Jocko Podcast - 62: Battle Studies: Applying Ancient Combat Knowledge of Human Nature to Modern Leadership and Life

Episode Date: February 15, 2017

0:00:00 - Opening  0:09:35 - "Battle Studies", a work by Ardand Du Picq. Discipline, preparedness, stress.  Comparisons with Ancient Battle tactics.  2:09:21 - Closing and Final Take-aways. 2:15:50 - Support, Workout stuff. Cool Onnit, Amazon, JockoStore stuff, with Jocko White Tea and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes). Extreme Ownership (book) and The Muster002  2:51:09 - Closing Gratitude.Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

This is Jocko podcast number 62 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. The smallest detail taken from an actual incident in war is more instructive for me, a soldier, than all the tears and geometies in the world. They speak no doubt for the heads of states and armies, but they never show me what I wish to know. a battalion, a company, a squad in action. Concerning a regiment, a battalion, a company, a squad, it is interesting to know the disposition taken to meet the enemy

or order for the march toward them. What becomes of this disposition or this march order under the isolated or combined influences of accidents of the terrain and the approach of the danger? Is this order changed or is it continued in force when approaching the enemy? What becomes of it arriving within the range of the guns, within the range of the bullets? At what distance is a voluntary or an ordered disposition taken before starting operations for commencing fire, for charging or for both? How did the fight start?

How about the firing? How did the men adapt themselves? How was the charge made? At what distance did the enemy flee before it? At what distance did the charge fall back before the fire or the good order and good dispositions of the enemy or before such and such a movement of the enemy? What did it cost?

What can be said about all these with reference to the enemy? What about the behavior, i.e. the order, the disorder, the shouts, the silence, the confusion, the calmness of the officers and men, whether with us or with the enemy, before, during, and after combat? How has the soldier been controlled and directed during the action? At what instant has he had a tendency to quit the line in order to remain behind or remain behind or rush ahead. At what moment if the control were escaping the leader's hands has it no longer been possible to exercise it? At what instant has this control escaped from the battalion commander? When from the captain, the section leader or the squad leader? What time, in short, if such a thing

did take place was there but a disordered impulse whether to the front or to the rear carrying along pell-mell with it both leaders and men where and when did the halt take place where and when were the leaders able to resume control of the men at what moments before during or after the day was the battalion roll call the company roll call made the results of these roll calls what were they how many dead how many wounded on the side and on the other side the kind of wounds of the officers non-commissioned officers corporals privates etc all these details in a word enlighten either the material or the moral side of the action or enable it to be visualized Possibly a closer examination might show that they are matters infinitely more instructive to us as soldiers than all the discussions imaginable on the plans and general conduct of campaigns of the greatest captain in the great movements of the battlefield.

From colonel to private, we are soldiers, not generals. And it is therefore our trade that we desire to know. certainly one cannot obtain all the details of the same incident but from a series of true accounts there should emanate an ensemble of characteristic details which in themselves are very apt to show in a striking irrefutable way what was necessarily and forcibly taking place at such and such a moment of an action in war Take the estimate of a soldier obtained in this manner to serve as a base for what might possibly be a rational method of fighting. It will put us on guard against a priory or pedantic school methods. Whoever has seen turns to a method based on his knowledge, his personal experience as a soldier.

but experience is long and life is short. The experiences of each cannot therefore be completed except by those of others. Proofs have weight. And that right there is an excerpt from a letter by a French officer in the French Army named Arden-Dupique. And he was in the French army in the mid-1800s, which had him

then fighting in the Crimean War, 1855. He was in Syria during the sectarian violence of 1860 and 1861. He saw service in Algeria from 1864 to 1866.

And finally, he was a regimental commander during the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war where he served as the commander for 33 days of his regiment from 15 July 1870 until 18, August 1870 when he was severely wounded by shrapnel and eventually died of those wounds. So there's something that I really like about this guy,

Arden DuPic, and that is that he likes. What I like. He is interested in what I am interested in, and that is primarily human nature and human beings and how they act under stress and under fear and in the face of death and then more important, how do you lead in those situations? And he recognized that war, while just like today it certainly involves tactics and strategy and technology and politics, but war at its core is about people, men, human beings. And therefore, the general and the captain and the sergeant and the lieutenant in order. for them to master war, they first have to master their understanding of human nature. And that is what he looked at. And that is what we will look at tonight.

And obviously, when you look at human nature in the context of war, it does not change when you put it in the context of life, the rest of life. Now, as we know, combat is like life but amplified and intensified. So when you see the emotions and the human nature in war, it's much clear. It's much easier to see than it is off the battlefield in regular life, in the business world. But when you know the undercurrents, it makes you that much better of a leader. And DuPique, like many other great. military leaders especially ones that I seem to like he was a little bit of a rebel

spoke his mind kind of like kind of like Hackworth kind of like Patton he called it out when he saw things going wrong he called it out when he saw slack slack that would lead to poorly trained and therefore poorly prepared troops so luckily he wrote a lot of his work down. This is a work called battle studies and unfortunately he didn't finish it because he was killed. But he got a lot done and it is a lot of lessons to be learned in here. So with that, let's go ahead and now this is his critique. Remember I said he was a little bit of a rebel? So this is talking about Frederick the Great on maneuvers. And here's what he said.

The great mistake in inspections is that you officers amuse yourself with God knows what buffooneries and never dream in the least of serious servers. This is a source of stupidity which would become most dangerous in case of serious conflict. Take shoemakers and tailors and make generals of them and they will not commit worse follies. These blunders are made on a small as well as a large scale. consequently in the greatest number of regiments the private is not well trained in Zeramba's regiment he is the worst in Fadden's he amounts to nothing and no more in Keller's earlatch or haggers why because the officers are lazy and try to get out of a difficulty by giving themselves the least possible trouble calling out the slack and that was a bunch of obviously a bunch of

regimental commanders that he's saying these guys are not good at what they're doing and they're not getting after it with their guys and getting them trained up and ready to rock and roll. So this is where he kind of lays out what I was talking about and his view of war being primarily about man. Back to the book. Battle is the objective. Battle is the final objective of armies and man is the fundamental instrument in battle. Nothing can wisely be prescribed in any army.

It's personnel, organization, discipline and tactics, things which are connected like the fingers of a hand without exact knowledge of the fundamental instrument, man, and his state of mind, his morale at the instant of combat. It often happens that those who discuss war taking the weapon for the starting point assume unhesitatingly that the man called the servant will always use it. as contemplated and ordered by the regulations. But such a being, throwing off his variable nature to become an impassive pawn, an abstract unit in the combinations of battle is a creature born of the musings of the library.

So legit. So he's saying like, oh, you think these guys are going to go out and just do what you tell them to do? That's a fantasy that you can only find in the library. You won't find it back to the book and not a real man. Man is flesh and blood. He is body and soul. And strong as the soul often is, it cannot dominate the body to the point where there will be a, where there will not be a revolt of the flesh and mental petribution in the face of destruction.

The human heart, to quote Marshall de Sacks, is then the starting point in all. Matters pertaining to war. Think about that. And it's the same thing with leadership overall. People. That's what you're doing. You create cool technology. You make a great product.

You want to build a business. You've got to understand people. You've got to understand human nature. Back to the book. The best masters are those who know man best. The man of today and the man of history. You've got to understand history. This knowledge naturally comes from a study.

of formations and achievements in ancient war. Boom. Look at what's going on in the past. That's one of the reasons that I read books in the first place because I want to understand what happened in the past. Understand how those human beings

reacted to these situations. I want to know that. I want to know that. Back to the book. We shall learn to distrust mathematics and material dynamics as applied to battle principles. We shall learn to

be aware of the illustrations drawn from the range and the maneuver field. So the range is where you go shoot a gun and no one's shooting back at you, right? Oh, we're going to shoot the gun and no one's going to shoot it back on us. Hey, if this guy can shoot 10 rounds a minute and hit his target on the range, that means I can take him out on the battlefield and he'll be able to shoot 10 rounds a minute and hit his target. Wrong answer. You don't know that.

That's actually wrong. He's going to shoot 100 rounds a minute. He's going to miss his target on all of them because he's going to be freaking out. Back to the book. There, oh, and the maneuver field is where you go out and you march around. And this is a training field too, right? You go out and you march around a training field or you go around even when you try, you know, I see some military units, they simulate combat and it's so cheesy.

It's got to be hard. You've got to have chaos in there. Back to the book. There, experiences with the calm, settled, unfatied, attentive, obedient soldier with an intelligent and tractable man. instrument in short so that's what that's what that's what that's what's what you have in the training situation all those things calm settled unfatigued of all those things is what you really get back to the book and not with the

nervous easily swayed moved troubled distraight excited restless being not even under self-control who is the fighting man from general to private there are strong men exceptions but they are And he mentions that throughout here. Of course, you're going to get guys that are super calm and super courageous. He mentions that throughout this. But from general to private, get a guy that's not going to be the same on the battlefield as he is in training. Let us then study man in battle for it is he who really fights.

Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything that he can to avoid the first and obtain the first. second boom now we start kidding a little psychology here a man surprised needs an instant to collect his thoughts and defend himself during this instant he is killed if he does not run away fight or flight the surprised adversary does not defend himself he tries to flee so there you go that's why you know one of the tenants of seal combat is surprise surprise and violence of action we are going to surprise you because everybody when you get surprised, it's, you, now you're defending yourself.

And in many cases, running away. That's your best action. Back to the book, man taxes is ingenuity to be able to kill without running the risk of being killed. This is so fundamental. Think about that. Man taxes is ingenuity to be able to kill without running the risk of being killed. That's what all modern weapons are for, right?

Can I shoot this guy from 500 yards away? That's what I want. You know, we make guns now that shoot around. corners we drop bombs from the sky we want to kill without the risk of being killed back to the book his bravery is born of his strength and is not absolute before a stronger he flees without shame so and he points out this is what's what's cool about dupeak is he's done this massive amount of historical studies and he cites all these situations and he's like you know when you're in a bad situation and you're facing a stronger enemy, you can just count on the guys are going to run away.

Guys are not going to stand up here. How many times you've seen that in a street fight? Oh yeah. Right? As soon as the big friend steps in and says, wait a second, you got a beef here with my buddy? Oh no, no, got no problem here. Echo Charles, I'm good. I didn't realize there was a big yoke to Hawaiian over here getting ready to kick my butt. So he's saying that bravery is born of Strengthen. Everyone's strong. Everyone's brave when you got 12 people with you and you're going to fight one guy. Everyone's brave. When you reverse those roles doesn't always turn out that way. Back to the book. Collective man. A disciplined body of troops formed in tactical battle order is invincible against an undisciplined body of troops. But against a similarly disciplined body,

he becomes again primitive man. He flees before a greater force of destruction when he recognizes it or when he foresees it. Nothing is changed in the heart of man. Discipline keeps enemies face to face a little longer, but it cannot supplant the instinct of self-preservation and the sense of fear that goes with it. Fear.

There are officers and soldiers who do not know it. but they are people of rare grit. The mass shudders because you cannot suppress the flesh. This trembling must be taken into account in all organizations. Discipline, arrangements, movements, maneuvers, mode of action.

All these are affected by the human weakness of the soldier which causes him to magnify the strength of the enemy. This faltering is studied in ancient combat. It is seen that of nations apt in war the strongest have been those who not only best have understood the general conduct of war but who have taken human weakness into greatest account and then taken the best guarantees against it powerful now what's really interesting is when you start

you know when you think about some of these true combat stories you know this guy's around in the 1860s, right? Some of the stories that we've talked about on this podcast, what makes them so phenomenal is that you can see U.S. Army soldiers, U.S. Marines, just completely defying what he's saying here. And say, no, it's a bigger, stronger force. Cool.

We're game. We're surrounded by Chinese army at the Chosen Reservoir. Okay, cool. We're going to fight them. Are we going to run away? No, we're going to go. and we're going to stand. So that makes these modern warfare situations

even more impressive because you realize that the general, as he says, the mass shudders, the mass shudders. So most people, they shudder with fear and it breaks them down. And, you know, even for me, and I've talked about this, you know,

you know, like people always want to ask about seal trade. And it's okay, you're cold and you're wet and you got to do a bunch of pushups, right? Can't sleep that much. Oh, and you can't sleep a bunch, you know, okay. But they're also feeding you a bunch and it's fun, right? Sure. But you compare that to, you know, that stuff doesn't even, it's not, it's nothing.

And my favorite example to compare that to is, you know, a guy when we were in Ramadi, you got the guy that's the lead turret gunner going out on a patrol and a Humvee. So he's up above the Humvee, exposed to the enemy. And that guy, wait on the way out the gate in Ramadi, you drive by this vehicle graveyard where there was 100 vehicles that were blown up and destroyed by IEDs. And the IEDs going to hit the first vehicle. I mean, most often, right?

So there's that guy. He's going to be up there. And I'm watching this guy go out on operation after operation. Mark Lee is primary turret gunner on many operations. That's why I remember it really clearly. but same thing. Like there's no way that those guys, and that's one. Of course, you got every guy in the vehicles,

you got out, the army guys that are out there to Marines. These are guys that I've seen, all of them, looking at this situation, knowing that death is a high possibility. I won't call it a problem. Dude, that's a high possibility. But you know what? Roger that.

It's rock and roll. You know, when you say how Bud's training is easy, do you think I mean obviously that had some effect but you know how you go through buds training and that's kind of the thing like they got through buds training that you know I'm tough kind of thing

and then after you go to combat do you look back on buds training and that's what's making it seem like it's easy I just thought it was fun for me and the funny thing is it's not like buds I mean I was not a great athlete so

it was hard for me to pass the timed evolutions. And I failed some timed evolutions. And they have a special way of making people fail things. I mean, at the time, we would do four mile time runs that were five mile time runs, but we didn't know that. We just had to run as hard as we could. And, you know, we had swims that there's a like, you know, a strong ocean current going

the opposite direction. You know, everyone in the class would fail. Like I failed to swim like that. Everyone in the class failed except for two swim pairs. The two guys that swam in college or whatever. those two those those those four guys passed everyone else failed right so yeah I failed that so I'm not saying buds was easy although there are guys that are great athletes and they have an easy time with the physical part too and then there's guys that have an easy time with the mental part which is

probably where I fell into because I was having a good time yeah yeah and yeah yeah you know but I think yes I think once I think once you get to combat because there's you know there's times where guys that obviously are seals and made it through Buzz, they don't want to be in combat. That happens. Yeah, because in combat, just to begin with, never mind, firefighters, never mind. Just starting off,

your mindset is I could die today. Just starting off, regardless of what happens or doesn't happen, I could die today. In Buds, you would think, even though buds, guys die in Buds, but very, very, very. That's what I mean. So it's like, chances are I'm not going to die today. Yeah. You know? Very slim.

