Jocko Podcast - 51: “The Coldest War.” Mortars, Battle Fatigue, and THE COLD

Episode Date: November 30, 2016

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:47 - "The Coldest War", by Jim Brady 2:29:08 - Lessons learned 2:31:41 - Cool Support stuff:  Amazon, Onnit, Jocko Store (Apparel), Jocko White Tea, stuff.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 51. With Echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Forgotten. The Korean War is often referred to as the forgotten war. And it's sandwiched between the massive World War II and then on the other side, the highly controversial

and also highly televised and therefore highly remembered, Vietnam War. So I guess in that middle of that, the Korean War somehow gets lost and I guess somehow gets forgotten. Obviously, we should never forget. The war in Korea was brutal. And in many ways, when you look at the Korean War, you see the worst parts of these other wars. You had the trenches of World War I. You had the bitter cold of the Eastern Front in World War II.

You have the landmines of the Vietnam War. And for the nearly two million that served in Korea and the more than 100,000 that were wounded, we should never forget and we must never forget. and for the 36,516 Americans that were killed, we must always remember. Always. And remember that for those that died, there is nothing else. There's nothing else. They gave everything.

Everything they gave for a few meters in between trenches or for a hill or for their brothers in arms. That's what war does. It gives everything to some. And it takes everything from others. So tonight we begin to take a look at the Korean War through the eyes of James Brady. United States Marine Corps in his book, The Coldest War. What job are you looking for?

I knew the expected answer and snapped it back. rifle platoon leader, sir. The major said that I was a hard charger, that they needed hard chargers. In the basic school in Virginia, where they train Marine lieutenants, they ask you every few hours that same question. Then they push a form at you

to write down your first three choices of duty. There are several schools of thought about this. One held you should tell the truth. Those who subscribe to this, odd notion put down communications or tanks or mountain, training, anything that might delay assignment to a replacement draft and the war. Another advised diplomacy, a first choice of rifle platoon leader to show your spirit than what

you really hoped for. Logistics or motor transport. A third school felt you should lie brazenly indicating ferocious demand for a rifle platoon on grounds that this might impress people and get you made a general's aid. Mac Allen achieved something of a name at basic school by stipulating, quite honestly, each time, rifle platoon leader, rifle platoon leader, rifle platoon leader. I didn't worry about it much, not out of fatalism, but simply because I believe the Marine Corps discarded all such forms without reading, and it didn't matter much what you wrote. This close to the line, I was too embarrassed to give any answer but the one, the middle. Major obviously wanted to hear.

Splendid, said the major. We have an opening for a hard charger. Second Battalion. Colonel Gregory's Battalion. They want hard chargers up there. They need them. That's where you're going. Second Battalion, short of company-grade officers.

Then, sensing curiosity, that's where I'm sending both of you, you and Alan. Hard Chargers. So we're going to hear a little bit about Mack Allen, who gives just the, the most fired up response you can give. You get asked what job you want in the Marine Corps when you're going through the basic school, and that is rifle platoon leader, rifle platoon leader, or rifle platoon leader.

Now, prior to that, prior to that evolution, they were actually, James Brady's actually graduating from his school in 1950, and I'll go to the book. In June 1950, I graduated and was handed along with my BA, a commission in the United States Marine Corps Reserve as second lieutenant.

That was clever, I remember thinking, how nimbly I'd avoided two years of military drudgery. A week or so later, the North Koreans crossed the 38th parallel, and the war was on. Within a few months, my class was mobilized. I joined up to dodge the draft and ended up being sent to war. People said the worst job you could have was Marine Rifle Platoon Leader. life expectancy was supposed to be very short. So he thinks he's, you know, just avoiding the draft. World War II had ended.

There's nothing going on. But I don't really feel like, you know, doing two years of service. I'm just going to join the reserves, the Marine Corps reserves. And didn't work out that way for him. Now we get to Korea. I'm going to skip some of the other leading up to Korea. But they show up at Korea. And one of the reasons that, you know,

I've got a bunch of books on Korea that I've read over the years. and one of the reasons that this book kind of bubbled to the surface because there's a guy named Captain Chaffee who is. You're going to see just exquisite leadership throughout the little things he does. It just is worth studying, worth us taking a look at. And so they show up in Korea and this guy, Captain Chaffee, he kind of greets him. So back to the book. Captain Chaffee.

the dog company commander came a few hundred yards down the trail to meet the gook train shaking hands with allan and me now the gook train gook is a term i'm getting to a little bit later it's a it's a it's a term that they use for these koreans that worked for them that did all the marching up and down carrying water and fuel up and down they call it the gook train and they also when it's when it's time for new people to get brought up to the front lines they follow up the gook train So Captain Chaffee comes down to meet him. Back to the book. I'm very pleased to have you both here. I simply wanted to say welcome and get you off to a proper start. Chaffy was a Rhode Islander, one of those old Yankee blue bloods with a high color of large nose and a splendid mustache. He was very lean, very dark, a handsome man.

He didn't seem to have any weapon of any sort, only a kind of alpine stave that he used as he loped, his long legs covering the uneven ground in great strides. Going uphill, he was fast and coming down. He nearly ran. Later I would learn he was skull and bones at Yale and had a law practice and political ambitions. He now took us on a guided tour of the company front.

So not your typical sort of what you'd expect a Marine Corps company commander to be. You know, guys at Yale. He's a lawyer. and sounds like he comes from some money. So kind of different than what you imagine. Back to the book. We're a trifle under strength at the moment, Chaffee told us.

He didn't sound apologetic or dismayed by this, just stating a fact. He took off as he talked, swinging along the top lip of a shallow trench line that followed the ridge, linking large and small bunkers 20 to 50 yards apart. As we moved along the length of the company line, Chaffee stopped to talk. with each Marine at each bunker. He called each man by name, not Christian names or nicknames as they do in war movies, but the man's proper name.

He didn't make introductions but was business-like in a cheerful way. At the bunkers, Marines were shifting sandbags, cleaning rifles, cooking rations over small primus stones, stoves, one Marine cutting another's hair. No one seemed fussed by the captain's presence. none of the obsequiousness or make work you saw at

Quantico intended to impress Chaffy's questions dealt with enemy activity to the front the conduct of an ambush sent out the night before the possibility of getting some mortar fire laid in on a suspicious looking piece of ground off to the right and so on

no chat about rations or leave or letters from their girls they were all eating the same rations there was no leave a man's mail was private. Here and there I noticed there were blackened places in the snow where incoming shells had hit. No one mentioned them. The company frontage was astounding.

Once again, the school solution was in discard. Dog company under strength was covering about a thousand yards of front, more than a half mile of rough ground. Now the company commander jumped into the trench, a dirt corridor waist deep with dirty snow piled on either lip. Got to stay in the trench from here on, Chaffee said. Show you why in a minute. They proceed along the trench and eventually they meet up with one of the other platoon commanders. This is Lieutenant Flynn, Chaffee said.

You're in his area now. He introduced us and we shook hands. Flynn, too, had a mustache, but it was scruffy, lacking Chaffy's elegance. He wore no insignia of rank, not even a color. dollar bar and looked like any other Marine. He had a good smile. Now, the reason I brought that piece up is because you can hear Chaffee says, you're in his area now.

So he's given that ownership to Flynn. He wants to make sure that everybody knows. This is Flynn's deal down here. And that continues. We got back in the trench. Chaffy let Flynn lead the way. It was his neighborhood. Now the trench was head high and even deeper.

with ammunition boxes set in here and there as firing steps. We passed two bunkers each with a heavy machine gun in place. Here there was no hair cutting, and the men were all underground. So now we're back in old trenches, World War I style. In each bunker, one marid had his back to us, his face toward the firing port. Open boxes of grenade stood inside the bunkers.

At the third bunker, Flynn tapped on the shoulder of the man on watch. He backed away and Chaffy squeezed in to peer through the port. He knelt there for what seemed a very long time, then he squirmed back out and waved me into place. For the first time, I was looking at ground that matched my notion of what it would be like. There were three untidy fences of barbed wire a few yards to the front and some rusty Constantina wire looped farther out. Beyond that were a field of snow poked by shell holes, a few scrub pines badly chewed, and about a football field away. long, dirty mound of snow. I turned back and found Flynn's face very close to mine.

Those are the neighbors, the platoon leader said. Now they continue on a little while longer, and then Chaffy tells them, we'll skip the right flank tonight. You know Simonus already. Simonus is one of the other platoon commanders. Besides, we only have a little daylight, and I want you to get settled in by dark. You know the division order. replacements don't go forward of the MLR for their first five days.

It's a good order. Let's you get delay of the land. Last summer, we lost some new people just because they got mixed up and made a wrong turn. They just plain got lost. Not their fault, of course, but they're gone nonetheless. Mack looked downcast at being shackled. Don't worry, Jeff, he said. Five days go pretty fast, and we'll count this as one day, so you only have four to go.

So Mack Allen, who's all fired up about getting after it, he hears this rule about you can't go forward until he'd been here for five days, and he looks all downtrodden because of that. Back to the book, they get to a position where they're about to go to sleep. They're back in a bunker now. And he's sort of back in the rear, not in the rear, but he's a little bit of the rear. He's with a mortar position. So the mortar positions obviously aren't right on the front.

So he's back with them, and it's time to lay down. Back to the book. I said that that was fine and lay down my mind churning with events of the day. Hopes and fears, both. But I was very tired. Then the air was full of sound. I sat up. Porterfield and Dodge were gone.

Those are the two guys living in this bunker with him. I pulled on boots and snatched my helmet. You slept fully dressed with your web belt on, so I had the Smith and Wesson. Outside it was black, and then just below me, a blinding glare as one of the mortars fired. It was followed by another off to the side, and then by a third. Somewhere over the ridge, there was the rip of machine gun fire and an unfamiliar fire from another weapon. I started down the hill to the mortar emplacements, half sliding on the hard-packed snow. Porterfield grabbed my arm.

Lieutenant, you don't have to stir yourself. You need your sleep. Didn't I tell you we'd probably have a fire mission? What is it? Gooks are pestering Mr. Flynnigan is all. Listen, you hear it? That burp? that's a burp gun

once you hear it you'll never mistake it for anything else I like how the guys are out there doing this mortar mission and they're just telling the lieutenant hey you can just stay in bed we got this don't worry about it he's all fired up

running down there they're like hey we got this you need your beauty sleep there sir just take it easy and a burp gun this is a very common weapon it's the most common weapon here in the Korean war for the North Koreans the North Koreans made it

it was called a Type 4 The Chinese made a version of it called the type 50. It's all based on a Russian version that was called a PPSH 41. And this is a 762 by 25 millimeter weapon. So not the same as an AK-47, a little bit smaller of a round, but a very, very reliable weapon. Why they call it a burp gun? Because it's like small bursts or something?

because the noise it makes. That's why they call it that. Yeah, it seems like a burp would be like a small burst of like quick rounds, like machine guns. I actually, I don't think I've heard one. But, you know, he can even say, he says, listen, you hear it? That burp, that's a burp gun.

So it must have had a really distinctive sound when it fired. Back to the book. The morning offered no evidence of the night. Porterfield made coffee and said there were no casualties. anyone knew of, though mortars might have gotten some people on the other side where they could not be seen. The other side. They called them that or gooks or people.

They also called our Koreans gooks. The Chinese were chinks, but we weren't facing them right now. It was all very matter of fact how we spoke with the enemy. Now, obviously, those are not the politically correct terms to use, but obviously I'm also going to stick with the book because these are the terms that the guys used back then the the term gook from what I understand I read about a little bit it came from there's a there's a term there's a Korean to say America in or American in Korean the term was me gook and and so I guess you picture guys meeting you know some Korean soldiers and and they're trying to see if

they're Americans and they go me go and they go oh you're a gook Okay, cool. And that's, that kind of stuck. Kind of like me, jaco. Yeah. You jocco. Yeah, that kind of thing. That kind of thing.

All right, back to the book. The next four days would pass slowly. I felt self-conscious about the simplest things. Should I walk in the trench or atop it? If I stayed in it, people might think I was afraid. If I stayed out, someone might accuse me of drawing fire and being a damn fool. They didn't teach you the finer things at Quantico. I compromised by walking atop the trench line,

but walking slumped. So a couple things. Number one, that's the kind of thing this young leader is thinking about. Like, what do I appear like to the men? If I walk hiding in the trench, then I'm a wimp. And if I stand up too tall

on the top of the trench, then I'm an idiot. So which one do I want to be? So he compromises. He takes the little thing I talked about when J.P. was on about how guys kind of slumped down a little bit. They crouch their, they bow their heads when they're walking around

just to make themselves, a little bit of a smaller target. That's what he's talking about. And that's what he did. That's how he solved that problem. Now, as he starts spending more time there, he starts meeting the guys, and he's very surprised that they are not exactly as,

quote, unquote, squared away as he might anticipate. Because these guys are Marines, and he's coming from Quantico, where everything is spit and polish, right? Back to the book. Fresh from Quantico. I knew I should be righteous about it, but it was Chaffy's company, not mine. Some men wore knee-length parkas.

Others pile vests or field jackets, one of forest green overcoat to his ankles. There were stolen army jackets, turtleneck sweaters, a plaid sweater made respectable by an issue green scarf tossed jauntly over one shoulder. There were fur hats and hats with earmuffs, ordinary fatigue cap, and. and a baseball cap, wool stocking caps, overseas caps, helmets, some with green, some with tan, some without any camouflage cover. There were thermal boots and ordinary boondockers and jump boots liberated from the army. Men wore no insignia or black stripes painted on the sleeve or metal badges of rank. I didn't recognize that they'd got from every breast pocket gleamed a brass spoon hammered from an old shell casing, a goose.

I did not know what they were and finally asked one Marine War is Purple Heart another a Nineteen forty eight Dewey for president button so this is not what he's used to he's used to see it guys Totally squared away and these guys have have obviously done whatever they can to try and stay warm Back to the book Phillips took us out to the right flank to see Simonus He seemed glad when we were there but he looked very weary tired though physically in good shape so Simonus they They had heard this story that Simonus had done a pretty awesome operation where they went across the valley, deep into some enemy-controlled territory, and killed a bunch of North Koreans. And then made it back with no casualties. So it's kind of a, everyone is super impressed with this operation.

And back to the book, Max said something about his patrol. The one Young Doll was bragging about. That was the mission that went across the valley. We were quiet and we were lucky, Simone said. it was obvious he didn't want to talk about it. He excused himself saying he was inspecting weapons this morning. Then as they're walking along, all of a sudden, Phillips moving faster than the plump, man should, dropped into the trench.

Down, he shouted. Mack and I jumped in after him. There was an explosion in black smoke rising somewhere behind us, and then another whiz with a bang on the end of it. 76, as Phillips said, squatting in the bottom of the trench. Flat trajectory weapon, not as fast as it sounds. If you hear the whiz, you can usually beat the bang. I looked past him at Allen.

