. Hell yeah. Got to get them all.

Damn, dude. How long did it take you to write it? It took a long time to write it. Is it with do you count the iterations that you sent me in the beginning where I was like bro what even is this? Yes Without those iterations this book doesn't get written so it's so cool I look like you know one thing that's cool about computers we have Dude for very first attempted chapter of extreme ownership the first version of extreme ownership So bad it's so bad when you read it you're just like you know not not the concepts obviously are good But the the writing you're just terrible so it was it's it's it's it's it's it's it's

It was awesome to watch you go through iterative, iterative, iterative. It's just getting better, better, better. And now you're pretty stoked. The forward is good enough to buy the whole book. Yeah, but I am stoked that it's done and I'm excited for it to get out there. What's cool about it for me is like, you know, you and I spend a lot of time obviously talking about our shared experience on the battlefield, but not as much time talking about everything else you did in your career. You were only with me for six months. So you have, what, a 24 year career?

And then obviously everything we do at, actually I'm front. I'm kind of abreast of. But yeah, hearing some of your lessons learned from the rest of your career. It was pretty awesome, especially you. What was the chapter where they're just like, hey, Dave Burke, you know, you're, you could be the greatest lieutenant? Yeah. What's the, the line is, Lieutenant Burke would be one of the best lieutenants in the platoon if he didn't already think that he was. which was my platoon commander

in my very first six months of being an officer in the Marine Corps is the basic school. You get something called peer evaluations. It's what your peers think of you. And I went into that like ranked eighth out of 250 in my company and I'm like I'm one of the best in the company.

So you went in ranked eighth in terms of performance, military inspections, tactical stuff. They ranked number eight out of 250. Yeah. They grade on physical fitness, leadership,

and military skills. I was ranked number eight. How'd the peer review go? The peer review did not go that well. That's the line. It's like, hey, this is what they think of you. They'd think you'd be one of the best lieutenants if you'd already think that you was.

That was the chapter on humility. And thank God I learned it then and not never or 10 years later. What's scary is how, well, I'm guessing, and according to the book, how completely unaware you were of that. I was 100% sure I was going to be showered with praise because I was top of my class.

Why wouldn't I? And I was very confident that the people that that didn't think I was awesome, they were the problem. Yeah, they were just turrets, of course. Yeah, that's one of the scariest things about, but the one of the scariest things about being a human being is that things can be happening around you that you're not aware of and you don't recognize that it's happening. And that is just absolutely terrible.

Because let's face it, if somebody slaps you in the head and says, hey, Dude, your ego's too big. You can go, oh, damn, I didn't know that. But when you're just going through life, just thinking everything is great and you don't even realize what people think of you, the lack of awareness is terrible. So there's one of the many lessons in that book. The other thing that's cool, I mean, for me, is the, how you're relating some of the flying stuff to leadership and decision making is just, it's just an awesome book. So the need to lead, October 21st, just order right now, get a first edition. Let's face it, you don't want a second a dish.

We'll, you know, are you going to sign second of dishes? Only if required, only that first a dish gets signed. Yeah, you have to, you have to, if you bring a second a dish to me, you got to apologize. Hey, I'm sorry, it's a second of dish, but actually the funny thing is they only made, I think they made like 10 or 12,000 copies. True first editions of extreme ownership. So you don't have to apologize. I'll sign your book because we should have made more. So there you go.

Check out the book. Need to lead. I've written a bunch of books too about leadership. Put in some kids books as well. Ashlandfront, speaking of leadership, we have a leadership consulting company called Ashlandfront. Go to Ashlandfront.com. Whatever you need inside your organization to help you get squared away.

We will help you. And we also have an online training academy. Check out Extreme Ownership.com for that information. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, do you want to help their families, Gold Star Families? Check out Mark Lee's mom. She's got an incredible organization. She helps out so many of our veterans. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to America's Mighty Warriors.org. Also check out Heroes and Horses.org and finally Jimmy May's organization beyond the brotherhood.org. And listen, some of you might have been

thinking today, I might want to go in the National Guard. I think that's a good call. If I look back in my life, going in the National Guard would have been awesome. So you, like I said, a lot of people hit me up with the, hey, I really never served, but I want to serve. Go serve. Go be in the National Guard. For the Vermont National Guard, you can check out Twitter and Instagram, VT National Guard, at VT National Guard, Facebook, Vermont National Guard, internet, vt.public.

ng. And then for us, I'm at Jock-Willick. Echoes at Echo Charles. Dave's at David R. Burke on the various social activities. And also you can check out jocco.com. Once again, thanks to General Greg Knight for joining us. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. Most important, thank you for your service in Ramadi

and for your continued service today in the Vermont National Guard. And thanks to all our service members in every branch with a specific salute to our National Guard soldiers. And to be even more specific, those soldiers of the 117-2. And the entire 22A Brigade Combat Team, thank you all for your incredible service and sacrifice in Ramadi, Iraq, 2005, 2006.

We'll never forget what you guys did. And we thank you for your service and your sacrifice. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all of the first responders. Thank you for your service. keeping us safe on the home front.

And everyone else out there, let's remember some powerful advice from General Knight. Quote, there is a difference between effective and good leadership. Leadership strive to not only be effective leaders, but good ones. Learning from subordinates. Learning from subordinates. Imagine that. And placing the agenda of the organization above their own by good leaders

cultivating the respect of subordinates through listening, asking for advice, mentoring, and keeping them informed with making decisions, we may find and develop those good future leaders we are looking for, end quote. So there you go. Listen to your people. And that's all we've got for tonight. Until next time, this is Dave, An Echo and Jocko.

Out.