Very few people, usually when people die in buds, they have some kind of a pre-existing condition where they have some kind of heart trouble that didn't get picked up or they have some kind of brain trouble and all of a sudden the pressure of water or whatever. Yeah. They, they unfortunately get killed in these horrible situations, but it's very rare. Right. Very rare. Especially you compare it to a combat situation. Yeah. Right when you get off the, what, the plane.

Yeah. You're like, okay. And that's just starting out. Just. That's like a 100% chance. that that's on your mind the whole time. I mean, it's a factor, you know what I mean? It is definitely a factor.

So, yeah, I would imagine thinking back. Oh, yeah, but it's not that hard. Yeah, I remember thinking about this, the guys that came in relieved us in Ramadi, so like the next task unit that came over, who were a bunch of great guys. And it'd been a long time since seals had been in sustained urban combat like that and suffered pretty significant casualties

like we did in T.U. Bruiser. and those guys, I was friends with good friends with a number of the guys in there. And so we're Laif and the other, you know, all the guys, we had friends that were back, you know, back in that tasking that was coming or leave us. And it's taking what you're saying and multiplying it times a lot. Because when we went to Ramadi, we weren't really sure, you know, oh, yeah, there's a lot of bad guys there and we'll get after it. But it's different when you get there and then you start going on operations and you realize, yeah, this is this is this is going to be a long deployment and the chances of us making it through this deployment without suffering any casualties is actually zero. It's zero like this is not going to happen and when those guys came over again a bunch of great dudes, you know, I talked to when we got home and then they got home and one of the guys. He was a good friend of mine and he came and worked with me in the training department and you know we would have that come we had that conversation a couple times Where you know Mikey Monsor got killed you know September 29th

And those guys were now coming on deployment a week maybe two weeks later to come over and start getting a turnover from us We went home October 21st So you know when I talked to my to my buddy that was the senior enlisted guy, you know He he he I said man what was that like and he goes we were trained training so hard. You know, there was no, they were just a hundred,

a thousand percent training. Because we'd send them back, hey, make sure you're in good shape, make sure you can run, make sure you can do buddy carries, make sure you, so they're running on the beach

doing buddy carries all the time. They were training so hard because they're thinking of themselves, you know, this is it. This is going to be a different kind of deployment. And we're actually going to probably have one of those guys from that follow on deployment

on the podcast who's a stud. So we'll get him on here in the next. near future. Going back to the book now. The discipline of the Greeks was secured by exercises and rewards. The discipline of the Romans was secured also by the fear of death. They put to death with the club. They decimated their cowardly or traitorous units. They clubbed them to death. Clubbed them to death. In order to conquer enemies that terrified his men, a Roman general heightened their morale, not by enthusiasm, but by anger. He made the life of his soldiers miserable by excessive work and privations.

He stretched the force of discipline to the point where, at a critical instant, it must break or expend itself on the enemy. That's crazy. And it's actually, there's a great little clip on YouTube of a Marine. I think it's a sergeant major in the Marine Corps, but he's given a little talk to his boys before they roll out. And he's just, he's awesome.

And he's saying, why do you think we don't feed you good? We want you to be pissed off. We want you to be pissed off. You got there and kicked their ass. But that's what this is saying. Only, you know, the Marine is being somewhat facetious and playful about it.

This guy's not. They made life hard for these guys. And again, you can see that. Even that's a, there's a line. There's a dichotomy. Like, you could go too far. Now you're going to get some kind of rebellion. You get it where it's either going to break.

the guys or if you do it perfect they'll take that rage and they'll use it against the enemy yeah kind of like to do with dogs yeah if you ever seen fighting dogs yeah for sure they do that back to the book but discipline alone does not constitute superior tactics men in battle i repeat is a being in whom the instinct of self-preservation dominates even at certain moments all other sentiments discipline has for its aim the domination of that instinct by a greater terror. Okay, so you're going to be scared. Discipline, the goal of discipline is to shut down and dominate that fear instinct. Back to the book, but it cannot dominate it completely.

I do not deny the glorious examples where discipline and devotion have elevated man above himself. But if these examples are glorious. It is because they are rare if they are admired it is because they are considered exceptions and the exception Proves the rule so obviously we have heroes I have guys I my task unit were that level of heroes That overcame every instinct of self-discipline or of self-preservation to do their job Back to the book the determination of that instant where man loses his reasoning power and becomes instinctive is the crowning achievement in the science of combat. So what he's saying there is understanding that where that line is with people is the

crowning achievement. If you know that, if you know where that line is, that's the crowning achievement. In back to the book, in general, here was the strength of the Roman tactics. In particular cases, such successful determination makes Hannibal's and Caesars. They understood their men. Combat took place between masses in more or less deep formation commanded and supervised by leaders with a definite mission. Leaders understood the mission. The combat between masses was a series of individual conflicts juxtaposed with the front rank man fighting alone. If he fell, if he was wounded or worn out, he was replaced by the man in the second rank who had watched and guarded his flanks.

This procedure continued up to the last rank. Man is always physically and morally fatigued in hand-to-hand tournament where he employs all of his energy. These contests lasted but a short time. With morale, like morale, the least fatigued always win. So, conditioning. Literally, we're talking about combat conditioning right there. That's what we're talking about.

during this engagement of the first two ranks the one fighting the other watching close at hand the men of the near ranks waited inactive at two paces distance for their turning combat so imagine this echo i'm in the front and you're behind me two paces and you're going to watch me fight so that's what he's talking about right here at two paces for their turning combat which would come only when their predecessor were killed wounded or exhausted they were impressed by the violent fluctuations of the struggle of the first rank

they heard the clashes and the blows and distinguished perhaps those that sank into the flesh they saw the wounded the exhausted crawl through the intervals to go to the rear passive spectators of danger they were forced to await its terrible approach

these men were subjected to the poignant emotions of combat without being supported by the animation of the struggle. They were thus placed under moral pressure of the greatest of anxieties. Often, they could not stand it until their turn came. They gave way.

So that's just a crazy way to think about combat. You're standing behind me. I'm fighting. I get clubbed in the head. They stab me in the chest. I'm dead. And actually, no, it didn't happen fast. Let's say it took too much.

minutes right and you're standing there watching me you're like oh go hey and then all the sudden get killed yeah and then I'm up and then you're up dang yeah that's when he says like the most anxiety yeah the most thing imagine you're four guys back well yeah yeah you're four guys back and I can totally confirm this in combat the time when you're when you're waiting to go yeah is the worst like we get to a pre-staging point and now you're waiting to go yeah okay you've got all this stuff going through your mind what if this happens what you're What if that happens? What if this guy moves?

What if they do this? You got all this turmoil going in your mind. And you're not even, we're not talking about this situation where you're watching your guy get stabbed in the throat. Right? And just standing there watching it,

waiting for him to go down so you can step up. And by the way, you know, like you know me. And so if you see me get crushed and when we train, I'm crushing you, you know you're walking into your death, right? Because, you know, like,

Jocko, he's good with the sword. Oh, he just got stabbed the neck. Now I got to take his place against Billy Badass. my enemy and I don't understand a chance. Yeah, that's right. So that's why he's saying a lot of times these people turned and gave way. So this is a little bit different.

Listen to this. Back to the book, the best tactics were those that made easiest a succession of efforts by assuring the relief by ranks of unit in action, actually engaging only the necessary units and keeping the rest as support or reserve outside of the immediate sphere of moral tension. So don't put those guys right there where they can see all the stuff going on.

Back to the book, the superiority of the Romans lay in such tactics and in the terrible discipline which prepared and assured the execution by their resistance against fatigue, which rude and continual tasks gave them and by the renewal of combatants in combat, they secured continuity of effort

greater than anyone else. So did you notice this part? Their resistance against fatigue came from rude and continual tasks. So these guys were just getting ground all the time. Basically, they lived a hard life, working or basically working out. I'm sure it wouldn't be what we considered like a Metcon, but they were hard. And because they were tough and they were hard, they're physically stronger and more physically conditioned. They did better.

And, you know, Dan Gable, I think it, I forget the exact quote, but, you know, the great. American wrestler Dan Gable conditioning is the ultimate equalizer if you get tired you feel this in jiu jitzy all the time you someone gets tired or MMA someone gets tired it's game over game over you can I can crush anybody when they're tired you give me you give me anybody and you force them to do a hundred burpees and 75 kettlebell swings and you know as fast as they can and let me in the ring with them I'll kill anybody you know because they already got worn out so This is actually this is like I said he does a lot of I didn't go into a lot of these

But this is Caesar's account of a battle Against the Pompeians and at the battle of Farsalis so I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but it's pretty there's some pretty cool points in here Again, it's pretty cool that you know you know I like first person account of things right let's get a first person account from Caesar up in here and what's cool Well it's he writes he refers to himself in the third person for whatever reason I'm sure there's some reason for that but that's what he does Here we go Caesar in the meanwhile our soldiers at the given signal advanced with javelins in hand But having noticed that the that Pompeii's soldiers were not running towards them and taught by experience and trained by previous battles they slowed down and stopped in the midst of their run in order not to arrive out of breath and worn out.

That's pretty legit. They're like, oh, these guys aren't running towards us. We don't need to run towards them to save our breath. Some moments after, having taken up their run again, they launched their javelins. And immediately afterwards, according to Caesar's order, drew their swords. The Pompeians conducted themselves perfectly, a little compliment to the enemy. They received the darts courageously. they did not stir before the dash of the legions.

They preserved their lines, and having dispatched their javelins, drew their swords. At the same time, Pompey's entire cavalry dashed from the left wing, as had been ordered, and the mass of his archers ran from all parts of the line. Our cavalry did not await the charge, but fell back a little. Pompey's cavalry became more pressing and commenced to reform its squadrons and turn our exposed flank. As soon as Caesar saw this intention, he gave the signal to the fourth line of six cohorts. This line started directly and standards low. They charged the Pompeian cavalry with such vigor and resolution that not a single man stood his ground.

All wheeled about, that's what happens when you flank people. All wheeled about and not only withdrew in full flight, but gained the highest mountains as fast as they could. They left the archers and slingers without their defense and protection. These were all killed. At the same time, the cohorts moved to the rear of Pompey's left wing, which was still fighting and resisting and attacked it in rear. Meanwhile, Caesar had advanced his third line, which up to this moment had been kept quietly at its post.

These fresh troops relieved those that were fatigued. Pompey's men taken in rear could no longer hold out and all took to flight. Caesar was not in error when he put these cohorts in a fourth line, particularly charged with meeting the cavalry, and urged them to do well since their effort would bring victory. They repulsed the cavalry. They cut to pieces the slingers and arches. They turned Pompey's left wing, and this decided the day. Caesar lost in this battle 200 soldiers. but nearly 30 of the bravest centurians were killed therein.

Of Pompei's army of 15,000 perished, and more than 24,000 took refuge in the mountains. As Caesar had invested in the mountains with entrenchment, they surrendered the following day. That's one of the things that DuPie points out. He does a lot of comparisons, and we'll get to some of them, in the differences between ancient combat and modern combat, and one of the big things that he points out is in ancient combat,

the winner would take very, very small amounts of casualties. And the loser would be exterminated in many cases. And what's different about modern battle, you know, World War II, World War I, the victor and the loser, they're both going to take really bad casualties. In fact, sometimes they take almost the same amount of casualties. In fact, sometimes the loser of the battle takes less casualties or takes more casualties.

The winner takes more casualties, but they had more people, they had better maneuverability, they dropped bombs or whatever. So that's a really different thing. And that gets into the mental state because think about if you and I were fighting in a battle. Sure. And we knew that if we lost, we would die. You're going to fight harder. you're going to be more aggressive.

And when, and if the battle started to turn, you were going to run to try and save yourself. Whereas, you know, in modern warfare, we take prisoners, you know, you can survive and you can live to fight another day. So, you know what, hey, we're starting, I'm just going to surrender, I'm going to give up. You know, you're not going to fight

with that same kind of vigor. Now there's a comment in here. The order to await the charge given by Pompey to his infantry was judged too severely by Caesar. Caesar certainly was right as a general rule. The enthusiasm of the troops must not be dampened. And the initiative of the attack indeed gives to the assailant

a certain moral influence. So clearly, if your boys, your team is aggressively getting after it, it's not a good idea to pull the reins on them. They got the momentum. They're going. They're fired up. Let them go. Let him rock and roll.

Obviously, you don't want to let them run to your death, but you want to maintain that momentum to the best of your ability. Now, talking a little bit about morale in ancient battle, and this is some of the stuff again that I have been saying. Back to the book, it was customary among good troops to have a clash, but not the blind and headlong onset of the mass. The preoccupation of the rank was very great.

As the behavior of Caesar troops at Farsalis shows, in their slow march. At the moment of getting close to the enemy, the dash slackened of its own accord because the men of the first rank of necessity and instinctively assured themselves of the position of their supports, their neighbors in the same line,

their comrades in the second, and collected themselves together in order to be more the masters of their movement and to strike and parry. So that's not an order that was given. Those guys instinctively, they're getting close to the enemy. They slow down.

They check their flanks, they check that they're good to go, they check that their buddies are behind them, now we're going to go forward. Because, and I think that's important because it says in order to be more masters of their movements, they're slowing down so they're ready. Back to the book, there was a contact of man with man. Each took the adversary in front of him and attacked him because by penetrating into the ranks before having struck him down, he risked being wounded in the side by losing his flank support. So these guys tried to stay in ranks because even if I'm going against you and I chop you down, if I now step into your ranks, now I'm exposed. My flanks are exposed. So I can't do that. We got to stay online.

This is something we still do in the military today. We got to stay online. Each one then hit his man with his shield, expecting to make him lose his equilibrium. And at the instant he tried to recover himself landed the blow. The men in the second line, back of the. intervals necessary for fencing in the first were ready to protect their sides against anyone that advanced between them and were prepared to relieve tired warriors. It was the same in the third line.

So that's what we already talked about. And by the way, this is cover and move. This is an ancient cover and move. If I need some help, you're going to be right there to cover for me. If I'm fighting a guy in front of me, you're covering my flanks. That's what it is. It's ancient cover and move. Back to the book, everyone being supported on the other side, the first encounter was

rarely decisive and the fencing the real combat at close quarters began so after that initial now's when we get now is where it gets gritty if the men of the first line were wounded quickly if the other ranks were not in a hurry to relieve or replace them or if there was hesitation defeat followed this happened to the romans in their first encounter with the galls the gall with his shield parried the first thrust brought his big iron sword swooping down with fury upon the top of the Roman shield, split it, and went after the man. So the Gauls had some big swords, big guys, and they figured out a little tactic, technique, and procedure.

Oh, you got that little round shield? Cool. I'm going to hack it right in half, and that's what they did. The Romans already hesitating before the moral impulse of the Gauls, their ferocious yells. So this is the Gauls. They're ferocious yells. Their nudeness, an indication of a contempt for wounds. So the guy that you're fighting is naked or like not wearing armor, which says, oh, I'm ready to bring it.