Mack was beaming. Were they shooting at us? I asked Phillips. Likely. They only wasted two so they couldn't have been serious about it, just trying to instill a little discipline into three damn fool Marines. He didn't seem angry at being shot at, but we stayed in the trench for a hundred yards

until it dropped away below the skyline. It was all very casual. Mack's pleasure at being shelled puzzled me. one thing to be gung-ho about going to war another to be delighted someone was shooting at you Max fired up this is pretty cool talking about the he's getting some education now from one of the one of the enlisted marines named dodge and dodge says most of the most of the enemy weapons are Russian and the Russians are pretty smart about weapons their mortars are one millimeter larger in diameter than ours we got 60s and 81s. They got 61's and 82s. So they can use captured American mortar shells.

They slide in easy and just a little fraction loose, but we can't use their shells. They're just a tad too big for our tubes. So Soviet Union's pretty smart when they came up with that idea, with that plan. Back to the book, around 3 o'clock off to the left, there was a sudden mash of incoming mortar fire, then a distant shouting. Chaffy, just back from a scouting mission with Lisman, took off along the ridge towards Flynn's position. I started to go, but Red Phillips barked at me. Stay put till we know what happened. Then Phillips' phone rang.

It was Flynn. Four of his men, sunning themselves on top of a bunker, had taken a direct hit from an 82-millimeter mortar. The gooks had thrown up without notice. Just one shell, but two of the Marines were dead. Another had lost both legs, and the fourth was badly holed. They brought them down past the CP The dead shrouded in ponchos The wounded conscience and in pain

I stood watching feeling a stranger One of the dead was a cousin to the man whose legs were gone They came from a town in Massachusetts The Marine without legs didn't seem to realize about his legs But he was talking about his cousin Poor Eddie he said what's Eddie's mother gonna say Chaffee was with them at the corner, at one corner of the four men carrying Eddie in the poncho.

He turned it over to someone else and went into the CP, Phillips and I following. Get some onus, chaffy said. Tell him to send three men up to Flynn for tonight to fill in the line. Tell him to thin out his own people where he can. I'll try getting him some more men in the morning. He can have my runners if I can't get anybody else. They'll have that bunker okay before dark. It wasn't banged up too badly.

The men took most of it. While Phillips made the call, Chaffy turned to me. Well, that happens. No one to blame. Blame the sunshine if you have to lay blame. Truman himself couldn't keep Marines from getting some sun. Good men, too. You hate to lose them anyway, but losing them like this is stupid.

It hurts even more. We learn, though. You won't see anyone doping off on top of a bunker for a while. He picked up the battalion phone to call in the casualties. So you can see Chaff, he's got like a certain level of detachment, right? He's got a very, I would say it's actually a very good level of detachment where he's, even in his own sentence, he's saying, hey, it's horrible to lose these guys, no one to blame, we need to move forward.

It's like the right level of, it hurts, you know, he says it hurts even more, but he's not going crazy, he's not beating himself up. He's got a job to do. So there's a good level of detachment that he's got going on, and you're going to hear more about that as well. Now, this was interesting. You know, on social media, people are always asking about EDC, which is everyday carry.

They say, Jocko, what's your EDC? What do you carry every day? That's what people want to know. And when I read this paragraph here, I was thinking, this is the EDC, the everyday carry for the Korean War. So when they ask you, your EDC is a gun or just everything like knife? It's just everything you carry. Knife.

What do you care for? Knife. Your wallet, you know, your various things that you carry. Yeah, your EDC, man. Your EDC, yeah, yeah. All right, back to the book talking EDC. We forgot a lot of what they taught us at Quantico, but I remember Joe Will's lecture. Will was a captain who'd been in the hard fighting around Pusan, the first

summer of the war. There were pictures of Will and his men in Life magazine. Will had really been to Korea and had fought and so we listened and took notes. Will didn't talk about war aims or strategy or even small unit tactics. He told you what to take to Korea in your pockets. Nail clippers. If your nails grew too long, they caught on things and became jagged or maybe even ripped off. One-a-day vitamins. You were going to miss meals and there was no fresh fruit or milk. and you needed vitamins to keep you going. A knife. Not to kill people with,

but just a Boy Scout knife with a couple of blades and a screwdriver and an all. Toilet paper. There was a package in every ration box, but there was never enough. A flashlight, sheathed in black rubber for insulation and against hard knocks.

A pen and a small spiral notebook. You wanted to keep track of your men and to be able to write lists to leave notes for people. A good watch with a luminous dial you could read at night. A couple of good-sized bandanas You could use as handkerchiefs You were always wet

And we're going to catch a cold And your nose would run A toothbrush and toothpaste A small bar of soap A razor, of course The soap also worked as shaving cream Some raw hide leather thongs In case your shoelaces broke

Or you had to make jerry-rigged repairs to something A plastic bag to keep your wallet in When you got wet An extra pair of wool socks a zippo lighter for smoking and lighting fires. You didn't need any stamps or money. There was nothing to buy and no place to send it. The dog tags went around your neck.

You hung them from a leather from leather thong at different lengths so they didn't clink together and make noise. You wore two dog tags so that if you were killed, they would cut one off and turn it into the graves registration or some other authority and leave one on the body to ensure accurate identification. The Marine Corps had a system for just about everything. People at Quantico said Joe Will did some drinking nights at the officers club,

but he gave a good lecture and most of us remembered what he told us. As I was pretty sure I was going to remember what I was learning now from Chaffee, Phillips, and Texeless Listman and Sergeant Dodge. So there's your EDC for Korea. It's amazing how some of that small stuff gets. Like in the SEAL teams, that's the kind of thing that you'd get turned over from somebody that was in an area where you were. And you'd be all happy to get these good turnovers. Someone would say, hey, you really need this up here.

You need that. And it'd be always good. And it'd be bad when you'd forget or someone wouldn't give you a good turnover. And you'd say, wait a second, I should have had this. Why didn't anybody tell us their stuff? It was interesting, too, because when we first got over to one of my first deployment to Iraq, man, we were learning so many lessons about what was, going on. One of the biggest was how we were operating in Humvees all the time

because we didn't really do that much before the war started. So all of a sudden we were just learning a lesson a day in how to operate with the Humvees. And we just logged it all down and passed it on so the next guys knew what was coming. Capture those lessons learned and pass them on.

And by the way, when you're coming into theater and you haven't done the job, whatever job that you're taking over from somebody, listen to whatever they're telling you. Don't go in with your preconceived notions. You might have your own ideas, that's fine. I'm not saying don't have your own ideas. But listen to what people are telling you,

because they're going to know some things that you don't know, and that's all there is to it. All right. Now, there's a point where it looks like Chaffy's going to decide which one of these two guys, Brady or Mack Allen, is going to get to take over as platoon commander. And they're actually going to do a coin flip to decide.

So that's just who it is. And it turns out, that Brady wins the coin toss. Well, it's your platoon now, and Brady, Chaffy says, I won't worry about how you'll do. Both of you are ready to take platoons. You'll get yours soon, Alan, when Flynn goes home. The thing to remember is we were all platoon leaders once. A good job.

The finest command a man can have. Nowhere. I don't care how long you live or what you do. Will you ever have direct responsibility for so many men? You can command more men. You can be a general with a division, but it's no longer direct. Colonels and generals are nodded into the system, the whole military bureaucracy. You make your own system here.

You run it. It's your platoon. And I have to agree with the fact of being a platoon commander is awesome. And you have total control. And I will say this, though. I always looked at every job like that. Like every job I got my only, anytime I get put in charge of something,

whether I got put in charge of radios when I was a new guy, and I just had to be in charge of any people. I was just in charge of radios. I was like, oh yeah. I'm going to set these radios up like this. I'm going to make that my world. Right?

And then when I was got promoted and I was a squad leader and all of a sudden, yeah, I'm like, it's my squad and we're going to do things. And so I always had that that feeling of, what is basically? a feeling of ownership, right?

I'll take ownership. And I always did that. But he's right in the fact that once you go above the platoon commander, now there's going to be other, there's going to be someone else that's going to actually own those guys. Yeah, yeah. And it's not you. So you've got to give those platoon commanders some space

so they can do their thing. But it's a good job. When you get that opportunity for a platoon sergeant, a platoon chief or a platoon commander, it's about as good as it's going to get, in my personal opinion. All right, here's again, I talked about how Chaffy's sort of the reason why I wanted to do this book. And this is a classic example, good leadership lesson learned for anybody here.

Back to the book. Another order came up which sounded dumb. So dumb, I thought Chaffy was jollying us. The order was to pick up all the brass expended along the line and send it back for salvage. Brass is the military term for empty shell casings ejected from weapons. when bullets are fired. In the states, on the firing range, you're supposed to pick up the brass

to police the area to keep it neat. But here? The following morning, Chaffy, as usual, was up and down the company front with his wolf slope, moving fast without seeming to, seeing everything, knowing everyone. He called me into the CP when he got back.

Your machine gunners aren't picking up the brass. It's piled up around the guns and down the slope. Didn't you give them the order? I said I hadn't considered it a serious order. All orders are serious, Chaffee said and turned away. I was ashamed and angry. It was a ridiculous order, but Chaffy was right. I should have carried it out.

Now he caught me doping off. This was a Chaffy I hadn't seen before. A man with whom you didn't play games. I would not again. I didn't want to look. I didn't want that cold look coming down on me again. He didn't shout or curse when he chewed you out, but he didn't have to. You understood.

So that's any of these, anybody that thinks they're yelling and screaming and that's having this huge impact, you're probably wrong. You're probably wrong. You should seldom have to do that if you're in a leadership position. Back to the book, I hustled down the line to give the necessary orders to the gunners who looked at me as if I were mad. I said they were Chaffee's orders and to be obeyed, shrugging. and sulky, they started picking up the brass.

So what does he do? What does Brady do? He gets down there and says, hey, guys, pick up the brass. And when they start looking at him like, oh, this is ridiculous. He goes, hey, look, it's Chaffy. Chaffy told us to do it, so do it. Which is not good leadership. That's not good leadership, right?

He's passing the buck on up the chain of command. Hey, this is bosses. This is the boss's plan. I don't agree with it, but we have to do it anyways. Wrong. And he finds out just how wrong it is here. Back to the book, it was not until later. I learned that the order was from Youngdoll

and that Chaffy too thought it was inane but in dog company he issued orders as if they were his own idea without passing the buck or permitting any reflection on higher authority it would take time before I learned to do the same so when you pass that word you can argue all day long up the chain of command

but once the decision's been made and now you're talking to boys that's your order now. That's your plan. That's your idea. You own it. Now, they spend a little bit more time up on the line and then they go back to the reserves into the rear for a little while. And when they go back to the rear, it's, they're, they're Marines. So they're continuing to stay disciplined. They call them night problems. That means exercises. When I say problems, sometimes I'm going to forget to say this. But when they say problems, they're talking about exercises. Back to the book, The night problems went on and the inspections and drills and all the chicken shit of reserve area.

Chicken shit is a term that they use in the military. It's just stupid stuff that they make you do for no reason, right? That's just a common term. Oh, this is a chicken shit. Like, hey, we're going to paint these rocks white. That's the big thing. Oh, we're going to clean this sidewalk again. Hey, we're going to sweep up the parade ground again.

We swept it yesterday. We're going to sweep it again. It's just chicken shit stuff. The weather got colder and worse, but I began to feel wonderful. Suddenly I stopped thinking about minds and about losing my legs. The hell with it. Waring it and being afraid wasn't going to help. After that, I felt fine.

One afternoon, coming back from a live fire problem, Mack Allen and I were in such high spirits. We fell behind the party just to wrestle in the snow out of pure delight. I was easy for Mack, but we had a fine time and rolled halfway down the bank and nearly into a stream. Mack scrubbed my face with snow before we quit and stuffed a handful down my shirt. It was boyish, it was silly, and we knew it. But with another tour on the line coming up, you took pleasure where you could. So he's having a little attitude change.

Number one, he's over this idea of being afraid of minds and being afraid. He's like, hey, I can't control it. Do everything I can to mitigate, but it is what it is. And then, of course, sometimes you've got to get a little rolling. A little bit of a roll. And now they get back on the line. and again I'm obviously skipping sections of this because I'm not going to read the whole book.

You should read the whole book. But they're back on the line and now Brady is in charge of a platoon. He's a platoon commander. And Chaffee comes around to check out his section of the line. Back to the book. My bunker was toward the base of the nose where it joined the main ridge.

So the nose is a little, Little terrain feature that stuck out and that's where his bunker is. I showed Chaffy over the ground, not going all the way to either flank. It was too late for that and dark was coming. But I gave him the gist of it. Keep 50% of men on watch until I tell you different. All right? Aye, I, sir.

This looks like a good line, Brady. Better than the last. Yes, it does, sir. We've got work to do, though. Get some more wire in, plot the minds and don't get too relaxed just because of It's high. Any hill Marines can climb down, the gooks can climb up. Get relaxed and you'll find trouble. I said I wasn't too relaxed. Chaffee greeted that with a grin. I don't imagine you are first night on the line with a new platoon. I laughed. It was getting late. The sun gone now,

but Chaffy walked away, but Chaffy walked with me for away, the two of us alone. Not much I want to say, Brady. You'll do a fine job for me. I'm not worried about that. But one thing they don't tell you at Quantico and maybe they should. Get to know your people as Marines, as professionals. Learn their capacities, their strengths, their weaknesses. But don't get to know them as men. None of this first name stuff. Don't ask about their families or their hometown, whether they're married if they've got

kids. Do that and before you know it, you'll lose your judgment. You'll be sending a man out on point because he's single and not because he's the best point man. There's something else. Get to know your men too well, too personally, and when you lose one, you'll be losing a piece of yourself. A platoon leader can't afford that.

It's bad enough losing men without losing pieces of you, too. Remember that, Brady. It's hard learned and it's right. I said I would remember. Chaffy went off bouncing along the icy path and down the hacked out steps of the reverse slope in the gloom, a lean, tireless figure who did not look back, who told you what to do and left you to do it.

Now, that section, obviously in the SEAL teams, in special operations in general, there's definitely a much closer relationship between the officers and the senior enlisted guys and the troopers. That's just the way it is. I mean, you're doing everything together. You're going through training together.

You're doing everything together. so you that that that wall between the ranks definitely gets degraded somewhat and this is something that I talk about all the time and this is part of the dichotomy of leadership right this is part of the dichotomy of leadership and what you do is you know you're going to have your relationships with your guys but you've got to make sure that you're not you got to make sure you keep those under control and and like for me I was it was fairly easy easy for me to have really good relationships with guys, to have guys that were my best freaking friends and be like, okay, and you're the best guy for this job, so you're going to

go do that. And I didn't, I never let the personal things cross over into my business, my tactical reasoning ever. It just didn't happen. And that's why I definitely had better relationships, closer relationships than what Chaffee's talking about here, no doubt about it. Um, you know, And I think that's beneficial in a lot of ways because, yeah, you know, you know what's making guys tick. And obviously the downfall to that is that when you do lose guys, you are going to lose a PCU. And that's the reality of it. Now, going back to the book, he gets another visit from the colonel. The colonel comes up on the line.

So the guy above chaffy in the chain of command comes up. Same thing, just looking at his trench, seeing what he's got going on. Back to the book, the colonel said, where are your machine guns? The answer was, I didn't know exactly. What I said was they're down with the squads. The first squad has one and the second and the lieutenant. What bunkers are your machine guns in? Do you know their fields of fire?

How are they laid? Do you have aiming stakes in? No, sir. You should know, shouldn't you? Yes, sir. Then find out. Aye, I, sir. The words floated in the crisp cold of the hill

as the colonel hopped jauntly into his chopper and left. I got on the phone to call Chaffee. I told him. I thought I'd better since the colonel surely would. Chaffy didn't say much over the phone. Well, he said, I guess you better go out and chart your guns, hadn't you? Now, this is something if you're in a leadership position and you get inspected up the chain of command,

and you said yourself, oh, should I tell my immediate boss that something's gonna come back? Yes, you should is the answer. Yes, you should. Don't let your bosses, don't ever want your bosses to get blindsided with something.

Same thing, you know, in the military, we'd have guys get in trouble out in town. Yeah. And... Like get arrested, kind or something like that. Get arrested, get in a fight, whatever. Now, this is what I,

how I would handle those situations. If I could contain them, right? If I could contain them myself and I could punish the guy myself and handle it at my level, I would do it. But if it was something that was going to get out of control and we weren't going to be able to stop it, if it was going to be in a newspaper or something like that,

well then I'd tell my boss, like, this is what happened. I had one of my idiot guys, went out, got drunk caught in a fight, went out, caused some problems, this is what happened. So that way he's not getting blindsided by it. He can prepare for it. He can have an answer. He can say that this is the punish that's being. and belt out or whatever, get the thing handled.

So when something like this happens, tell your boss what's going on. Just, it's going to be uncomfortable for those 12 seconds that it takes for you to get those words out of your mouth. Once those words out of your mouth, I promise you'll feel better. You will definitely feel better. Back to the book, Chaffy didn't say anything more. He didn't need to.

But I knew there was plenty he would have said. There was plenty of the colonel of the regiment would say to the colonel of the battalion, who, in his turn, and in the hallowed traditions of the core, would have a few words for Chaffy. I felt pretty bad. It seemed unfair. A fine officer like Chaffy, a good man should suffer

because a green junior officer doped off. But it was the way things were and the way it had to be. Later in the day, Chaffy met with Phillips and the three platoon leaders. He stressed as a might-a-teacher-in-kindergarten the importance of basic things. The precise location of machine guns

being only one of these fundamentals. He made no reference to the colonel, none to me. He simply reminded us of the things he wanted done and said he expected them to be done. Then he and Phillips loped off to look at something and the rest of us drifted back to our platoons. I wanted to tell the rest of them it was my fault. We'd been lectured. I wanted to hug Chaffy for not saying so. These were mistakes that came with still being an amateur in a professional's war.

So there's another just great example of leadership. He could hammer Brady and say, look, Brady did this and he doesn't know what his guys are doing and he didn't know where his machine guns are, made us all look bad. He didn't do that. No, no. Instead, he doesn't mention Brady's name. He tells everybody they got to get stuff done. Now, does Brady want to do better for him? Yes, he absolutely does.

He's building up that leadership capital with his troops by not dropping dime on somebody and making an example out of him. Now, is there times where you have to do that? course there is. Yeah. But this one was nothing major, right? A little stern talking to from the colonel, hey, I can absorb that. Not going to make Brady look bad, but I'm going to build up that loyalty. Yeah.

Now they go out in an operation and a guy named Fitz gets wounded. And it almost, he's, he and Brady's actually also very close to the mind that goes off, but he's okay. and at night he gets back to his bunker. And there's a guy named Princeton who's taken over as his senior enlisted guy, kind of his sergeant that's working for him. And here we go back to the book. That night I worked hard at tidying my half of the bunker,

ate very little but enjoyed what I had and tried unsuccessfully to get Princeton to talk about the day's events. I gave that up and wrote a number of letters, separate ones to my mother and father, telling them what happened and that I was okay and that I love them. and another to a girl. The girl was tall and lean and very pretty and quite exciting, but we had never really meant anything to each other.

Now I wrote her quite dramatically, that I'd nearly been killed, that my eyes had been opened, and as soon as I got back, we should begin to consider the future. We've wasted an awful lot of time, you and I, the letter concluded. It was a college boy's letter, and in the morning I tore up all three letters chiding myself for being counted, and sent a three-paragraph letter home in which I discussed the weather in some detail. Princeton, who wrote to his wife once a month, shook his head over all this correspondence.

I just love that. He's just growing up. He's growing up fast on the line in Korea. First, he's right, the girl, I almost got killed, and this is what's going on, and we need to consider our future together. He just rips that up in the morning. And then writes his parents about the weather. Yeah, yeah. That's classic.

And I totally agree with Princeton, who's right and what. You don't, if you're on deployment, don't get in this mode where you're spending all your time trying to thinking about what's going on back home. Concentrate on what you're doing overseas. The best thing you can do for your family is concentrate on what you're doing overseas so you can live and you can win.

That's what you want to focus on. Let your family, you know, contact them once a week. Hey, what's going on? Everything, I'm doing great. That's another thing is, you know, you don't need to tell your family back home, all the stuff that's going on. You just say, look, we're doing great.

I'm having the best time. It's a lot of fun. Miss you, and I'll be home and whatever. I hope how's Johnny's, you know, grades in kindergarten? Let's talk about that. How's he like in his jiu-jitsu class? Is he working on his arm lock? How is his Camero looking?

Let's stick to those subjects. Not get all crazy. All right. Now this is a, he starts going into a description of what some of the guys were like. He's spending some time with him, and he's getting to know them. Back to the book. I started to get to know my men. Like most people my age, I've been brought up on Hollywood's idea of a marine platoon.

A demographically, ethnically balanced blend of wasps and the rest of us. You know, a Brooklyn Jew streetwise, but sensitive. A big city Italian talking baseball and making obscene arm gestures behind your back. A dumb hayseed farm boy with a girl back home. A heroic black man. A Puerto Rican or Mexican with a rosary muttering Spanish wisdom. A feisty little Jimmy Cagney Irishman with a chip on his shoulder. A goulash of stereotypes.

The reality in Korea was somewhat different. My platoon had no Jews, one black, no Hispanics, one Indian, surly and sullen. There were Protestants and Catholics and few who were nothing, and that was it. Some Irish, some Poles, some Italians, a few. French and the Irish were sober and it was the Midwest rubs who got emotional while the Italians were being methodical and phlegmatic. Nor were the battalion officers what the Marine Corps had traditionally been, Southern gentlemen.

Now we were Easterners, Ivy Leaguers, college kids, Californians, men from Detroit and Chicago and Seattle. It's a little different from what you might imagine. not quite as diverse as they made it out to be in Hollywood. Now going into a little more detail about a rifle platoon in the Marine Corps in Korea. Back to the book. A Marine rifle platoon in Korea was a superbly balanced tactical unit with enormous firepower and an eminently sensible fundamental premise.

Eminently sensible fundamental premise in combat, no one man can reasonably be expected to control directly and effectively more than three other men. In a firefight, you can't keep tabs on more than three Marines and still be aware of the enemy. A Marine rifle platoon has three squads whose squad leaders are trained to maintain contact with the platoon leader. When he issues orders, he issues them not to 40 men, but only to these three sergeants. in their turn each control three fire teams, each of which is commanded by a corporal fire team leader. They look to the squad leader for their orders.

He to them for action. In the fire team, the corporal has three men whom he controls and who look always to him during a firefight. So this is just a very clear explanation of decentralized command. And when you're out on the battlefield, you can't control 30 guys or 60 guys or 20 guys or even 10 and actually he makes a very good point he says in a firefight you can't keep taps on more than three Marines and still be aware of the enemy so maybe if you weren't didn't have to worry about the enemy and what they were doing

maybe then you could handle six or 12 but you got to worry about what the enemy's doing do you got a lot of other stuff to worry about so you can handle three guys and you see this this happens in the business world as well, where people start to build little worlds where they have direct reports, they have 18 direct reports. That's not going to work. You should not have 18. In the administrative situation, I think you can handle seven, eight, maybe you can get to 10, maybe.

I don't recommend it. The fewer direct reports you have and the more you empower them, the better off you're going to be. The more you're going to be able to look around, the more you're going to be able to see what your competitors are doing. the more time you have to spend on strategy. When you have 12 or 16 direct reports, you don't even have time to think

because you're in their worlds all day long. You're not in your world. You're in 18 different brains. That just doesn't work. Yep. So set yourself up with decentralized command. Now we go into, back into where they're just on the line and we're about to have a little bit of action.

back to the book. We were waiting, awake. Princeton cleaning his M1 rifle, like most Marines. Then the first grenade exploded, followed by a second and a third. The phone sounded at my ear. It was chaffy. The man never slept. What have you got up there, Brady? Is that your area where we're getting grenades? Yes, sir. Over by the heavy machine gun section. I gave him the closest mortar concentration as I was trained to do. then I tried to cool down the affair but there's nothing else maybe someone's a little shook over there throwing at shadows

no firing anywhere well they're not supposed to throw grenades at shadows Chaffy tell them to hold their fire until they see something want me to come up there no sir Chaffy has to be kept informed

so Chaffy's just saying hey look get this handled you want me to come up there because by the way I can come up there if need be no I got it and then the snow comes and when the snow comes

it's brutal back to the book even Chaffy was grounded by the snow he held his daily company meeting by telephone transmitting the password giving a brief account of the fighting elsewhere checking on the conditions of the men and irregularities

in supply there were no patrols but Chaffy urged us over and over not to be lulled not to relax to be alert when everyone else might nod to scout out the ground each day whatever the weather to see to it the weapons were clean and lightly oiled oil froze in this cold you couldn't use much prince and i alternated visiting the flank of each platoon once a day in this snow it was easier to duck into the bunkers to talk to inspect weapons to question the men at the firing

ports they brewed cocoa or coffee and i took it so this is something that we see consistently from chaffy is that he's constantly on his guys to maintain their discipline, right? And even when things are going okay, he always says, hey, yeah, that's good job on that. Guess what? Let's not get lax. And that's exactly what he's doing right here. Urges us over and over, not to be lulled, not to relax. Somebody's got to be driving that.

Back to the book, a new lieutenant had just joined Fox Company, an Annapolis graduate, a trade schoolman, a matter of understandable pride already in the battalion. our very own academy graduate. He had four years of Annapolis behind him, all those parades, all that tradition, all those Army-Navy games, and another four months at the basic school at Quantico. Fox Company was very excited having him.

It made everything so official, so grand. But beyond that, he seemed a good man, a cool and professional young officer who would do his job. His name was Folger, and his nickname was Lucky, and he was 22 or 22. 23 years old. When the barman squeezed off the burst, Marines came out of every bunker along the Fox Company line and on my flank. A dozen men with rifles and bars started down the hill after the raiders hoping they could move faster than the gooks with their prisoners, hoping to catch them before they

crossed the river and disappeared into their own lines. Folger, who had not yet been out in front of the line because the five-day rule was one of the first men to reach the grove of trees. As he and others ran through the low pines, hurtling over the spring. The deep thunk of mortars drifted up to us from across the valley. All around Folger, Marines threw themselves flat in the snow, pulling helmets down tight over their ears, legs pulled in close, cupping their bodies against what they knew was coming. Folger had never heard an incoming mortar before.

One of the first shells hit Lucky Folger, a Marine who is nearby said Folger made no sound could not have known he was hit. No one else was hit, only Folger. Scary thing. I talked about that before on here and being in situations where you can hear the mortars. And obviously you learn what that sounds like and Folger hadn't learned yet. It didn't know what it was like and, you know, probably no one even thought that, you know, because I was thinking about how has this happened.

No one tells me to get down. I'll tell you how that happens. Everyone else it's so instinctive at this point They hear it and they get down They're not looking around They just think everyone knows like oh yeah Obviously we got mortars coming No one yells out incoming

They just everyone gets down And he just doesn't know it yet And that lack of knowledge Cost him his life And that's why Another thing when you're doing turnover with guys overseas Like go into detail on stuff And stuff that you take for granted

Don't take it for granted And if you think If you're worried about appearing condescending to someone just go ahead and appear condescending just go ahead and go over the details to say look man I don't mean I know you're not stupid but I'm just going to go over this just in case you didn't know

here's the deal when you hear this noise funk that means mortars are coming so get down now we get Brady started to do some patrolling back to the book I took out the first patrol for dog company Nelson squad it wasn't required that the

platoon lieutenant go out but it was sensible showing you wouldn't send a patrol where you wouldn't go yourself. So common thing. You know, you, if you're sending your guys out, make sure they know that you're going to go out too. You're not just sitting back in the bunker. We saw that in platoon leader. Remember the book in Vietnam where the one platoon leader every day, his platoons are going out or his squads are going out, but he's just staying back there all hiding. Yeah. Don't be that guy. Moving forward a little bit, back to the book, I lost two more men. One of them, Danker had a fire team in the third squad.

Danker was one of the men wounded in September on 749. That's a hill. They fought a big battle, Hill 749. You're going to hear about that. Brady wasn't on it, but a lot of his veterans were. His wounds were cured, but he was only a month away from rotation, and he was shook. That's what they called combat fatigue. Danker did everything he was told to do, but he was afraid.

He begged Princeton to do something. Then when a Chaffee's runners broke a leg on the ice steps, and I sent Danker to the CP as runner. He came to thank me. Lieutenant, I haven't shirked you. But if I have to go out on another ambush, I'm scared I'll do something bad and get people hurt. I don't know. I just can't know more control the way I am, the way I feel. I used to be a good man. He began to cry. And I turned away and told Prince to get him saddled up that the captain was waiting. So we're starting to see some some psychological impact on the guys. And I think that Brady handles this perfectly,

very similar to the way Dick Winners would handle it. Oh, we got a guy that's starting to lose it a little bit. Get him off the line. Give him a break. Give him a rest. And the big thing that Winners points out, Dick Winners, I'm talking Band of Brothers, First of the 506,

one of the things that he points out is, if you get the guy off the line, they can come back, they'll be okay. If you don't and you grind them out, it's like having an engine that's low on oil. If you get it to the service station, they'll just put more oil in there.

Come back, it's going to be fine. If you keep driving that thing, dry on oil, it's going to be destroyed. And that's the same thing that can happen with people, with people's minds. You're going to see some more minds start to become affected by this. Back to the book, Kelso, the machine gunner,

lost a man. It wasn't the gooks that did it, but the wind. We'd been on the line three weeks, and the wind never stopped. One night, Halswell's corporal went berserk, firing off a heavy machine gun inside the bunker trying to kill rats that no one else saw. They carried him off in the morning, cursing the wind and the rats, drooling and trying to tear off his clothes.

Princeton looked at him thoughtfully. I was shaken by the sounds coming from a good Marine, a solid NCO. So again, both these guys, Danker and this guy right here, they're good Marines. that just couldn't, couldn't, they just got, they just had enough and they need to get off the line. They needed to break. Back to the book, we lost other men. Only Fitzgerald's squad did not lose anyone. Fitzgerald's squad did not lose anyone.

Fitz would not permit himself to be evacuated the morning I tripped the mine and he would not permit his men to quit. He was tough, but he was more than that. He was the best we had and his men knew it. And they refused to weaken. even when weakness closed in on them. Fitzgerald drove them and they drove themselves. That's such a great indicator of what leadership is. All these other people are losing people.

People are going crazy. They're combat fatigue. They're being overcome. Fitzgerald is a leader and he holds the line. And that makes his guys hold the line. And it says, you know, he was tough, but he was more than that. It's not just about being tough.