But you want to beat me in a street fight? Be naked. I'm not going to fight you. I'm not happening. Fell then in greater number than their adversaries and demoralization followed. soon they accustomed themselves to this valorous but not tenacious spirit of their enemies and this is pretty cool back to the book when they had protected the tops of their shields with an iron band they no longer fell and the roles were changed so they made a little adaptation oh you're

gonna hack the top of our shields cool put an iron band in there what he got now gall bring it if the weapons were nearly alike preserving ranks and thereby breaking down driving back confusing the ranks of the enemy was to conquer. The man in disordered, broken lines no longer felt himself supported, but vulnerable everywhere, and he fled. Think about that psychology. As soon as you start seeing the lines breaking down, you don't feel like you're getting supported anymore, boom, I'm out.

It is true that it's hardly possible to break hostile lines without doing the same with one's owns. But the one who breaks through first has been able to, to do so only by making the foe fall back before his blows or by killing or wounding. He is thereby raised his courage and that of his neighbor. Common sense, right? If I see my buddy take that guy out, I'm getting more fired up. He knows, he sees where he is marching, whilst the adversary overtaken as a consequence of the retreat or the fall of troops that were flanking him, he's surprised.

This is just group mentality, gang mentality. Is that right? Group thought, group think. I start seeing my guys getting crushed. I'm going to get scared. He sees himself exposed on the flank. He falls back on a line with their rank in the rear in order to regain support. But the lines in the rear give way to retreat to the retreat of the first.

If the withdrawal has a certain duration, terror comes as a result of the blows, which drive back and mow down the first line. If to make room for those pushed back, the last lines turn their backs, there is small chance that they will face the front again. Space has tempted them. They will not return to fight. Then, by that natural instinct of the soldier, to worry, to assure himself of his supports, the contagion of flight spreads from the last ranks to the first. The first, closely engaged, has been held to the fight in the meantime under the pain of the immediate death. There is no need to explain what follows.

It is butchery. You can see how important it would be to understand those dynamics of what's going to happen and to apply your tactics in a manner that, as they said in, as DuPieck says in the beginning of the book, apply your tactics or formulate your tactics with that understanding of human nature. A little interesting note here. Sword to sword combat was the most deadly. It presented the most sudden changes because it was the one in which the individual valor and dexterity of the combatant had the greatest and most immediate influence. So that sword fighting is what takes the most skill, right? So I assume that means if I've got a javelin or if I've got a spear, it takes less skill. You get man on man with the sword.

That's where things count. That's where your skill level counts the most. Yeah. Because you can kind of maneuver more with it. Yeah. It's like a big club. You're just kind of, oh, I hope I land it. And, you know, we know from doing jihitsu that you can get really good.

And if you go, you know, anybody that does jiu-jitsu goes against someone that doesn't do jihitsu, they annihilate them. So imagine the training that you do with a sword when you knew that how much it was just going riding on it. Oh, man. You're just killing guys. Man always has had the greatest fear of being trampled upon by horses. This is a section talking about cavalry. That fear has certainly routed a hundred thousand times more men than the real encounter. So the reason I put that in there is because Jesus is saying, hey, people are scared of horses. They're scared of getting trampled by horses.

And that fear of horses has done more to win battles than the actual horses. You know, we did some, you know, for us, the U.S. military, we're going against a gnarly enemy. We can put the fear into them too. We have close air support coming and start dropping bombs. or at least even flying over. We did, we would have, you know, if we didn't have a specific target, but we knew bad guys were around,

we would shoot like fields, start dropping bombs and fields. Like deterrent fires. Like, hey, get these guys, hey, put us some deterrent, there's a field over here, yes, we got no friendlies in that area. Do you see anything?

No, drop some bombs in there. Send some shock waves on these bad guys. Same thing. You're scared of the horses? You're scared of a AC-1-3. 30 or an A-10 coming down and getting after it or a cobra gunship or an Apache. Yeah, those things are fearsome machines of death. And when the enemy knows those things are around, they're going to run.

They're going to hide. Can't always run or hide from an Apache or a U.S. gunship. All right, back to the book. If we have spoken, especially of the infantry fight, is because it was the most serious On foot, on horseback, on the bridge of a vessel, at the moment of danger, the same man is always found. So he's saying, look, we're talking about infantry, and we just talked a little bit about horses, but it doesn't matter what the fighting situation is. The same man is always found. Anyone who knows him well deduces from his action in the past what his action will be in the future.

So understand that human nature. Here we start talking about, again, it's, it's a lot. It's this same theme. Back to the book. Let us repeat now what we have said at the very beginning of this study. Man does not enter battle to fight, but for victory. He does everything he can to avoid the first and obtain the second. The continued improvement of all appliances of war has no other goal than the annihilation

of the enemy. Absolute bravery, which does not refuse battle even on unequal terms, trusting only to God or destiny, is not natural. In man it is the result of moral culture So that's that's pretty that's pretty poignant right because I've seen some absolute bravery and there's Thousands of individual stories of absolute bravery in our culture in our US culture And that's because of our moral culture. That's where it comes from back to the book it is infinitely rare Because in the face of danger the animal case of self-preservation. Oh,

gains the upper hand man has a horror of death in the bravest a great sense of duty which they alone are capable of understanding and living up to is paramount but the mass always cowers at the sight of the phantom death discipline is for the purpose of dominating that horror by still by a still greater horror that of punishment or disgrace So he's talking about you you know what and Tony said this and this is a common team guy thing to say, you know, I would rather die than look like a pussy. And it's like, oh yeah, ha ha ha, no, actually it's true. That's that's an actual feeling. It's an actual thought for sure. And that's what he's saying. People would rather die than be disgraced and that's powerful. But there always comes an instant when natural horror gets the. upper hand over discipline and the fighter flees. Stop, stop, hold out a few minutes, an instant more, and you are the victor. You are not even wounded.

If you turn your back, you are dead. He does not hear. He cannot hear anymore. He is full of fear. How many armies have sworn to conquer or perish? How many have kept their oaths? An oath of sheep to stand up against wolves. History shows not army.

but firm souls who have fought unto death and the devotion of Thermopyla is therefore justly immortal. So the Spartans, the 300 Spartans, there's a reason why that is any immortal story because it's rare and it's not a whole army, it's 300 Spartans and obviously we've seen examples of guys doing the same kind of thing, but that's why they're heroes. Two in sure success in the rude test of conflict, it is not sufficient to have a mass composed of valiant men. The mass needs, and we give it, leaders who have firmness and decision of command proceeding from habit and an entire faith in their unquestionable right to command as established by tradition, law, and society. So, like, step number one, you need good leadership. Step number one,

you need good leadership. A bunch of valiant men is not going to be enough. You need good leadership. Step number one. Step number two, we add good arms. We add methods of fighting suitable to these arms and those of the enemy and which do not overtax the physical and moral forces of man. So you've got to give them good weapons. And the weapons have got to be easy to use and suitable for the enemy that you're going against.

Next, we add also a rational decentralization that permits the direction and employment of the efforts of all even to the last man. So we have decentralized command. I believe Laif and I wrote about that. It's one of the fundamental principles of combat leadership.

Next, we animate with passion, a violent desire for independence, a religious fanaticism, national pride, a love of glory, a madness for possession, an iron discipline which permits no one, to escape action, secures the greatest unity from top to bottom between all elements, between the commanding officers, between the commanding officers, between the men, and between the soldiers.

So those are a series of things that you can have that can fuel this, right? A passion, a violent desire for independence, religious fanaticism. These are things that people fight for. National pride, a love of glory, a madness for possession. Think about that. You need one of those elements. Have we then a solid army? not yet unity the first and supreme force of armies is sought by enacting severe laws of discipline

supported by powerful passions but to order discipline is not enough of vigilance from which no one may escape in combat should assure the maintenance of discipline discipline itself depends on moral pressure which actuates men to advance from sentiments of fear or pride but it depends also on surveillance, the mutual supervision of groups of men who know each other well. You got to have relationships. You got to have relationships.

And then the relationship has to have inherent in it. This attitude of like, echo, if I see you slacking, I'm going to call you out on it. Hey, bro, we don't do that here. That's not how we roll. You need to get your game on.

And that's, you get this mutual supervision of each other based on pride. Back to the book, a wise organization ensures that the personnel of combat groups changes as little as possible So that comrades in peacetime maneuver shall be comrades in war From living together and obeying the same chiefs from commanding the same men from sharing fatigue and rest from cooperation among men Men who quickly understand each other in the execution of warlike movements may be bred brotherhood Professional knowledge sentiment and above all

unity so what are we talking about there you're building this strong bond between the people that are inside this unit that's what you want to do and how do you do it you train them hard they live together they work together they listen to the same boss they command the same people that's what you do and that's when you look at you know you look at military units that's what makes them good you go through that you go through that hard training you get to know your people you build those relationships the duty of obedience the right of imposing discipline and the impossibility of escaping from it would naturally follow and now confidence

appears and you know what this sounds like it sounds like a gang and I often said about task unit bruiser that I was in charge of a gang awesome gang an awesome awesome gang that did good things for the world but they were a gang gang gang mentality for sure you didn't want to you don't want to you didn't want to get called out by the gang you just didn't want that to happen when someone was messing up when someone was doing the wrong thing someone was cutting corners tasking bruiser wasn't going to be they were gonna be on you you're gonna be on you I never had to say anything guys were I didn't even barely see it but I'd hear about it hey this guy

was doing this and so we tighten him up oh good to go good to go back to the book then we have an army and is no longer difficult to explain how men carried away by passions even men who know how to die without flinching without turning pale really strong in the presence of death but without discipline without solid organization are vanquished by others individually less valiant but firmly jointly and severely combined so You know what you see this in the business world? You see this in the business world where you meet people in the business world

that are really passionate about what they're doing? They're really passionate. They're really into it. They've created something. They're really into it. They want to succeed. They're busting their ass. They're really passionate about it,

but they don't have the discipline. And if you don't have the discipline, the passion is not enough. You have to have the discipline too. And I'll tell you this. The discipline without the passion is also equally weak. maybe not as weak but it's equally weak

it's close we'll say close unity and confidence cannot be improvised they alone can create mutual trust that feeling of force which gives courage and daring courage that is the temporary

domination of will over instinct brings about victory unity alone then produces fighters but as in every There are degrees of unity. Let us see whether modern is in this respect less exacting than ancient combat.

These are cool. These are very cool examples right here. Sometimes I'm like, hey, should I really read that whole thing? And then I think, oh, yeah, I'm going to read the whole thing. So this, but these are just very cool because you're going to get a direct comparison of ancient combat psychologically and modern combat. psychologically. And to understand one, it's good to have a frame of reference of the other. Back to the book, in ancient combat, there was danger only at close quarters. If the troops had enough morale to meet the enemy at broadsword's length, there was an engagement. Whoever was

that close knew that he would be killed if he turned his back. Because, as we have seen, the victors lost but a few and the vanquished were exterminated. This simple reasoning held the men and made them fight if it was but for an instant So we already talked about that you know you think you're gonna die you know you're either gonna fight or die you're gonna fight you're gonna You're gonna at least give it a shot neglecting the exceptional and very rare circumstances which brave may bring two forces together Action today is brought on and fought out from afar Danger begins at great distances and And it is necessary to advance for a long time under fire at each step in which each step becomes heavier.

The vanquished loses prisoners, but often in dead and wounded, he does not lose more than the victor. He's already talked about that. Ancient combat was fought in groups close together with a small space, an open ground and full view of one another without the deafening noise of present day arms. men in formation marched into action that took place on the spot and did not carry them thousands of feet away from the starting point the surveillance of the leaders was easy individual weakness was immediately checked general consternation alone caused flight today fighting is done over immense spaces along thinly drawn out lines broken every instant by the accidents and the obstacles of the terrain From time, from the time action begins, as soon as there are rifle shots, the men spread out as skirmishers. Or lost in the inevitable disorder of the rapid march, escape the supervision of their commanding officers. A considerable number conceal themselves. They get away from the engagement and diminish by just so much the material and morale effect and confidence of the brave one's.

who remain. This can bring about defeat. So modern combat, and again, we're in 1860s. You start charging and the lines broken up and the commanding officer can't.

So if you're thinking maybe you want to just live through this one, you might just get down a little trench, get down a little depression, get behind a tree and sit there and wait. But if we're online in ancient combat, there was nowhere to go. The commander could see you

and your buddies could see you. Back to the book. But let us look at, man himself in ancient and modern combat in ancient combat this is cool in ancient combat I am strong apt vigorous trained full of calmness presence of mind I have good offensive and defensive weapons and trustworthy companions of long standing they do not let me be overwhelmed without aiding me I with them they with me we are invincible even invulnerable we have fought 20 battles and not one of us remained on the field it is necessary to pour each to support each other in time

cover move we see it clearly we are quick to replace ourselves to put a fresh combatant in front of a fatigued adversary we are the legions 50,000 who have held out against the furious avalanches of the Kimbrey we have killed 140,000 taken prisoner 60,000 while losing but two or 300 of our inexperienced soldiers So that's sort of a mentality Back in the day And when I say back in the day I'm talking ancient times

Way back in the day Now here's the modern soldier Well at least 1860 soldier Today As strong, firm, trained And courageous as I am I can never say I shall return

I have no longer To do with men Whom I do not fear I have to do with fate in the form of iron and lead. Death is in the air, invisible and blind, whispering, whistling, as brave, good, trustworthy, and devoted as my companions may be, they do not shield me. Only, and this is abstract and less immediately intelligible to all than the material support of ancient combat,

Only I imagine that the more numerous who we are who run a dangerous risk the greater is the chance for each to escape they're from I also know that if we have confidence which none of us should lack in action We feel stronger and we are we begin more resolutely are ready to keep up the struggle longer and therefore finish it more quickly But that is just you know I've I've talked about World War I, how I don't like World War I, I wouldn't want to fight in World War I, because it doesn't matter how good of a tactician you are, you can just, you're just going to charge and it's going to be

horrible. Well, if you take that a step further, I guess I would love to be in a situation where I'm fighting with a sword against another guy, because now I could have trained, I could rely on the guys next to me. You have so much control because even in World War, any

other modern war, like he's just saying, you're not scared of the enemy necessarily. You're scared of a random bullet. You're of a random piece of shrapnel hitting you. And that could come at any time. So the psychology is very, very different. Back to the modern soldier here, we finish it. But in order to finish it is necessary to advance,

to attack the enemy. An infantryman or troopers, we are naked against iron, naked against lead, which cannot miss at close range. So again, you against me with a sword, we got a battle, right? You against me with a gun if you get your shot off I'm dead is it