Being tough only gets you a part of the way there. This is, this next loss of men is just awful. Back to the book, Mack Allen lost men. His platoon sergeant took out a typical patrol, terrible cold, but no fighting.

They came back in about 2 a.m. using a fixed rope to help them scramble up nearly sheer ice below the wire, came in, half frozen and tired. Mack was there to meet them to check in each man. As he questioned the platoon sergeant about the patrol, the sergeant remembered, damn me, Mr. Allen.

We left a rope out there, hanging down from just below the wire. The sergeant yelled for another Marine to give him a hand and disappeared over the lip of the ridge with a husky, blonde Marine in tow. Mack was back in the bunker taking off his boots. when a burst of machine gun fire, then another ripped through the mountain stillness. Outside, Marines were running. Mack pulled on the boots and crawled out, grabbing a man running by.

Where's the platoon sergeant? Where's the sergeant and Windgate? In the confusion, it took a few minutes to find them. They both lay dead on the forward slope. Big Windgate draped over the wire. The sergeant curled up, looking like a man taking a nap on a reddened patch of, One of Allen's machine gunners knew the patrol was in, but no one had thought to tell him about the two men going back out to retrieve the rope. As they came back, he took them for gooks, trailing the patrol home, trying for a straggler, and he fired off two short, effective bursts.

He was a very good gunner, and he caught both men in the face. The rope was coiled neatly over the sergeant's shoulder. Wingate was in my machine gun platoon on 749 before being transferred to Mack's platoon, not a terribly good Marine, a brooder. Most men disliked him. One of the few friends he had was the gunner who killed him. Knowing what losing Sergeant and Wingate would mean to Mack, I called him on the company phone to talk about it.

He wondered if he should have just left the damn rope out there dangling, no matter that the sergeant should have passed word that they were going back out. This was Max Patoon, and these, his men, and their deaths, his deaths. It carried the bodies to the supply tent just below the company CP and laid them out. The cold would take care of them through the night, and in the morning the gook train would come through. But when the gooks got there and eight stretcher bears fell out to approach the supply tent to pick up the dead and carry them down the hill, a Marine stopped them. The gunner who'd killed Wingate and the sergeant. He had sat crying all night in the tent, sitting over the bodies, and now he stood

just outside the tent flap, dry-eyed, but holding a 45 automatic. You're not taking them, he said. The gooks dropped the two stretchers and scattered along the path in both directions. Crazy Marines. The stretcher lay on the ice. Chaffy walked up to the gunner. Give it here, Corporal, he said. You know Wingate wouldn't want you doing that. Stay back, Skipper, the corporal said. He waved the gun, crying again now and shaking his head. I was down there by now with all the excitement, and to me it was pretty clear, a fast man standing this close could jump in.

And a new chaffy was very fast. But the captain just stood there easily, hands on his hips. Phil, he said. Phil, you know Johnny wouldn't want anyone hurt over him. The corporal didn't move for an instant, and then he shook his head and his right arm flexed, then fell, the pistol hanging loose in his hand. Chaffy reached out to take it. Then he did something I would not have done.

He slipped the 45 back into the corporal's holster, patting him on the shoulder, and waved the gooks to come to the tent. Then Chaffy and Phillips and I, with the corporal's help, lay the two bodies very gently on the stretchers. They were frozen solid and handled like cordwood. The corporal sat in the snow crying until Red Phillips got him to drink some coffee and go back to his bunker. I realized it was the first time I'd heard Jaffe call a Marine by his Christian name. So this blue on blue, and I seem to hit this in every book that we talk about. And for some reason, it's something that doesn't get taught very often.

It didn't get taught to me in great detail, the detail I would. wish it got taught in. Something that happens. Happens as simple as this. Oh, we forgot the rope. We're going to go back out and grab it. And then you got two dead Marines killed by another Marine. I mean, it's just an awful situation.

So don't ever take any part of an operation lightly, ever. And make sure you keep people informed of where are you going to be on the battlefield. And there's nothing harder. When you're leaving the lines, you've got to let people know. Don't take it for granted that people understand what's going on. So these are kind of things that are happening. Back to the book, so the gooks were not the only danger. We were killing ourselves and breaking our legs and falling sick and cracking up and being carried away.

It was how it was in a mountain war in deep winter. But the gooks were to have their chances. Both Mack, Allen, and I had lost men. And now it came Simonus's turn. So Simonus is the guy that I'd said had done a big operation. that was pretty successful, hadn't taken any casualties, and it killed a bunch of enemy. And now we're about to do an encounter with him. Some things are going sideways for him.

Back to the book. I heard the firing before I was really awake, part reality, part nightmare. I sat up suddenly in the bag. Princeton was up and dressed, and he handed me a canteen cup, hot with coffee, very strong and blacked the way he made it. Prince went on fussing with domestic chores, keeping a tidy bunker. Mr. Simonus is catching it, he said. Simonus had taken a patrol down the mountain the night before, an ambitious affair affair all the way into the valley.

He should have been back into the line by this time. It was almost six. I tried to call the CP, but nobody answered. They must all be out trying to do something about Simonus. Then I remembered that Chaffee wasn't there. He'd torn his hand, helping men lay barbed wire. It had become infected, and he was down at the battalion getting it. repaired. Chaffee had no business out there muscling wire, but try telling Chaffee not to do things.

So there's Chaffee's not around. The squared away company commander's not around. So it's actually Phillips that's run in the company right now. And you got Simonus supposed to be back in the wire, but he's not. He stuck out in the field. And Simonus had had radio contact, and he'd been caught out there at first light as they went across a little stream, and they got mortared. They got hit and so finally Brady goes and in gets to Phillips and talks to him Phillips was back to the book Phillips was standing in front of the CP looking solemn look red I'll take some people down there if you want with stretchers and help simonis get out of there Phillips looked at me for the first time and in what seemed to be

focus yeah yeah he said that's a good idea I sent a fire team down already with a corman and some blood but they're gonna need more than that good idea get a squad of people together i appreciate this get them back i appreciate it it came to me he was afraid maybe they wouldn't be back and so uh brady gathers up his troops and they take off he's he says he's feeling afraid but he's going anyways and they take off down the hill and it's it's it's a long distance but they get make it up very quickly because they're traveling light and they're heading downhill which is pretty easy No, it's obviously easier than going uphill.

Back to the book. I was at the bottom before I expected. A dozen or more Marines lay around in the snow, some under some pines at the edge of flat ground. There were two dead, Simonus told me, and seven wounded out of 12. Only one of the wounded was really bad, and he might not make it.

The others were walking wounded. It was the mortars that caught them in the open ground at first light. They must have had the concentration registered. he said because there were no ranging shots just silence one moment and shells worrying the next there was no firing at all from either side so one thing that one thing about mortars is is first of all they're they're hard to shoot accurately and when he's talking about ranging what you do is you shoot one you if you're trying to hit a target you shoot the first one long and then you shoot the second one short and then you take the two

the compromise the two in the middle and then you're going to hit your target so that's that's how mortars work so what they have in this situation when he said that they must have had the mortars registered. That means they already have them. They know that spot, and they don't have to arrange them at all. They can just drop them. And the other thing that,

so mortars, they can just, you don't always hear that sound of them being launched, especially if it's further away. You're not going to hear that. Or different atmospheric, noise conditions. You know,

if you've got heavy cloud cover, that reflects the noises. But if you don't, maybe you don't hear it. Maybe different terrain doesn't let you hear noises, just like noise is reflecting around in a city. And the other thing about mortar, that is hard to understand.

Motors come in all different shapes and sizes. And small mortars are tiny. They're tiny little 60 millimeter mortars. They're tiny. And I mean, it's six centimeters, right? That's how big it is. They're tiny little things. And then it goes all the way up to 120 millimeter.

And they go bigger than that. But common is, you know, as big as 120 millimeters. And that's the diameter, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's big. Yeah. And so what you end up with,

the main point of this is, that these things, when mortars hit, the shards, the shrapnel that comes off them. People think of shrapnel as being little tiny things, and I've talked about this before. Shrapnel is big. Shrapnel is giant. Shrapnel can be eight to ten inches long. I mean, just giant, and they're thick. Shrapnel is a half inch piece of steel.

Just a big chunk, a half inch piece of steel. It's brutal. And so when it hits in these guys, you know, totally unexpected, they're just walking. and boom, it's devastating. But the shooting had stopped. Back to the book, they had stretchers out and rolled the bodies aboard, strapping them on with their own belts,

and then four men lifted Caulfield and slid a stretcher under him. So Caulfield is a big, giant guy. They said he's over six, six, just a monster of a guy. God knows what he weighs, but he's huge. And so they got to carry him. And like I mentioned that they were running downhill to get to him.

Well, now to get back, they got to go uphill the whole way. We heaved him up and started off up the trodden snow slowly as it had to be with his weight on the hill. The hill reached endlessly upward. So they are trudging and it doesn't take long for them to be like exhausted. Back to the book, the other three men looked as bad as I felt. We were all tired, the four of us. and among us there wasn't a damn shred of sympathy anymore for Caulfield, the cause of our exhaustion, of our misery.

We all hated poor Caulfield. When I realized this, some pride seeped back into me. We were all in the same fix. I didn't want to be the first to give up. But if I didn't give up soon, I would die there with Caulfield there in the snow, broken by the impossible load we carried. I was climbing now with my eyes shut,

not wanting to see how much hill remained my mouth wide open and gasping we all fell again the third time like christ under the cross this time i didn't get to my feet but crouched there gulping air around me the others were still down then simonis was at my side time to change over we'll take him for a stretch so this is just a brutal physical evolution that's happening i was back to the book i was thirsty but my canteen was frozen solid. Princeton was always warning me about that, but I hadn't wanted to add whiskey the way Prince did. I regretted it now and scooped up smooth snow from just off the trail and let it melt in my mouth. So imagine that. You're just devastatingly thirsty. And boom, you go to get your drink of your canteen.

It's frozen completely solid. Now they continue. I mean, it's just a heinous evolution that they go through. they finally get him back up back to the book the climb was over 13 hours after it began over for today tomorrow could be the same or worse it really wasn't fair that having done so much there was still so much to do you never really mastered war never got on top of it it was always too big there was too much to it ever to finish the job. Now, it goes from that just brutal situation.

I mean, you imagine 13, 13 hours, but you think you're going to be back in like 45 minutes, right? Hey, run out, we'll help these guys, we'll get some stretchers. Yeah. And then you run down there, and it's 13 hours later. You're dehydrated. But he starts to go into some reflections now of what it was like, some other parts of the war. And you're going to see he's going to oscillate back and forth as he describes some of the stuff, but it's all really good information and things to think about.

Back to the book, when you weren't fighting, the war was pretty good. Mornings were the best time. The terror of the night ended the patrols and ambushes and duck blinds. Men slept late. When there was snow in the night, it lay smooth and untracked. No industrial smokestack or city soot turning it dowel. and gray, no vehicles to churn it into slush. It hung, glistening on the pine branches until the sun, warming as it rose, thawed it into tiny, shining

icicles, glistening, melting, drop, drop, drop. Men crawled out of their bunkers into the morning calm, the industrious using entrenching tools to dig away the snow, tidying the trench. So there's, that's the dichotomy of war. and he's going to go back and forth on this dichotomy quite a bit. Do you, you know how, I mean, I guarantee you'd experience that too where overall it's just this really junk situation overall. But then all those little almost like micro pleasures,

you know how just those little things, they kind of add up and then you kind of miss them. Oh, yeah. Never even mind micro. That's one of the reasons in this chapter you're going to see like he goes back and forth about what makes it good and what makes it fun. And I've talked about this before. There's something so pure about being overseas fighting a war.

You don't think about anything else. You don't think about anything else. And it's just this pure thing that you have, then nothing else in the world matters. And that feels good. I love that feeling. Yeah. Even like if you think back to your, I don't know,

some people, they're like, oh, yeah, my college days. where I was so broke. There's all this, like, junk stuff and how much better it is now, but you think back on just the small good parts, you know, like, I had no response to them. Yeah, well, you definitely, everybody self-edits their past and remembers the good stuff more than the bad. Yeah. Right?

I mean, that definitely happens. Yeah. If that didn't happen, you know, I've heard said if that didn't happen, women would never have more than one kid, right? Because given birth is, like, a really tough evolution. So I'd say, oh, no, I don't want to do that again. But the reality is women have all kinds of kids, despite the toughness. of that evolution because they remember the good stuff. Yeah, especially, I mean, sometimes if they,

if they kind of leave that experience with a, like, a bad idea of it, then they'll self-at it the other way. Like, oh, it was just junk. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, those times when it's like, we always kind of miss those times. Well, it's the same thing. There's all kinds of, when you're on deployment,

there's all kinds of frustrations and, and there's infighting and there's all these problems. And then you get back, and everyone hates each other. You get back, everyone's like, oh, yeah, well, yeah. You've set all that stuff aside. Yeah. Yeah. You figure when you go on deployment, if you make it back and, you know,

and get back, it's like, you know you've done a good thing. You know, to go fight for your country is a good thing straight up. So you know that. So it's pretty rare you're going to emerge thinking, oh, man, we shouldn't have done that kind of thing. Yeah, no, that's definitely not a few of them. I mean, overall, you know, overall. So that's one of those things where, yeah, the way you're going to self-edit is going to be in the good way. You know, so you're going to be, oh, I miss that time, even though it was miserable.

And I think what's cool is I think you're going to hear this here. He goes back and forth. Like he's definitely self-editing some of the good stuff, but he's also going right into some of the, his description. And we'll get to it here in a minute. I think it's in this section, but he's talking about like when the night comes and it's awesome. We'll get there in a minute. Back to the book, Princeton, like most regulars, made a fetish of shaving daily. Water was always short.

We melted snow in canteen cups. over Coleman stoves and parceled out from five-gallon jerry cans. Water maybe is the heaviest thing Marines ever have to carry. We never washed. There wasn't water for that. I suppose we smelled pretty bad, but you stopped noticing. The air in the bunkers lighted by candles and worn by Coleman stoves was so foul that you spit soot and body odor didn't really register.

You never changed clothes except for socks. I had two pairs of heavy wool socks and I tried to change every day. The socks you put on were filthy, but after 24 hours they were dry, the sweat evaporated. Frozen feet were a continual fear. We all knew the horror stories from the winter before, men who lost toes or an entire foot, sometimes both feet. If you could somehow keep your feet dry, the cold wasn't as dangerous. You might, if the Koreans didn't get you, or a mine, or an accidental discharge or a short round survived the winter. with limbs intact.

How the sock smelled didn't matter. Only if they were dry. There's a part in the book that I didn't talk about that I didn't highlight. At least I don't think I did. But they're showing them a film to get ready to go to Korea.

And the film is of a guy with frost-bitten toes. And the surgeon, he's not even using a knife. He's just, the toes are just coming off, like breaking off a twig off a branch. And, you know, that kind of thing right there, we'll make you try and keep your feet dry.

Back to the book. If I had one, I smoked a cigar chewing the stub into pulp, spitting juice onto the snow at my feet onto my thermal boots. It didn't matter which. There were no inspections up here. None of the garrison chicken shit you lived with at Quantico or Pendleton or even in reserve. These were good times too. Afternoons, looking at the mountains and the snow and smoking and spitting with no one to

complained, scratching yourself where you itched, your groin or your belly or wherever. In a country this lovely unless someone was shooting at you or sending you out on patrol, if you could stay warm and dry and you knew there was one more can of sweet peaches or pears back in the bunker, the war wasn't so bad. So that's awesome. That's what I'm talking about. You're over there. It's weird because there's all kinds of rules when you're in combat, but they're different rules.

and the rules of normal life, they don't apply anymore. And you just do whatever you want in a lot of cases. You know, oh, this isn't a work and smash it. Oh, I don't like this. I'm going to break it. Oh, there's something over there. Shoot at it.

It's fun. It's awesome. And then, yeah. And then, like, he's literally talking about, you know, just scratching yourself. Like, you're just, it's just man's world, right? I mean, at least it was for me, just a bunch of guys hanging out with a cool job.

And so it's awesome. It's fun. now things you're going to see this is that this is that paragraph that I was talking about it's awesome then by 2.30 or 2.45 in the afternoon the sun would start to fall toward the ridge line and the wind out of Siberia would pick up and I would begin to shiver not just from the cold but knowing that the good time was nearing its end that darkness was coming the dark and the night and the terrible cold and unless we were lucky the fighting i hated to see the dusk come in combat there are no beautiful sunsets a falling sun is a warning of the night the shadows lengthen and the

temperature falls and the wind seeks you out mend again begin to move around now restless nervy busying themselves with chores to take their minds off the night breaking down weapons one more time for cleaning, rearranging their grenades and bringing in the sleeping bags left out for a day's airing, heating a supper of lima beans and ham before dark. Once the night comes, there may not be time. Once the darkness falls, the good times are past. The pleasant indolence, the contemplation of the day is gone. By 4.30, there is no more sun, and then only a swift dusk, and then the real night, cold and frightening and too often deadly yeah I was this is something else to think about this is like a daily reminder to me because I was I was I was watch the sunset if I

have the opportunity yeah but like I reread this book for the podcast and so lately now when I'm watching the sunset this is what I'm thinking about about what these guys were thinking it's all nice and pretty here in California watch the sunset it's not always like that do you think that that kind of robs you of the experience it's here or do you think it adds to it? I think it adds to it 100% because I'm not sitting I don't I'm not in this reality. I'm not in their their reality. I'm in my reality.

Sunset means looks nice. The wind calms down. You get to see a beautiful sky. That's what sunset is. But I get to contrast that with what these guys experienced with the true darkness coming and what that meant to them, the fear that they were going to they were going to face every single night. And it's amazing that every single day they'd wake up and enjoy that day.

They'd enjoy that icicles dripping water, and they would relish that. Even with the imminent darkness coming, they relished what they could. And I think that's a good lesson for anybody to learn. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. If you can manage to do that, you know, not only does it keep things in perspective,

but it'll enhance your experience, you know? Exactly. You've got to know the darkness. Back to the book. If you've never been to war, and this is going back to us oscillating a little bit, the other direction about the good times. If you've never been to war, you cannot realize that some of it, not all of it of it, of course,

but some of it is such sheer, boous fun. You lived outdoors. You were physically active. You shared the boisterous camaraderie of other young men. You shed fat and put on sinew and muscle. Except for those nagging minor hurts, you were clear-eyed and generally healthy, and your body responded instantly and instinctively whenever called upon. You slept like the dead.

Not even the dull menu of the ration box killed appetite. You saw the dawn and the night and the stars and came to calculate time and date by the phases of the moon. And on those rare days of thaw, you heard the gurgle of running water under the snow heading toward the valley and the sea. You smelled the pines and listened to the wind and you could sense when the snow was coming

and new to the instant when the sun would rise, when the sun would set. A city boy, I was falling in love with the country, those first months in the hills. If only I could get home to tell about it. I hoped I would live until spring. So that's the other side of it. And I completely agree with it. You're so focused and you're with your guys and there's nothing else to worry about. And you're all working towards a common goal.

and it's awesome. That's just the dichotomy of war. Moving on, back to the book, you learned from men like Chaffy, a Yaley with a law degree from Harvard, who came from money, a handsome man, physically courageous and tireless. From all that could have come arrogance, snobbery, but he possessed neither of those traits. He was only calm and vigorous and efficient, usually cheerful, decent, and humane, a good man, a fine officer. And you learn from men like Corporal Geist, whom I heard one day expounding on what was wrong with war movies. You notice in the movies, Geese said, Marines never shit.

John Wayne or none of them. They never have to take a crap, never. How can you believe the rest of a movie where no one ever takes a shit? I have to agree with that. And actually, if you read this book, he goes into some detail. about that that are that are really good just some of the minute details things like shitting that that are really they're hilarious to read it's it's great stuff and it's and again it's the kind of details that those are that they part of the life yeah you know it's like in in iraq you

you you basically are always shitting in these little porta bodies porta potta potta potta poti's porta right and so there's a whole like they're in the summertime they're like saunas we would call them saunas because they were blue saunas because they were blue and there's flies and it becomes its own little thing and no one's going to talk about that right i mean i guess i just did yep but that's that's a big like when i go when i'm at a event somewhere and i got to you want to talk about flashbacks you put me into a porta potty somewhere and it's hot i'm thinking i'm in iraq him instantly and there's flies and it's just horrible that's the way it is that's one of the little things and He definitely goes into some great details in this book about all kinds of stuff that we don't really think about.

Another thing that was interesting is he talks about his canteens being frozen. But back to the book, in this cold, dry air, your throat was always parched. Your canteen might be frozen, and you longed for drink. I vowed once the war was over, never again to pass a faucet without pausing to slake my thirst with a glass of cold water. You don't think about these guys being thirsty, but they were. Absolutely. Now we get into some, back towards some of that psychological issues that guys are coming up against. We're beginning to learn a new word for someone who'd had a bad scare who was losing his nerve.

We said he was shook. English majors, such as me, wondered why it wasn't shaky or shaken or something grammatical, but it was always shook. And you knew what it meant. It had little to do. with the old world war shell shocked. That was another very precisely defined thing that came from being too close to an incoming shell.

Shook was nerves in general. And once you had a man who was really shook, you tried to get rid of him because he was no good to you anymore. It was the 76s coming in flat and fast, or mortars dropping on you, or fear of mines, or maybe too many duck blinds and night ambushes or a wind that never stopped blowing. those were what made you shook.

And so he's actually, he's saying that it's different from being shell-shocked because he's saying that shell-shocked was a precisely defined thing that came from being too close to an incoming shell. And they've actually, that's not true. Shell-shocked wasn't only from, in fact, it was not just from the concussion.

The concussion absolutely causes problems in your mind. But shell-shocked, World War I, any war that you go into, it's PTSD, right? It's fear. It's the thinking things, it's a good thing you're to die. It's all those things building up.

Fear of losing your legs. It's all those things. So when he's talking about it, he says, oh, it's not the same thing as Shell Shocked, but then he says it was the 76s, which are flat trajectory rounds coming at, big giant rounds coming at you, mortars dropping on you, fear of minds.

So it's being afraid. That's what he's talking about, is what makes you shook. And it's the same thing in World War I, World War I, World War II. You go to any war, and you want to know what causes psychological damage, it's prolonged fear of maiming death

and seeing your friends get maimed and killed. That's what I believe it is. Yeah, the shell, what? I heard that shell shocked is like when they say the expression, shell referred to your head. Like your shell got rattled. Maybe they used that in football or something. But, you know, for me, shell shocked,

the reason they said it was from shelling. You know, that's what they said at World War II. And again, I've said this on the podcast before, go on YouTube and watch the guys that came out of World War I that were shell-shocked. It's horrible. It's a horrible, horrible thing to see. And it just makes you feel so thankful that you didn't have to go through

what these guys went through. And, but it's the same, you know, it was to an extreme. And the worst part about World War I. I've talked about this, too, is like, When those guys reached their breaking point, they got called, they got sent back to England. They're like,

oh, this guy's a coward. And of course, the people that are calling them cowards were people that were never on the line. I mean, a lot of them. And so,

yeah, it's really horrible. I think we do a much better job of taking care of guys that, hey, you went and did this for your country and you went through a little bit too much, okay, cool,

let's give you a break. Let's give you a breather. Yeah. Right. And take care of, take care of our veterans, something we absolutely, we do better then, but we always need to focus on

taking care of our veterans. Here's an example of you know, what condition these guys get into. Back to the book, the most bizarre was an enlisted man in dog company who'd been out a long time and who had been in a lot of fighting, a fine marine,

a good solid man. But now, with the rotation draft beckoning, he began to act funny, refusing to wash or shave. And he would not get out of his sleeping bag. That was the strangest part. He didn't refuse to muster or go on duty,

but he went everywhere in his sleeping bag. He cut out the bottom of it so he could walk, taking mincing little steps, his arms and bodies completely inside the bag and the hood of the bag over his head only his bristly face showing. He lined up for meals that way. I don't know how he handled going to the head.

Mack said it was a psychological return to the womb. I didn't know what to make of it. He only had a few days left, No one wanted to run him up or bring charges because he'd been a very good man. But people moved away when they saw him coming because they knew he was spooked and because he had begun to smell much worse than the rest of us. Maybe he was shitting in the bag. Some people insisted he did.

He didn't seem to mind being snubbed as he hoped, as he hopped around the battalion with those little steps content to be in his bag. He was shook, gone mental, some said. and I think that's the reason I highlighted that one is because they're taking care of them. They're like, hey, we're not going to bring him up in charge, get a few days, hey, let him walk around

their sleeping bag, it's all good. Now, hopefully they got him some help when he got out or when he got off the front and said, hey, you need to go talk to somebody and, you know, relax a little bit. Give this guy a little breather. Now, moving forward, again,

jumping forward in the book a little bit, they're planning an operation and they call this Operation Mole. Mole was a splendid plan, the sort of exercise they would probably be discussing at staff colleges for years, bragging up its genesis, lying about its actual accomplishments. So here we're talking about what the plan was. They call it mole. The idea is that the day after tomorrow towards sunset, it will be made to seem that the entire division and divisions all along the line are pulling back to new and better

positions for after the snow melts and when the fighting resumes. We'll seem to have pulled back several miles, maybe more. We'll sit there on the reverse slope and then until dark and then we'll crawl right back into our bunkers. Then for four or five days we sit in our bunkers not going out at all by day and little as possible at night. No patrols, no firing, no nothing. And wait for the gooks to take the bait and come marching up the hill.

So that's the plan. It's this big deception plan. And they all think it's pretty, they don't think it's the most effective plan they could come up with. Back the book, it was all bullshit. A silly, flamboyant scenario and not a real operation. That was how we felt. And Chaffee must have known,

but he didn't curry favor with subordinates by criticizing the brass. I'll read that again. He didn't curry favor with the subordinates by criticizing the brath. He had argued with the battalion and lost. Here he passed on orders and said he expected dog company would carry them out impeccably. So again, you see Chaffy, he never breaks. Even when something, you know, he doesn't agree with it. He made his arguments.

And then he says, okay, guys, here's what we're going to do. And mole ends up being fairly uneventful. And they end up coming back down off the line. A week later, we were relieved and the regiment came down off the line. the line dog company again going down by helicopter we had been 46 days on the line living in holes i had not taken off my underwear in 46 days my hands were so dirty if i rubbed them on the bare ground they became cleaner since the skin couldn't absorb any more dirt but only shuck it off under friction my sore throat was gone and i felt wonderful i was not the same man who had gone up the

hill january 10th no better or any worse just different In a month and a half of fighting, we had not moved an inch forward or back. A few men had died on both sides. The men changed, but the war did not. Again, very similar to World War I trench warfare. Not as bad in terms of devastating numbers of casualties, but the progress is just not there. They come down off the line.

Now they get some good food. They get some showers. They get lined up for showers. I was at the end of the line. You sent the enlisted men first if it was something pleasant, shower, a shower. You went first if it wasn't. The rules were so simple once you learn them.

Classic. Classic leadership. You know, if you're, if it's something good to be done, give it to the boys. If not, you got to do it. Now, this is a very,

another, just great viewpoint. They, when they're in reserve, so they're on the line, on the hills, in the trenches, or they get pulled back off the line and they're back in the rear and there's no real threats and they're doing these exercises and problems and clean the weapons and maintenance and healing up and all that. And during that time, they actually have opportunities to fly to Japan in this case. And they call it like a logistics run to go to Japan. but what they're really going to do when they get to Japan is get with some women and get for the platoon, you can get with some women for themselves, and then for the platoon, they're going to bring back some booze.

It's like a booze run. And in order to be the guy that gets to go for the geisha girls, you draw straws. And whoever gets draws a straw, okay, great, you get to go to Japan for whatever it is, three days, have a great time, blah, blah, blah. Well, he draws the straw. and he decides that he doesn't want to go. He wants to stay with the battalion. He thinks he'd be wasted on him to go.

And here's why. And so I stayed with the battalion. The thought of that girl, of any girl, was immense within me. But that was another world. Those things didn't belong here. After five months, this battalion, these hills, these men were what matters. There was a purity of life on the line, a crude priesthood of combat that I didn't want to soil for a few days of pleasure. You didn't get laid up here. You tried not to even muddle your mind thinking about it.

I had no religious scruples about it. Not this time. It was as if Japan a trip to Japan would have spoiled something, betrayed the battalion and my men and myself. I couldn't imagine John Chaffy on a booze run. And for me, Chaffy was the model. So there's, he talks about that purity. It's a real thing. I'm telling you, it's a real thing. It's a real thing, the purity of combat and of war. It's a real thing.

It's an evil thing, but there's something about it. Now, things start to, the springtime comes, and things start to thaw out, but you can, and it's not all good. Back to the book, The Faw brought up green buds and turned the roads to mud here in the valleys. On the hills, there were snow slides,

and at the briefing, Gregory told us that along the line, bunkers were collapsing under the weight of layers of sandbags. In one regiment, two men were suffocated in one bunker. Another Marine's back was broken when his bunker slipped sideways and slid down the hill. Fox Company lost a man when he stepped on a mine during a night exercise.

Both legs were blown off at the knee, and by the time they got him back to camp and a surgeon, he was dead. A machine gunner shot his bunkmate with a 45. Then one night there was an alert, and the battalion moved out fast in trucks to a support position. The alert was nothing. The gooks never came, but a Marine fell out of one truck and was run over by the truck behind. So the war went on. No fighting to speak of. And yet Marines continued to die.

The mountains killed them and the cold. And now even the fog conspired to kill them. And they killed themselves and each other. And sometimes the gooks had their turn at it. So springtime doesn't even really, doesn't even really mean it's going to get any better. And it's going to be fighting season as well. So I haven't talked too much about the enemy.

And I thought that this was a really good, good little excerpt of of the enemy and give you a good insight on him. So one of the guys comes back from an operation and tells him, Jim, we killed one guy on patrol the other night, brought in the body because we wanted proof. You know, they carry this little kind of service book in their pockets. This chink, he enlisted or got drafted or something back in 1936. He fought the Japs for nine years. Then in 47, he fought the Reds for Chime.

Then, when Chang put out, bugged out to Taiwan, they just turned him around, put a red star on his cap, and in 1950 he's in Korea fighting us. Now he's dead. 16 years of professional soldiering and all that combat, and that son of a bitch is still just a private soldier. I got kids in my platoon, got out of high school last June. So you get these guys, again, that's just crazy life, right?

You fight the Japanese for nine years. Then you fight when the communists were fighting against Shanghai Kai Shek, you're fighting with him against the communists. And then once that doesn't work out, you just turn around and you start fighting with the communist against the Americans. It's hard, hard enemy. And the Korean soldiers were hard as well. The Korean soldiers that were fighting alongside the Americans,

and they still have a reputation of being very hard. I never actually work with Korean Marines, but they have a reputation of being very, very hard and tough soldiers. Here's an example of that in the book. Maybe a little too hard. Some Korean Marines were on the, 749 too that's the hill I talked about earlier pierce said when we made the top and there were no more gooks to flush out we dug in hoping they wouldn't come back we were thin we didn't have much left

across the saddle the Korean Marines were on top too the hill was secured but there was a bunch of Korean Marines over there shouting and arguing about something then they kind of stood back and one of them knelt down and this guy came up very close behind him and took out a handgun and shot him through the head. One minute, he was kneeling there and then he was dead. I was tired as hell, but I stood up and started yelling across the saddle at them. I'm yelling at them to stop and waving my arms and one of them waves back, being friendly. Later I found out they executed the guy because he was slow getting up the hill.

But when I saw him, he was on top and none of them had been there very long. so how slow could he have been? But they shot him anyways. Hard. Now, as far as a little more detail on the Marines here, each Marine Rifle Battalion has one or two aviators who are active flyers, but who for brief periods of time are grounded

and attached to the battalions to call in and coordinate airstrikes or direct reconnaissance over enemy lines. So this is something that's just one of the things that makes the Marine Corps so all. Awesome. If you can imagine this. So you know how hard it is to train a pilot, right? They train a pilot to be a fighter pilot. It's like, you know, there's just a tiny, tiny percentage of human beings in the world that are jet pilots, fighter pilots. And if you're in the Marine Corps and you're a pilot, at a certain point in your career, they pull you out of your

fighter jet and they put you on the ground in combat to go and call fighter jet. And, you for support. And this is a, you end up being a group in a group called Anglico, which is an air naval gunfire liaison company. And so they're Marines, and they do call for fire. They call in aircraft.

And we worked with, we worked with them extensively in Ramadi. And as a matter of fact, we had Anglico with, the Anglico went with seals on, I would say, 90 something percent of the operation. I don't know what the numbers, but a massive number of operations.

As a matter of fact, one of the guys is, we're probably going to bring one of the Anglico guys that was, this exact thing that I'm talking about was a fighter pilot, and we show up in Ramadi, and he's an Anglico guy on the ground, went on all kinds of operations, went on a ton of operations with Laif, and we're going to bring him on the podcast because we just, he's just an awesome guy. And hear his story.

But that, again, that's one of the things that makes the Marine Corps, so awesome is they're like oh you're a pilot and you're super high speed and you're well trained that's cool that that's fine you're riflemen get on the ground and start calling for fire it's it's awesome and one of the one of the anglico guys that they had here back to the book romone had been shot down the month before his plane had gone in over friendly ground but he had been concussed so now he was with the battalion and at least for the moment once again a foot soldier of course in a sense all marine flyers are still infantrymen. This is what the book says and the Corps tries to make it so

with every flyer reverting for two weeks a year to commanding troops or running problems as an infantry officer. All of them were trained that way in the beginning at Quantico, but some flyers or naval aviators as they are called sometimes are softened by the good life as pilots. Still in a pinch, most of them can do a competent job on the ground. And that's, yeah, again, that's just one of the things I love about the Marine Corps is they do.

that and we're going to get we're going to get my buddy Dave on here to talk about what that's like and what it was like for him think about it you're in a jet you know when you're in a when you're in a when you're in a jet fighter plane your missions are going to be a couple hours long right that's how long they're going to be and then you're going to be back on an aircraft carrier with or you know on an air base with the good chow and all that stuff and boom you know what all that's going away we're going to put you in the field you're going to get after it so very cool All right, now we get into just war. So there's a Korean that comes in to talk to,

he approaches them and needs to talk to them about something. And he's the head man of a village, and they have an interpreter with him, and we'll go to the book. He says two Marines came to their village this morning. They shouted for women. The people closed themselves in their houses, and a few ran into the fields.

The Marines tried to force some doors open, but couldn't get in. Then they went to the house of these two women. So the guy has two women with him, who are mother and daughter. When the women would not open the door, the Marines fired their guns in the sky. The women were afraid, so they opened.

The Marines went inside and closed the door. When they came out, they went through the village shouting at the houses and telling people not to tell anyone. They had been there or they would kill them. This man knows some English words. He understood what they said. then the Marines left and the people came out. It was agreed they should come to tell what happened

and to ask for justice. That is what he says. So obviously these two Marines got, had gone into this village, raped to these women. And it's Brady that gets assigned with Mack, I believe, to investigate. All right, Colonel Gregory's at regiment.

I'll assign you to investigators as investigating officers report to me when you have something He turned back to go back inside the tent One more thing I don't mind Marines being a little wild and I don't much like a gooks But we're not going to have rape this battalion is going to have disciplined their Marines We won't have rape He went inside So they do an investigation and it doesn't

doesn't take Brady long to figure out who these guys were. And then they do a lineup, basically. They bring a bunch of Marines in. They do a lineup, and they have the women there, and the women identify the rapists. And back to the book. Scott dismissed the rest of them. I turned to the machine gunners.

You men are under arrest. Jardine, Saso, take them down to the exec. If he tells you, take them to division to the brig. Mr. Allen and I will write the report. It disgusted me. Marines shooting up a village, terrorizing people, raping those two old women with their faces like baked potatoes. How could they do it?

How did they think they could get away with it? This way we were as bad as the Nazis and the Japs, attacking civilians, attacking women. It undid everything we were trying to do, saving their country for these people, giving it back to them. In that village, they wouldn't remember that Americans died for their two-bit village. They would only remember their day of horror when two Americans, two Marines, for God's sake,

raped their women at gunpoint. The blonde Marine was the son of a minister. The other was up for promotion to corporal. The records had been excellent, and now they faced a general court. This damn reserve, this being around civilian, it was no good. We'd been too long away from the war, losing what we had on the line,

the pride, the discipline, the professionalism. Not wanting to say anything to Gibson who wouldn't understand or even to Mac, who would. I longed for the clean, hard purity of the line. Dedication and celibacy, harsh and cleansing,

puritanic. That was the line. That's where we belonged. Yeah. and this is again combat leaders out there or you know this is the kind of stuff these are two Marines that didn't that had good records and you get them off the line you put them back in the reserves now they're interacting with civilians and you know they're ruining these women's lives they're ruining the strategic war effort and they're ruining their own lives so as a leader

you got to you got to keep your eye on this back to the book another section two nights later Cather, one of the new dog company platoon leaders, took a combat patrol out the route we had scouted. Crepped up quietly on an unimportant bump in the ground called Hill 69 and caught some chinks asleep.

Catherine and his men dropped grenades into the bunkers and shot them down as they came scrambling out. They killed 13 chinks and came back without a casualty unless you count a Marine who tore his knee on the wire. I went over with Catherine the morning the maps and paper and other

stuff he'd brought back. Cather was very relaxed and calm about it. So much so that when we broke, I very nearly snapped off a salute. The man was so young, so new, yet so competent and unexcited about what he'd done. In seven months, I hadn't seen a good as action as this one, a perfect exercise. And Cather just seemed slightly bored. Even the colonel had Catherine to shake his hand and tell him what a final example he'd set for the rest of us.

So here was a new guy, been on the line for a couple days, goes out and conducts an awesome operation, kill 13, no casualties Back to the book the next day, Cathar came down with a bad case of the nerves A delayed reaction and announced to Charlie Logan he didn't want to take out any more patrols If a transfer could be arranged, he would welcome it Logan knew you couldn't have an officer who was shook leading a rifle platoon and the transfer came through to motor transport and And Cather, the brief and unexpected hero, went off. New guy. Kick an ass, still gets to him.

So you got to have the open mind on who's going to be affected by this stuff and when, because you don't know when. Now we get to a Brady's back on the line and he's running basically a distraction operation. So there's a main effort, there's hitting a one hill, and he's just hitting this village where they'd seen a lot of Chinese army activity. And they're just doing sort of a distraction operation on this village to take away from this main attack that's going on elsewhere. As they're going in, all of a sudden there's some sniper fire and one of the lieutenants gets hit.

Back to the book. Mr. Settles hit, someone said. I ran along the trench, bent double until where I got this. They laid settle out in the trench. Sniper, Sergeant told me. I didn't know his name or recognize his face. Must be a new man, but he was a cool one. I would try to keep that in mind.

Where is he? Anyone see a muzzle flash? That's what counts first in a firefight. Not the casualties, but where the fire is coming from. Think about that one. That's what counts in a firefight. Not what the casualties are, but where the fire is coming from. Think about that in every aspect of your life.

Not just like, hey, oh, this is bad that's happening. Okay, what is creating the problem? Right. You know, I see that with businesses where they get focused on the internal. That's fine, but no. Where is this problem coming from? What is causing this problem? So when you have bad things happening, focus on where it's coming from.

What's the root of the problem? Now they kind of get pinned down a little bit and they're not making any progress. And finally, Brady says, look, I said, this is just a diversion. We're here to hit that village with four deuses. That's all. But this sniper didn't anyone see him? Even get a sniff? No one had.

Look, this is stupid. One lousy sniper isn't going to foul up this whole operation. It's five after six now. We're late. We've got to hit them as soon and take their minds off Fox Company out there. Get your riflemen, your bars set up, sweep the valley, fired anything you see moving. There's no high ground within sniper range.

So he's got to be down there in that bush and tall grass. You, observer, tell them they can start with their ranging shots. H.E. around the village. Then we'll give them complete in a couple minutes, fire for effect. Got it? Everyone said, yes, sir. So I've gotten asked this, and I think we actually answered it on the podcast, but this is a situation where things are starting to go shaky.

And he's not throwing out the plan. Like, hey, what do you guys think we should do now? And hey, here's the reason why. No, he's saying, this is what we're going to do. We're going to make it happen. And everyone looks at him. And you know what they say? Yes, sir.

And they're not just saying it because they're well-trained Marines. They're saying it because in a moment where they're unsure of where they're supposed to do, they're unsure of what's going to happen, and somebody steps up and takes a leadership command of the situation. You know what people say? They say, yes, sir. You see it like they teach you the scene of an accident. You know, they say someone, you look at someone and say, go call 911. That's what you do.

And people go, okay, they do it. Why? Because there's a pressure situation going on and they want to get that thing handled. But they don't know what to do. So when there's something going on and things are starting to go a little bit chaotic, you need to step up. say take charge and make these things happen and that's why I pointed out that example emergency situation you know it's not it's not the debate time time to lead back to the book the Corman was still working on settle but another Marine came up Corman says he's okay got

knocked out as all I said good now at this point he's still trying to find out where the sniper is and so he decides he's going to stand up and make himself a target and said, hey guys, when I stand up, look and see if you see any muzzle flash, he gets up. No one sees him. And finally, they do start calling in the fire onto this village and we'll go to the book. Now the first round slammed in. Beautiful to watch, the red burst and then the fireworks streamers of burning phosphorus splashing out from the burst. You knew it must have been different at the other end, a preview of hell.

One hut was hit directly. It was on fire. Another hut started to burn. Phosphorus had splashed out, and now someone came out running. I thought it looked like a man, but at this distance, you couldn't tell. He was in a long white garment. The platoon sergeant shouted in my ear, Do we fire?

No, hold it. Hold your fire. Them chinks. Sometimes they dress up like that, maybe. White stuff over their uniforms. I know. Just hold it. More huts were burning, and another figure in white sprinted out and fell.

Then the robe began to burn. From another hut came two more figures in white, and not the khaki of Chinese uniforms. They ran fast and bent low, zigzagging across the central clearing of the village. Them's chinks, Lieutenant. Women don't run like that. Yeah, I said. There were half a dozen people running now through the village, all in white, one of them on fire all sprinting away from us toward the Chinese lines.

One was carrying something. It could be a rifle. It could be a furled umbrella. It could be anything. Lieutenant, Jesus, let us fire. That's a weapon. Okay, Sergeant, I said, fire at will. The bars ripped off automatic fire heavy and fast.

Two of the villagers fell right away, one trying to get up and then falling again. You could see the bar fire kicking up dust around him. Then a white phosphorus shell burst right in front of him. We couldn't see him anymore through the same. fire and smoke. The whole village, every hut was aflame now. The bars fired and a white-clad figure fell. I could see three or more or four of them running away and one of them was on fire. Behind me in a trench, in the trench, someone yelled, Christ, we're killing women. I whipped around. Who said their women?

How do you know? A Marine stared at me. His face was twisted and I didn't know him. Them's women. You can see the dresses. You can't shoot women. They're men, I shouted. At this distance, you can't tell me their women. Not the way they run. The bars kept firing, nearly shutting out the firefight up at Tu Mari. No, and you can't tell me they're men, the Marine said.

Not shouting now, but still staring. He looked as if he were going to jump me. I looked at him trying to look absolutely confident. Then I turned back to the platoon sergeant. Keep firing. They're soldiers. Chinese soldiers. I was not sure of this,

not sure of anything, but I knew the probabilities, and I also knew I was scared from playing Target. So when he got up and walked in front of them, he was shaking up from doing that. I'd made the decision to fire, and I couldn't back off now

because a Marine, just as scared as I was, was yelling at me. He was guessing, that's all. I continued to kneel there, not really seeing anything anymore, not really focusing. They ran like men, damn it. Women didn't run like that.

Behind me, the Marine was still there. I could sense him. Without turning, I said, Go back to your post. If you're all that worried, don't fire. You don't have to fire. There was a sort of sob behind me in a scurrying movement.

I felt funny kneeling there with my back to him. The Marine was shook, armed. He could shoot me right here. I forced myself to stay where I was. Then there was another sound as the Marine crawled away. killer he whispered hoarsely as if through tears then he was gone and that that situation is actually not it doesn't it doesn't get there's no closure in that situation he doesn't find out doesn't get resolved in the book he does they leave they they hit the village they did cause their distraction

and then they leave and he never really goes one way to the other and saying it never finds out he suspected they were that they were men but he never finds out and that's you know obviously one young Marine thought they were women he thought they were men no one really knows for sure in war is hell now

the next thing that happens is Brady actually Brady and Mac they create like a a their own little special unit and they to go out the traveling light not traveling so much gear and they're going to go out

in smaller units and they're going to do little special operations things. And they're planning to go with them, of course. Well, finally, it comes time to go out in an operation. And the colonel says, oh, yes, Alan, one more thing. Neither you or Brady goes. I'm not sending officer on six-man patrols. Pick your best sergeant to run them.

So now Mack, he puts an up in argument, says, no, man, let me go. No, sir, let me go. Nope, not going to do it. So eventually the guys go out on this little operation, you know, a little special operations mission to infiltrate enemy lines. Back to the book, 30 minutes after they went out, no longer there was an explosion in front of the lines.

Mack jumped up, banging his head against the overhead logs. Oh, damn it. A mine. A lousy mine. They hit a mine. We knew it was a mine. They weren't out far enough to have hit chinks,

not yet. Of all the stinking luck. It was midnight before we got them all in. Mack and I went out with some riflemen and brought them back. there were three hit the sergeant lost a leg mac walked all the way back with the stretchers talking them all the way trying to comfort them saying he was sorry it was them and not him the marines even the sergeant doped up and lashed to a stretcher kept telling mac it was all right

no one could have helped it it was just bad luck the colonel disbanded mac's outfit the next day he was understanding saying it wasn't max fault or mines or anyone's that it might have happened with any patrol he sent out big or small. It was just rotten luck. No one knew where the damn minds were. No one could help it. And the reason I put that in there is just to think about, like, they disbanded this unit. That unit might have had a huge impact, right?

They might have started doing really good things. They might have started breaking through the lines. There could have all kinds of good stuff could happen, but it just got shut down immediately. I'm not saying that was right or wrong. To me, it's actually wrong. But it's the risk, right? And if you're in a leadership position and you take a risk and you get smacked on your first attempt, that doesn't necessarily prove you wrong. You might want to saddle up again and try something again, maybe assess it.

But these are minds. You know, there's minds all over the place and guys walked into a mine. There's like nothing. It's random. And that's one of the pressures of being in a leadership position is you're going to take these risks. And even when things go wrong, you've got to. pressed through them. You know, you got to keep doing them. And I definitely experienced that. I mean,

Normadi, we were getting, you know, we had guys get wounded early. They mean, they weren't, we weren't, we were, seals, we're not taking a lot of casualties in Iraq in 2005, 2004, 2003. And all of a sudden, we're

taking casualties. And we're doing different types of operations. We're going out in the daytime. We're going out in the daytime. It's really risky stuff. And so for, for me He was like, okay, well, we took, you know, we had a guy get wounded bad. We're not going to do this anymore. That would have been such a wrong answer for me to have.

Yeah. And the chain of command of anybody to have that attitude would have been wrong. Yeah, it kind of seems like that if they did have that attitude, it seemed kind of natural just because, you know, you get stung, you get kind of gun shy, you know. For sure. It can definitely happen. I mean, it happens in business. People take some risk.

And you can just have bad luck in situations. It happens in fights sometimes. For instance, you got a great guy, you know, you got a good wrestler that's going against a good striker. And of course, the wrestler goes, okay, I'm going to go out and take him down. Well, there's a chance that you get caught with a knee on your shot and you get knocked out. Does that mean you, hey, I'm never going to shoot again? That's the wrong answer. You've got to go with your strengths.

Now, this one, they're preparing for another mission on, to go out on another mission. And this mission, it's on a hill called the Yoke. A little terrain feature. And they're getting ready to go out. They got another night before they leave. And here's back to the book. I didn't fall asleep immediately. I kept yawning but sleep didn't come.

That was nerves. You never knew when you went out through the lines. You never really knew. And for the first time I began thinking about being rotated home. It was obvious that I was never going to become a rear echelon pogue. that so long as I was in Korea I would be with a rifle battalion on the line.

Now I had nearly seven months in and had not gone and had not many more to go. Two months, maybe three or four tops. Now I was going on patrol as I'd done that first tour when I was scared because I didn't know anything. Now I knew a lot

and I was still scared. So his attitude dude's not, he's still scared. And it's interesting too. You know, he says he's not going to be a rear-resthal on POG, right? He has opportunities like, oh, you can go in the back. No, he's, even though he's scared, he's staying on the line. Now, they're out approaching the yoke.

They're heading up the slopes of the yoke, this hill. Back to the book, the first explosion was so shocking. We thought we'd set off, we thought we'd set it off ourselves and wondered why we were so stupid and noisy. Someone must have tripped the mine Some point man got it Then there became the rip of burp guns from above And I realized it wasn't a mine but a grenade

There were chinks up there I looked around Rabel was nearest me It was his first firefight Rabel you okay Great lieutenant I didn't think we'd be this lucky the first time out Well that was a healthy positive attitude

So this guy's out of his first Operation Rabel they get they're starting to get crushed with grenades. Now that there's up ahead of them, they keep hearing machine gun firing grenades. Back to the book, a Marine crawled over to us. He was bloody too, but I couldn't see where he was hit. He talked fast, excited, but he didn't seem badly hurt. Could be a platoon, probably less.

We got up to the wire, and then when he started getting through it, they hit us with the grenades. They got grenades up the ass. They was throwing them down, and we was throwing them back. That's how Mr. Rowe got it. He caught a grenade and it went off. He's a eye. He's shy, an eye, and it looks like some fingers.

How many dead have we got? Just the point, man, so far, unless some of these hit guys croaked. But we got lots of wounded. Just about everyone picked up something in the wire. So they're getting basically attacked with grenades up there. And this is, and we talked about grenade battles in, when we talked about some of the World War I stuff, but this is, guys are catching grenades and throwing them back. right that's just just getting after it full on i don't know what else to say so now what they do is

they call in fire they call in their own fire the 105s 105 um artillery stay low the 105s are coming in they shuttled in very loud to smash into the hillsides above us i could feel the yoke jerk under me i thought maybe i should pray and i started to hail mary's but i never finished one short as they were. I would start and then another three shells would come and over me and bang into the hill and shake me like a rat. My body was trying to absorb the shock and I forgot where I was in the prayer and had to start again. I stopped watching the shells come. It was too much watching them and worrying and I just laid there as flat as I could. My dirt in the face, my face in the dirt, shoulders hunched and my neck screwed down tight between them, trying to squeeze me more of me into the helmet. Shels came in like

that for maybe three or four minutes. You couldn't really judge time. It had no meaning in a situation like that. Dirt fell lightly on us, feeling wonderful, being only dirt and pebbles and not hot metal. Then the gun secured. I think that short one of the rounds fell short. I think that short one shook the gunners up to if their forward observers saw it. McCarty was now on the radio.

Give us machine guns on that crest again. Now the two guns resume their chatter. With McCarty shouting, keep your heads down and pour it on. And then McCarty yelled orders to the Marines within hearing. On three, we go. One, two, we are all up and running all of us. Rabel next to me running uphill but not feeling the grade or being winded or legwere, just sprinting up. There were Marines all around me.

Some of the wounded must be coming with us, going up a second time. I didn't recognize anyone but Rabel, but it didn't matter. We were attacking the yoke together in daylight, assaulting a hill, and we were going to get there. I fired without aiming, just fired vaguely towards the crest of the hill. It felt good to be running and firing. I fired again. Around me there was shouting. I picked up the shout.

No prisoners, I yelled. No prisoners. Kill them all. That's what I was shouting. What the others were shouting. Everyone took it up now. Everyone near me anyways. It was stupid shouting stuff.

like that. My job was to get prisoners. Dead chinks couldn't help anyone. But it just seemed like the thing to shout at the moment. And since it felt good, I kept shouting it and so did the others. No prisoners. Now when they get a little bit closer up on the hill, now I could see grenades in the air. One grenade seemed to be trailing something tied up with rags. I couldn't understand that. A grenade went off right in front of me, stinging both my hands and face. Dirt. It was just dirt. Fragments of grenades would have been hot.

I didn't feel anything beyond the stinging, so I couldn't have been hit. I fired again. More grenades were in the air. More going off to both sides and above me. A burp gun ripped off a quick burst. I looked around. Another grenade exploded in front of me, then one behind. I still didn't feel anything.

Pull back, a voice came from below. It sounded like McCarty. Pull back. Get out of here. So they can't quite get it together to take the hill. And those guys are dug in and they're throwing so many grenades that the guys have to retreat. I moved along the, so now they get back, they get to a little position where they can take a quick muster. I moved along the file of men and then we stopped at the little knoll where the machine gunners had set up.

McCarty was jotting something in his notebook. Later he figured out, 64 of us had been on patrol with 48 actually. going up the yoke and 32 of us have been hit heavy back to the book i don't know how anyone who hasn't been shot at up close in a real firefight can possibly understand how good you feel afterward men have been hurt and killed the fight has been won or lost but there is only one truly significant fact that you are still alive that you had not been killed later I was sure I would mourn the dead and the damage, but not now. If you were not truly happy at a moment like this,

when you just come down off the line walking, perhaps you never would be happy. And then he goes on, and this is the crux of this story. By now, they seem to have figured out about the grenades that had come at us looking like they were wrapped in rags. Someone brought in one that didn't explode. It was in an old sock. The chinks tried to increase the explosive effect of the grenades

by putting them in old socks full of black powder. But the chinks outsmarted themselves doing it. The extra charge just blew the grenades to pieces, not in a nicely sized fragments that could kill you. That's why so many of us were hit, but not badly. The fragments were too small. Well, you fought and you learned. We heard from division that Roe would make it.

He was one of the guys that was wounded. They put him up for a Navy cross and he was going home. The other badly hit, man, didn't die either. Only the point, man, the first Marine hit was dead. All that firing, all that fighting, all those people hit, and one Marine was dead, and I couldn't swear to it any of the chinks were dead. They got real lucky on that scenario. Back to the book, no one I knew who'd been there long enough missed the winter,

but this fighting in the heat possessed its own dimension of horror. You could see the wounds. See what killed people. The explicit manner of death and injury. A leg severed at the knee, a mangled arm, how startingly white a man's ribs looked, sticking out from under a flack jacket, pink at the center, splintered ends,

with little bits of meat attached. All winter you were so muffled in clothes, layers and layers swaddled against the cold that a man could be all shot to pieces, literally seaved, But unless you were a corman, you didn't have to look at the broken bones and the torn flesh and see the blood pulsing from arteries and veins. The bodies were just as hurt, just as broken, but it happened under a couple pairs of pants and an oversized parka.

Men died more neatly in the winter, more modestly covered instead of naked and obscenely ripped apart. Those heavy clothes gave death a certain muffled discretion. A man could die in decency. After the yoke, I thought harder and longer about the accident of battle, the heads or tale of combat. This wasn't the ignorant fear those first weeks of war. I knew too much now to be frightened by everything and too much ever to turn smug. Yet combat was still a great mystery, mingled in fear and exultation, a sense of accomplishment offset by neurotic guilt. sheer joy at coming through a firefight and nauseating terror.

Wanting to flee the battle, you were drawn to its furious center. No one who had not fought could possibly imagine the contradictions or the nuances. Some fled battle and others embraced it. That was the enigma. I was one of those torn in both directions. The dichotomy of war. coming at you from James Brady. Now it starts looking like he's going to get rotated out.

Back to the book. There were rumors I wasn't going to be there much longer that if there were a big summer offensive as Colonel Gregory kept hinting, I wasn't going to be in it. I had mixed feelings about that. Most Marines did, I guess. You didn't want to be a rear echelon pogue.

You wanted to be with a line outfit. But once you'd seen combat and lost people and had the usual close calls for most of us, that was sufficient. Mac Allen heard the rumors too. They say you can extend if you want, put in for another three months. If you do it today,

they'd give me a rifle company. Why, Mac? Just why? This was dumb and being stubborn and I was angry at Mac for saying it. Mac screwed up his face as he did when he was thinking hard and being serious about something.

Jim, having a good company, a good company like Darry. was when Chaffy had it. That's the culmination of everything we've done out here. Being a platoon leader is wonderful, but I've done that. Being an exec or on the staff, this way is nothing. I've wanted a company since I was a scared replacement PFC on Okinawa. And all the time at VMI, I kept thinking about it. Sure, I'll extend if I can get a company.

I'd never forgive myself if I let it slip. What's three months? Nothing. Not when you put it up against commanding a company of the best soldiers in the world. The words may have been corny, but not the way Mack said them. And sure enough, Mac does go ahead and volunteer to stay on board and do another tour as a company commander. And Brady gets orders and he heads home. And here is Brady on the ship getting ready to head home.

I lay in the berth enjoying the novelty of electric light and the sheets and the pillow and the tiny and the shiny white paint of the ceiling just a few feet above me. Even the rows of rivets were strange and wonderful, simple joys. I was very tired and now I could sleep with no one waking me to go outside and be shot at. I guess most people were anxious to get home, but I hope for a long crossing. A leisure transition from one life to another. My name would never be recalled as one of those who changed the direction of the war. But no one could take away my memory. I lay near sleep thinking about the war and how I would not have missed it.

Not for anything. War gave you a perspective about things. even painted ceilings and orderly rows of little bolts. I used to read how old soldiers sometimes went back to walk over the ground. They even had organized tours, men from World War I going back to Flanders to trace where the trenches had been, where they had crouched and fired, where their friends had died. Tours for men from the Second War revisiting Normandy and walking the beaches, seeing in Montecasino and places in the Pacific.

I knew I would never go back to Korea, never sign up for an old soldier's tour. I didn't want to see the hills again or feel the cold or hear the wind out of Siberia moaning. I didn't want to disturb the dead. For all the firefights, for all the swagger I now permitted myself, I knew how raw I still was as a soldier and as a man. I wondered whether anyone ever became really good at war. An unnatural act, killing and trying to kill. That that was what I'd been trying to do since last November.

When on this very first day here, in the first hour, I made my peace with God. Now I had a lifetime to ponder the mystery of who lived and who died, but even as I lay near sleep in that crisp, clean bunk, I knew it was an ability or courage that had gotten me through as much as extraordinary good fortune. I was warm and safe and alive and I had been neither incompetent nor a coward. To be 23 years old and alive seemed a miracle such I would never know again, no matter how long I lived. Then I was asleep to dream of ordinary things without significance, lulled by the vibration and easy motion of the sea and did not realize the ship was moving now with the war drifting slowly astern

and the epilogue of the book which i'm going to close with he gets home and settles back in and then he gets notified by the marine corps that they have his footlocker had been shipped back from korea Back to the book. While it was still summer, the Marine Corps notified me my foot locker had been shipped and I could pick it up at Grand Central Station. My brother, who was 18 and on his way to seminary, drove over to help me with it. It was stored in the depot's cellar, down there where they held freight and kept lost luggage and such.

I handed a paper to the employee of the railroad, and he led us deeper into the cellar. There, along with the lost baggage and my foot locker were the coffins of the dead from Korea, stacked and tidy, each with its American flag neatly lashed on. Like Mac and Simonus and Captain Chaffee and me, they too were home. So here we are living. our lives safe and warm and alive and we be thankful for these sacrifices that these veterans made and as I always say we need to make sure we remember these sacrifices and that we need to live

a life that honors their sacrifice and beyond that let's make sure we learn from what what they went through. We learned from their experiences from men like Brady, men like Chaffee and Princeton and Mack Allen. Let us be their students. Let us learn from there because of their knowledge and because of their sacrifices. Let us be better.

And let's make sure that we never, ever forget these men And this brutal, savage freezing. It's like, yeah. So I don't think we're going to have time for any Q&A. Mm-hmm. But you could take a moment while I decompress over here. And you could talk about possible ways that if somebody would like to support this podcast, how they might be able to do that.

Yeah, sure. a little bit of a rough transition. I respect that. But that being said, we can talk about On It like we always do. I kind of feel like we haven't talked as much about On It as maybe we should have. Or maybe we have been. I don't know. That being said, I got another thing, Warrior Bars, the jalapeno one.

You're approving them. I'm about to. They didn't come in yet, but I ordered them. And we're excited about that. Um, nonetheless, if you like Onet supplements, which if you like supplements, then you will like on it supplements because they're legitimate. We already knew that. I know. You can get 10% off at onet.com slash jaco.

Um, warrior bars. I recommend. Krill oil. I recommend. Shroom tech. I recommend. Someone asked me online about strong bone. Yeah.

I use strong bone. Yep. What is that? It's, it's good. Yeah, yeah, for your joints and stuff. Okay. For sure. So now I'm recommending strong bone.

I'm going to order some and I'll give a more accurate report. They have, there's a new thing. Like a, it's like a, like a, I want to say a full recovery, pre-workout and recovery kind of drink thing. I have not tried that yet. I don't know. But yeah, I saw it like randomly too. I wasn't like trying to look.

I saw it. Oh, by the way, somebody asked me. Somebody had asked me on Twitter the other day and I haven't had a chance to respond to it yet. Somebody asked me on Twitter like, it was like, I don't know how old the dude was, but he said something along the lines of like,

cross your heart and hope to die. Do you actually use honest up on this? And yes, I do. I absolutely do. And I take krill oil every day. If you're wondering about the doses, I take three of the pills. So that's 15.

I take a lot of krill oil, right? because I'm a big believing her in it. And so, yes, I take that every day. I take Strongbone every day. I take Shroom Tech. I don't take every day. I take Shroom Tech when the anticipation for situations is arising. For the booths.

Usually it's for a jiu-jitsu scenario, just to be quite just straight up. Yeah. And then Alphabrain, I take fairly regularly. I don't take it daily. Again, I think you're supposed to take daily. As a matter of fact, you are supposed to take daily. But I don't.

I take it like I take it not every day. I take it several days a week, I should say. Maybe because your satisfaction in regard to your cognitive performance is pretty high. Your satisfaction of it. Maybe. Because Alphabrain too, it's not like one of these ones that they're like, hey, let me get these herbs. and I heard good things about these herbs, so let's throw it in there,

and hopefully your brain will work bad. It's not like that. Like, they put it through, and you can read about it on the website. I'm going to butcher the actual details. You're not going to say rigorous scientific testing or anything like that. I'll say it, but, like, you know,

they have the actual, but it's like the legitimate kind of test, you know, like double blind placebo, like that kind of, a lot of times they don't do the placebo test, and the placebo effect is a big component of why a lot of stuff works. That's a fact. So if you're trying to test something, you got to do that placebo test, you know? So you give some people that just has sugar. Yeah, and see if they react

to it. But you make them believe that they take the real thing. You're like, okay, you guys are going to take the real thing and then some of them have the, you know, the placebo or all of them or whatever. I don't know exactly how they do the test. But it basically filters out the fakers. I mean, it's wrong to call the placebo effect fakers, but it's basically you believe it. So your body kind of, your biology accommodates. Placibos is real. Yeah. Right?

Placobo is totally real. Totally real, yes. But alpha brain is like past that test. Okay. So they basically test. Well, I think it passes a test. Straight up proven. Yeah, but even if you were to be like.

Then maybe it's just a plastic for me. Yeah, exactly. Right. Or like it worked for me, but it won't work for. I didn't. I didn't take like the do some puzzles at speed and do it without it. Yeah. I didn't test it like that.

Yeah. Or, or. I tested when I do the podcast. though. See, I take it like the night before I'm here to do the podcast. I take it. And then in the morning, I'll take it. And then I'll take one more before it's good evening echo time. Yeah. And that's when it's, yeah. See, and that's good, you know, but that's what's called. I can't play around, bro. We need to bring it. I need to bring it. It's podcast time. No, but that that's what's called an anecdotal report on it. That's not like a, you know, scientific thing. Because there's all these other factors. What if your mindset gets into a great mindset anyway, you know? Here's the point.

The point I'm making is Alphagran's not like that. They actually do the test and the results are scientifically proven, measurably, that it increases your cognitive function, like memory and like all this cool stuff. I believe you. We're good. You're going to get on it.

Literally get on it. Stay on it. Do this. Do this stay on it. And it does support the podcast. Yes, yes, of course. And you get 10% off,

which is dope. Which is dope. And you get to take the, man, I'll tell you right now the worry bars. I don't know really what I did without them before. Yeah. Now all of a sudden you realize.

And my three-year-old likes them. That's how delicious is. They're good. Yeah. Yeah, they're tasty. I'm going to get the jalapini ones. I don't know if she'll like the jalapeno ones because they might be kind of spicy. I don't know.

Anyway, on it. com slash chocolate 10% off. That's it. There's more stuff on there. Really good stuff. Also a cool way to support Amazon. Someone kind of contacting me about this as well. Or to support the podcast is the Amazon link.

Click through, right? You click through. You do your shopping. We get a little kickback. referral thing for pushing Amazon. Big deal. You're saying it's a little thing. It's a big deal.

Yeah. It's a good way to support the podcast. Yeah, it is a big deal as far as results go. As far as doing it, it's easy to do. That's why I say it's a little thing. But here's the thing on the old. Little small step for anyone listening to the podcast, big effect for those that are making the podcast.

Yeah, like a, like a grenade or something. We're like, you ever, you ever seen like back in science class when they put the little piece of sodium in the water? And then crazy things. Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It's kind of like that. But they're on the old jocco store.com, there was a big banner on the top.

You just go to it, click on it. It takes you. I'm going to leave the details out. But right now it's on the menu, Support Jocko Podcast. Then you can see the banner. You click on it. Someone hit me up.

They were like, hey, where's the banner? You used to be there, all this. And the thing is he's right. But I'm trying to figure out a way to put that banner up there. A new platform. It's a long story. But nonetheless, go to support Jocco podcast.

And this is on the store, by the way. Support Jocococob. podcast. So it's hard. The other thing, it's not hard. It's just not as easy. Or just go to joccopodcast.com. It's right on the front, on the side there.

Boom. There you go. On the top left, maybe there's another one. Anyway, the point is a good way, a sodium in the water way to support this podcast, especially now when Christmas is almost honest. You're ordering all kinds of kettle bells. Yeah, that could be like a big piece of sodium with a big, explosion if you want to support.

Say if you're in the mood, you know, obviously you don't have to, but, you know, some people choose to get after it and we encourage that. And then you can subscribe, of course, on the iTunes. Of course, that's cool. Leave a review if you're in the mood. You know, be honest. If you think that Jocko's voice is kind of intense,

go ahead and say so. Don't say anything about me. Or subscribe to the YouTube channel. I recommend that. Yeah. I'm starting to put more videos of, I was shooting with Kong. You know Kong,

so big, huge gentleman. Yeah. And we're doing, I'm not going to be run around through life with the name Kong and be a small person. We understand. So I'm not going to tell you what video we're doing, but he has these huge, you know the strongman competitions,

you know, the big rocks, the big boulders? He's carrying it and pushing it up. a hill. So I'm not going to tell you what video we're doing, but I don't think you need to say, you know, we're doing a video, but man, so this ball, he brings a 250 pound ball, a 200 and like, I want to say like an 80. And he's like, hey, we can do, you know, which are ones. So he was like, he looked at the hill and it's like, it's, it's a legit hill. It's not like terrible, but it's legit. Like, without the, the rocks, we could do a solid workout on it. So, um, he grabbed, I'm thinking he's going to grab the small one. I'm like, I don't know if I could even pick

I wasn't going to try, but nonetheless, he grabs the 200-pound rock. Wait, 280 pound? What'd you say? No, there was a 250, a 200, and an 80. Oh, okay. So he grabbed basically the, quote-unquote, medium one that was 200 pounds of ball. It's not a dumbbell. No, I know what it is. I know what those are.

Anyway, he got after it. Anyway, good shoot. That's a good one. So subscribe to the YouTube channel. That's the point in all these rock-carrying things we're talking about. Because, you know, we're going to put some videos. on there. Some more videos. Put some excerpts, more excerpts, bite size

Jocco McNuggets, shareable stuff. You made up the name Jocco McNuggets, by the way. No. Did I? 100% positive. It's not a good name, though. Because sometimes McNuggets, first of all, it's trademarked, I'm sure, by McDonald's.

Yeah, I'm sure. But we're not doing it. We're doing a different products. I think you're saying it metaphorically for sure. You know. So there you go. YouTube. Get on it. Get on it.

and YouTube. Dang, it's like a circular logic thing. Also, the Jocko store I mentioned. There's also apparel on there if you're into it. You know,

some women stuff. I think women are starting to be more and more represented in the store. You got a few items there. Oh, the little patches, the regulation size. Oh, yeah.

Regulation color. They're in. Flat, dark earth is the color. Regulation. Boom. So, yeah. Velcro.

There's some hoodies on there, which are pretty cool. Those go fast, man. I've got to reorder them. I guess they're good. Yeah, I guess you do. My wife was wearing her as I was like the other day. Just the other night, starting to get lit cold. I know.

We'll just say it's the temperatures dropping here. For those of you in Wisconsin, Echo apologize for saying it was cold here. Yeah, I'm from Kauai. Cold means different things in different places. So anyway, here in Sunday, it got cold. My wife was wearing one. I was like, she looked good in it. In a casual sort of way.

so yeah some women some good shirts if you like literally some good shirts um you'll know what i'm talking about if you look at it anyway jocco store dot com if you like something here get a shirt man and a sticker and a patch boom you're good to go and you support this podcast and you get something in return that's cool i guess all of them you kind of get something in return so that's cool yeah yeah but yeah that's it boom christmas coming up it's certainly is christmas coming up The reason I'm laughing is because there's one thing that you didn't mention about the shirts, and I don't know if you did this purposely or not purposely. But there was one thing that you didn't mention about the shirts that you always mention about the shirts.

Maybe you've decided not to mention it now, and we'll just leave it at that. Oh, okay, I know what you're saying. Are we not going to mention it? The layers are. Oh, God, here it is. It is true. Yeah, there's some layers on the shirts. But sometimes if you don't know about the layers, here, how's this?

And someone mentioned this before they emailed me. Because I think you may have realized that talking about the layers kind of takes away the impact of the layers. Yeah, kind of like you just brought it up now and start talking about it. I think if you go into the situation, not knowing there's layers and you see the layers, I think it comes as more of a treat. Totally more rewarding. So from henceforth, we shall no longer mention or speak of the layers.

the layers this is it from now on there will be out there they'll be there but people people will just have to dig in and find and the layers on their own discover discover or maybe we'll talk about them again whichever but there you go I don't think so I like I like the reward being dug for yeah I like that more boom boom and also hey when you're on Amazon there's a couple of things you can get when you click through the store and you go to Amazon there's a couple of things that you might might be interested in getting. Sure.

They are, they might seem hard to get, which they kind of are. One of the things that you can get is called, well, there's a mug that says get after it on it, which is a good thing to have because it reminds you to get after it. And there's also a little approved stamp of approval from me, actually. So it's been improved. And then you can also get some jocco white tea, which there has been some, So somebody finally posted the other day that like, oh, because I announced that we'll never run out a white tea again because I ordered a ton of it. And of course we ran out.

Well, actually technically we didn't. Okay. We, the way Amazon works, the stuff shows up there. They can only in process so much at a time. So a ton of it showed up there. They started in processing it. Boom. So it showed up.

Everyone, yes. Sold out. But then they in process more, you know, the next day. So what you're going to see now, and I apologize for this, hopefully I can get this logistical thing smoothed out. It's just, it's taking me some time where they have so much that will be in process and we will truly never want out. But what you do right now is if it's sold out, just keep looking back because it'll come

back when they restock it the next day, boom, they'll have it. So we'll get there. I apologize. The tea is awesome. It tastes delicious. And when you have it, you, you will refuse flat out to drink anything else in the world. Nothing is going to come close.

You're just going to be like, where's my, where's my jocco-by tea? Strangely, when I was drinking it, the thing, one of the things that I did do significantly, and I'm talking about the first time, when it first came in the first time, the fact that you made it, you know, the fact that you contributed to the actual making of the formula of the tea, You like that? Actually, like, affected the experience. Oh, you felt, you felt like, uh, isn't there kind of, but that makes sense, right?

You know? I guess so. I think it makes sense. Well, I guess we spend a lot of time doing this podcast and then you got, it's like when, I guess it is correct. You know why? Because when I watch one of your videos, I feel the same way. I'm like, oh, that's, that's, Echo, did that.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's Echo held that camera there. So I feel the same way. Right. that you feel when you crack open a tin or a box of jockey white tea and you brew one up for the for the for the for the team uh also while you're on amazon you can get a copy of the book called extreme ownership which i wrote with my brother laf babin and you know what i got this to say don't be selfish with your knowledge don't hold it back and i don't this is this is what people get worried about right because you want to buy it for you think oh buy it for you think oh buy it for you for my subordinates and I'll buy it from my boss and I'll buy it for my family and you think then you you need to get scared you get scared because what you think is people are going to like see right

through you and they're going to go oh you read this in that book and that's why you're acting this way so you'd rather just not give it to them oh yeah yeah I'm telling you do not worry about that here's why when when people have read it and they see you acting it they don't get mad they actually go, yeah, bro, you're taking ownership. Yes. And it starts to get that more, you get more people on board of the program. And it makes your everything better. So when people see extreme ownership, when you see people enacting extreme ownership,

you don't get jealous. That's not, if you've read the book, you're like, bro, way to take ownership for that, man. That's awesome. I respect that. Recognize what's happening. So don't be afraid like you, a few minutes ago to buy this book for your subordinates is no big deal but even see the

other thing is we think oh well you know I want to be the guy that came up with a plan I'm going to do extreme ownership but I want it to be mine it is yours it's yours and I didn't invent it we just put it out there so grab a hold of it and it's it's a really good gift because it's not just going to be a gift that they get and then they don't get anything else from it. It's going to keep giving. Right. Gip that keeps giving. All right. By the book. Also, we got Extreme Ownership Monster coming in New York City.

May 4th and 5th, we'll be talking about combat leadership. Laif and I, the first one was awesome. Amazing feedback across the board. This one's going to be awesome. www.com to register. It's going to sell out. It's going to sell out. if you want to go in a couple months, or I'm not going to be able to help you.

You're not going to be able to say, hey, Jocko, can I go? I won't be able to help you. There's nothing I can do. The seats will be taken. So register early. You also save money when you register early and all that. So do that.

And we appreciate it. Now, also, if you didn't know this much, we are both straight up on the interwebs. We're there. And if you want to talk to us some more on Twitter, on Instagram, and also that Facebookie boha, we're going to be there.

Echo is at Echo Charles, and I am at Jocko Willink. And now to you listening, thanks for the support and to the military personnel thanks for going on the attack and defending freedom and defending humanity

just as your predecessors did in Korea like we heard about and to the police and firefighters thanks for keeping us safe at home and for the rest of you who are on a million different paths in this world.

Make sure the path that you are on is the right one. Make sure it's the hard one. Make sure your path isn't one of passivity and make sure it's not a path of regret. Make sure it is a path of discipline and is a path of progress. Make sure the path that you are on is the world.

path and that you are charging up that path ferociously and getting after it until next time this is echo and jocco