I'm naked against that there's no shield's gonna stop it I mean now we have body armor but your chances of getting hit in the body armor although it's saved many many lives But it's not a definitely not a guarantee Let us advance in any case resolutely our adversary will not stand up to the point blank range of our rifle For the attack is never mutual. We are sure of that We've been told so a thousand times we have seen it but we've been told so a thousand times we have seen it but what if matters should change now suppose the enemy stands at point-blank range what of it then so he's saying you know who's going to stand up when you're at point-blank range how far is that from roman confidence in another place we have shown that in ancient times to retire from action was both difficult and perilous matter for the soldier today the temptation is much stronger the facility greater and the peril less now therefore combat exacts more moral cohesion, greater unity than previously. So that's exactly what I was talking

about earlier. If modern combat, you can find a little, you know, a little ditch to hide in, find a little doorway you're going to get into, especially in this kind of mind. You know, this is a little bit pre-World War I, obviously, but they're still charging, right? They're still getting up and charging. So because everyone's all disaggregated across the battlefield, here we go. Back to the book, provision becomes more and more difficult. Direction being more distant tends to be tends more often to escape from the supreme commanders and the subordinate leaders. The certain and inevitable disorder which a body of troops always presents an action is with

moral effect of modern appliances becoming greater every day. So we are getting more and more spread out on the battlefield. In the midst of the confusion and the vacillation of firing lines, men and officers often lose each other. Now, we have some improvements nowadays. You know, we've got radios that are going to travel longer distances. We've got devices that allow people to know where each other are. So there's some things there that we've closed up a little bit. But if you think your radio is always going to work on the battlefield, you're wrong. That's why decentralized command is so important. Back to the book, in troops which do the fighting, the men and officers closest to them from

corporal to battalion commander have a more independent action than ever right we got to have our troops know what's going on as it is alone the vigor of that action more independent than ever the direction of higher commanders which leaves the hands of higher commanders available forces which can be directed at a decisive moment the action becomes more preponderant than ever battles now more than ever are battles of men and captains so this is pure decentralized command It's pure letting making sure that everyone knows what the commander's intent is and they can execute out on the battlefield without you having to tell them what to do They better know what to do on their own This completes the demonstration of the truth stated before

Combat requires today in order to give the best results a moral Cohesion a unity more binding than at any other time It is as true as it is clear that if one does not wish the bonds to break, one must make them elastic in order to strengthen them. Very, very, very, very, very, very poignant that, right? Because the more we try and control things, the less control we're going to have in these modern combat and in business and in life. The more constrictive you are, the more rigid you are, the less control you're going to

It's just not going to be able to flex and flow with all the craziness that happens out on the battlefield. It's not going to work. Decentralized command all day. Back to the book, the art of wars subjected to many modifications by industrial and scientific progress. But one thing does not change the heart of man. In the last analysis, success in battle is a matter of morale. In all matters which pertain to an army, organization, discipline, and tactics, the human heart in the supreme moment of battle is the basic factor. It is rarely taken into account and often strange errors are the result.

Witness the carbine, an accurate long-range weapon, which has never given the service expected of it. Because it was used mechanically without considering the human heart. We must consider it. With improvement in weapons, the power of destruction increases. The moral effect of such weapons increases and courage to face them becomes rarer. man does not cannot change what should increase the power of material is the strength of organization the unity of the fighting machine yet these are the most neglected so we run into this all time with with echelon front right we we are leadership that's what we

talk about that's what we talk about is leadership and oftentimes when we work with a company what they're focused on trying to fix the problem that they have they focus on the symptom, right? They focus on the process that this must be messed up or we've got people that aren't following our instructions or we've got growth that we're trying to maintain

and it's not coming out the way we want to but they're looking at, they're not looking at the human heart, right? And that's the first thing we look at. That's the main thing we look at. And I'll tell you this, 100% of the time, when we go to a company

and no matter what the problem is, no matter what the problem is, I will tell you the solution to the problem is with the leadership period in the story Period in the story oh we've got a process this messed up okay who's in charge of the process Give me that person's name I'll go talk to him let's get the leadership working Oh, we've got decisions that aren't being made oh that's a leadership problem we've got manufacturing That's that's not up to speed. It's not good quality Is that the manufacturing problem? Is that the problem with the machines? No, there's a leader

that's in charge of that that is allowing this slack to happen it is about leadership it is about the human heart is what is it about what it is about you said that before about morale you talk about morale

I think even one of the books said they do something to lower their morale like they were attacking their morale I think I forgot what I think might have been the Chechens I forget yeah but well every army does that or they tried to

attack the morale of the enemy If you can beat the morale, you're going to beat the army in many cases. Yeah, because so it's kind of like if you make them not want to fight, they're not going to really want to fight or they're not going to fight, you know? Yeah. That's what makes, you know, in the Vietnam War, what hurt our morale so bad, booby traps. Yeah. What hurt our morale so bad, mortar fire, sniper fire.

And you're losing guys, but you're not having anyone to engage against. Yeah. And you're not taking any ground and holding it. That's one thing they did nicely in Iraq. We could see that we were making progress. And so although we'd take, you know, you heard Brian Stan talk about it in the area where he was, there was progress was made. And you can look at it and see it.

And so therefore you're making these sacrifices, but you know that there's progress occurring. Yeah. And so that you're taking hits to your morale, but your morale is also building back up because you know that you're making progress. Yeah. This is an interesting comment.

Four brave men who do not know each other will not dare attack a lion. for less brave, but knowing each other well, sure of their reliability and consequently of mutual aid will attack resolutely. There is the science of organization of armies in a nutshell. Now, this is kind of a strange thing to me because I understand what he's saying, but I have no, I don't know what they mean by attack a lion. We got guns. Do we have swords? It seems like a lion. Four guys, I don't like those chances.

What do you do? You can't do a takedown on a lion. You do the Mata Leon. Yeah, I know you do the Monte Leon. Yeah, I understand that. I think it was a metaphor. Yeah. No, I know.

It's a good metaphor, but I try and think of things, you know, or sometimes I think of things in the realistic way. If you ever seen the claws on a lion, yeah. Yeah, no. Four guys versus the lion. I don't think it's going to work out good. If you have no weapons, if you have some weapons, but you don't want to be the one guy, like, you know,

the sacrificial guy that does the first attack so I can get to the neck. I mean, Echo, you run at him, bro. Yeah, be the bait. I got your back. And then I run up and stab it in the head, but that's after you got a jugular removed by his claw. But see what he's saying is if you can rely on me, you'll do it resolutely. I don't know if I can rely on myself being the bait, though.

It's kind of whack. Check. Back to the book. Anytime a new invention may assure victory. At any time a new invention may assure victory, granted. But practicable weapons are not invents. Vented every day and nations quickly put themselves on the same footing in as regards to armament the determining factor leaving aside

Generals of genius and luck is the quality of the troops that is the organization that best assures the Asprey the reliability the confidence in unity again. We're just talking about the technology comes out That's great. There's something more important than that and that is the the the relationships The relationships That's what's most important back to the book The purpose of discipline is to make men fight in spite of themselves. No army is worthy of the name without discipline. There is no army at all without organization,

and organization is defective, which neglects any means to strengthen the unity of combatants. Methods cannot be identical. This is so, so important. Methods cannot be identical. So you can't just throw this discipline all the same to everyone. Listen to this. Draconian discipline does not fit our customs. Discipline must be a state of mind, a social institution based on salient virtues and defects of the nations.

Discipline cannot be secured or created in a day. It is an institution, a tradition. The commander must have confidence in his right to command. He must be accustomed to command and proud to command. This is what strengthens discipline in armies commanded by an aristocracy in certain countries. So I just think it's very important because, again, I don't want people to listen to the podcast to go, that's right, we're going to lay down the discipline now at the company. Everyone's going to follow the rules.

No, it can't be draconian. It's got to be a part of the culture. People got to want there to be disciplined. Very important. Back to the book, ancient battle resembled drill. And when they say drill, you ever seen people marching? Like on a parade ground? That's drill.

Yeah. Okay. Ancient battle resembled drill. There is no such resemblance in modern battle. This greatly disconcerts both officers and soldiers. Ancient battles were picnics for the victors who lost nobody. Not so today. Artillery played no part in ancient battle.

The invention of firearms has diminished losses in battle. Again, this is, you can see he was. not 100% correct because he couldn't see into the future, but he's saying at the time, there was less losses in battle because of the firearms. And obviously that turned out to be true. Just what, 50 years later in World War I, we get to obscene and horrible levels of casualties

from the firearms. Why is that? Because they can, well, as far as what he said, because they could fire from a safe spot. Yeah, I'm sure it's because they could fire from a safe spot and the, momentum of the battle and therefore victory

and defeat could occur at a greater distance and it meant that once that occurred the people could run away yeah yeah and so oh we're losing we're gonna run away whereas in the old days yeah you're in the game you're in the game and we start to beat you I'm hacking your head off and all the people

with you and you can kind of run away we got archers lined up and we're all we're all in a football field you know or maybe maybe five or six football fields you know thousand yards maybe 10 football fields we're all there. And when we start getting the upper hand, you're not going to get away from me. In fact,

I mean, according to him, you turn your back to run away. Yeah. You're, that's guaranteed. Whereas, hey, we can retreat,

we can surrender. And then guess what? I mean, modern, modern surrenders, you know, they take place. They're almost like a formal.

Yeah. You know, you come and your general comes and signs the paper and then we take over your country. Yeah. You know what? It signs the paper.

Yeah, no, they signed surrender papers. Germany and Japan, both signed. you know, unconditional surrenders. Yeah,

that sounded kind of like, which is how you're supposed to win wars. Yeah. Unconditional surrender. And then the benevolence of our country says, okay,

now we'll help you rebuild and, you know, you can be a squared away democracy. Hey, remember, here's the question. So in war,

like, if you're, like on the saving private for Ryan, there's a small little clip where the guys are like surrendering and they still shoot them. Is that like illegal?

Like, you can't do that. Yeah, you're not supposed to do that. Yeah. Yep, it is illegal. It's against the law of armed combat. Remember the first Iraq war when the guys were like finding anything they could that was white?

I got asked that on social media guys like, well, what determines? I said, you know, you have to do the right thing in combat. He said, who determines the right thing? I was like, well, the Geneva Convention on the law of armed combat. Next question. Like, there's rules to follow. Yeah, yeah. This is like we're pulling, you know, out of thin air.

Yeah, it's not a, you know. Not making it up as we go along. Yeah, making it up. Back to the book, the greater perfection of weapons, the more dreadful becomes modern battle and discipline becomes more difficult to maintain. Again, that's why it's so awesome. When you see the US Marine Corps doing the island hopping campaign

and the amount of discipline that it takes to go, when you're dug in and you're in a bunker, you're a Japanese Imperial soldier and you're in a bunker and you have a machine gun and your sights are set on the beach, the amount of discipline that it takes to go onto that beach as an American Marine or sailor,

corpsman or army soldier that's coming on. It's just incredible. It's absolutely incredible. It defies what Depeake is saying. Some of the stuff that Depeake says about fear and all this and guys are going to turn, apparently he never worked with the U.S. Marine Corps. Apparently never worked with the 101st airborne.

Those guys, no. I mean, I'm calling it. out a couple units but come on these guys are it's it's amazing it's amazing the amount of heroism and discipline to overcome that that spirit of self-preservation and I and obviously a bunch you know tons of special operations guys and just it's impressive it really is it is very impressive I was humble to see that stuff and with my own two eyes back to the book the nature of ancient arms requires close order modern arms require open order and they are at the same time of such terrible power that against them too often discipline is broken so imagine this this is

tough because in ancient war we're all close together and so it's easier to maintain discipline but when we all get spread out modern warfare it's harder to maintain the discipline yeah plus nobody's looking to yeah discipline in battle becomes more necessary as ranks become more open and the material cohesion of the ranks not giving confidence it must spring from a knowledge of comrades and a trust in officers who must always be present and seen so leaders you got to be seen what man today advances with the confidence that rigid discipline and pride of him in himself gave the roman soldier even though the contest is no longer with man but with fate think about that the contests in modern warfare oftentimes not all the time is fate am i going to step on an id am i

going to get hit by a random bullet am i going to there's the war now is much more random yeah it's much more random bad luck can cost you your life good luck can save your life good tactics will put more luck on your side bad tactics will turn luck against you but there's always luck involved in modern warfare. So that's what you're up against. You're up against fate. So, you know, and I'll tell you, like when he talks about this modern warfare of, you know,

and even when I talk about, like, hey, guys going out in the turret, you know, guys going out on operation after operation in Ramadi. Sometimes, you know, guys would think they're going to die. But a lot of times, like, no, I'm not going to get killed. It's not going to happen. You know, like you have sort of, hey, it's not going to happen. If it does, I won't know it.

Check. Let's rock and roll. You know what I mean? It's a different. So I want to make sure that I'm not making it sound like the lead dirt gunner is sitting up there going, oh, tonight's the night. He overcomes that. And one of the ways you overcome it is, yeah, it's not going to happen to me.

It's not going to happen to me. You know, we've heard that from some other books. You know, they don't think it's going to happen. You never think it's going to happen to yourself. It's going to happen to that guy. It might happen to the guy next to me. I'm going to be good to go. It's like when you're on a plane and you think this plane, you know, if this plane crashes,

you know a big commercial plane jetliner or whatever I think I'm gonna live like that's my attitude is like if this thing crashes I will live you know I'm gonna I will land somewhere and track using my using my free fall capabilities and I'll find a pool and I'll track to the pool and then I'll get all spread out

in the last minute I'm gonna you know I think I'm gonna live like if you fall out of the plane no if the plane explodes in midair right right and you fly out like you know those crashes where everyone dies on the plane. If I'm on the plane, I'm going to make it. Right, you're the only one. That's just like the attitude.

So you can, if I can have that attitude about being on a plane, I can have that attitude. I can have that attitude. Going into combat. Like, hey, I'm not going to get killed. Bring it. What do you got? Yeah.

They can go, I think that's called availability bias. But I think that goes both ways. What's the availability? Well, availability means it's, I mean, the reason they call it availability. is because it's available in your mind, just that thought. So basically if...

Because that one girl lived through one of those crashes back at 1975. I'm like, hey, she could do it. I'm going to be good to do it. I remember, I always hear about that heroic story, even though all the other millions of stories, everybody died.

Yeah. Like winning the lottery. It's why people buy lottery tickets, even though you'd like... The chance of you dying on the way to buy a lottery ticket is higher than you winning. I'm going to buy it every time. I'm gonna be someone might as well be me can't win if you don't play yeah so I think I think a lot of guys

have that same attitude as I'm talking about and I know they do because I talked to him about it or not maybe not specifically but no one's going oh you know I'm really now believe me we get guys that think they're gonna die every time they go out you know got some paranoid brothers that'd be like man I don't feel good about this one be like you know you're gonna be okay buddy yeah no man I don't know what's this hot like bro even then they sound pretty hardcore though yeah yeah well the funny thing is like one of my most paranoid bros that was always paranoid he's going to die he always in fact i was going to send him home not they was the end of deployment yeah and and we had planes and we had to fill up the planes

with guys to go home and one of the other guys the senior guy said to me like hey we need to we need send that guy home you know he's really stressed out and i said bro he's not going to go home because i know yeah oh like if you say go home he won't want to go home yeah he's He's not going to go. This is a guy that would be like, man, we shouldn't be doing this off, man. I got a bad feeling about tonight, man. And I'd be, hey, man, it's cool. You know, you're going to be all right.

I think you're going to be all right, bro. And then so this other senior guy comes to me and says, hey, you know, you got to get this guy on a plane. And I go, bro, he's not going to go home. I know him. He's not going to want to go home. Dude, he's freaking out. I go, yeah, this is the way he is. Just his way I'm dealing with it.

And he goes, well, you've got to send him home. And I go, I'm not going to send him home. Because we'll go ask him. wants to go home and I go okay so you know we're going to lunch or something in our little hut and I go hey man I want to get you on you know one of these early plans going home because fuck you I'm not going anywhere I was like cool man walk back he's like oh what he's like what do he's like what do you say he's going to fuck off okay cool I guess we can stay here and you know what he did 10 more deployments after that deployment you know what I mean so he's a guy that like

I don't know that's just the way he dealt with it yeah with it through voicing and voicing his nervousness, but he just did it out loud chain smoking cigarettes, getting after it, and would never, ever want to stay back off an operation, no matter what it was. He'd say, you know, you know, if I ever didn't put him on the force list

of the guys going out, he'd come to me like, what's your problem? Get me on there. Oh, yeah, bro. I never, can't leave him back. Yeah, it's just how, so it was, it probably wasn't the kind where he really did want to go home,

but like how you were saying earlier, the culture kind of didn't know. what's inside of his head. Yeah. But definitely part of it is like, hey, I'm not going to be a pussy. I might be talking like I'm scared. Yeah. And like, I don't want to do this.

Don't you dare try and send me home. Bro, don't do it. Yeah. Now let me have another cigarette and get after it. And yeah. Actually, that guy just retired one of my awesome brothers. Well, when they say, when the guys are like, oh, it's not going to happen to me, right? Yeah.

You know, about dying and stuff. is that do you think that they really feel that it's not going to happen to me or is that a thing that they sort of tell themselves well i can tell you that oftentimes i did not think i could be killed yeah you know what i'm doing hey this is it's not going to happen right bring it yeah go ahead bring it and and i guess part of that a little 10% of that was like hey if i do get killed whatever right i'm good to go you know this is it's kind of a good way to die right i don't mind that way of dying, getting killed in combat, right? I'm a Viking with a sword and I want to die

with it in my hands. I don't want to die the way I'm going to die now. You know, now I've got to live and do all this stuff. I think that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, I guess so, but technically. Yeah.

But, so there's a little bit of the, but I think guys probably fall in that whole spectrum. Yeah. Of guys that just didn't think they would get killed and guys that just said they didn't think they could get killed and guys that thought they were to get killed but really didn't think they were going to get killed. They're just,

Just man, you don't know what's going on inside people's inside people head, but what you've got to do is pay as much attention to it as you can and Always be looking at people and trying to gauge where they're at mentally because Yeah, it's it does it does freak people out you know the continual specter of death It can it can hang heavy and and you know I was never exposed to the kind of things that these people were going through and World War II going on to Going on to a beach going on Where you're hey you know we're gonna take You know 40% casualties

First two waves You know that means you're looking at your buddy like okay One of us ain't gonna make it Or one of us is at least gonna get wounded bad I was doing some more I was doing some reading you know just some World War II reading You just crazy How those guys were going

I mean D-Day is the same thing D-Day they thought they were gonna take Even worse casualties and they did You know actually the first goal for I remember hearing a port on on the news I think it was CNN because yeah it was it was the only cable news I think at the time they were saying there's going to be 40,000 casualties in the first 48 hours I was like oh it's on I'm gonna get some and that was literally my attitude you know and of course it was over in 72 hours nothing happened that's why I think that

lured us into a false sense of security and arrogance the second Gulf one we said oh we're gonna go into Iraq oh yeah I won't you know probably be done in two or three months or maybe a month You know, maybe a month. And guess what? We got up to Baghdad in what? A couple weeks, a week or two. And boom, we were there. Okay, this is going to be, yeah, well, guess what?

We didn't, we, we weren't expecting that insurgency to form. And we didn't do a good job of transitioning the government properly. So we made some, I can't say we made some mistakes. Okay, I can say this, we made mistakes, but we, you don't know what's going to happen in war, right? We don't know the answers. If we knew what the answers were, we would do everything perfectly. You just don't know. It's like playing a football game, right?

You don't know what's going to happen. Not only do you not know what the opponent's going to do, you don't know what passes are going to be caught and dropped and what the ref's going to call. There's all these variables that you just cannot know. The only way you can know the outcome of a football game is to play the football game, right? The only way you can know what's going to happen in a war is the war happens.

And things are going to happen that you will not expect, ever. and you got to deal with them. And we were a little slow to recognize. But again, we had false sense of security. Hey, we beat these guys last time in 72 hours. Okay, we want to take their country. So what's that going to mean? Two weeks, we should be good to go.

You can never do that. You got to be ready for the long haul. Back to the book. In ancient battle, unity existed, at least with the Greeks and the Romans. The soldier was known to his officer and comrades. They saw that he fought. In modern armies, where losses are as great for the victor as the vanquished the soldier must more often be replaced in ancient

battle the victor had no losses or very limited losses today the soldier is often unknown to his comrades he is lost in the smoke the dispersion the confusion of battle he seems to fight alone unity is no longer ensured by mutual surveillance a man falls and disappears who knows whether it was a bullet or the fear of advancing further that struck him. And again, we're talking, these guys are doing sort of World War I style advances, charges on positions. The ancient combatant was never struck by an invisible weapon and could not fall this way. The more difficult surveillance, the more necessary becomes the individuality of companies,

sections, and squads. Dispersion brings us back to the necessity for the unity. which was the absolute necessity in ancient battle. So another point here. The size of the battlefield permits less than ever holding units together. The role of the general is much more difficult. Many more chances are left to fate. Thus, the greater necessity for the troops who know best their trade,

who are most dependable and the greatest of fortitude. So you've got to have even better soldiers now. Because you've got to train them better because they might be out there alone or, you know, with two or three guys. there is a strange similarity in battle at one league to battle at two paces so one league meaning separated by 2,000 meters two paces is obviously two paces the value of the soldier is the essential element of success let us strengthen the soldier by unity and this is obviously this is businesses this is teams the tighter you are as a group the better you're going to perform

Worked at unity The good quality of troops Will more than ever secure victory Nothing should be neglected To make the battle order stronger And the man stronger This is good When in complete security after dinner

In full physical and moral contentment Men consider war and battle They are animated in by a noble ardor That has nothing in common with reality How many? So everyone's all brave when they're at the dinner table, the full bellies. How many of them, however, even at that moment, would be ready to risk their lives. So even when they're at their dinner table talking, really at that moment, how many people are ready to risk their lives.

But oblige them to march for days and weeks to arrive at the battleground. And on the day of battle, oblige them to wait minutes, hours to deliver it. If they were honest, they would testify how much the physical fatigue and the mental anguish that precede action have lowered their morale, how much less eager to fight they are than a month before when they rose from the table in a generous mood. Man's heart is changeable as fortune. Man shrinks back and apprehends danger in any effort in which he does not foresee success. So when we don't think we're going to be successful, we shrink back. We get worried about it.

There are some isolated characters of Iron Temper, who resist the tendency, but they are carried away by the great minority. Examples show that if withdrawal is forced, the army is discouraged and takes flight. The brave heart does not change. Real bravery, inspired by devotion to duty, does not no panic and is always the same. The bravery sprung from hot blood pleases the Frenchman more. He understands it. It appeals to his vanity.

It is a characteristic of his nature, but it is passing. it fails him at times, especially when there's nothing for him to gain by doing his duty. So this is like, you know, motivation, being fickle. If you're one of those people, yeah, you're super fired up and now you want to go, that's going to fade away. Yeah.

That's not the kind of bravery we're looking for. Yeah. We're looking for the constant, steady bravery. The instinct of self-preservation can make, can then make the strongest tremble. But they are strong enough to overcome their emotion, the fear of advancing, even losing their heads or their coolness.

Fear with them never becomes terror. It is forgotten in the activities of command. He who does not feel strong enough to keep his heart from ever being gripped by terror should never think of becoming an officer. Don't become an officer if you're going to get really scared. The soldiers themselves have emotions, have emotion, the sense of duty, discipline, pride, and the example of their officers and above all their coolness, sustain them and prevent their fear from becoming terror.

Their emotion never allows them to sight or To more than approximately adjust their fire Often they fire into the air Cromwell knew this well Dependable as his troops were when he said Put your trust in God and aim at their shoelaces That's something that we still teach you know when you're in a firefight you shoot low Shoot at the ground in front of the bad guys

What because you'll hit ricochets the bullets will walk up into the bad guys and Oh, right. Ricoshays will put stuff in their face. And you'll at least hit something. If you aim high, you're going to shoot over their heads. You're going to hit nothing. Yeah, it wasn't. Oh, Roger.

Roger Haydard. Yeah. He was kind of saying that right. Like the new guys shoot a tend to shoot high. Oh, yeah, for sure. He definitely said that. Yeah. No, they drilled us into that.

They drilled out in us big time. Yeah. Walk it in. Yeah, walk in those. Shoot at their laces. And that's another thing. When you're shooting high, you don't know where it went. When you shoot the ground,

You can see where it's hitting. You're like, oh, okay, boom, I'll walk it in. Walk it in. Walk it on in. What makes the soldier capable of obedience and direction and action is the sense of discipline. This includes respect for and confidence in his chiefs, confidence in his comrades, and fear of their reproaches and retaliation if he abandons them in danger. This is peer pressure, basically, is what we're talking about.

His desire to go where others do go without trembling more than they, in a word, the whole of the spree decor. Organization only can produce these characteristics for men equal a lion. Esprit decor is secured in war, but war becomes shorter and shorter and more and more violent. Consequently,

secure espree decor in advance. This is about training. That's where we're going to establish a spree decor. Mental acquaintanceship, this is a weird word for like friendship or brotherhood. Mental acquaintanceship it is not enough to make a good organization a good general spree is needed all were all must work for battle and not merely live quietly going through the drills without understanding their application so you got to have everyone understand what's going on they got to understand why they're doing what they're doing once a man knows how to use his weapon and obey all commands there is need needed only

occasional drill to brush up those who have forgotten marches and battle maneuvers are what's needed. So don't just run the simple drills that people know. The training that I used to run was battle maneuvers. That's what we were doing. And marches. Yes, you were going to get your long walk on.

You're going to get conditioned. You were going to get tired. You're going to get fatigued. You're going to get after it. And you're going to get tested. And then some crazy stuff was going to happen. It's going to be mayhem. That's how we get guys ready for combat.

The technical training of the soldier is not the most difficult. It is necessary for him to know how to use and take care of his weapon, to know how to move to the right. the left, forward and back, but this is not what makes a soldier. It's absolutely necessary to change the instruction. He's talking about how the instruction is being run, and he's talking how it should be run. It's absolutely necessary to change the instruction to reduce it to the necessary minimum and to cut out all superfluous information with which peacetime laborers overload it each year. To know the essential well is better than having some knowledge of a lot of things,

many of them useless. Teach this in the first year. Then, in the second, the essential. Also, instruction should be simple to avoid mental fatigue of long drills that disgust to everybody, so keep it simple. So that is the viewpoint on training. That is what you have to do.

The book, when confidence is placed in superiority of material means, valuable as they are against the enemy at a distance, it may be betrayed by the actions of the enemy. If he closes with you in spite of your superiority in means of destruction, the morale of the enemy mounts with the loss of your confidence. His morale dominates yours. You flee entrenched troops give away this manner.

So did you understand that? So if you're stronger than me, but I attack you, you might just get on your heels and lose. And if you think about it, I mean, you see this in film footage in World War I. People would take the trenches. So you're in a detransposition. You've got cover and you've got concealment. You've got barbed wire, but someone's still going to come in there.

And when they do, you run. Yeah. It's kind of like you ever see those videos on YouTube with a squirrel attacks the dog. But it's like this big dog, but the squirrel gets nuts, you know? And the dog runs away. Is that a pond there too? Like a squirrel getting nuts? You're good with that one.

No, for a lot. You know, in Hawaii when you're, when you amp out when you, you know. Yeah, you get nuts. guy's getting nuts. Like, you're nuts. Yeah. So it's weird,

you know, it's weird that we talk about that because I was talking about that. I've talked about that. When you're a kid, you see someone losing their temper, you see him getting nuts. And it's impressive.

And he's saying, that's actually true. Somebody gets nuts. Somebody might say, yeah, it's not. Now, if you're an experienced fighter

and you see someone getting nuts, you go, oh, cool. I've got a guy that's going to be winded in about 35 more seconds. Yeah, yeah. Isn't that crazy? Like,

that's essentially, like a fight. He's trained. That's why. So he's essentially trained out of the human element that he's talking about, that instinctual. Oh, a good fighter, yes. Yeah, you know what I mean? He's trained out of it.

He's trained out of it. It's crazy. Yes, that's exactly what happens with a trained fighter. But this is, that shows you how that momentum in battle and business in anything, you, you know, you're going to come at me. I'm going to attack you. You're stronger than me. I'm going to attack you. That's why it's be aggressive, right?

Default mode's got to be aggressive. That's why. Even advancing, even by advancing, you affect the morale of the enemy. but your object is to dominate him and make him retreat before your ascendancy and it is certain that everything that diminishes the enemy's morale adds to your resolution and advancing so go on the attack be offensive be aggressive the mere attack does not completely succeed against such troops it is necessary to destroy them again i always like to point that out because as we're sitting here talking, even me, we're starting to think of like a chess game and a video game

and all this stuff, but we're actually talking about killing everyone. That's what we're talking about. We can't forget that. In modern battle, which is delivered with combatants so far apart, man has come to have a horror of man. I thought that was interesting. We don't get this hand-to-hand combat very much anymore. These are good. He who calm and strong of heart awaits his enemy, has all the advantage of fire. But the moral impulse of the assailant demoralizes the assailed. He is frightened.

He sets his sight no longer. His sights no longer. He does not even aim his peace. His lines are broken. So again, you're a comfortable spot. This is what happened to the Japanese and the island advancing campaigns? They're hunkered down in a bunker

with thousands of rounds of ammunition. And what do they see? They see United States Marine Corps. course coming across the beach and they go oh my god who are these guys and why are they not backing down and they got frazzled got overrun with good troops on both sides if an attack is not prepared there's every reason to believe that it will fail so this is so this is we're going back and forth it's like each one is contrary to the other one so he's saying hey if you attack you're going to win but now he's saying with with good troops on both sides if an attack is not prepared there's

every reason to believe it will fail that's because the guys that are waiting the attack such an advantage they're dug in they're covered there you know again look at the Japanese there they're in a bunker yeah the Marine is on a beach bro this you can't get any more exposed your weapon is wet you're falling in the water it's a horrible situation yeah we want every single time yeah that's amazing yeah he's kind of talking about all other things being equal yeah you're saying other things being equal if the attack is not prepared right there's every reason to believe that it will fail the attacking troops suffer

for more materially than the defenders. The latter are in better order, fresh, while the assailants are in disorder, having suffered a bunch of losses and a certain amount of punishment. I mean, clearly, again, we're going across the beach, any beach, amphibious invasion, you're taking losses, your disorder,

the boats are crashing, you're coming through the water, people are drowning, all that stuff is really happening. The slightest, this is important, the slightest reaction by the defense made to moralize the insurmoralize the, attack so you see that again see someone in a street fight coming up getting in your face and you just like like oh really you want some and it immediately will demoralize the attack never mind you know you you hit them or you choke them because then now you're in a fight but if you just

little thing made demoralize the attack and that's why you know we train when we get attacked we attack if you shoot at us you're going to feel the heat the more confidence one has in his method of attack or defense, the more disconcerted he is to see them at some time incapable of stopping the enemy. So that's another thing. You think you're all strong, but then when you start getting beat, you just fold. Interesting. Just a quick comment.

There is back to the book, there was always mad in patience for results without considering the means. So you see this a lot in businesses, in the military, where the senior leadership, they want to see the results. We want results on this thing. You've got to be patient. Because the whole time you're asking that, if I start asking you echo, how do we do this?

How do we do this? How do we do this? How are we doing right now? You start going, well, maybe I'm failing because I'm not getting any results here. If I say, you know, I need to give you some space and give you some time to let things develop and let you succeed.

With us, very few reason or understand reason. Very few are cool. So again, human nature. If you only, this is important. This is very important. If you only use combat methods that require leaders without fear of high intelligence, full of good sense and of a spree, you will always make mistakes. So you've got to plan your plan that it suits the,

maybe the less superior leader that you might have. Man is always man. He does not always possess ability and resolution. The commander must make his choice of methods depending on the troops and on himself. Okay. Pride generally causes refusal to acknowledge the truth that fear of being vanquished is basic in war. In the mass pride, vanity is responsible for this dissimulation. With a tiny number of absolutely fearless men, what is responsible is their ignorance of a thing they do not feel feel? There is, however, no real basis for this and all real tactics are based upon it.

Discipline is a part of taxes. Tactics is absolutely at the base of tactics, as the Roman showed. So discipline is more important than, hey, we're just going to be brave. It's not going to work out for you. Not going to work out for you very well. I had a, we were just got to Robadi. and I pulled the officers in to, it was actually the radio room where we had radio,

so I just wanted to talk to the officers. And I said, hey guys, look, we're gonna be a long deployment, it's gonna be rough, and we gotta pay attention to guys that get, you know, combat fatigue, and it's gonna get, you know, guys will get scared, and it's gonna break them down and all that. And one of the junior officers was, he said,

he literally did not believe me. He was like, he said, that's not going to happen to our guys because we had a bunch of, you know, badass studs. He said,

we don't need to happen to our guys. We don't need to worry about that. I said, okay, well, I hope you're right. And then about two months later, he goes,

you were right about that. And I said, yeah, I know, so let's find out who we got to take care of, get him some rest or whatever, we'll do our best.

Our infantry no longer has any battle tactics. The initiative of the soldier rules. The soldiers of the First Empire trusted to the moral and passive action of masses. Today, the soldiers object to the passive action of masses. They fight as

skirmishes or they march back to the front as a flock of sheep, of which three-fourths seek cover en route if the fire is heavy. So you think, you know, we'll just march to the front. No, three-quarters of your guys are not going to make it. Not going to make it to the front. Maneuver is possible

only with good organization. Otherwise is no more effective than the passive mass of rabble in an attack. In ancient combat, the soldier was controlled by the leader in engagements. Now that fighting is open, the soldier cannot be controlled. Once, often, he cannot even be directed. Consequently, it is necessary to begin action at the latest possible moment and to have the immediate commanders understand what is wanted and what their objectives are. Decentralized command.

obviously self-esteem is quite unquestionably one of the most powerful motives which moves our men they do not wish to pass for cowards in the eyes of our comrades if they march forward they want to distinguish themselves after every attack formation no longer exists this is because of the inherent disorder of every forward march under fire the bewildered men even the officers have no longer the eyes of their comrades or of their commander upon them sustaining them self-esteem no longer impels them they do not hold out the least counteroffensive puts them to route so just talking about being separated and how before we had everyone watching us now no one's watching me I guess well I'm gonna take a little take a little cover over

here in this trench object that no one ever gets within 200 meters of the enemy that a unit attacking from the front never succeeds so be it let us attack from the flank oh this is important this is important in combat no prescribed interval will be kept exactly it will open it will close following the fluctuations of combat and this is true with any plan business plan it's not going to be what you thought it was going to be it's not going to go as planned there's going to be fluctuations in what you told people to do they got to be ready for that. You've got to be ready for that. Oh, I love this one. Absolute rules are foolish. Absolute rules are foolish about it. If you find yourself saying never or saying always, you better

put a caveat on that. Those are too strong. There's no such thing. With this very rare, actually, I'd say there's no such thing. Maybe I could think of an example. But I'm sure there's an exception even to that. Yeah, even to the one that I could think of. There's going to be an exception. This is cool. The infantry square is not a thing of mechanics of mathematical reasoning. So the infantry square was a tactic they used.

And they hear, they'll tell how they formed up. A platoon in four ranks, two facing the front, to the rear. Its flanks guarded by the extreme files that face to the flank. And conducted, supported by non-commissioned officers placed in a fifth rank in the interior of the rectangle. Powerful in its competence. and fire cannot be dislodged by cavalry. So he's talking about this infantry square and why it's such a good tactic.

Why? Moral reasons and no others make the soldier in a square feel himself stronger than when in the line. He feels himself watched from behind and has no way to flare. So you might think like, well, they got good 360 security and that's why it's good

or they're in a unit that's easier to control. What it is, hey, when I'm in this square, I know someone's got my back, I know someone's got my flank, and I know that the people are watching me and counting on me. So I got to fight hard. That's why the infantry square worked really well. Fire by command presupposes an impossible coolness.

Had any troops ever possessed it, they would have mowed down battalions as one mows down cornstalk. So he's saying, look, this idea that you're just going to tell him to get online, on my command, shoot, no, They need to have freedom. And the only thing that creates calmness under fire is security.

Security. Just like a quarterback. What's going to make him calm under fires when he has good defensive people keeping the O line? The O line keeping the what, the defensive line at bay. It's going to keep him cool under there. I mean, obviously some guys get pretty cool under some pressure. Not as cool as they are when they got a good O line just holding the line. as always oh sorry always always take draconian measures to prevent pillage from commencing if it begins

it is difficult ever to stop it so you got to keep you got to hold the line keep your troops disciplined here's a little dichotomy of leadership coming at you a leader must combine resolute bravery and impetuosity with prudence and calmness a difficult matter that's the dichotomy of leadership You got to be calm, but you've got to be brave. You got to be prudent with what you're doing, but at the same time, you've got to be a little bit rash and be aggressive. Good times. Okay. He lays out a little information here about generals and being in high command.

So when we're talking about CEOs, we're talking about senior leadership. When one occupies a high command, there are many things which he does. not see the general and chief even a division commander can only escape this failing by great activity moved by strict conscientiousness and aided by clairvoyance you have to be able to like see you have to have a clear clairvoyant skills this failing extends to those about him to his heads of services so you're the CEO you're not gonna know everything that's going on the only way you do you do know what's going on is by being really proactive in finding out what's going on

And by the way, it's not just you that doesn't know all your little, all your other people in the sea suite. They don't know what's going on either. You lose a lot of that stuff unless you're super proactive. Now here's some examples. These men live well, sleep well. The same must be true of all. They have picked well-conditioned horses. The roads are excellent.

They are never sick. The doctors must be exaggerating sickness. They have attendance and doctors. Everybody must be well-looked after. Something happens which shows a body. Domenable negligence common enough in war with a good heart and a full belly they say But this is infamous unheard of it could not have happened. It is impossible So you got to be careful of that detachment when you get to the senior leadership positions when you start going all those guys in the front lines

What's wrong with it? What can they possibly be complaining about? We can't be that bad out there actually it can now we'll talk about a little micromanagement Back to the book today there is a tend to whose cause should be sought on the part of superiors to infringe on the authority of the inferiors. This is general. It goes very high and is furthered by the mania for command. Right? People don't want to be controlling everything. It results in the lessening of the authority of subordinate officers in the minds of their soldiers. So when you're micromanaging, you're hurting the authority of your subordinate leadership. This is a grave matter. only the firm authority and prestige of subordinate officers can maintain discipline.

The tendency to oppress subordinates, to want to impose upon them in all things, the views of the superior, not to admit of honest mistakes. Right? We don't want to make mistakes. We want to impose on them, all things, the views of the superior, not to admit honest mistakes and to reprove them as faults to make everybody, even down to the private feel that there is only one infallible authority, and that's me. A colonel, for instance, sets himself up as the sole authority with judgment and intelligence.

He thus takes all initiative from subordinate officers and reduces them to a state of inertia, coming from their lack of confidence in themselves and from fear of being severely reproved. How many generals before a regiment think only of showing how much they know? Oh, don't be that leader. They lessen the authority of the colonel. That is nothing to them. They have asserted their superiority. True or false, that is what is essential.

With cheeks puffed out, they leave, proud of having attacked discipline. Oh, there's me. But it's, you know, here we are. 1840 we're talking about. 1860 we're talking about. 1865, 1880. We're talking about micromanagement. We're talking about micromanagement, right?

We're talking about the upper echelon, not knowing what's these problems that we deal with with businesses all the time, and this is what we deal with. And it's hard for people to see that they're doing this because they don't know it. Even though this is such a common trait that we can go back thousands of years and see,

people don't recognize it. Oh, this one bothers me. Ask much in order to attain, obtain a little. is a false saying, a source of errors and an attack on discipline. One ought to obtain what one asks. It is only necessary to be moderately reasonable and practical. So this is like, hey, Echo, we need to sell 10,000 of these new units we've made.

And what I'm really hoping is that you sell 1,000. That's not a good way to do. If I want you to sell 1,000, that's what I want you to make. You want you to make 1,000 of these new units. Okay. Make 1,000. I don't tell you make 10,000 in hope that you can know. Well, it's a disaster.

Don't do that. Man's admiration for the great spectacles of nature is the admiration for force. Again, we're getting into a little bit of human nature, just a little touch. In the mountains, it is mass, a force that impresses him, strikes him, makes him admire. In the calm sea, it is the mysterious and terrible force that he divines. That he feels in that enormous liquid mass, in the ancient, Ingris, force again, in the wind, in the storm, in the vast depths of the sky, it is still force that he admires.

All these things astounded man when he was young. When he became old, he knows them. Astonishment has turned to admiration, but always it is the feeling of a formidable force which compels his admiration. This explains his admiration for the warrior. The warrior is the ideal of primitive. man, the savage, the barbarian. The more people rise in moral civilization, the lower this ideal falls. But with the masses everywhere, the warrior still is, and for a long time will be

the height of their ideals. This is because man loves to admire force and bravery that are his own attributes. When that force and bravery find another means to assert themselves at least or at least when the crowd is shown that war does not furnish the best examples of them, that there

are true and more exalted examples this ideal will give way to a higher one. Don't think it's quite happened yet. One last note on decentralized command. Napoleon said, he quotes Napoleon, The only method of fire to be used in war is fire at will.

So when you're trying to control your teams and their every action, because that's really the, that's the action of a soldier, right, is to fire. When you try and control that, you are micromanaging in many cases. You know, let them operate on their own. And now I'm going to close out this piece of battle. studies right here we're going to August 15th 1870 and this is about in the first month of the Franco-Prussian War Colonel Depeake was with his regiment on the

outskirts of a town called Mars Latour in France and they started to receive artillery fire and this section or this quote is from the history of France's 10th infantry regiment so they start taking some shelling and here we go the colonel had arms taken at once and disposed the regiment north of the road which being elevated provided sufficient cover for the men he himself stood in the road to put heart into his troops by his attitude they having been a little startled by this surprise and the baptism of fire which they received under such disadvantageous circumstances. Suddenly, a shell burst over the road a few feet from the colonel and mutilated his legs in a

frightful manner. The shell caused other ravages in the ranks of the 10th. The commander of 3rd Battalion, Major D. Chenez, was mortally wounded. Captain Rebole was killed. Lieutenant Pone, 3rd Battalion, First Company, and 8. men of the regiment were wounded the colonel was immediately taken to the other side of the highway into the midst of his soldiers and a surgeon called those of the regiment already being engaged in caring for the other victims of the terrible shot in the meantime

Colonel Depeake asked for Lieutenant Colonel Doliak delivered to him his saddlebags containing important papers concerning the regiment and gave him his field glasses Then, without uttering the least sound of pain, notwithstanding the frightful injury from which he must have suffered horribly, he said, with calmness, my regret is to be struck this way without having been able to lead my regimen on the enemy. They wanted him to take a little brandy. He refused and accepted some water, which a soldier offered him. A surgeon finally arrived. the colonel showing him his right leg open in two places made with his hand the sign of amputating at his thigh saying doctor it is necessary to amputate my leg here at this moment a soldier wounded in the shoulder placed near the colonel groaned aloud forgetting his own condition the colonel said immediately to the surgeon see first doctor what is the matter with this brave man i can wait because of the lack of instruments it was not possible to perform the amputation on the ground as the colonel desired so this much

deplored commander was transported to the Mets hospital four days later on the 19th of August Colonel Ardent de pique died like a hero of old without uttering the least complaint far from his regiment far from his family he uttered several times the words which summed up his affections. My wife, my children, my regiment. My wife, my children, my regiment. Adieu. Goodbye.

And so we see a man who despite his intimate knowledge of the fear and the immense strength that the instincts of self-preservation hold, yet he showed no fear and overcame his own instincts of self-preservation. And maybe, maybe that's because he knew them so well, understood them so deeply that he was able to overcome them. And maybe of all the incredible lessons we can learn

from Colonel DuPique perhaps the most important one is for us to realize why it is so critical for us to increase our knowledge not just of war but of all things so that we have the knowledge and the understanding to confront and overcome those things the good and the bad so about your strengths and your weaknesses. Learn about strategy and tactics. Learn about fear and hesitation. Learn about human nature. And learn about yourself. Test yourself.

Find out who you are. Find out where fear and hesitation might cause you or to fall short and understand yourself. So you can overcome and conquer the limitations of your natural instincts and replace them with the will and the discipline to overpower and overcome Everything in your for tonight. So echo Charles. Yes. Speaking of learning and gaining knowledge and man maybe you could convey some knowledge on how to support this podcast time for support sure of course I feel like we should start with on it good places you know don't break this

the cycle the routine the ritual if you will so on it best supplements in the straight up in the world he calls it huh yeah brows is funny like I sound kind of sick I was like talked last weekend all talking you know you're trying you're trying trying to not be sick, remember? Oh, yeah, that's right. Look at me getting sick. Yes, guess what I did. Shroom Tech immune.

Boom, ordered it today. You got to have that stuff on standby because you know where you can feel when you're getting sick. Yeah, I totally deserved it. Actually, I didn't really say anything bad, but I deserve it. Oh, so you were deep inside. You were looking to be a weakness over here. No, yeah.

I don't know. I was more like, because I hadn't bought it yet. You know, we knew it was there. We were like, Shroom Tech Sport because that's what I need. I don't necessarily need to me. because I'm not sick but then again once you're sick it's kind of too late you don't kind of anyway nonetheless lesson learned shroom tech immune on the way for me I by the way I didn't get sick like I just barely touched on getting sick and I

amped up the vitamin C I amped up the shroom tech immune that fires you up because it's like a little battle you know yeah it is a battle you know it is your morale was high after that one yeah yeah I flanked him like to put the shroom tech immune Yeah, big time. But yeah, so to kind of go down the list, and I think this is important, people ask me. And not the kind of like how I say, you know, how people say, people have been asking me. And it's like two people, their mom.

And then their neighbor or something. Your brother. Yeah. And it's like, oh, people have been. And I was actually talking to my brother about this because he said that too. He was like, oh, people have been asking me this. And then I was like, oh, yeah. Two people ask you.

And you're like, but here's a thing. Let's say if three people. ask you the exact same question in like three days. That's one person a day. That's not very much. But if they're asking the same question, that's a lot of people asking you. Really? Feels like it. Okay. Anyway, so a lot of people have been asking people. People been asking me, you know, three. Is the on it stuff for real? Is that for real good? You know, and what do you take? So here it is. If you don't know already. Officially on, what do you say on the roster? Mm-hmm. Right? On the everyday consumption.

or whatever. I have on it total strength and performance. That's not every day. That's only when I do Mek-Konzen and workout. Sometimes I'll use it for Jiu-Jitsu. Shroom Tech. I used Shroom Tech the other day for Jitsu. Reminded me of why I used it before it was good.

Would me be the advantage? I'm not going to tell you. Because I didn't notice any. It wasn't the other day? Yeah, yeah. the other day. Okay. But we didn't really roll hard because you were taking it easy on my rib and I thank you for that.

Yeah. That's right. But I didn't feel tired. Like it wasn't. It was good. Anyway, so Shroomta, total performance and strength,

total strength and performance. Shroom tech as needed. That's for like, you know, hard output, sustained stuff. Jiu-Jitsu rounds, Metcons.

If you're into CrossFit, take that Shroom Tech, get you right through it. It'll keep you in the green, maybe in the yellow, maybe. And then krill oil, of course, daily, essential. You like the strong bone, right?

That's for joints. Joints. You know, you get these joint, you know, I refer a lot of stuff back to Jiu-Jitsu because Jiu-Jitsu is like a sustained. So, Trim Tech, you know, and it can mess with you. If you're getting after it five days a week in Jiu-Jitsu, even three sometimes, if you're not used to it, you take the, the krill oil. Take you right up.

Yeah. cruel oil I got the gourmet peanut but it's not peanut but it's like cashew almond you know it's a try blend butter that one's good you like that one yeah

warrior bars and warrior bars for sure we're not going trips now to speak of companies or work with companies a lot of them in their little snack area warrior bars they know about the worry bars in the no yeah it's good so good though because what are they going to do put donuts out for me

I'll straight up leave yeah and oh no no no on it is interesting in that way i don't know how much you browse the website but when i'll go in there i'll browse it just to see like i'm not gonna buy you know women's t-shirts for myself you know no but i'll just browse just to see you know you still read about the women's t-shirts but i'm just saying even if i'm not in the market for some stuff i'll look and they have like all kinds of like new stuff like um you know obviously protein powder and stuff but they'll have like wellness stuff they'll multiply vitamin they have toothpaste oh i didn't know that deodorant yeah interesting i'm not saying get the toothpaste and deodorant i'm just saying it's interesting

how much new stuff they're always like coming out with oh and i forgot to say the kettlebells that they have i'm all up on those primal bells legendary legend bells and then there's zombie bells That's what I have zombie bells. Yeah. Because I want something that looks, you know, disturbing and crazy. How much is the, or how much does it weigh?

What I have the 40K? Dang. The 80-something pound one? Dang, that's good. I have the werewolf one, two werewolf ones. Those are like 62 pounds. I keep the zombie bell in the house.

Oh, it's like aesthetic. No. Oh, you jump on it spontaneously. Because in my garage, I've got a bunch of kennepels. But those are all older than on it, right? But in my house, I got the boom, the zombie bell. Because that way you just hit a couple snatches, right?

You will wake up. Yeah, yeah. Hit a couple snatches, hit a couple swings. You're good to go. Do you do the one where it goes, boom, and hits the back here. You got to get used to that. Don't just jump into that. But, yeah, there's some reason you notice it when you first start kettleballs,

but you don't notice it after a while. Yeah, just, well, you're not ready for the whole. No, you know what you do is you use your grip. At least I do. I use my grip to, like, slow it down a little bit. Yeah. There's a little bit of friction there. Crank it down.

It sounds like a little soft little landing on there. Dang. Yeah, it's a good idea. So you kind of use the zombie bells, kind of like you know how some guys, I think it was you was telling me you have two geese. You have one guy.

You never really use unless it's like picture taking time. That's not me. And it's called the Hollywood. That wasn't you? The Hollywood geese and the action geese? No, the Hollywood geese is like it's a legit gie like most geese are. You can roll in them,

but you kind of keep. keep it, you know, in the closet hung up. When it's, you still roll on picture. Do you know me at all? I thought it was you long time. Maybe you changed. I don't know. I didn't change.

Nonetheless, um, if I have a key, it's gonna get rolled in. Dig it. Period. I dig it. Otherwise, why would I have it? Yeah. Oh, that's right. To take pictures in.

No. Next question. Whatever. Oh, by the way, Jocococin' Jitsu magazine, taking pictures the other day. Yeah, I said it. Yeah. Maybe on the cover, maybe not.

I don't know. Anyway, back to Onet We all know Best Supplements the world These are all the things If you take a supplement for something Like from on it You still doing it right now?

Yeah, I'm gonna continue to do on it Because it's worth it This is valuable information If I was on the other side of this I would hope that somebody told me this information Well, that is true And I think like for instance Crill Oil you do not know about krill oil

Yeah And now you know about Crowley You are sore and getting old and decrepit Boom you started taking krill oil Boom. Back in the game. Back in the game. Yeah.

What's, what's a good point. What's bad about the krill oil, though, is I did. My wife's dad, my father-in-law would always see cruel oils better than fish oil and be like, whatever. Health, nut, dude. Look at me. I left.

Yeah, I got to admit to it. All good. Anyway, you know that the supplements you take from on it are going to work. That's the good thing. And there's a bunch of cool stuff. Even it goes above and beyond supplements. Like the peanut butter, the nut butter. You said this.

There's a lot of stuff. Yeah. I'm just a small reminder. All good. If you want 10% off, though. Yes, that's the support part. Support the podcast. Support yourself with the supplementation, support the wallet with the 10% off.

Go on it.com slash jaco. Boom. Another way to support Amazon click through. It's a good way to support. And it's super easy. It takes no time. Before you do Amazon shopping, go the website jacojocopodcast.com. Or it on the side.

Here's the thing too. If you have an ad blocker, it might block these little banners there, which is cool. That's a safe thing to do. you know you block ads and pop-ups and whatnot but know that this will happen most of the time most ad blockers anyway banner on the side go joccopodcast.com over on the side there's a banner that amazon click through that then do your shopping that helps a lot supports a lot reinforcements another way subscribe to the podcast on iTunes on stitcher if you haven't already do you know what I haven't said in a while.

What? Review. Review. Kick a review on there, man. Kick a review on there. Tell them what's up. And there's been, hey, there was a review of Jocka White Tea.

Yes. Have you read? It's the best review of all time. Yeah. And it's, the basic theme is brew, brew, brew, brew, brew, brewing up the tea again.

And it goes through an entire, is the best review of all time. Yeah, I saw that one. I agree. That is what I mean Just The best thing about that When I read that

And of course I get it Yeah But what I love about that Is when I read stuff like that I think about all the people That know nothing about Anything that we're doing And they just read that and say

What do they think? What is going through their mind? So when everybody puts all these crazy reviews on On Amazon Or on the podcast I got to admit that I find them entertaining

Yeah, I would think if you don't really know and you see just all the the I wonder what a person could figure out that's what could they deduce Yeah, they deduce like get after it because a lot of people say that that yeah But there's a lot of stuff that yeah It would freak people out it yeah no but that would at least make them think like dang There's there's a lot to this thing this thing is heavy this isn't just white tea or this isn't you know This is heavy. I got to look into that unless they're scared or whatever, intimidator.

That's not for me, which would be strange. But nonetheless, yeah, if you're in the mood, write a review. You know, you're feeling creative, get creative, whatever. Good. Yeah, you can get creative on all. You can get creative on it. Because the reviews actually help. That's the thing.

Yeah. You know, you might think it doesn't mean anything, but A, we read them. B, it helps. It helps, like Amazon. It helps the ranking in Amazon. It helps the iTunes ranking for sure. Yeah. So that's cool.

It's another good reason to do it. But mostly do it just to crack me. up and make people think that all of us are psycho. And express yourself. That's a good point. You can't express yourself. I should read that brew. Maybe if we'd ever do a commercial for Jocka white tea, that's what we should do.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Dang, that's a good idea. The chorus is there's no tea leaves in the pool. It's so good. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. All right. Very much so.

Also subscribe on YouTube. We're putting on more videos, you know. Which is pretty dope. It's pretty dope. Concert. Sure. I don't know. Videos to watch.

You want to, you know, shorter. You got some in the hopper too, right? I got a few in the hopper, yeah. I have like three in the hopper,

which is kind of different. Do you think you should prioritize and execute? Yeah. Or do you just like creating three different things at the same time? No, because a lot of time and this may,

may not be the most disciplined approach, but I like kind of go with the wave, you know? So it's like, oh, man, this one really like I'm feeling this one. You know, so, oh, let's make that one into a video

and I just start. And then I'll, get hit with something else that you said or whatever. Just all these artistic things you got going on in your mind. Yeah. Actually, I do that with books. You know, I read a lot of books. And I will definitely read a book.

And if it's kind of slow moving, I'll read another book at the same time. And then when I get bored with one, I start reading the other one. I can have up to three books going at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. So that's actually not a bad idea. There you go. See? And mine is a lot.

Like, I just figure if you're real into it, it comes out like better. I don't know. It's what it feels like. So, you know, I'm going to stick with that for right now unless it, you know, produces roadblocks and then, you know, we'll change the strategy. But they are coming along. Videos, YouTube.

Subscribe if you haven't already. If you're in the mood to support. You're under no obligation to subscribe to anything, by the way. Of course. But if you're in the freedom of choice. Totally. Totally. Also, jocco has a store.

It's called jocco store. URL jocococor.com. We have a shirt. if you like t-shirts, cool. Multidimensional, multi-layered, philosophically layered t-shirts. Some travel mugs on there. The travel mugs were still working on it.

What was the layer I was telling you about the other day? Which one? I don't know. I was talking about a layer. There's layers and things. Oh, this is what it was. The book, Weigh the Warrior Kid. There's a layer here. Because the illustrator for the book

of Weir the Warrior Kid is a guy by the name of John Boezer. John Bozac was my brother growing up. My friend growing up, good friend. One of my best friends growing up. And when we were kids, we were in hardcore bands and we were playing rock and roll music and stuff. And one of the bands that we were in

was a little band called Bronson's Children. So the layer here is one day I posted a picture of an old silk screen T-shirt for Bronson's children. Yes. Which I think we should personally reproduce. and get after it. Because Charles Bronson was awesome, right? He was a legit guy.

He was an actor like we have nowadays that were, like, oh, would you, you know, I'm an actor. No, he was like, oh, I was a tail gunner in World War II, barely survived, and I came back and got a job making movies about badasses. That's Charles Bronson. By the way, grew up in, you know, like a, he was like a coal miner. He was in the mines in some steel town in Pennsylvania, you barely spoke English because he was a Polish immigrant.

Anyways, with an attitude. Like, that's why that's why that band was named Bronson's children. So the layer here is, interestingly enough, because I don't have a lot of friends, right? Never have. But the layer here is, the couple, the few friends that I have, I'm good friends with. Yeah.

And, yeah. And so that old Bronson's Children t-shirt, silk screen, was designed by my guy that was in the band with, me whose name is John Bozak who now has illustrated way of the warrior kid that's some layers like yeah layers and yeah layers so cool just did a good good job they're just good yeah it's awesome um but yeah layers sorry layers yeah hey let's go back to the store real quick uh the yeah the shirts whatever they have layers cool if you listen you know these layers or you'll pick up on them which is you know i guess kind of makes it by the way i have never thought these

layers were super deep right you you I think you think the layers are deeper than I think they are yeah I do the one that I I kind of was a little bit I liked was the layers on the equal sign on discipline equals freedom and you made it like a barcode which matches the layers of the font which is OCR standard which can be read by a computer just like the equal sign apparently by the barcode so I like where you're coming there's some layers there yeah the OCR standard the original font the first font you know what we should do is next t-shirt let me help you put layers in it yeah and then we can not say what the layers are to have people report the layers

yeah yeah actually the good shirt layers apparently are kind of deep because I've got more than one inquiry about this they're like hey did you realize that the word good is spelled backwards it's like I don't know if that's a mistake I don't care it's a cool shirt but it's about backwards and I was like yeah no man it's it's for you that message is for you telling yourself that but it's kind of jocco saying it that's what you look at it in the mirror it's not for other people to show your cool shirt sort it is but that message anyway so you layers yeah I didn't think that was too subtle though I amen you know to each their own certain people see you know people are different their minds some are creative I'm gonna come up with it shirt that's got layers

layers for days people are going to have to do Analytics and analysis of the layers on the shirt. Yeah, man. Good, good idea. You're going to do it. You have a shirt that's so layered that no one understands what it is. Sometimes that happens in literature. It's just when I was going to college.

Some of that had so many layers. I'd say, you know what? This has so many layers. It's not worth it. If you have to break out a microscope to see the layers, why put them in there? I know, man. If four people on planet Earth are going to understand the layers you put in this crazy poem that you wrote, why did you do that?

was that good if only four people can get it no it's bad yeah well it's bad for our thing i want the people to wind up getting i want some people to be able to get them yeah i think layers should be a little bit harder to see yeah that's what i think yeah yeah you don't need to i guess you don't need to for a while you weren't talking about the layers you thought that was too much layers and layers came back you know i didn't want anyone to go into layer fatigue or nothing like this but yeah they're back anyway layers to on the t-shirt they're good Well, you know, they're quality shirts. They're not like the cheap, you know, I didn't go to Target and buy a bunch of undershirts.

And then, hey, let's, and spray paint them in the garage. No. They're good. They're good. Anyway, jocco store.com. Some hoodies on there. Some patches, some cool patches. And rash cards.

Just take a browse. Don't buy anything. I'm not saying go buy something. I'm saying, look at it. You like something. You're in the mood to support. Get something. Get something in return.

There you go. Also, psychological warfare is doing well. And when I say doing well, I mean, it's out there like making a difference. That's true. And I remember there was actually, you know, whatever a few weeks ago, I said, oh yeah, I don't need it anymore. Like I got my boost and it, but yeah, I needed it. I went right back to it and boom, it's there. Easy money.

Yeah, that's the genius of it. What did you need it for? What was the scenario? The workout, the same as always. Like, man, I could easily skip today. I got some projects to finish up right now. And so I love to wake up early in the morning and work out, but I got to prioritize next to you right now

and finish some projects. And so today, I didn't, I woke up and wrote because I got projects. And it's so easy. If you don't work out in the morning, it's so easy to not work out. And because by the time I had this, and then I didn't get where I wanted,

and then I had something else, and then I'm trying to work on this and then the email. So now, because what I want to do is like, hey, I'm just gonna go get a pre-launch workout. 11 o'clock in the morning, get in there and get it done. And all of a sudden it was 11.30. All of a sudden it was 12. All of a sudden it was like 12.10 get the workout started.

And now I'm a little bit hungry. And you know, you have a little thought of, you know what? Maybe I shouldn't work out. But I actually didn't have that thought. You know what I said? Cool. I'm tired. I'm fasted.

And I don't feel like working out. So I'm definitely going to work out right now. I want to make it a good one. So that's what I did. Yeah, but not everybody's like that, Paul. No, well, like the voice that's in psychological warfare, I actually have to live with that asshole all the time. Yeah, that's what you know.

Yeah. There is no, like, it doesn't, it never presses pause. It never stops. It's always in there telling me, get to the gym. You don't want to work out, good. Get in there and crush yourself. I have to live with that guy, so. Yeah, that's good, which really is the originating story of psychological warfare.

So if you don't know, psychological warfare. So if you didn't know, Psychological Warfare is a album with tracks that you can purchase from what? No music. There's no music. Correct. It's... Do you think it should have had music? Okay.

Maybe, but... The problem is, there's too many different types of music. Yeah, and it wouldn't have the same effect. I don't think. That's true. I agree with you. Yeah. So...

Because otherwise, I would have said, he, put some little instrumental, whatever. Well, here's... Some, like, if there's music on certain things, things like you like to listen to certain like you know you hear a speech of i don't know martin luther king or somebody saying like a speech and you want to get inspired yeah it'll work for sure but that's not really what this is in that specific way it's more like you actually talking yeah it's a good point it's like you're part of like when you see uh like the movie no country for old men yeah i don't know if you've seen that movie there's no soundtrack yeah it's just the actual sounds of earth and

people and walking. And that is such a cool effect. So I think you're right in this case. Yeah. No country for old men, by the way, written by Kormac McCarthy, who also wrote Blood Meridian. Dig it. Dang it. Yeah. Layers, by the way.

Layers all over. Yeah. All right. Yeah, that's it. Psychological World. Oh, I didn't finish explaining what it is. So it's an album. You can get iTunes, Amazon music, whichever.

And they're, basically, you listen to it. if you're ever feeling a moment of weakness before you want to go, you know, work out. Before you want to do something or not do something. Or does, yeah, if you're making a decision and you're choosing the short-term payoff over the long-term payoff, essentially. Donuts. Eating donuts. Or just messing up your diet with donuts or sugary stuff. Or donuts.

Skipping. When I was going to airborne school, there was a sergeant major, and he was some black guy from Georgia. And for some reason, there's the Chattahoochee River down there. Yeah, and he says, Let me tell you what, you go down in that Chattahoochee river. So he's talking about if you're parachuting and you end up in the Chattahoochia.

You better watch out. There's snakes in the Chattahoochia. And there's alligators in the Chattahoochian and snakes. And vines that'll wrap you up in snakes. Snakes in the Chattahoochia. I always thought, you know what? Let's keep clear of the Chattahoochia because there's snakes in there. Right.

So is that kind of what you were trying to replicate? there with the psychological warfare? No, I forget what I just did, but it led me into that story. Yeah, that was a good story. The snakes in the Chattahoochee River. You got to beware for sure. Beware the sugar-coated lies.

I don't know. By the way, your impression of what was his name? I have no idea. So he was what's called a black hat at Army Airborne School. Back in the day, the Navy used to only go to the Army Airborne School. So you'd get done with seal training.

And you're all in good shape and feeling And then you show up at airborne school, which is a much, it's a less strenuous school than seal training. I mean, you're not special operations if you go there. I mean, pretty much anyone in the Army or very many people in the Army. So it's a three-week school. It's a good school. I mean, obviously the biggest thing you've got to overcome there is not physical. It's the fear of heights or whatever fear of jumping.

But yeah, so you go down there and the black hats are the guys that run airborne school. It's a totally professional thing. It was a lot of fun. And that sergeant major, though, he was awesome. He had the crazy eyes, you know what I mean? Sure. And the guys with crazy eyes. And the one other thing he said to me one day, because he liked me.

You know why he liked me? Because I was getting after it. Hell, yeah. And he said to me, he goes, hell. And I don't think he, I think he'd call me like Navy. Yeah, that's what he called me. He just called me Navy, right? Because they don't know what our ranks are.

So he's called me Navy. And I said, what's up? Yeah, I think he said clear. For some reason you said clear Sergeant Major or something. I know, clear a Sergeant Major. And he goes, let me tell you something. when you get back to your seal team one day i want you to come over to jay sock and we'll have fun killing motherfuckers now what do you think i was i was like 19 years old i was like i am so in

wherever you go sergeant major i'm with you i'm in the game so yeah that was a sergeant major black hat dang down at airborne school you kind of sound like uh tajmaha the singer I don't even know who that is He's a blues singer man I actually grew up with his family on Kauai He's a traveling guy But yeah he's a blues singer He's a what guy

He's a blues singer Oh okay but he's from Hawaii Well he's not from Hawaii But how can you really get a lot of blues When you live in Hawaii I think you'd be surprised man He sound like him Your little imitation there's good

We have fun killing motherfuck He never said that Yes You know Anyway there it is Psychological Warfare Sounds more more like Jocko, not the, not Taj Mahal.

And he tells you, he convinces you that making the long-term decision to stick with the discipline path, he gives you that boost in your head. So it's like, yeah, it's good. Anyway, check that one out. You want to get one of those or all over just the album's good.

It's been number one, straight up number one. Straight up number one. Since day one. Yeah. So everyone that's hooked it up. Thank you for, for, that's a good way to support the podcast too. Yeah.

Dig it. Because it costs $9.99 to buy the album. Yeah, the whole thing. And you know what? We were like, oh, should we, how do we do this? Hey, it's $9.99. Boom, done. Yeah.

You can get it. And you're supporting the podcast, so that's cool. Also, you know, another thing you can get, this jocco white tea. You can get it. It's in stock, by the way. And it's going to stay in stock. I'm a little nervous about saying that, but it's going to stay in stock. Because you know why?

I'm confident in saying that because I bought a lot of it. Because I don't play around. When I make a logistical error and we end up with no jocco white tea and everyone's angry about that, myself included, guess what? We're going to do something about it. So we have stock. We got a lot of stock. And you actually know that you need it because deadlifting. You know you need that 8,000 pound increase, which, by the way, is guaranteed.

It's guaranteed to happen. We're hearing about pull-ups now, too. People that are trying to get better at pull-ups are going from 10 to 12 pull-ups. Now we're getting numbers up around 147 minimum. And the other thing is the jiu-jitsu, if you're training the jiu-jitsu, and we're probably going to have to add a warning to the label of jocco-white tea. Because we've got people out there that are just randomly throwing kumiros. They can't stop it.

They're meeting somebody, boom, they're throwing a kumera on them, just on the regular, just landing kumeras all over the place. So you've got to watch out for that little warning. It's on Amazon. That's if you're here in America. If you're on international orders, go to eBay and get it from the official listing of the Jocko podcast. It's sold by pro-resourcing, which is actually going to change in the near future, because we're getting more involved in the actual, what's that called, the fulfillment of the tea?

We're joining some force. Streamlining. Yes, yes. While you're on Amazon also, there's a book called, extreme ownership referred to it a couple times tonight possibly by me and my brother Laif Babin and let me tell you what you do is you lead within your company or within your team you infiltrate with extreme ownership get a copy for your subordinates get one for your bosses spread the word because it will it will actually

improve your alignment and your effectiveness as a team it will And one thing I noticed I was at a company that we were working with, and it's very impactful. Just when people read the book, all of a sudden, they have a common language. They're referring to the problems in the same way. They recognize the problems clearly because they've seen it and they all understand it. And it improves the communication and the understanding between the groups because they know what the problems are because they've been identified in the book. So make that happen. And also you can get a little copy of a book.

pre-order it's called way of the warrior kid and you might be thinking oh well i'm not a kid i'm an adult doesn't matter you actually need this book too so there's a part in the book when uncle jake is trying to explain to his young nephew mark what discipline is and why it is important and that it starts discipline starts by getting up early in the morning And of course, Mark, he just thinks discipline is sort of like following the rules. So Uncle Jake has to do a little explaining to him, and this is what Uncle Jake says. That's one kind of discipline. But it isn't as simple as just following the rules people give you.

The most important part of discipline is following rules you set for yourself. It is doing things you might not always feel like doing things that make you better than Uncle Jake. started getting really intense, intense. Listen, if you want freedom from being bullied at school by Kenny, you have to have the discipline to go to jiu-dicey class and learn the skills to defeat him. If you want freedom from ridicule, when you do pull-ups at school, you have to have the discipline to train so that you can do pull-ups.

If you want freedom to swim in the water and enjoy your school field trip, you need the discipline to overcome your fear of the water and learn how to swim. What about school? Do you want to be free of being stumped on tests and not knowing the answers to the questions they ask you? Then you need the discipline to study and learn the material they teach you. When you get older, you're going to want financial freedom.

That means having enough money to do what you want without worrying about it. And the only way you're going to get financial freedom is by having financial discipline. by saving money and not wasting it on things you don't need. And that discipline starts with getting up early in the morning. So that's a little hit from my Uncle Jake right there. So Uncle Jake is, you know, he's clearly mentoring and helping his young nephew, Mark, who's got some shortfalls that he needs to correct. And Uncle Jake helps him do that.

So all kinds of lessons to be learned in there for all of us. and, you know, lessons about how to study, how to overcome fear, how to get stronger. So order yourself a copy and do it now. This is the thing. We want to do it now. Again, I pointed this out before. We want the publisher to print enough so that there's not a shortage, right? If everybody waits, then the printer goes, oh, I'm going to need, that's many copies.

And then everyone orders it when it comes out, and now we have a backup and everyone's angry. So order it now. that way we have enough when it rolls out and get one you know get one free the kids at school the classroom the library down the street get the word out there I wish I wish I had this book when I was a kid I wish I had this book when I was a kid so it actually comes out May 2nd and then by the way two days later after May 2nd after this book comes out it's gonna be time for the extreme ownership muster number zero zero two in New York City May 4th and 5th Marriott Marquis in New York City.

We're finalizing all the details right now. And I'm telling you what it's going to be awesome. We're going to get after it. And it's going to leave a mark. It will have an impact on you. It's intense. It's going to be powerful. And the other cool things you're surrounded by all these other people that are all in the game.

Out there crushing it. Every imaginable industry, every level of leader. ship just getting after it so sign up book your ticket get your hotel room and by the way I mean obviously Laif is going to be there I will be there so will J.P. Dinell of course echo Charles he's going to be rolling around cruising as he likes to say Dave Burke who's now a new to Ashland Front team J.P's been on Ashland Front team for a little bit you know basically came on the podcast and we said you know what we got to get you in the game So J.P. is in the game, obviously.

And Dave Burke, just coming on right now, done a couple, worked with a couple companies so far. Wasn't the Marine Corps, fighter pilot, top gun, top gun instructor, by the way. And also was with us with Tasking to Bruiser as the Anglico team leader in the Battle of Omadi. So awesome guy. He's going to be coming on the podcast here soon. I'm so can't wait for that. And also, I'm telling you, we will be hanging out with you talking, discussing things, overcoming problems. There's no backstage, no green room.

I'm not that guy. No, none of that. No curtain behind to hide behind, just us, all of us, all these guys I'm talking about, including Echo Charles. We brought Echo Charles up on stage last time. He didn't like that. No. He doesn't like public speaking. I think you need to give a speech,

like a five-minute speech about something. No, okay. So come on out and do that. And until the muster, until we do get there, in the meantime, you know that you can find us on the interwebs. On Twitter, on Instagram. And even you're going to find us right.

There on that Facebook, boy. Boja. We are there and we are interacting on the interwebs. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocka Willink and to close this out to the warriors out there in the world giving us freedom and protecting this country a country by the way where we can say whatever we want where we are blessed with unprecedented freedoms in thought and speech. Thanks to all you servicemen and service women out there in the world holding the line right now, protecting those freedoms and keeping evil at bay. And the police and law enforcement that do the same for us here at home and keep us safe from evil,

thank you for putting on your vest every day. And the firefighters and the EMTs that are standing by 24 hours a day. Think about that 24 hours a day to come and help us. And of course, we never say thank you. Or we never even see them until some unforeseen horror comes. and that's when you're there for us. So thank you for your vigilance. And to everyone else listening to this podcast,

thanks for going down this path with us, this path of learning and gaining knowledge and trying to get a better understanding of the world and trying to get a better understanding of ourselves so we can all recognize, and overcome our weaknesses and our faults. And we can all get out there and get after it. So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko.