Jocko Podcast 33 w/ Echo Charles | The Killing Zone | Fighting & Male Psyche | BJJ Frustration

This is Joo podcast number 33 with Echo Charles and me Joo Willink Good evening Ekko Good evening People say there is a line There’s a line between good and evil right and wrong between light and dark And that’s a nice clean way to think of things But the line can be hard to recognize It can get blurry It can get twisted by emotion and passion and by one’s own ego And in war that line is tested It’s pressed It becomes even more blurry It gets crossed and violated and sometimes abandoned And we can see that throughout history And we’ve talked about it here in the Japanese slave camps in Rwanda and Mi Those are a few examples but there are thousands of them And I’ve seen the line And I’ve seen men approach the line driven filled with fury and with hate And that fury needs an outlet And if it gets a purchase it can become unstoppable But it can also be controlled because there is a counter to all that evil There is the man that steps up and says “No no not today Not here not now We will not do that “ And the dichotomy of leadership and the dichotomy of war is so hard to balance Soldiers are trained and tasked to kill And yet they are also trained to be humane and fair and moral and good So how does a warrior reconcile those opposing forces that dichotomy? How does he know to balance? Godamn Thoughts rush through my mind as I try to decide what to do Women old men and kids obviously non-combatants But this is a free fire zone There are not supposed to be civilians in this area Yeah but dinks occasionally ignore those warnings about freef fire areas Maybe they’re the point element for Vietkong or NVA traveling behind them Maybe they’re supposed to give the warning if stopped It’s happened before In that case some of my men could come under fire and be killed or wounded 46 killed that one dink last evening and he had a Thompson There was a whole squad of Kong in that group There was some incoming fire when we made the LZ A dink tried to cross cross the dyke last night These people look innocent enough They may be carrying supplies for the Kong in the area food and/or ammo It’s a free fire zone Everyone is supposed to be considered enemy I’m responsible for my men They’ll get killed if I make the wrong decision These dinks coming toward us mean nothing to me My men mean everything What if the dinks aren’t innocent? My men depend on me to keep them alive I spoke softly to the men around me It’s a lick on them When I give the order open fire I brought up the M16 to sight in on the dinks Spag was standing to my right his M60 machine gun supported on his hip by a sling around his neck and shoulder He reached over and touched my arm His whispered voice reflected the agony of doubt in his face No sir you can’t Kids women He motioned toward the file of people coming towards us I felt ashamed Spag was right Wait one I whispered to the men around me I’ll call for them to surrender I felt relieved Capturing them was the best solution If they were the point for a VC group I would just make sure none of us was exposed to fire when we captured this point The dinks were almost to the intersection I stepped through the brush with some of my men Dungl Dungl I warned They were only 10 to 20 m from us They all glanced at us standing with our weapons trained on them We had them dead to rights They had no cover and no place to run to A perfect capture situation Almost in midstride they all moved with astonishing speed The two boys in the point split up The one ran past us heading down the trail past the schoolhouse The other boy the woman the old men started running back toward the bridge “Stop! Stop! Dung Lloy! Dung Loy!” I yelled to no avail I could not order the men to run after them It could be a trap Neither could I let them get away Why were they running? In the split second those thoughts ran across my consciousness I gave the order to open fire An irrevocable wave of death swept in front of us After the initial burst of gunfire I yelled “Ease fire “ The two women survived long enough to cross the bridge and enter one of the hooches Three of my men crossed over the bridge and threw grenades in the hooches We hurriedly took looked over the bodies on the trail since they were lying in the open We had no desire to be caught exposed The men reported that some of the dead had been carrying hand grenades in their ammo and ammo packs I felt somewhat relieved Those supplies could have been for could not have been for anyone but the Kong I received a report from the squad down the trail The firing had alerted them barely fast enough to fire at the teenager running toward them down the trail Someone hit him in the shoulder and knocked him down Surprisingly the boy had jumped up and run past the squad to safety somewhere in the brush I had no pleasure in reporting to Delta 6 that we had killed six dinks and one wounded I knew he would ask how many weapons we had captured I stared at the gray horizon for a long time before answering that the dinks were not carrying weapons only supplies and grenades I felt low This putrid war I thought of so many ways I could have done it differently So easy to think afterward After all now I knew there was no Dink squad behind on the trail This episode would be the darkest of my career I called my men together for a march up the slight hill to Delta 6’s position forcing the dinks out of my mind Now that’s from a book that we’re looking at tonight It’s called the killing zone My life in the Vietnam War by Frederick DS Now Vietnam it was a hard war obviously a wretched war for many reasons And the Mi massacre is almost the apex almost the pinnacle It almost seems like the essence of the war in many respects At least it’s viewed that way and it did have a huge strategic impact It was devastating to the war effort and something that should always be remembered is that tactical operations can have strategic impact Like Hackworth said the Mili massacre probably did more to end the war and hasten our departure from Vietnam than anything our communist enemy did And in a similar vein the war I was in in the mistreatment of the prisoners in Abu Gur prison in Iraq and the photographs that showed that mistreatment likely did more to fuel the insurgency in that country than anything al-Qaeda did Tactical actions can have strategic impact and and that actually happens in business too one bad customer experience for a customer that’s got some reach and there can really be a strategic impact And what the frontline troops do really does matter and what the frontline troops do is based on how they are led And clearly in MI lie there was a total lack of leadership especially from the moral and ethical perspective But this was not the norm Not by any stretch And and like I said it’s viewed sometimes as the representation of what the Vietnam War was like but it’s not And and I said this when we talked about MI Yeah America has done monstrous things in our history but we most certainly are not monstrous We are an amazingly benevolent nation especially now perhaps even to our own detriment But that’s why I wanted to talk about this book The Killing Zone to show the challenges of the Vietnam War and how American troops handled those challenges and pressures on a day-to-day basis and how they sometimes crossed that line if only for a moment but then most of the time brought themselves back from the brink of darkness us into the light Now let’s go back to the book here Going to the beginning when Fred DS young lieutenant in the army is flying into Vietnam At 2330 hours the continental big bird with the golden tail DC8 dropped through the night sky into the landing pattern over the black landscape of Vietnam 23 hours earlier 165 of us had been crammed aboard the commercial jet at the airport near San Francisco I looked around the cabin at the officer and enlist at the officers and enlisted men who had come from all over the United States to catch this flight from San Francisco How would they return? How would I return? I had graduated 6 months earlier from the US Army’s OCS program at Fort Benning Georgia And now I was soon to be leading men into combat I was 23 years old and I had been trained to lead Physically I thought I was ready Mentally I was as confident of myself as any young officer could be But underneath my confidence were the everpresent questions worry and curiosity about war and my role in it I was eagerly looking forward to finding answers I would not have to wait long So we’ve talked about that before When you’re stepping into a leadership role you’re not going to there’s a good chance you’re not going to feel 100% confident and that’s okay So he gets to Vietnam he gets assigned to uh fourth division and he actually he hadn’t heard of fourth division He hadn’t seen it in the papers He’s kind of asking “Hey why why why haven’t I seen that in the papers? What are they doing?” And he said “There’s no reporters up there where they’re working It’s too rough for him ” And he’s kind of saying you know I want to get I want to make sure I I get it on and and some of the old-timers are telling them one of them says “You’ll get a belly full of fighting up there son if that’s what you want “ So it’s one of those be careful what you wish for scenarios And uh I thought this was pretty pretty interesting You know we talk about Hackworth and the the hardcore Ricondos as the salute and reply The reply is no slack So here’s what they had here It was SOP to salute in the in the company area but not in the field When an enlisted man saluted he would say golden dragon sir The officer would return the the salute with right of the line I asked about this They told me that that the first of the 14th that’s the that’s the division he’s with The first of the 14th was an old infantry regiment steeped in tradition During the box rebellion in China the unit had fought bravely Afterward they adopted the symbol of a golden dragon The other part of the salute came from some some battle in the civil war Right before a large battle a staff officer asked a general where to put the first to the 14th The general had roared back put them to the right of the line where they belong The right of the line is where a leader traditionally puts his best men and units This comes down through military history When a man fought with the shield and sword the right arm or sword arm was unprotected The best fighter was put to the right to protect the sword arm of the man on his left Only the most trusted and best fighters held the position to the right Legit So he’s there in in kind of in the in the uh headquarters area for a little while and then he gets his indoctrination and then gets flown out He’s flies out into the field into where he’s going to be operating out of He gets up there and this is this is straight out of a movie right here Bugs swarmed around my face I squatted and looked at the men who looked right back at me It was my first view of American GIS who had spent several days in the jungle I stood there in sparkling crisp fatigues brand new boots new rifle clean shaven fresh haircut I even smelled clean My helmet camouflage cover didn’t have a mark on it nor did I The two men opposite me were filthy Their fatigues were torn and they had scratches all over their skin two or three days of growth on their beard and dark circles under their eyes They looked tired and they smelled the high heaven So that’s that’s right out of a movie The boot lieutenant coming in to take over He’s in his pressed camies looking all squared away and these guys look like they’re living in hell And they introduce the the company commander And this guy you’re going to see throughout the book This guy Captain Cells was an ROC officer 26 years old son of son of a father killed in Korea So that’s you know the guy’s dad got killed in Korea and he’s during the Vietnam War he’s joining up and and leading men in a combat He’s a company commander And if you remember from from the book platoon leader you remember he didn’t even meet the company commander So his direct boss didn’t even meet him for weeks He’d been in the field for weeks before he even met him And here’s this this company commander obviously much more squared away Walks him around introduces him to everybody He’s giving him a heads up You know this is the way it’s supposed to be And you know he’s getting told “Look there’s enemy all around ” And you might have heard in that intro piece that I read I was talking about Delta 6 And and here’s a little piece about that He informed me that his radio signal was Delta 6 So that’s the Delta Company Commander Delta 6 Lieutenant Smart the first platoon leader was Delta 16 The second platoon leader was Delta 26 Sixes were the commanders of the unit And this is a tradition that holds true in the in the Army and the Marine Corps today And it’s pretty cool When you’re when you’re in the field you would hear someone call for the six and and that means we want to talk to the guy that’s in charge out there Their seconds in command were known as fives For instance Delta 15 was the first platoon sergeant And this is uh you know goes on to talk a little bit more about Captain Cells who’s asking him about his family He’s getting to know him and he’s you know uh uh DS had a had a wife and two little girls back in Illinois And so again you’re getting the impression that Cells is a guy that’s trying to get to know his people and and learn about him which is which is the way a leader what a leader should be doing Now these guys are out and he’s talking again This is This is something straight out of a straight out of a movie Darkness quickly engulfed us My hooch mates watched in astonishment as I pulled out mosquito netting and spread it over my poncho liner and air mattress They were a gas that I carried so much extra weight “No ” I answered “This is all the good stuff ” Their amazement grew as I revealed three changes of underwear and fatigued clothes “Wait until the next day ” they scoffed “When the sun sun and heavy pack will drag me down The jungle would exact a toll for every ounce I carried We’ll see I answered Not a good answer Lieutenant Smart said “Yeah you’ll see You’ll see that the only change of clothes you’ll carry is being an extra pair of socks You’ll learn to live in one set of jungle fatigues until they rot off you or rip too badly to wear “ That’s that that actually reminds me when we were in uh my my first deployment to Iraq we we had you know three sets of camies and just wore them rotated them in Romani the the OP tempo was so high and and the conditions of fighting We had to order new camies within within a couple weeks of being there Guys had destroyed camies You run across the street they’re getting you know dragging people and they were just ruining their their camies So that was another indicator in Rammani that we were in a totally different scenario than I was on my first deployment to Iraq Back to the book My first days on combat control combat patrol introduced me to the vissitudes of war 10-foot deep pungy pits Wait a minute vines that collected around the feet and legs until their combined strength stopped you and you had to say wait a minute while you untangled or cut yourself loose The hot sun beating down us on us as we marched around with 70 pound packs The sweat pouring off us The bugs so thick our faces that around our faces that we sometimes inhaled them The and the physical agony of forcing tired muscles to keep going It was a search and destroy mission which meant we searched all the hooches we found and then burned them down Whether a single farmer’s hooch or a whole village all were burnt The few Vietnamese we found in the area were women children and old men who had been left behind When we started to burn their particular hooch they would start wailing crying and pulling at our clothes We didn’t harm the people but the orders were to destroy all the dwellings So we did The first time I saw a Vietnamese family go into hysterics when their hooch was set on fire I I was unsure of whether burning their home would accomplish our mission The mission was to deny the enemy use of the hooches to destroy any food we found and to teach the people a lesson about supporting the enemy But I quickly got used to it and accepted that this was one way to win the war And that’s you know if you if you talk to anybody anybody knowledgeable about true counterinsurgency this is not a great plan to go in and basically abuse the populace Now if you know that they’re supporting the the insurgents sure you want to you want to disrupt that but often times they’re not dis they’re not supporting the insurgents because they want to They’re they’re supporting the insurgents because they’re fear for their lives That’s the way it was in in Iraq when when I was there So back to the book Sheldon Bran took the opportunity later that day to explain in the you in this unit everyone called the enemy and ultimately all outsiders dinks So that’s their word that they use And I found this interesting He says ultimately all outsiders And you’ve you’ve heard me and you’ve heard Leif and in the book we we talk about moosh That’s what we called the enemy We called the enemy moosh But what’s interesting is here it says all outsiders And that’s exactly what we did If when we were getting resistance from you know up the chain of command down the chain of command guess what we called them? Mooj We’d say “Oh the boss is saying this I can’t believe that Mooj ” So it became the word that we used every to all outsiders And that’s that’s unit cohesion And there’s some dehumanization of the enemy there obviously but the fact that you end up using the same slang word to to describe anybody that’s against you right is is is interesting Back to the book it turned out that the enemy started calling us dinks first because it was an insulting or demeaning term that meant hairy man from the jungle We had just turned the word around and started calling them dinks At least that was the story I don’t know if that’s true or not Never never read didn’t do any research on that one I saw the face of the enemy for the first time He had been machine gunned down by one of our gun crews The powerful weapon had thrown a hail of bullets into the brush where we had spotted him When we got to his position I saw for the first time the death of a soldier The machine gun crew had done a good job The young soldier’s green combat uniform body was riddled with bullets He was sprawled across his bicycle with his face toward the sky At last I had before me the enemy I had been trained to destroy He was a young man for whom the war and life had ended One evening a jet was returning to base and needed a target to get rid of his unexpended bomb load The captain called the forward air controller and gave him the coordinates of a sniper 300 meters away who had been pestering us off and on for three days As the jet pulled up after dropping napal on the sniper’s position we could hear the pop pop pop of the sniper firing at the jet The men talked about the gall of that sniper as I watched the napalm burn itself out I wondered what would drive a man to stand up to death in so remarkable a manner Again you’re dealing with a hardened enemy You’re getting napal dropped on your position and as you burn to death you’re trying to shoot down a jet fighter Back to the book Sheldon Brand was worth his weight and gold to me in running that platoon He even introduced me to the platoon motto It’s a lick A lick is a lick on a young man’s ass Lieutenant you remember when you were a kid and you did something wrong or something got up that you got the blame for? The old man would give you a licking with a switch or a belt? Yeah I sure remember getting lickings Well when something goes wrong it’s a lick on you You see anything that goes wrong will give you a lick And over here you’ll get plenty of licks My RTO was the other most important man to the platoon His job was to carry the radio and stick to me like a shadow The radio was our link with literally everything outside our platoon from supplies to survival Without a working radio and a good RTO a platoon leader and the platoon were as good as lost in this war My RTO man a skinny kid 5′ 11 in tall was next to perfect for his job He loved to know what was going on and his job was akin to the central switchboard operators So that’s the RTO That’s was that was actually when I was an enlisted SEAL That’s what I was So I was uh I always had that same attitude When you’re the when you’re the RTO you always know what’s going on because the the officer telling you you’re right next to him You’re listening to what he’s saying So you always know what’s going on And that was a real good education for me Growing my whole career always being next to the to the guy that was running the platoon Talking a little bit about the troops here My squad leaders were first squad del cowboy type from Wyoming Second squad Porter a light a slightly built black from East St Louis Third squad Jose a skinny short swarthy Puerto Rican Fourth squad Gallagher a medium built red head from the New England states And of course there was the platoon medic Doc The platoon makeup was whites blacks Puerto Ricans Mexicans Americans and an Indian and a Japanese American All of them from 18 to 21 years old In a combat platoon we were evaluated by our peers on our ability to help the platoon survive and not on our racial backgrounds A combat platoon pulled together and was tight with each other with no room for the soldier who wouldn’t do his share So I you know it’s always good to just point that out These are just people a cross-section of America And these these are pretty stereotypical right? A cowboy from Wyoming you know this is this is stereotypical stuff And that’s that’s one thing that the military So when I joined I grew up in New England right? When I joined the Navy and I got to California and I went to the enlisted man’s club on NAB Coronado the Gator Gardens back in the day I was 18 years I was 19 years old and I showed up you know because there’s a club So it’s a club on base right? And so I go I’m going to go there People are saying “Hey we’re going to go to the the club ” So I go “Okay well let’s go see what’s going on there ” So I walk over to the club and as I’m kind of standing outside I see two guys walk by with with jeans on with cowboy boots with big belt buckles and cowboy hats and like a Wrangler shirt And I was kind of thinking to myself “Oh that that’s is there some kind of is it Halloween? Is are these guys getting dressed up for something?” And um again this is pre- internet man I mean and and and then I see a couple more guys go by and it turned out it was country western night but at the club that you at the club but I had never seen a person in you know I come from a a small town in in Connecticut and there’s there’s there’s just no cowboys up there I mean and and interestingly there’s farms and there’s people that raise cattle and there’s people that grow you know have have farms but they don’t have cowboy boots and they don’t wear cowboy hats And so it’s just that’s what I that’s what I was thinking about when I read this is just how you take all these different people from all over the place They had no idea You have no idea what other people are like And again this is pre- internet You know when I joined the Navy we didn’t get to Google We didn’t watch YouTube videos cuz you you’re exposed to the entire planet and and galaxy through YouTube Yeah First time you saw a real cowboy huh? Mhm It is I thought I thought they were I thought they were dressed up I thought they were dressed up Yeah It’s crazy It is kind of crazy And then you know I ended up I mean in in TU Bruiser we had all kinds of guys from Texas and there’s all kinds of cowboys down in Texas Uh like I mean Chris Chris Kyle was like a legit whatever rodeo dude and Leif Le’s LA’s an absolute cowboy Yeah absolutely I mean there’s all kinds of cowboys in there Yeah So all right Now we we’re going to advance a little bit This is the first time that that DS is actually in charge Um he did a little turnover with the with the former platoon commander He takes charge of the platoon and he’s doing security for the bridges for some bridges that are out kind of away from the main camp And they’re out there to prevent landmines and gather intel and kind of set up a checkpoint and and they’re there They’re they’re actually staying out there So they would they would set up by these bridges And as they’re getting set up for the first time I’m going to the book An explosion ripped the air behind me followed immediately by a scream My body instinctively threw my threw itself against the sandbags as my mind shouted “Mortar attack ” My eyes registered the scene of men frozen in shocked wonderment their eyes staring behind me Man was directly in front of me and the trackmen were off in the background crouching where they where they were when the explosions went off So they’re actually out there with some tracked vehicles Quickly turning around my eyes swept An awful catastrophe One of the claymores had gone off shattering forever the lives of the three men in front of it Jesus Christ Was it a mortar? No One of our claymores went off Get those men quick No No Wait There’s another claymore out there What the set it off? What about the other one? So imagine this you you get to a position and you want to put out claymore mines And if you don’t know what a claymore mine is it’s a it’s a directional blasting mine that you set off by command detonation So you have a little a little thing that you squeeze and when you squeeze this thing it sends an electrical charge down the wire into the claymore detonates a blasting cap the the claymore explodes and everything in front of it is going to die Well they had set up the claymores and then they were going to put some barbed wire out And as they were putting the barbed wire out there was a storm electrical storm you know thunderstorm And the static electricity in the air actually set off the claymore So it killed or it it did some serious damage Back to the book Only a few seconds had passed since the explosion One of my men and I dashed to the other claymore frantically fumbling unscrewing the plug and holding the blasting cap throwing it away from the claymore Then I rushed back to the radio Two men were applying first aid The other positions were covered by the men assigned to them They had stayed in place during the action Good training I thought as I fumbled with my map It was folded in a plastic radio bag All of us used to carry maps in Delta 6 This is 16 Over 16 This is Delta 6 over This is 16 I need dust off There’s been an accident resulting in three peanuts over We tried to say nothing over the radio that could be understood by the enemy Thus we used code words for certain things A Kool-Aid was a dead soldier and a peanut was a wounded soldier This is delta 6 What the hell happened? Over This is 16 Static electricity in the air set off a claymore while three trackmen were putting out barbed wire Over This is delta 6 What’s your position? Over Now what would he ask me that for? I was on the bridge he’d assigned to me Let’s see We’re here So I read writing up real easy just like all the training So he’s looking at his map He’s trying to figure out where he is Of course that was my first responsibility where men had been hurt So maybe that accounted for what happened next in spite of training Lieutenant Lieutenant you’ve got to get a dust off out here quick This man’s got a bad head wound said one soldier as they brought the wounded over to me Dirty black clouds with lightning crashing around added to confusion as the wind howled over from all directions Huge raindrops started to spatter down This is 16 I’m at coordinates 298028 over I read them out This is delta 6 Are you sure of that? Over This is 16 Uh let’s see Yeah it’s that’s it All right there 16 You better check that again According to what you gave me you’re in the South China Sea Over Oh did he sound mad? God damn I’ve done this a million times The thought ran through my mind as a sweat broke out The wounded were groaning The storm was reaching gigantic proportions And the track sergeant was demanding to know where that that dust off was “Concent concentrate Fred Concentrate ” I said to myself while staring at the meaningless blob of colors whirls and numbers So he’s looking at his map He’s just trying to figure it out Suddenly everything gelled in perfect clarity Delta 6 This is 16 You’re right My coordinates are 28028 I need a dust off fast Over 16 This is delta 6 I know where you are I just wanted to see if you could figure it out I already called the dust off So Captain Cells this that’s who he was talking to Captain Cells that’s uh that’s Delta 6 the commander of the company And even in this pressure situation he’s trying to make sure that the guy is thinking He’s in opportunity to think for the first time under pressure and he already called the dust off but he’s still putting the test to him and seeing how he operates under that kind of stress and pressure another uh following situation They’re they’re kind of sitting in this location and they see a woman start to start to approach where they had some some equipment and she was looked like she was going to steal some stuff and you know it’s kind of no big deal Okay she’s going to steal some whatever some ponchos or something Well then they see her what she picks up as a case of grenades and they’re thinking “Wait a second Now this just got really bad because if she was stealing a poncho okay no big deal But if she’s stealing grenades that’s stuff that’s going to be used to come back and kill them But again because we have a guy with a with a conscience you know a guy that sees where the line of darkness is and he doesn’t want to cross it So instead of just shooting her which he could have done he loads a a magazine of tracer rounds into his into his weapon and he starts shooting them around her kind of warning shots and then eventually starts shooting He’s a good shot He starts shooting at the little rope that holds the case that she’s holding on to He starts shooting at that rope Shoots at it like five or six times Finally hits the rope Kind of hits her hand She drops it She runs off Again just trying to show the discretion that this guy’s using as a real contrast to to the Mi episode Now speaking of that they’ve a little later on they roll up some prisoners One is an old man and one is a young man and this old gay-haired sergeant starts going after him So they got these two prisoners They’re captured and here’s the sergeant So you’re the that zap my buddies in the tank The old gray here sergeant snarled without warning He swung a heavy fist into the face of the old man knocking him down The other fist swung into the face of the younger man knocking him down beside the old man The sergeant was screaming and bellowing as he pummeled the two men on the sand They rolled into balls for protection but were hampered by their tied hands I ran from the road yelling my two men to pull the sergeant off the prisoners They grabbed him by his soldiers as he fought them to get back to the Vietnamese He lashed out with his foot at the prisoners catching one of them in the side “What the hell are you doing Sergeant? Those men are my prisoners ” I exclaimed His face was red with fury as he yelled back at me “You had no right to take those stinking Kong prisoners ” He smelled of beer that he had drunk “You should have killed those like they killed that other tank crew ” “Fuck these men are tied up We don’t know who they are ” I yelled back I was saved by the sound of Lieutenant Nutson’s voice breaking over the argument “Calm down Sergeant Go back to your tent ” So that the other lieutenant was the commander of the tanks Again I’m pointing this out He’s new in country He sees somebody beating up a prisoner They had just lost a one of the tanks to a mine earlier And obviously the greyhaired sergeants pissed that he wants to take it out on these guys But you know calmer cooler heads prevailed in that situation Now speaking of minds minds back to the book minds continue to be laid in the road at irregular intervals It was a fact of life but the terror of an explosion never failed to send a shiver through our guts No matter how many times we heard them whatever we were doing our heads would jerk around It was terrifying to hear the explosion see the ugly gray and black crow cloud as it ripped into the air see dark pieces of metal canvas machinery and human beings flying in the blossom of death out from the center of destruction And this one big mine happens and he’s going to check it out It hits a truck It hits a vehicle I approached the twisted wreck It was very disheartening to see the smoking wreck which had once been the carrier of human beings There were wisps of smoke drifting upward from the Hulk As we approached closer we saw parts of the driver’s body mangled beyond recognition in the cab and on the ground The main portion of the driver was only recognizable because we knew that was what it was supposed to be My men ran toward the still living being huddled in the rice patty muing over and over that his leg was gone The scene of desolation brought about the true impact of the Vietnam War to me There was no enemy to fire at There was no nothing to retaliate against At a distance the traffic of vehicles and Vietnamese watched All that remained was the messy job of cleaning up while thinking that this could happen to us A small part of our mind tried to retain its sanity by reminding itself over and over that it would never happen to us It can happen to everyone else but it would not happen to me With that in mind we started scraping up what was left preparing it for the plastic body bag Now eventually they they go from guarding the bridges to where they start doing patrols out in the jungle and ambushes out in the jungle and direct action missions out in the jungle And at this point they’re out in the jungle And I’ll go to the book My platoon and I had not shaved for three or four days Delta 6 was a bear about shaving combat patrol or not Just because we lived like animals didn’t mean we had to look like them was his way of thinking Throwing my fatigue jacket across a bush I grabbed my shaving gear and told Spag and V Venor to accompany me We would guard each other as we shaved So the the company commander’s coming out and they’re unshaving and they’re like “Okay we got to shave real quick ” But again you can see that Captain Cells has a real influence And you can see that that discipline it carries over And when you let it slack and but then you go visit your troops and they have to get back in line it brings them back to humanity It makes them reminds them that they because think about it that shaving is something you do in the military every single day So when all of a sudden you’re out in the field you start losing that You start slipping away from that and things start other things start slipping away as well They get into a uh they get into some firefights out there and at one point he gets wounded and I’m going to the book After Holmes had finished banding my arm I put on my fatigue jacket and lit a cigarette I felt good I had only been in country a few months and I had my second Purple Heart The first one had been from a wound received in October To top it off I had been wounded twice in one day Shot in the ear in the morning and hit with a grenade shrapnel in the afternoon Luck was with me All three wounds had been slight Now you can say luck when you get shot in the ear and you are lucky for sure but that’s that’s a real that’s a real eye opener indicating that you realize how close you were to dying And I had guys get shot in the helmet and and they didn’t like it one bit cuz that’s real close Someone got real close to to getting you Now going forward more there’s a there’s a battle going on and the company’s out in the field and they’re not directly involved in the battle So they get told “Okay we want you to go set up where the where we think the the VC is going to run to where we think they’re going to run you guys set up a blocking force so that way when the VC runs into you you ambush them and take them out ” So they’re kind of maneuvering to go set that up His platoon is maneuvering to set that up and we’ll go to the book After 15 minutes or so we were approximately halfway down the ridge The captain gave me a call Dragon 6 had decided it would be better if I halfed my platoon Marching the two elements in opposite directions in order to cover a larger area I was dead set against this My platoon was below strength and dividing it would be asking two reinforced rifle squads to defend hundreds of acres of jungle against a foe of unknown size So Dragon 6 is above the company commander This is now the battalion commander And so now you’re getting an order from the battalion commander So it’s you know you’re a young lieutenant platoon commander and you’re getting told to do this and he doesn’t feel good about it Back to the book But orders were orders especially from Dragon 6 I passed back the ward for Sheldon Brand to come up I was pouring over my map and compass when Sheldon Bran reached me The battle was full full-blown It sound It sound provided background noise as I briefed Shelly on the situation and our orders I don’t like it sir I know No I don’t either but it’s a lick You got your map and compass Good So there’s all kinds of reasons why they don’t like this idea Uh obviously one that he already stated was that you know you take your platoon and you cut them in half That’s that’s just you don’t have the same fighting capability at all I think they had one one heavy machine gun in each squad So now you got basically they’re down to two squads because they were under strength So we’re talking one heavy machine gun And by the way if somebody gets wounded you know you got your wounded guy And if you’re going to carry that guy it takes two or three guys to carry the guy So that’s four guys gone So you could very easily be outnumbered outmanned and outgunned by the enemy So he doesn’t like this idea On top of that I will tell you he doesn’t talk about it here When you split up in a situation like this it’s becomes very difficult to do command and control And now you got two elements that are weaker size and you’re you’re no longer able to support each other That’s the that’s the premise of cover and move Cover and move means you want to be close enough that you can support each other You don’t want to split far apart where you can’t help each other if something happens Well that’s what they’re getting told to do They don’t like it And but they do it And maybe he should have protested more but he’s getting he’s getting orders from the battalion commander and he says “Okay let’s do it ” And of course within a couple minutes of doing it they lose radio contact So now they can’t they can’t hear each other and they’re starting to march apart Finally they get radio uh they get connected on the radio again They get comms again And it sounds like this 15 This is six Have you figured out where you are yet? This is 15 Negative So Shelly with his squad is lost Doesn’t know where he is Okay now the lieutenant’s all set up though They’re they’re in their position where they’re thinking the enemy might come by They’re set up to attack them And here we go back to the book Lieutenant Porter Ris whispered as he reached my side We We hear noises to our front Men are moving across in front of us in the jungle Hold on a second Porter 15 This is six The sound of the battle should be on your right if you’re going in the right direction Where are the sounds? Over This is 15 Negative on the right The sounds are on the left Over 15 Did you just say the sounds are on your left? I was squeezing the handset so hard my knuckles were white Affirmative Affirmative Jesus Christ 15 I horsely whispered intensely into the mouthpiece You’re heading in our direction I could hear the sounds of men moving through the jungle below us I whispered to Porter “Get back down there and tell the men to hold their fire That may not be Dinks after all Hurry Porter had heard the conversation with Shelley and quickly turned to our to carry out my order He couldn’t yell because the sounds were coming from the Dink soldiers His yell would put us in jeopardy As Porter started toward the crew the machine gun crew opened fire The harshness of the guns multiple explosions ripped across my thoughts as its sound echoed through the handset I was holding next to my ear The sound of Americans swearing and screaming rebounded from the jungle below and from my handset Cease fire I screamed Cease fire So he can actually hear his guys getting shot by his own guys We have a blue on blue Porter and I were running to the gun crew Both of us yelling “Cease fire Cease fire ” The sound of their gun blanketing the screams in front of them Abruptly the gun quit firing I yelled into the jungle Shellyley is that you? Yes Yes Stop firing Don’t fire I was answered by many voices I stood there an instant The horrible realization that I had fired on my own men swept over me like a wave from an ice cold hell The gun crew looked at me their faces filled with shock I ran leaping and falling down to the brush line where my men were asking the question “Anybody hit for Christ’s sake?” Gallagher yelled back as I burst into a small clearing One man the point man So there you go Blue on blue Another reason why if you don’t have to separate your forces you don’t you don’t separate your forces unless you have to And when you do it you do it with extreme caution And we we’ve I think every book we we talk about blue on blue It happens in all these books It happens in my book And some of these descriptions right here I recognize those 100% When he says “The horrible realization I’d fired on my own men swept over me like a wave from an ice cold hell ” Yeah I totally recognize that And the fact that he says the gun crew looked at me their faces filled with shock When I when I explained to my guys in the field like that was a blue-on blue Their faces were just complete shock If you’re in the military if you’re in law enforcement be very careful when you split your forces It’s if it just multiplies the challenges Sometimes it is necessary but you got to keep control over it And now we go to where he’s calling for a medevac for his for his wounded guy Delta 6 This is one six Over This is delta 6 Over This is one six I need a dust off for a peanut We run into a little action Over This is delta 6 What do you mean a little action? What’s going on? What happened? Over My knees felt weak and my stomach was sour This is six We had a little difficulty with with the terrain and uh I am 15 over What? How the did you do that? Six You mean you ambushed your own men? What kind of outfit are you running up there? That’s the most asine thing I’ve ever heard of You get your head out of your ass One six and get that platoon straightened up You got that? Over This is 16 Affirmative Over Ah 16 Give me your coordinates The dust off’s on its way How bad is your peanuts? Over This is 16 Not too bad He’ll lose a couple of toes but everybody else is okay Over All right 16 Settle down Out He was more gentle with the last transmission because I’m sure he heard my voice and showed the strain I was feeling Whatever the reason I welcome the sound of his voice Perhaps he understood better than I thought what had happened So he comes at him real hard He realizes that the guy feels horrible and and and then he kind of backs off and says “Settle down ” He also knows he’s got to stay in the game He’s got to get him to stay in the game And there’s a nightmare of a video on YouTube of and there’s actually it’s from a documentary but there was a really bad blue on blue in the first Gulf War where uh Apache gunship led up lit up uh I think it was a Bradley some kind of APC That’s the one It’s a nightmare But you can hear the one guy that fired They’re saying “Hey you got to get back in position You know hold the line basically ” and he’s like “I just killed my own guys I want to come back ” And they’re they’re saying negative And so that’s basically what this what Captain Cells is doing here saying “Hey listen Okay I’m pissed but guess what? Calm down Settle down Get your together ” And he says “Out ” And and and by the way for those folks that aren’t military over when you say over at the end of a transmission on the radio it means you expect a reply When you say out there’s no reply expected So like when we end this podcast I say out because it’s over You don’t don’t say anything back to me It’s over I don’t say over And and sometimes you’ll hear people say over and out in the military That doesn’t you don’t say that It doesn’t make any sense So when you hear that in a movie know that they know that they are cheesy Is that kind of like when you when they hang up the phone on the movie it goes and you hear the dial tone That doesn’t really happen That doesn’t really happen either Yeah Yeah Same thing I trudged back back to the book I trudged back to my position 15 and his men following Man handed me a a can of coffee I chain smoked my cigarettes and drank coffee while the platoon expanded into a larger perimeter I stood facing the mountain the battle still raging on 15 walked over to me still shaken from his experience He told me how he was sorry that he had gotten to me in such a Dutch with the captain and we discussed the operation going over his mistake while we attempted to figure out ways to keep it from happening again if we were ever split up Shelley and I had been through too much together for me to blame him for what had happened I told him so and we let it go at that We had been lucky Besides I blamed myself for what had happened The responsibility for any unit’s actions ultimately rests with its commander The leader got the glory when things worked out and he took the blame when they didn’t That went with the job When it came right down to it the men were my responsibility and I had failed them today Little bit of extreme ownership If you read the book Extreme Ownership that Leif and I wrote the opening chapter that’s what it’s about Blue on blue and doing exactly what what Lieutenant DS did right there Taking ownership of what the mistakes were made in the battlefield Back to the book there’s a couple guy well actually not yet They’re they link up with another with another platoon and now they’re having a conversation Uh DS is having a conversation with another officer named Anderson A dink was lying next to us as we talked He had a black ace of spades stuck onto his fist Hey Anderson what’s that all about? That’s so the dinks know what outfit them up over here Look around Most of the dinks got those in their hands Sure enough the dinks were all holding an ace of spades That’s a good idea but where’d you get all the aces? One of the guy’s moms works in a card store so he wrote home asking her to send her a couple packs of nothing but the ace of spades Why did we want to kill Dinks? After all we had mostly been law-abiding citizens back in the world and we were taught that to take another man’s life was wrong Somehow the perspective got twisted in a war If the government told us it was all right and in fact a must to kill members of another government’s people then we had the law on our side It turned out that most of us like to kill other men Some of the guys would shoot at a dink as much as they would at a target Some of the men didn’t like to kill a dink up close The closer the killing the more personal it became Others in the platoon like to kill in close A few even liked to torture the dinks if they had a prisoner or cut the dead bodies with knives in a frenzy of aggression A few didn’t like to kill at all and wouldn’t fire their weapons except to protect their buddies Mostly we all saw it as a job and rationalized it in our own way Over it all ran the streak of anger or fear that for brief moments ruled us all My job as platoon leader was to control the spectrum of emotions to guide the men toward survival I didn’t believe in torturing or in allowing a dink to die a lingering death In the jungle we never took prisoners if we could help it Every day we spent in the jungle eroded a little more of our humanity away Prisoners could escape to become our enemy again Hence no prisoners The philosophical arguments in favor of man’s ability to resist the slide into barbarism sound noble and rational in a classroom or at a cocktail party But when the enemy is bearing down on you bent on taking your life away from you it’s not his country against your country not his army against your army not his philosophy against your philosophy It’s the fact that that son of a is trying to kill you and you’d better kill him first That’s a reality right there Now going back to tactics a little bit back to the book there was a spot about midway down the mountain marked in blue That meant something bigger than a stream If I were an enemy commander that would be a perfect spot for a camp High mountains on three sides a good water supply thick jungle growth and escape path in any directions If he decided on that location the enemy commander would be counting on attack from the valley up towards his location He would have his back guarded but not very heav he heavily Or so I reasoned I just like that because you can see he’s getting his mind in the mind of the enemy He’s thinking about what would He’s looking at the map He sees a stream He sees valley He sees good good uh covered positions from three sides He’s thinking “Okay this is what the enemy must be thinking right here “ Now the the fighting continues and and as always you know I’m burning through book I mean this is a this is a 250 page book and I’m reading you know what maybe 20 pages from it So there’s so much action going on and and so many good lessons to learn Obviously I can’t cover them all That’s why you can buy this book yourself as you should But here we go I’m going to a point here where they’ve been in a firefight They got three wounded One of the guys lost an arm One of them’s unconscious and they’re getting they have a helicopter that’s come in and the helicopter’s lowered down a cable and they’re lifting the guys out to get him to a medevac situation Back to the book The signal was given and the cable pulled him off the ground About halfway up he waved to all of us grinning like a cheshure cat Blood dripped on us It was a picture I shall always hold in my mind A man dangling from a cable holding a stick fastened to a tourniquet on the stump of his leg waving at his comrades with the other hand A cigarette dangling from his lips Six This is getting hairy up here We’re starting to take fire the pilot reported Hold on just one more Spag and I lifted the unconscious man up while we slid the vest onto him Someone handed me the cable which I hooked onto the ring The unconscious man was winched upward dangling like a limp doll at the end of a cable Spag and I stood underneath watching this final exodus As the crewman reached out to grab the man something went wrong The man had become unhooked and somehow fell through 50 ft of sky towards us We jumped back as the man fell in a heap at our feet The medic and I pulled the man over He stopped breathing He goes on to say “The attrition rate on our side was terrible on our morale Although we killed and wounded many of the NVA we never knew how much it hurt them It seemed there was an unlimited number to take their places But on our side when we lost a man we all knew and it wore heavily on our minds The constant marching and fighting demanded two things of us strength and absolute reliability Now they’re moving out on another operation and there’s one of the one of the soldiers named Yodar Yoder was the point man He was experienced and full of good humor due to his promotion to door gunner A good man to have on point any day He was aggressive and unafraid even though he was going in soon there was no question of putting someone else in his place on point It was his turn and he would not have it any other way So he’s getting promoted to door gunners He’s going to get pulled out of the field He’s going to fly around in a helicopter Um you know relatively safe compared to being in the field He reminded me of a hillbilly with his coarse language mannerisms and humor I was always asking him when he was going to get that front tooth replaced That missing tooth made him look more like a hillbilly than anything else He always laughed and said “Fuck sir I ain’t about to let them army dentist work on me no that would be a lick on me “ So they continue their patrol and they’re coming up on this kind of flat area and Yodar crept forward in a crouch looked back at me and grinned I grinned back and nodded my head Yodar stepped over a tree route holding up part of the small gully bank At that moment all hell broke loose as a Chic machine gun strafeed the point element Yoda was hitting the body and fell forward into the gully The machine gun acted as a key which triggered a complete ambush We walked into a classical U-shaped ambush with the machine gun being at the base of the U So this is we we used to call this a fire sack when you’re get ambushed and you’re completely surrounded by the enemy and that’s where they’re that’s where they are Starts with this machine gun hitting Yodor and then just breaks out Explosions machine guns and rifle bullets ripped through the air and ricocheted off the ground and trees around us The noise was overwhelming Men were screaming and yelling trying desperately to get cover or screaming when they were hit or thought they were hit which was almost as terrifying We still not seen any of the enemy in the thick growth around us Most of us in the point play dead I lay trying to get my thinking organized as to what to do So you’re just taking massive ambush and you’re laying there thinking “What am I going to do?” I could hear Yodar crying on the other side of the route where he’d fallen He cried out for me to come and get him Lieutenant I’ve been hit I’ve been hit bad I’m dying Please come and get me Please come and get me I turned my head in his direction Twigs and bark from trees were falling like snow all around us as the terrible shrapnel and firepower ripped through the jungle around us I was terrified So they’re they’re pinned down and he’s actually ends up going to try and help one of the other guys first a guy named Belle And he gets to Belle under covering fire and he says “Bell was able was able to help me but couldn’t see anything He limped and crawled I pushed and swore as we continuously fell in our flight back up the hill As I pulled him up the hill one of my feet was shot up from from underneath me I’d been shot in the heel one of the bullets knocking off a piece of my boot heel And then and the force had knocked me down I got up again and felt a tremendous blow to my hip knocking me down Hit again I thought Finally I got Belle behind a rock Doc was there and started working on him I lay on my back looking up at the sky through the jungle canopy not believing I had actually made it down there and back Yodar was still down there And although I had witnessed the bullets hitting him I didn’t want to leave I had to be absolutely sure he was dead I would never forgive myself if I pulled back and he was still alive I was ready to call artillery in on our position if we were overrun And that’s like the ultimate the ultimate game over move We’re going to be overrun by the enemy Okay here we go I’m going to call call all ordinance on my position Drop But luckily the fire subsides The one of the other platoon had come to their help And now that other platoon shows up and the enem is pretty much gone and it stopped shooting We all stood up A couple of my men and I ran down to where 36’s point was standing over Yodar I leaped over the edge of the gully and stopped at Yodar’s body Kneeling down I turned his body over He had died with his head lying downhill His face was a dark blue from the blood which gravity had pulled into the downhill portion of his body There wasn’t much blood on his body but numerous bullet holes were cut into his fatigues covering his stomach and chest His eyes were closed I looked at him for a moment my thoughts running back to our many conversations in the past Once we had discussed whether we would go to the aid of one of our fellow soldiers if he was in trouble I had told him I would always respond to one of my men if they needed help He had replied it would be a lick on me I wondered if he had known that I tried to get to him He was the first man under my command to die I looked up to see some of my platoon and 36’s platoon standing over a dink body in the gully 36 had an Indian his platoon and I had an Indian in my platoon They drew their knives and slashed the enemy’s body in frustration This was the only dead dink the men could find One lousy dink for all that pain and suffering At least we could take our hate out on that son of a They had also taken one prisoner as well the the other platoon head And so now he starts thinking back to the book This is it I thought I’d been wounded four times in battle I had done my job Captain Cells had asked after my third wound if I wanted to be sent back Anyone with three wounds was do that All it took was two wounds to get you out of the field Surely four would let me live with myself What was I trying to prove? But I answered my own question The men depend on me It’s my job to keep them alive by giving them good leadership and looking after them They need me Yeah but What did I owe myself? I had a wife and two little girls who needed me The $10 000 in insurance money wouldn’t do them much good Where did my duty lie? I was still shaking I couldn’t go through this again Reluctantly almost against my will I started walking toward the captain Captain? Yes Fred You asked once if I wanted to go out of the field if I’d been wounded a third time He turned and looked into my face Yes Well I think I mean would you think I was letting you and my men down if I did? I stammered No I wouldn’t You’ve done your job I could get you a job Get you a good job with S2 That’s some intelligence back in the rear I I think I want out I don’t know if I can do this again Maybe I can’t cut it That’s nonsense You’re a hell of a fine officer and the men will understand But you think about it Okay I will Let me think A little bit of confidence returned at his words I handed Yodor’s things to him I wandered back to the packs thinking I should find Yod’s pack Belle had stood up and was coming toward me when he saw the blindfolded dink In one motion he swung his fist into the dink’s face He hit him again and again knocking the surprise dink down in a burst of fury Belle started kicking him It was obvious Belle was going to kill him The other men and I stood smoking and watching We were going to let Belle kill the dink Belle had the right Captain Cells yelled and ran over to us pushing me out of the way and pulling Belle off the dink Here what’s this? What’s going on? We are not going to have this in my company This man’s a prisoner Lieutenant DS what are you doing just standing there? I looked at him in surprise Belle was killing this What’s wrong with that? I retorted You know godamn well what’s the matter with that Lieutenant? This man is defenseless and our prisoner Now let’s get this prisoner back to the LD LZ I wanted the dink dead but the captain was right So you you can see there obviously Captain Cells has a has a great head on his shoulders And there’s something else at play The other thing that’s at play is that by function of the way the battle went down and by function of being one rank above the platoon commanders that are in the firefights guess what? He is de facto He’s detached He’s detached He didn’t I mean Bell is the guy was pinned down almost got killed right? He’s the guy that’s emotional And guess who pulled him out risked his life lost Yodar That was DS So these guys are emotional They’re they’re they want to kill this guy They captured him He’s VC Let’s kill him And Captain Cells is detached because he wasn’t in that firefight He wasn’t directly there So he’s able to maintain enough mental detachment to to make a a hard decision but also hold the line And this is something that you know when we go through the Mei massacre this could have happened over and over again This could have happened to any anywhere along the way Someone could have said “Hey what are you doing right there? Stop ” We don’t do that And that’s exactly what cells does And I think another thing that’s that’s important from a leadership perspective Also well before I go to that point you notice that when he’s having the personal conversation with Lieutenant DS he calls him Fred But when he’s screwing up and he needs to kind of put him in his place he’s Lieutenant DS M on top of that from the leadership perspective from Captain Cell’s perspective he’s got to always remember that what what is happening that they are emotional that they did just lose their buddy they he’s got he can’t just you know be so on the straight narrow that goes oh I’m going to court marshall you he could he could court marshall bell right hey you abused a prisoner you’re you know I’m going to court marshal you and he doesn’t do that because he understands their perspective perspective And that’s why you know again throughout this book Cells really impresses me as a as a very squared away good solid leader as does DS I mean DS obviously right here he’s emotional and he’s lost it Uh he’s he’s crossed the line right? But all it takes is Cells just telling him “Get back over here buddy You cross the line Come back ” And he says “The captain was right ” Yeah So that’s all it took just a little snap just to get him to detach a little bit from the emotions and and move move away from the darkness Back to the book I walked over to the bodies Yodor’s eyes were partially shut and I leaned down to push them close Not that it did any good but for some reason I thought it was better that way I stood there with one hand on my aching hip smoking and thinking Yodar’s face was all muddy from the numerous times he’d been dropped in the mud And there was a trickle of blood at the base of his throat This is the way it will always end I thought Men being killed in the jungle other men dragging their bodies out putting them on choppers and the rest of us going back to the fighting When they left on the chopper it was as if they had never been Man’s beginning and man’s end would always be attended by only a few Those that bore him at birth and those that bore him at death The only important thing was what he did in between Good or bad or indifferent He would touch those around him in some way and then be gone I wondered if a salute would be in order not necessarily in the military sense but a salute from one who had known him and who would never forget him I decided it was and I raised my hand to my forehead in a farewell Now the bird’s coming in to pick him up as after he gives that final salute to Yodar Smoke was popped and the large chopper swung in towards us for his landing The doors were pushed back and I saw the door gunner on the side facing me looking around anxiously searching for the ominous for the omnipresent enemy Good man I thought not trusting a goddamn thing even with an American infantry company surrounding the LZ And I I just love that he’s noticing that this door gunner’s coming in the Hilo’s coming in to pick him up And instead of this guy cutting corners and be like “Oh there’s an infant Trump There’s no rounds being fired I’m just going to relax ” No this guy’s in the game Opens the door Doesn’t What does he say? He says “Uh not trusting a goddamn thing ” Even with an American infantry company on the LZ Many thoughts were crisscrossing my mind Above everything else ran the thought that I could not abandon my men I felt the shame that I had asked Captain Cells to pull me out of the field earlier when I was still shaken What would the men think if they found out I was doing such a thing? Worse what would I think of myself? Now they continue to do operations and eventually they get they they get pulled out of the field on this for the final time on a helicopter Back to the book The machine carried us away I looked over My men sprawled along the sides of the chopper They had removed the magazines from their weapons before boarding and now were holding them close to their bodies The men were dirty and unshaven their clothes in various stages of disrepair jungle boots worn and torn with clouds of mud between the cleats There were dark rings under their eyes and their faces were drawn and tired Some of those faces were new men sent out to places the faces that started the operation and were erased We had experienced the worst of life and the most challenging We had survived The platoon I took back was not the platoon I had brought out Now they’re on yet another operation have to go back They get reset and they’re out on another operation Doing a patrol and I’m going back to the book About 5 m past the gate the two men turned to me and waved me forward All clear sir Let’s go Rudo I passed through the gate My right hand grasped my M16 My left held my cigarette I was humming the blue tail fly as I mentally ticked off the positions around the saddle where I would set my men I noticed the time 0745 hours My foot slipped backwards a fraction of an inch hitting the trigger mechanism of a mine I never heard the explosion Black powder and dirt flew by me My eard drums ripped My body was flying through the air I threw my arms in front of me in a reflex motion to balance myself My eyes registered the horror of a brilliantly white jagged bone sticking out of the stump of arm above where my left elbow had been Ragged bloody flesh surrounded the splintered bone My mind cursed as utter helplessness and disrepair and despair overwhelmed me Another part of my body coolly calculated what had caused the explosion It had been a landmine But what kind would blow off my arm instead of my legs? Of course it had to be a bouncing Betty A mine that flies up to out of the ground after being tripped and exploded waist high That would do it My M16 had been in my right hand The rifle was shattered My hand was mangled I stared in horror at what remained of my right arm The flesh had been ripped away exposing two bones in my white forearm from wrist to the elbow The bones looked like two white glistening narrow rods buried in raw bloody meat thinking “My god my god my god ” I felt told defeat of my life as I landed on my feet five yards from where the mind had exploded exploded After landing I staggered forward two or three steps and then collapsed My legs wouldn’t work The mind had gone off about 6 in from my left hip From the waist down my body was mutilated and torn where large chunks of flesh muscles blood vessels and nerves had been ripped away by the hot exploding shrapnel My buttocks were blown away The back of my legs were ripped to the bone down to my heels I rolled over on my back being careful to keep my stump and right arm out of the dirt and sand My body was sending so many pain signals to my brain that it overloaded like an electrical circuit It caused me to feel a racing humming numbness I lifted my head to view a scene from hell I watched a couple of men run by me to the wounded point man They would only glance at my at me sideways as I lay there holding my bloody stump in the air They seemed nervous Some of my men ran toward me then turned suddenly away at the sight of my torn body They stood near me but hesitated to come too close as if their movement through the air would make it worse Spag asked me to turn sideways a little bit so he could pull my gear off There were tears on his eyes as he worked over me With a grunt he pulled the belt out from under me “Is there anything I can do for you?” Spag asked “Yes run over there and pick up my arm and bring it back to me I don’t want to leave it in this stinking village “ I told Marley to get my squad leaders Go take care of the other men Doc they need you I looked up Marley and my squad leaders were standing in a rough line along my right side I asked who was hurt I was feeling weaker and weaker It was so goddamn cold As my body fought for life my thoughts ran to my men in my platoon I felt I was cheating them by leaving them when they needed me most When I had joined the platoon as their leader they had taught me the ways to survive in combat A second lieutenant who is new in country and they were old-timers 18 19 20 but old to the ways of combat and death As I gained experience and confidence as a leader I became an old-timer having to make decisions that put me in the position I was in now wounded and maimed facing death My men were still up there looking at me despair on their faces Their invulnerable leader had been brought down Marley Yes sir I want you to your men to get the dink who planted that mine I want him dead Get him We will six Don’t you worry about that They looked at each other then back at me The gray haze of the day was strong I pushed it back to look beyond my men It was colder now and harder to see I was thinking of my grandma DS and her farm of the woods and fields of Indiana I love so much If only I could walk them one more time I’m only 23 years old and I’m dying What a waste There are so many things I had meant to do and say but I hadn’t Now I will never get the chance So obviously although he thought he was going to die he lived He lost his arm He uh ended up with a with severe wounds got discharged from the army and you know it’s one of the things in the story He had actually got picked up for a for a pilot program So he was going to be a a pilot in the army He was going to stay in the army become a pilot and obviously that was gone cuz he didn’t have an arm anymore Uh luckily they were able to save his other arm but you know severe wounds real long rehab and eventually he ends up going back to college And here we go back to the book In the fall of 1968 as I stopped at a traffic light on my walk to class across the campus of the University of Denver a man stepped up to me and said “Hi “ Without waiting for my reply to his greeting he pointed to the hook sticking out of my left sleeve “Get that in Vietnam “ I said “Yeah up near Tam Kai in one core Serves you right “ As the man walked away I stood rooted too confused with hurt shame and anger to react 10 years have passed The hurt shame and anger still flood over me with the memory But one thing I am certain none of the men I knew who served in Vietnam deserve to die or to be maimed either physically or mentally I think it is necessary now to give Vietnam to give another view of Vietnam That of the dayto-day life of an infantry man on the ground I have always been asked what I thought about Vietnam but never what it was like to fight in Vietnam This is the way it was for us The platoon of Delta 16 And in the afterward he talks about why he wrote this book In writing The Killing Zone I had two goals I wanted future young infantry lieutenants and non-commissioned officers to learn from my experiences both good and bad Some actions I took as a combat officer had worked out well and some had not The time had come to deal with both Perhaps some would learn from my mistakes especially the lessons that combat especially the lesson that combat does not go by the book I also wanted to show future generations that the American soldier in Vietnam was a good soldier In 1978 the anti-war anti-military feeling in the United States was pervasive in the newspapers on television among writers in movies and in colleges I had started college in at the University of Denver in the fall of 1968 while I was still on active duty in the military The students for a democratic society the Weathermen and other anti-war groups on campus targeted anyone in the military as fair game for their anti-war stance Such hostility was not pleasant for me or other Vietnam veterans It was hard to be denigrated for serving your country Many veterans have never admitted many veterans never admitted they were in the service for many years after Vietnam Angry at the anti-war faction I wanted to set the record straight by proving that the men I served with had fought and died with honor And here are the men that died and made the ultimate sacrifice for freedom and for their brothers in arms from Delta Company First Battalion of the 14th Infantry Third Brigade Fourth Infantry Division PFC Donald Lawrence Glover PFC Norman Charles Kissinger PFC Robert Wayne Satin Spec 4 Gregory Thomas Thomas IDing Spec 4 Charles Irwin Edwin Doc Hoffman PFC James Garrett Miller Spec for James Strong Yodar PFC William Henry Harf spec for Steven Richard Anderson Spec for Lewis Charles Nelson Second Lieutenant William Dwight Ordway PFC Paul James Miller Spec for Jose Cortez PFC Charles Peter Toliet and Second Lieutenant John C Martin So Fred DS second lieutenant asks us to do two things in this book First learn from his experiences the mistakes the lessons And that is what we do here We read and we study and we think and we learn And the second thing he asks is that we remember the men who fought and died with honor And that’s something that we need to do and we should continue to do each and every day remember And that is one thing about this podcast that is a has a lot of meaning to me is the fact that people are listening to it and the memory of these types of men and the challenges that they faced It will be remembered They will be remembered always So once again the book is called The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War by Frederick DS It’s it’s a fantastic read It’s a fantastic book It’s a fantastic dedication and and it’s a it in does an incredible job of honoring honoring these men that fought so hard in a in a very unpopular war And buy the book and read it You will you will absolutely get a lot out of it Echo Charles I believe uh we can move on to the next sector of this podcast And again um if nothing else is delivered through this podcast you know let’s let it be these couple things these couple ideas of learning lessons from other people’s experiences and remembering other people’s sacrifices That’s definitely one of the driving forces be behind my will to do this podcast and we’re going to keep doing the podcast Echo get me out of here Please get me out of this situation I’m in I’m in that zone right now Um I need to send up a red star cluster You know what that is? So So in the military when you need help it’s a red star cluster It’s a it’s a flare You pop up and it’s big means you couldn’t communicate with anybody and you need some help So there’s my red star cluster You need to jump in and say “Hey Jock’s speaking to the podcast Here’s how we can support it ” Yeah So talk about that while I go get over here and get myself under control before I start smashing things All right Yeah Yeah if you want to send in reinforcements to support Joo and and our podcast here while supporting yourself with supplementation by the way good idea Go to onit com/joo So Onit has like these supplements that we take supplements for your joints Krill oil Boom Shroom tech for uh performance hard stuff you know uh CrossFit jiu-jitsu Mhm if you’re trying to go hard you know hardcore in the paint Um yeah Shroom Tech Boom Um also if you do your shopping at Amazon which I think we all do Um go ahead click through our website We have a little link there Um you know and you can support it that way That’s a super easy way All you got to do is remember to do it before you shop That is helpful Yeah very much so We also have a new tool cuz can you can you make the remembering part a little bit easier? Yes So when you know you figure hey I got to remember to go to the website before I shop on Amazon Sometimes I’m in a hurry whatever You know maybe I’m thinking about other stuff I’m not thinking about Joo’s podcast every single day all day I got to buy some you know some cleaner some duct tape whatever Here’s a way so you it helps you remember and or makes you not have to remember Anyways this little tool called the trooper tool Oh Jo podcast trooper tool Thanks to Brady for that one Brady props It’s it’s a cool little thing It’s like this small little thing It’s pretty cool You click on there’s there’s a little link on both websites So you click on the thing It asks you if you want it You click yes puts a little icon there on your browser and it basically directs you to the to the affiliate Amazon link um automatically You don’t got to think Yeah it’s dope And that’s that’s a really uh easy way to support the podcast and the the it doesn’t cost you anything It cost Amazon something It seems to me like Amazon can afford to kick a little bit to the podcast over here right? Yeah And it’s really it does serve its purpose cuz you know Amazon you know like Amazon they’re you know they’re a good company provides good stuff good service and all that and they’re trying to get the word out and you know they they partner with people who who can get the word out Yeah And there’s people that are going to go oh you know what I want to support the podcast so I will buy this instead of buying it through some other website They’re going to go to the the the store that’s going to support something that they enjoy or something that they get value out of hopefully from this podcast So yeah that’s an awesome way to support We appreciate it And it makes it like it’s kind of this little tool is kind of cool because it kind of makes it official you know like if you’re I mean if you’re one of the people that that listen to this and really talk with us and stuff it’s it is a cool way to kind of be more part of the group I guess I don’t know It seems like it when I put mine up there I’m like “Hey you know I’m like a fish ” I don’t know It felt like we’re in the game I don’t know Yeah Echo Charles is in the game and we dig that So yeah it’s it’s a really cool tool You don’t have to It’s safe It’s not like this You just put it on If you don’t want it on there anymore for whatever reason right click it Right click and it because you made a little video that shows if you go to the Joo podcast YouTube channel and Echo Charles made a video a very high-speed instructional video on how to do this I wasn’t trying to waste anybody’s time It’s really easy You are not playing around with the instructional video I think uh that was very impressive And and by the way subscribe Do me a favor troopers subscribe to the YouTube channel the the Joo podcast YouTube channel That way when Ekko cuz I’ve been I’ve been hacking on Ekko to make little outtakes and other little conversations and videos and he’s like “Well you know we got some subscribers but maybe you know if we had some more maybe I’d be more ” So we need to motivate Eko Charles just a little bit cuz so we could get some outtake videos some other other interesting videos I wanted to do a little prevideo today of what it was like when we’re getting set up because we have a little ritual that we go through when we’re making some some beverages you know some some alphabrain and we have you know so I was like it’d be pretty cool if you shot a little video And he’s like well you know maybe one day imitate me right now No I I actually am imitating you So subscribe to the I don’t think it doesn’t I mean just just go to go to the Jaco podcast channel on YouTube Subscribe Yeah Yeah I think it’s youtube com/jooodcast And also what’s cool about that is when you do that then you get little emails that say not like you just get an email that says “Hey Joal Podcast just uploaded a new video ” I get those and I’m always like “Oh yeah cool Now I can watch the video ” And even that’s optional Oh okay You can opt out if you can opt out But yeah that’s a good And I have um remember that that one uh ch children’s book idea I had? Yeah You probably forget cuz No you need to remind me I got a lot of ideas I have that I have that on video when we’re Anyway Oh Oh yeah That’d be funny Yeah So yeah Some of some things you got to understand So I have a certain stand This I’m not talking to you Echo I’m talking to people that are listening right now I mean you’re here too so I guess I’m talking to you too But people got to understand that there’s a certain expectation in my mind of what the podcast is and what it’s supposed to be So when something happens that’s not quite there I’m like you know what? I don’t really Hey you know I don’t want to talk about that on the podcast but this like for instance before we hit record we’re recording but before we go before I open the show we’re talking about something right? We’re always talking about something And sometimes those conversations are 20 minutes half an hour we’re talking about real stuff We’re talking about legit things but we haven’t even introduced the podcast yet So that goes in the scrap pile Now some of the scrap mile material while it might not be in march marching step with what the podcast is it does perhaps have a have a life that it could live and could could guide people in a certain way and it’s stuff that people might be interested in So that could be a YouTube download you know YouTube just post it on there so that way people get a little taste of other things around the podcast which I think people would dig Yeah Yeah that makes sense So like you know if you free your mind Echo Charles free your mind Yeah I You’re totally right Um the Well thank you Thank you Once for once Yeah Yeah Cuz you know how if you listen to it on iTunes you’re like why am I going to sit and watch Ekko and Jaco talk to each other? You know I listen to what I got to look at them too You know a lot of people might not be interested in that There’s some moments You know what I do is I well I watch certain moments of the podcast on YouTube Yeah Like when I know I was feeling intense about something I go and see what it see what that looks like See like okay what does that look like when I’m feeling that? Does it look like does it look like from the outside? What it feels like from the inside? Cuz even today I was getting pretty fired up Like I mean you’re talking about heroes and young men man 18 19 20 years old that said “Okay this unpopular war I’ll go fight it I’ll go fight it You know I’ll go risk my life I’ll go out there in the jungle and live in you know I was I was uh out this week in the field right camping I I I kept putting it in quotes on Twitter I I was putting in quotes cuz I was like I can’t call this the field ” But you know it wasn’t the comfort of a house right? It was in it was and it was you know bugs and ants and and I’m like thinking to myself you know this is nothing And I was thinking back to uh to the Forgotten Highlander and remember the bugs were just eating those guys alive and you know you just you just can’t you can’t compare So these guys that that just stepped up fought I just want to I just want to always you know that kind of thing will get me fired up So when I go back to the videos sometimes I go man what what was I looking like right there? You know a little self assessment And I wonder if you know cuz when I’m feeling that way I’m like okay you got to detach a little bit cuz you’re starting to get a little bit fired I’m going to start breaking I’m going to start getting like really emotional about something So I got to I got a little red flag goes up I go “You got to back off a little bit here “ We don’t want to have to edit the video if I break down So I got to just back off And sometimes I got to see what does that look like? Does it look Can you tell? Am I looking you know? So that’s the kind of thing that I like to go back and look at the YouTube videos and say you know what does this what does this look like? Yeah You Yeah Yeah There’s some value There’s a lot of value on YouTube that I’m that we’re probably not uh you know capitalizing on I don’t know whatever For for people who who care And it’s weird too because the interesting thing about all this is you use the word capitalize right? And the fact of the matter is we aren’t really capitalizing on this at all And I keep getting told by a variety of different people what to do to you to do what that right there to capitalize Yeah I meant it just capitalize Not for us to I mean for everybody you know people listen But what we what we want to do is we want to maximize the effort that we put in here want to maximize so people get the most out of it Yeah that’s that’s what I know that’s what you meant I know you didn’t mean like let’s run to the cash machine because we’re doing it for the passion of doing it That’s what I’m sitting here for Sitting here so I can tell so I can tell this story right here about these guys Yeah And I know you know I know I I hear from all kinds of cops I hear from my my SEAL buddies that are still in that are listening to it that are asking me texting me questions going “Hey man what’s going on with this? Hey what would you have done differently here?” Hey th those are my buddies that are in that are getting ready to deploy overseas right now And I get texts and emails and Twitter things from guys that were guys that are active duty in the Marine Corps and and the Army So I know that we’re getting the word out there and that’s what that’s what I’m sitting here for Yeah So yeah And and you make a good point with you know there’s a lot of people who don’t watch the video of that makes sense I mean I don’t watch podcast videos Right? I mean why you know the reason podcasts are so convenient? You can be doing something else You don’t have to dedicate You don’t have to dedicate your all your senses to it You only have to dedicate two of them Your ears and your brain Yeah But you don’t have to dedicate your eyes You don’t have to dedicate your ass to sit down in a chair and watch something You can walk around You can do yard work You can drive You can do what you got to do Yeah But I think the shorter little YouTube clips where you go “Hey check this out This is when Jaco and I were discussing a kids book that Ekko was talking about or Good idea by the way Yeah I’m gonna post it Yeah post that thing up Yeah And it’s interesting because a lot of people apparently don’t I mean don’t are surprised that I look different than I sound appar I guess Oh yeah They think you’re a skinny white hipster or Yeah that’s what they think you are Maybe I am at heart Maybe you are at heart You’re just trapped Maybe you identify as a skinny white hipster even though you’re a a 220 I don’t know No I don’t know I don’t I don’t identify myself by my physical characteristics you know? It’s what’s in my heart and my mind The content of your character like to say Yeah I think the YouTube is a good idea Yeah We’ll we’ll post more So I have a lot too man So many out takes A lot And you’ve done some really good outtake videos in the past Yeah Yeah they’re pretty Yeah From when we were filming commercials and stuff Yeah those were good Um All right Anything else? Jaco you in Jaco store Did you talk about that? Yes Go to the store buy some buy some merchandise Somebody hit me up on Twitter the other day and they’re like “Hey you should set up a We got asked this a bunch of times Set up a Patreon ” Patreon Is that what it’s called? Patreon Patreon where you can donate to the podcast certain amount And I just said “Hey man go buy a t-shirt You know that supports us just as well And you get a t-shirt and just that’s a good way to support the podcast Buy some merchandise Buy some gear ” Right Yeah The the Jaco store That’s a good one T-shirts coffee mugs stickers Those are kind of cool Um one of my friends saw two Jaco stickers in the wild In the wild one day Yeah Or maybe the weekend here San Diego Oh everyone in San Diego We know everyone in San Diego Doesn’t count I don’t know I want to see it in Cleveland It counts It counts But yeah Awesome That’s good Yep So now we get to those questions from the interwebs So oops First question Choco is a minimal amount of competent defensive ability self-defense essentially the most overlooked essential stabilizer of young male psyche So this question this actually this actually came across the interwebs as a as a statement an opinion and I I kind of rephrased it just a little bit to make it into a question but it actually came across someone was saying “Look he believes this person believes that the knowing how to fight you know competent defensive defensive ability I call that knowing how to fight is and he thinks it’s the most essential stabilizer of a young male psyche ” I agree with this statement I think that yeah I completely agree I think that learning how to fight and knowing how to fight gives you real confidence and security not just in the form of being secure but as as a in in opposition to insecurity right? Because when you know how to fight all of a sudden you don’t have anything to prove anymore Yeah And we this changes so I you know I wish I would have learned how to fight and I’m much we fought all the time when I was a kid We fought we didn’t know how to fight So what do we have to do? Prove that we knew how to fight If we actually knew how to fight we wouldn’t had to prove that all the time So I I absolutely agree with this And that’s why I’m constantly trying to get people uh to get into jiu-jitsu You know get your kids into jiu-jitsu Get your 13-year-old boy your 10-year-old boy get him into jiu-jitsu Your girl too I mean your girl too because your girl is going to use it for defense Um girls don’t have the constant tension of fighting that guys have It is part of who we are When I shake someone’s hand I don’t care what kind of mood I’m in I am thinking about taking them down I am thinking about what I’m going to do to him in a fight It doesn’t matter if I’m meeting Santa Claus I’m thinking about doing a double leg I’m thinking about what what his weight is Does he have cauliflower here? That’s what I’m doing And guys do that Guys do that And it’s real And I mean especially in the environment I grew up in the single teams I mean everybody’s got that constant like test between it’s the evaluation So if you don’t know how to fight there’s only one way to figure out where you are and that is to fight And so you end up doing stupid things Stupid things to prove your your manhood ood and I hate to use that word but you end up doing stupid things to prove your manhood So my recommendation um is well I totally agree with this statement I think it is a huge stabilizer of of your personality and and your psyche as a man So teach get those kids to learn jiu-jitsu They’re going to the other thing is you understand violence You respect it because you know you’ve got choked out You know it’s happened You know that that is a horrible feeling It’s a horrible feeling when another human being can control you 100% You know what? Physically it doesn’t matter how smart you are anymore I’m sorry It doesn’t matter It doesn’t matter It doesn’t matter how smart you are anymore When you are getting completely physically dominated by someone it doesn’t matter that you’re smarter than them At that time there’s nothing you can do about it You could What are you going to challenge them to a spelling be? It’s not going to help you you’re you’re under their control and that’s a horrible horrible feeling Yeah And so I think it’s uh you know and I felt that you know when I was a kid you know I got bullied just like everybody everybody gets bullied at s certain point you know you show up to high school you’re 13 years old I was I was a young whatever however that works when you are born that was born in September So I was a young scrawny kid and I didn’t get bullied to some crazy extent but you get picked on You get picked on You get into little scuffles and you get thrown around by a kid that’s that reached puberty when he was nine and he’s now you know 6 feet 220 and I’m showing up at school 13 years old weighing a buck 45 You’re going to get you’re going to get physically controlled and it’s not fun And so I didn’t know how to fight I was trying to figure it out and there was no no one knew how to fight back then unless you were a boxer maybe a wrestler Um but yeah so definitely this is a huge piece helps you with I think I think kids that know how to fight are going to get in a lot less street fights They’re going to do a lot less stupid things to prove themselves because guess what? They already have the essential primal animalistic characteristic of physical domination And that goes a long way Yeah And and we talked about this before back to the the girls thing getting your girls into it You know how when you get into any kind of physical situation even if you’re in a crowd and someone starts shoving someone else not even you and boom you feel the force of somebody or someone’s just all like on you or even if someone like I don’t know tackles you or something like that It’s like this kind of imposed physical situation And when you’re into jiu-jitsu that’s every day So you get used to that real quick And in fact you get real comfortable with it But as a girl you’re not trying to like win fights now You know I know jiu-jitsu I’m going to try to win fights and beat up guys That’s not really what it’s for for girls It’s more for knowing how to function knowing where to be where not to be because man if you don’t know you just simply don’t know And also being Yeah And also being totally right And then also being inoculated to the the physical contact when it happens And I’ll tell you you say you can’t win I mean not looking to win fights There’s Go watch YouTube There’s all kinds of videos of girls just working over guys And I mean in street fights There’s one in particular where this girl’s just trying arm lock just choke just crushing this kid Yeah Well the I mean the the truth is if you learn jiu-jitsu if someone knows jiu-jitsu someone doesn’t the the chance of the person knowing jiu-jitsu winning the fight is very very very high Even if you’re a girl it still applies to you Of course the girl’s at a physical dis disadvantage cuz she’s smaller weaker whatever But like I said jiu-jitsu is just this huge jump in you know ability as far as fights go And you know something else from a pure self-defense perspective if you a lot of times let’s say a girl’s not able to physically let’s say she’s 100 lb and she’s a guy attacks her that’s 200 lb she might not be able to put him to sleep She might not be able to finish him but she may able to be able to survive fend the guy off for a minute and 30 seconds instead of 2 seconds Yep Instead of 4 seconds instead of 8 seconds So that’s what it takes for someone to hear for someone to see So every second counts And if you know jiu-jitsu I guarantee you it’s it’s really hard to subdue somebody that knows some jiu-jitsu If you don’t know anything you are going to have a hard time getting control of them They’re going to they’re going to be and even if you’re stronger than them you’ll be able to get a hold of them Maybe eventually if they’re a lot smaller and a lot weaker than you but it’s going to be a fight And a lot of a lot of you know you read a lot of stories when in self-defense situations if the girl puts up a decent fight the guy is not going to have any of it You know he’s going to realize that he’s not looking for that He’s not looking for a fight He’s looking for something else And so the fight begins he backs off So yeah absolutely It applies for for girls as well And there’s just a certain level of confidence you know and I’ve seen that you know my son’s had a couple little scuffles a couple that I’ve witnessed too where uh you know he just was like not trying to not trying to have a problem until someone just grabs him and is obviously going to do try and do something to him and then that person’s getting launched you know like hey perfect judo cuz you’re going to go you know how hard is it to judo throw somebody that doesn’t know any judo jiu-jitsu? It’s so easy So you see a kid fly through the air hit the ground You see my son you know just like there’s no guard passing cuz the person doesn’t even know what the guard is So it’s just straight to mount and then once you’re in mount the person has no idea what’s happening and and they’re completely controlled and they’re getting put to sleep That’s it It’s as easy as that Yeah And it’s so funny how you This is kind of the part that I forget actually every once in a while where how you brought up when you shake someone’s hand you’re always thinking about it or whatever So that’s that’s the thing too That’s why that’s why it’s almost like if you don’t know jiu-jitsu like or or for real fighting there’s not many out there man There’s not many But even we’ll just say if you don’t know jiu-jitsu you might fall into this trap by thinking well you know I might you know you never know He’s not on all the time or he might not be ready for this or you know I’ll surprise him with a like this punch or something like this And they’ll they won’t give it its due credit But the thing is when you learn jiu-jitsu bro that’s all you’re thinking about You’re like “Oh I take this guy right here 100% of the time you you can be laying in your in your bed with your wife and she’ll be like “Hey give me a hug ” And you’re like “Let me get that under hook there ” Yes Exactly The whole time So you can’t really to surprise a guy who knows jiu-jitsu to surprise him is super hard Like you got to do from behind I don’t know Even if you see him from behind like you know what to do from behind you know to you got to like I don’t know hit him or something really hard knock them out one punch from behind or something like that It’s really hard to knock somebody out with one punch from behind So yeah But that’s so funny cuz um that that is how it is Even as like a like a highle guy you’re still like it’s always on your mind Like it’s like you’re walking around with this big powerful like gun or something Like you’re like “Okay who wants to get shot?” Not that you want to shoot people specifically but it’s like this radar that’s like “Okay who wants to get shot?” kind of thing cuz you’re just it’s ready you know? You’re just ready to do it the whole time Yeah And to me honestly it’s so instinctive at this point It’s just part of every movement that you make is thinking about that and you you know you ever had somebody that doesn’t know jiu-jitsu like maybe you haven’t seen someone in a while I’ve had that happen where I’ve se seen someone for a while Yes All and I mean 20 years So they have no idea what jiu-jitsu is We’ve gone completely different paths in our lives and they like grab hold of you as if it was the old days and you were going to have a tussle and it’s Yeah It’s just a it’s just a 4second you know spirit crushing maneuver of death Yeah And and you’re happy to do it too you know cuz as an adult like you know I think anywhere past 26 27 years old it’s hard to get away with like getting into a wrestling match in public or you know somewhere outside of the That’s interesting You might not have known that but there I don’t know I think I speak for more than more people than just myself but you there’s a part of your mind that kind of hopes it it happens just with your friend you know or something like that Just so you do always on your mind Always hoping for a for a scrap You know what? Ironically back to the part where where I was saying um it’s kind of hard to surprise a jiu-jitsu guy Ironically the easiest time to surprise a jiu-jitsu guy is on the mat If you’re another jiu-jitsu guy what you do is you play like “Oh we’re just going light right now and then you go hard you know?” So you can’t really surprise them in the like in public You got to like you got to learn jiu-jitsu Go on the mat roll with them make them think you’re not rolling hard then surprise And you know I think that’s part of it is you become more aware when you’re just talking what you’ve been talking about the past couple minutes is awareness And when you have jiu-jitsu in your brain then and it’s true with boxing too and and Muay Thai When you have that stuff in your brain then you can’t help but be aware of what’s happening around you because it’s in there It’s like knowing that the color of the table is brown Like you you know what that person’s body position is You’re looking and seeing that their stance is offbalance You’re seeing an under hook exposed You you know so you can’t help you can’t take it away So your awareness increases You also are aware of what problems can occur really quickly So if you start you know if you’re a girl and you say “Oh wait a second Now I’m back into a corner where I can’t get out I don’t like this feeling It becomes it increases your awareness as a human It makes you more aware of your surroundings So there’s so many benefits It’s kind of ridiculous Yeah And it you kind of have almost like one level up from that awareness that you’re talking about because like how you’re saying it’s part of that even if you don’t know how to fight it’s still kind of on your mind You know you like all guys have that kind of sort of sort of evaluation especially if the guy’s close to your close to you who you are you know whether it be age size whatever whatever the scenario even like if you’re a scholar and no one else is a scholar then another scholar walks in Oo this evaluation you know so that’s how it is naturally See how smart this guy is Yeah Yeah So well so as a guy just naturally you’re going to have even more It’s like you know what the color of brown is or whatever but just instinctually you’re always looking for brown That’s kind of what it’s like So now you when you’re doing these evaluations that are going to happen anyway your jiu-jitsu mind is right there at the front ready the whole time Yeah Interesting Train jiu-jitsu people But that’s not to be confused with like you’re aggressive and want to fight That’s the weird thing It’s like you don’t want to actually fight with people because you don’t feel the need to like oh I got to I don’t know prove anything That’s where this whole conversation started off And also now you not feel like you need to prove anything but I literally am like “Oh do I really want to get in a fight with this guy? I’m going to get my knuckles you know I’m probably going to rip my t-shirt This guy’s going to Is this really No I I fight every single day I don’t need I don’t I don’t care about this guy This is a two second thing where I got to scuff up my knee on the pavement and he’s probably going to rip my my shirt and that’s going to be a pain and then I got to deal with the cops if they show up It’s just a big pain ” Yeah Whereas if you don’t fight and you have that opportunity maybe you got that thing inside you you know no right? The payoff of the fight right? If you don’t know or if you’re just insecure whatever the payoff of the fight and hopefully winning is bigger than all the detriments that you got to face I used to tell my platoon guys um when we were overseas before the war started and you know so guys are overseas what are you doing? You’re drinking you’re out in bars you’re causing problems or whatever And I you know before we go out I’ll be like “Hey guys if you feel like fighting tonight come find me because if you want to fight come find me and it’ll be all be good ” You know you know we’ll we’ll fight and it’s all good You won’t get in trouble You won’t get arrested You won’t get hurt It’s all good Oh you’ll get in trouble Get in trouble for sure You’re not going to get in trouble with the law though You know what I mean? You’re not going to get in that kind of trouble You’re going trouble in your situation and your in your positioning is going to be troublesome So yeah it’s better to fight amongst yourself than to fight against the outsiders who are going to sue you pull a knife out and stab you in the throat whatever right? Don’t do that Stay out of the street fights Not worth it Yep All right I agree with it too though And you said you agree that it is the stabilizer overlook It is cuz if you don’t know you don’t even know how much you don’t know It’s funny cuz we got a lot of people that have started training jiu-jitsu Good move Yes But they but they’ll come on Twitter or on on the Facebooky and and say you know um hey I started training jiu-jitsu Oh my god I can’t believe I I need to train this all the time I can’t believe I got control How hum They always say how humiliating And sometimes they say humbling but sometimes I think even when they say humbling they actually mean humiliating cuz they you that’s the weird thing when you’re walking around on the earth without the knowledge You think you look at other people you think you know what this guy knows jiu-jitsu I heard this guy knows jiu-jitsu It doesn’t matter I’m strong I’m athletic I’ll just hit him in the neck Or even even you know I’m just strong enough He’s not going to get my How’s he going to get my arm over there? That’s not going to work I’ll just pull my arm back And you get on the mat and you go “Oh my lord I have no control over this situation This guy is effortlessly making me submit over and over and over again ” And that’s when the reality hits the reality hits doesn’t it? On the first time you tap because on the first time you tap you go “Oh I’m I’m going to I’ll just I won’t do that single movement again I won’t stick my head over there ” Okay So then you get your arm locked Yeah And then you get your foot locked and then you get your knee locked Then you get Kim and then you get guillotine again Then you get rear So you it’s just a lose lose lose lose lose lose lose And then you go after usually for me it’s like three to five times with somebody that’s never trained jiu-jitsu before three to five times before they realize like oh I will never because you know when you tap a guy once that’s never trained before and he comes at you so hard in his mind he thinks “Oh this time I’m going to get him ” Y and they don’t even come close they don’t even realize So yeah get on the mat man and learn learn the jiu-jitsu Yep Please cover the over or please cover overcoming the frustrations of beginning jiu-jitsu And this is coming from a 54 year old by the way but not quitting Good Good for him Uh that’s awesome Glad you’re picking up the jiu-jitsu at 54 years old Uh okay So how do you the frustrations of beginning jit? And it is absolutely if you have the wrong mindset it’s viciously frustrating because of everything we just talked about You think oh I’ll just do this and I’ll just go a little bit harder and I just won’t put my arm there and then I’ll be able to win You’re not going to win You are going to lose You’re going to lose over and over and over again to people that are smaller than you weaker than you not as tough as you are Literally not as tough as you are Yep Not as tough as you are You know jiu-jitsu has a faction of of nerds for lack of a better word Straight nerds And no offense to the nerds out there but you know people that are not physically active and then some for some reason they fall into jiu-jitsu at some point and and they and all of a sudden they got a guy that’s they’re not tough but they’ll they’ll know the moves and they’ll finish you So that so those are the people you’re going to lose to So and it’s a it’s a long long slow journey that takes a long time Now that being said if you train for a month and someone’s trained zero that journey is not that long You’ll beat that guy Yeah You you will beat that guy I mean you know again you take two people one of them knows jiu-jitsu for a month and one of them doesn’t That guy’s going to win I mean you know basic weight same weight basic same You know you can’t have somebody that’s completely weak But in 6 months you’re beating anybody that’s untrained for you We beat 95% of maybe even 99% of the people that are on train But but but as far as like you think you show up and in 6 months you’re going to be beating a blue belt is not happening Yeah Yeah It’s not happening Beating a purple belt is not happening You’re not going to you’re not going to catch a purple belt Yeah In in your first two or three years Um unless you got to somebody that doesn’t or he lets you Yeah Of course Yeah And like Glover Jeff Glover he he’ll he he’ll let people put him in all kind I mean he does that in comp You just saw that at Metamorous He he lets all kinds of crazy things happen So yeah can that happen? Of course But as far as legitimately taking someone down yeah it’s not going to happen So So that’s a that’s what I’m saying is a long slow journey especially too because everyone’s on that bus We’ve talked about this before Everyone’s on the bus getting better So that blue belt that started that you started 6 months behind or a year behind So he’s a blue belt you’re a year behind him he’s not stopping getting better So as you start to pursue his game his game is evolving and changing and improving So you’re not going to get there And then on top of that when you do learn something new it takes time to incorporate into your game So if I taught you echo a new move tonight I said “Hey here’s this cool It’s here’s this new setup for the arm lock ” And we drilled it 10 times and you went now and started to apply that it would make your game worse because you’d be trying to apply a move that you don’t know 100% yet Like you got some good solid moves that you do and those are you know those work really well So when you start incorporating this new move you don’t know it well You don’t get it all together So you’re going to fail at it a hundred times It’s not going to work a hundred times before you get it And by the way every time you tried it on me I got on top and then I smashed you and then I So you’re you’re sacrificing and it’s and every time So you’re actually going backwards a little bit before you can go forward So that’s problematic and that’s very very frustrating Occasionally you might learn something that like really improves your game dramatically almost instantly That happens from time to time Someone will say “Hey put your arm position here or hey you know whatever the case may be ” But generally when you incorporate something new it can take some time You’re going to get injuries You’re going to get little injuries You’re going to get big injuries You’re going to be sore You’re going to So yes you will be frustrated So how do you counter all that? You just got to embrace it You got to embrace all those things You got to enjoy all those things And I hate to be cliche here but you got to enjoy the journey You got to enjoy getting tapped out by somebody that’s small Be amazed by that Say “Dang how did that just happen? That is impressive ” Yep Uh you know say “Hey got a little war scar on my face I got you know split the eye open Okay cool Chicks dig scars you know I mean just going to go don’t don’t don’t look at all that stuff as negative Look at it as you know it’s like don’t rush to the end Uh don’t rush to the end Don’t be in a rush to get there Take your time and enjoy the sights that you’re going to go for Also I’ve said this before select your training partners carefully especially like you’re 54 years old You don’t want to be rolling with a 20-year-old steroid freak that’s going white belt trying to kill you You want to be rolling with a cool mellow purple belt that’s wants to do jiu-jitsu Yeah And and train Um and finally I would just say remember that jiu-jitsu should be fun It should be all those other things all those frustrating all those challenges all those things all that humiliation and hum and getting humbled but it should be a good time You should have fun when you’re doing jiu-jitsu I know I do Yeah Yeah Like a video game right? You know how I was out of town for a couple days man And I came back and I had a little injury that I fig figured out Took me a little while I got my jacked up finger and it took me a little while a little while to uh get the right get the right apparatus to splint it properly and protect it But it’s But tonight I trained and I was so happy I was so happy going getting on the mat just saying yes Yeah that that is how we’re all these all the junk parts that come with it or quote unquote junk part you know like the the soreness yeah the I got choked out or whatever that’s all part of the game seems obvious right yeah it’s all part of the game but be happy that that’s the game you’re in you know so I mean jiu-jitsu basic I mean if you don’t do jiu-jitsu this would be kind of kind of an insight basically all it is you go if you go to a class you go in you you may or may not warm up you learn a a move whether a submission move or just a move You learn a move two moves three moves sometimes four moves and then you cut to rolling straight up You guys are fighting No strikes That’s it You’re fighting No strikes If you whatever moves you know go ahead and do them one in real life against this guy That’s it If you don’t know it if that’s your first day and you learn one two three moves that first day you better try to do those moves That’s it So of course you know two three moves that you learned once by the way and you roll with someone who even if he’s still a white belt or whatever he knows those moves and then you know three four more and he’s practiced them in you know in real time or whatever of course he’s going to get you You know that’s just how it works But keep in mind the more you go the more you do the moves the more moves you learn the more you practice them in real life the better you get at them And and you know let’s go ahead and just apply this to life as well cuz jiu-jitsu is such a great metaphor for life whatever you’re doing whatever goal you’re trying to achieve If you’re letting those frustrations when you hit those obstacles if you’re letting them control you and get you down that’s the wrong attitude to have Y look at it as a learning opportunity Look at it as something that’s good that’s happening Look at it as as a chance for you to try something new Look at it as the journey that you’re trying to achieve And by the way anything that’s easy to achieve and you don’t hit any obstacles well that’s not worth it right? that’s not that’s not going to get the full satisfaction that you want out of that So in life as in jiu-jitsu don’t get frustrated Embrace those challenges cuz those are what is making this goal worthwhile Yep man And I’m telling you when you let’s say you well back to the um avoiding frustration specifically um it does how you were saying training partners that does make a big difference cuz sometimes every once in a while like I’ve I’ve heard of um people where they their schedule doesn’t allow them to catch like the beginner class for example So they’re like hey I have no choice I got to do this more intermediate or advanced class So they’re the only white belt and the next you know guy even closest to him is like a advanced blue belt So that’s going to be a steep learning curve It’s going to be tough because it’s how are you going to practice your moves in the wild? You’ll never you won’t get to work your offense Yeah it’s really But here’s the here’s kind of the good thing You get to work your defense So when you do get the opportunity to exercise like your offense whether you you get another class or it just comes but just takes long or whatever but you know how good your defense is going to be Yeah And I actually So from training with Dean for so many years you know he’s just got some positions that are brutal brutal positions And you know for instance his mount is is outstanding He’s when he gets the mount when anybody else that I’ve ever trained with in my life has mounted with the exception I guess of of Hicks and Gracie I felt like oh it’s not Dean This is not you know this isn’t a horrible scenario right? And not that I’m not that worried I’m not trying to degrade people I’ve trained with but that is a Dean has an incredible mount And on top of that Dean kind of knows my escapes So whereas if I roll with a random other really good you know world class black belt they might not know the particulars of my escape Dean actually does know those and he’s good at it And he’s good at it So So you’re right in that the more you train with people that are better than you your your defense is going to become very good cuz like when you mount me I mean you got a good solid mount but I’m not I’m like I’m like “Okay cool I’m going to be out of this in a in a short period of time with with no real threats ” Keep telling me And and the re and you’ve had I mean I’m sure it’s the same way You’ve had Dean mounted on you I mean my mount because I don’t have a great mount My mount is nothing compared to Dean’s Nothing Yeah Yeah Fully Yeah And that’s absolutely true And at the same time though so if you fall in and I don’t want to say it’s like a small because it’s pretty big chance where if you enter a beginner class there’s going to be a guy who’s just as much of a beginner as you And that’s where you can really flourish because you’re you can practice moves your new moves which I mean for lack of a better term your junk moves on junk people I I will say this though whoever you roll with whether they’re worse than you the same as you or better than you you’re going to get a lot out of it All three of them So you should roll with all three of those types of people I have a tendency to want to usually roll with guys that are you know like good and and I should spend more and I I do I mean I definitely I train with everybody that we got at the gym I’ll train with everybody but I always prefer of course I guess I shouldn’t say of course because there are people that are like white belt hunters right that want to go out there and be bullies I’m not like that I’d rather get bullied right? I want to get I want to feel the I want to get after it you know? Yeah But you definitely get benefit from training with people that are better than you worse than you and the same as you One of them you’re practicing defense One of them you’re practicing pure offense And someone that’s equal than you you got to start practicing your setups and and your approaches and you got to learn how to defend and do offense and defense at the same time So it’s all good Roll Yeah That’s basically the concept here Roll Yeah So consider consider that scenario Roll with And you’re talking from an ideal standpoint roll with people better than you same as you worse than you or you know not as good as you Um for a beginner that’s not really the option The worst than you guys that’s not an option For a beginner like really you know so there’s no one that’s worse than them Well as far as overcoming the frustrations or whatever it is a good situation where you can get in with guys just as beginner as you and and hope that they hang around because after a certain amount of time those guys who aren’t as new or or I could I could see where it could become frustrating if you were the guy that you were talking about earlier Let’s say a guy that’s you have to work late and you can only go to the advanced class and all of a sudden you think jiu-jitsu is just getting crushed and I can’t learn this really you know it’s like the distance to to understand But yeah that’s that’s a good point So keep in mind that if you’re in that situation it’s okay You’re going to you’re going to when you eventually get to roll with people that are more your skill level you will be uh you’ll be that much better off Yeah Yeah For sure And and watch the first time you tap someone out with a move that you learned Celebrate that Did you? Yeah That’s a good That’s a good time for everyone Next question Jaco How do you balance the idea of checking the ego while in an interview scenario where you need to talk about yourself? Okay so good good question I I would say in that situation and that’s something that it’s not just an interview situation where you’re going to need to do that I mean you’re dealing with your your superiors you know throughout the course of your career whatever that may be you’re constantly interacting with people and you you’re going to want to make an impression Uh so I I think one of the best ways to do this is instead of you speaking about why you’re so awesome just state facts of let’s say accomplishments and let them speak for themselves In other words you know you wouldn’t want to say uh you know I am the best project manager in the entire world right? That’s not that sounds ego centric you Instead you’d say uh you know I got this hey we had a $38 million project got it done on time under budget ahead of schedule and when I got done with that one they moved me to another project that was off track and we got that one uh back on schedule and back on track as well So that that’s the kind of experience that I’ve had and I and I’d love to bring that here to this company Right? So you’re not you’re not you know there’s a hint of hey this is what I did I can get some stuff done but you’re not saying “Listen I’m better than the people you currently have so you should hire me cuz I’m the best ” Cuz you don’t want to do that Um and you know so so yeah just build think about it you know before you go in how what what experience that you have represents the good qualities that you have So then you can say if they say you know how are you at meeting timelines? You don’t say I am perfect and I’m never late I’m dope You just say you say you say “Well you know as far as meeting timelines here’s a bunch of projects that I got completed on time The only one that I missed was one that we had to roll back because of whatever ” That way you’re actually showing a little bit more humility You’re saying “Hey here’s what happened ” You’re being logical about it And you know speaking of that I actually got a good question that’s similar to this one um about what’s the best way to interview people to see if they can be in a leadership position And this is really hard This is really hard because it’s really hard to interviews and working I work with all kinds of different companies and everybody always says you know hey what’s the best way to interview and man I interviewed this guy and he seems so great or I interviewed this woman and she seemed incredible and her her paper looked great you know she looked great on paper and we hired her and she’s a disaster or he’s a disaster whatever the case may be because because there’s people that are very good interviewers right I mean there’s people that can interview well they have the gift to gab they can they can BS their way through anything and make themselves sound good So it can be really hard to identify if someone’s a good is actually going to be fit for a leadership position or really any position So one of the things that that I always tell people to do is when you go into these when you want to ask interview questions ask them scenariobased questions and say “Okay here’s what’s going on You got these three people in your department and one of the people has come to you and said that they think there might be something illegal going on in with the other two What actions do you take? And and you know have a scenario built out that you can actually talk through and see where they go and see what their mindset is and see what they’re going to develop as a plan and see how they would execute plan It’s a great way of figuring out how people think And then you know even that’s not a guarantee because there’s people that can can navigate those type of answers as well So you know one thing you can do is hire people on a little bit of a trial basis And that can be difficult in some situations where people are walking away from one job into another job They’re not going to do it on a 90-day trial basis But when you do have that opportunity it’s a good thing to do as well Um but hey so going back to the first question about keeping your ego in check in an interview like I said be confident but not cocky and let the facts of your experience speak for your your abilities rather than beating your own chest Yeah So it’s almost like and correct me if I’m wrong here So you you essentially even if you’re talking yourself up you just you simply state the facts That’s it You just state the facts Don’t say your opinion about it Like just like how you were saying just simply state the facts Here’s what I did You know we turned this project around We got it on on track and on budget And that’s the type of that’s the type of experience that I have in those situations Right Just like how you’re saying like even if someone had got like an award to be the best whatever salesman of the year right? Salesman of the year the best whatever of the year and then um like to say that in a factual way would be I was recognized as the best guy in the world instead of saying I’m the best guy in the world Here’s my award to to prove it you know So it’s like you’re saying the fact that you were recognized you know not so much the fact Very good way of doing it Stick to the facts right? Just the facts Just the facts That’s good Uh yeah sure Next question Um how do you stay humble when you know you have better skill sets than others? You seem humble with all that you’ve accomplished Well this is just what like in general just how do I be humble? Yeah How do you stay humble when you know you have better skill sets than others? And then he’s saying that I seem humble with all that I’ve accomplished which is which is actually it’s funny when I read that like it’s not I’m sure that for for the dude that’s asking this question he’s thinking I accomplished all this stuff and it’s not I don’t feel that way like first of all there’s always somebody that’s better than you that’s I guarantee it there’s someone that’s done more than you there’s someone that’s had better experience to someone that’s accomplished more And and if you are truly the master of some thing whatever one thing you’re a true master of there’s going to be people that are a lot better at other things than you So you might be the master of one particular thing but are you you have to respect the fact that people are going to be masters at other things or better than you? I mean so if you’re super strong that’s great Let’s see you run a marathon If you’re super flexible awesome How much can you deadlift? If you’re if you’re smart that that’s great You’re smart academically Let’s check out your common sense and see where all that’s at you know? So so you’re you you’re going to be good at one thing but you’re going to have failed in other areas or have weaknesses in other areas And so you just have to keep that in check And I and I’ll tell you like I I recognize why I’ve been successful You know for one thing been surrounded with great people for another been lucky in certain situations that I’ve been in certain times And you know going back to jiu-jitsu a little bit it’s a good example because just because I can beat someone in jiu-jitsu it it doesn’t mean that I’m a better person Yeah it does It doesn’t mean that I’m a better person It it what it means basically is that I happen to get into this random fringe sport before they did and I spent more time on the math than they did That’s what it means It doesn’t make me a better person And I’ll tell you what it goes with you know if you’re if you feel like you’re smarter than someone it’s probably because you’ve had the opportunity to study a subject or you’ve had a bunch of education on something or you you’ve dove into some subject so that might make you seem smarter Whereas if they applied themselves in that particular area but guess what? They were applying themselves to something else So yeah stay you got to stay humble with that And also when we talked about this when you oh you know what? I am smarter than this person Well guess what? There’s something there’s still something that they’re better than you And what is it? You might be smarter than them but guess what? Maybe it’s the guy we talked about earlier where I’m smart as I can be Guess what? This person can physically take me down and dominate me and that’s horrible Or they’re better at whatever better athletically or some people are really good craftsman with their hands I mean there’s so many different things to you can be skilled at And if you start thinking that yourself that you’re that you’re better than other people you’re going to have issues because in the long run you want to stay humble Just stay alive because life will humble you Humble you Life is hard and if you’re pushing hard and you’re driving hard and you’re trying to achieve a lot you’re not always going to win I don’t care who you are you’re going to get humbled It’s going to be hard So many so many people that are successful they’ve got some hard luck stories along the way of things that they had to push through and overcome in order to get there They got humbled And if you’re winning every single time then you’re you’re not your goals aren’t high enough So step those up So you know I appreciate the the kind of comment but um man it’s not hard to be humble when you know you need to take like maybe someone and you know people always think oh oh he’s a Navy Seal or whatever Um you know there’s a lot of SEALs that are more badass than me that done more deployments that have gotten after it more than me and I know that that that’s awesome I mean good good for them I you know they got after it good Um so I don’t feel like oh I did more than everybody No there’s no one like that There’s no one like that Even even uh you know Mikey Thornton who was sealed that won the Medal of Honor Awesome guy I’ve uh you know just a just a you know he’s a he’s a hero But if if you know he gets interviewed I’ve watched a bunch of interviewed heard him talk He’s like you know he’s like oh you know you you you got the Medal of Honor He’s like it’s not mine It’s my guys You know it’s it’s the guys I was with represents all So there’s a guy like who’s going to be if there’s anyone in the world that needs to that could not be humble Maybe it’s Mikey Thornton But guess what? Mikey Thornton he’s as humble as they come because you know what? He also has been humbled by combat because he realized there’s things that he tried to do that he didn’t get done There’s lives he tried to save that he couldn’t save So you’re going to that there’s no doubt if you’re living the right life you’re going to be humbled by it And there’s always always always going to be somebody that’s better than you that’s done better than you So just stay humble By the way what does being cocky get you anyways? What does that turn you into? What we’ve I I talk about this all the time What does what does overconfidence get you? You start cutting corners You start slack I mean it’s just ridiculous So you got to stay humble You got to stay hungry if you if you want to stay in the game And believe me you want to stay in the game You want to stay in the game Do do you think that like and I I can’t I mean I don’t know if maybe this is where this even the question is coming from Um but if you know when you’re insecure and like you’re just like everything’s a competition like just in life it’s it’s like it goes beyond just what you’re into It’s just like if someone’s better than me it makes me mad It makes you uneasy or whatever It’s like this insecurity kind of thing So when you do it’s like if you look at everything as just this big life competitive like I got to beat that guy I got to be better than them So when you are better than them it’s like you’re still looking at this as this competition like eh you know like you’re not on my level so you don’t deserve to be treated It’s kind of like maybe this is a good analogy maybe not but like in jiu-jitsu where if you roll with a white belt you don’t go hard You don’t get satisfaction or whatever So in the jiu-jitsu competition arena you’re not giving them the respect You’re not going all out like you would you know you’re not respecting his arm bar You know if you are you’re smashing him No satisfaction You know whatever It’s in that specific competition setting But if you’re just an insecure person where you think that all life is like just one big competition Oh you got to smash that person Yeah And if you’re not worthy of my smashing it’s like I don’t even treat you like you should be on the mats with me kind of thing Cool But may I mean do you think that maybe that’s where some of that comes from? like if if you’re having trouble like being humble it’s kind of like I’m better than you in life Yeah It’s probably just just driven from and it’s insecurity but there’s also a uh there’s a dichotomy there too because man I like to win Like like no doubt about it I like to win and and the dichotomy of it is is that I also don’t literally don’t care like if I get beat I’m like okay well I what can I do to get better? What? It’s not I don’t feel this despair because I lost Losing actually kind of motivates me more right? Yeah As opposed to getting angry And the worst thing that happens is people decide they’re not going to compete right? They’re not going to compete in the game of life because they didn’t win or they don’t feel like they can win So they go “Ah you know what? I’m just going to I’m just going to back off I’m just not going to participate in the game ” But get in the game Get in the game Yeah theme So maybe it comes from not understanding what that means when you win and stuff I guess I guess you know like let’s say like like the fight like back to the fighting situation where the about you know being a secure part of the male balancing a male psyche If you know that you’ve achieved these skills have these skills to win people you know who who don’t have your skill set you don’t want to fight them So you’re just like whatever But let’s say like you you have a better skill set yet you’re still blowing your horn about your skill set You know you’re not humble about it It’s it’s like it comes from maybe I don’t know some there’s no doubt there can be some insecurity that charges that makes people super competitive beyond healthy competitive right just like in life like I’m just in life you know no matter what which again there’s people that are that way myself included and but again the dichotomy is I don’t think you’re like that no no I I I I know I am well okay Remember Echelon Front? Remember the logo? Yeah Right And I’m going to post this on Twitter too Joo made the original Echelon Front logo This is like a long time ago Yeah Yeah And you were like “Hey you know this is the logo Something like this ” And then basically but you didn’t care that it was junk No No But I all I wanted to do is get you the idea You weren’t competing with me But you drew and I drew But like like as someone who’s competing in everything in life like if you draw something and I draw something you’re like I want to make mine better No no no But but well see I wanted to win with the idea not with the skill The idea win the war I wanted to win the war not the short-term battle is like who can draw this thing better The the the war was who comes up with the strategic victory which the icon and the symbol for Echelon Front is the one that I drew I liked it So yes I didn’t care that it looked like junk because I’m not I was did it You should post that because it’s pretty fun I did it on PowerPoint with like a like a crayon Looks like a crayon cuz I I didn’t want to take much time with I know I knew that that thing would take you 15 minutes to make on your what is it? AIll illustrator Yeah man That was a long time I don’t know I was like that might have been with Don’t be mad at me That’s probably the first logo I’ve ever actually made H maybe Hey there you go It was very successful Yeah Yeah Cool Thanks for trusting me Next question What do you do when you have two extreme ownership believers that have to go against each other? Ooh sounds like a big challenging question but it actually shouldn’t be because if you think about this if you truly think about this this should not be an issue And here’s why Go against each other Against each other So what are the goals? Are these two people on the same team? I’m assuming that they’re on the same team right? They’re on the same team So if they’re on the same team and we want to win we have the same goals we want to win but we won’t work together Because if the goal is to win and we both want to win why would we be going against each other? We are not taking actual extreme ownership Because if you and I were had opposing ideas but we had the same long-term goal I’m going to take ownership and say “All right Eko we got to come to terms here We got to work this out We got to figure and if you were doing the same thing you’d be like “Yeah absolutely Let’s sit down Let’s figure this out Let’s figure out which one to be the best Let’s take it to market Let’s do a market say we’re going to figure out a real solution cuz we’re taking ownership of it ” So what’s the little what’s the little nugget that’s getting into the system here and screwing things up? It’s it’s ego 100% And I will say this occasionally the idea of extreme ownership can be very poorly and very incorrectly interpreted as micromanagement and ego mania Meaning like I’m going to own this I own this This is mine Right? We’re not that’s not what extreme ownership is at all It’s you you’ve got to own everything but you don’t you don’t feel the intrinsic need to do everything right? Cuz you own it’s like owning the outcome right? And owning the progress and owning the steps along the way and owning the responsibility of mission achievement It doesn’t mean that you own each individual step and you have to make it your way That’s not extreme ownership That’s micromanagement What you know so extreme ownership is about leadership and decentralized command and using indirect tactics to make things happen and owning the outcome So that’s that’s why when you if you have two people that were truly about like hey I’m going to own this I’m do I’m going to have the attitude of extreme ownership If you and I have the attitude of extreme ownership we’re not going to fight over anything because we have the same long-term goal And if you come up with a better idea of how to get there I’m going to say “Oh Echo awesome job That’s a great way We’re going to get to where we want to go We own that outcome We’re going to make it happen Boom I’m going to support you The only time it’s going to be a problem is if I have an ego and then you have an ego When we both have an ego issue and and usually one person with a big ego it that that inflames other people’s egos because if I say “Hey Ekko I got a great plan for how to do this We need to execute it my way ” There’s a little bit of ego coming out because now your ego was down but all of a sudden you be like “What do you mean your way?” Right? Wait a second Just right there Now we got a thing Now we got some kind of issue going You know we’re now we’re working against each other instead of working together So that is uh that is absolutely problematic Can I guess to say to put this in a nutshell the if if you’re using the principle of extreme ownership the most important thing you need to take extreme ownership of is your own ego and put that thing in check Yeah it seems like the extreme ownership as far as owning it is more is essentially take responsibility like at all costs kind of thing for more like the the bad stuff that happens Oh absolutely The bad stuff Absolutely the bad stuff But you know but you’re going to take because absolutely if you and I do something great together and I was the leader I don’t go “Yes that’s right I was the I’m No you say hey first of all this was mostly on Echo He did most of the work He did all the you know that’s what I’m going to say I’m not going to say “No this was mine ” But when something goes wrong obviously I don’t say “No it was Ekko’s fault ” No I say “Hey this was my fault ” So you know I should have done double check on the audio before we started the podcast because uh you know we wanted to make sure that thing was recording right? I don’t say “No Echo dropped the ball ” Yeah I don’t do that Well him I say “Hey you should have double checked ” So that’s if you truly have two people that have real ownership and they put their egos in check this is literally not an issue right? So they Yeah This isn’t even a question for that right? Cuz they don’t go against each other They’re going with each other And and so what are the chances that you as a person that’s really put your ego in check and you’re exercising extreme ownership? What are the chances that you work with another person that is exactly with the same mindset taking ownership but no ego? What are the chances of that? They’re actually pretty slim This is not easy to do this It’s simple not easy Right? So that means you have to be even more proactive in helping adapt to their ego scenario that’s happening And when Ekko says “Hey we need to do this my way “ I’ll be like “Hey you know what Ekko? Let’s take a look at it ” Absolutely You’ve always come up with great plans Let’s take a look at what this one is here And all of a sudden I’ve disarmed you a little bit You’re feeling good about it You’re like “Oh yeah That’s right Jo’s gonna listen to me because that’s that’s great That’s exactly what I want you to think ” That’s exactly what I want you to think So you’re going to have work to do You’re going to have work to do That’s that’s what that’s what that’s what it is It’s a challenge It’s work But when you have the basic principles the I shouldn’t say basic When you have the fundamental principles they are going to work well for you And when they’re not working well for you don’t get mad at the other person and blame their ego Look at your own ego because you can adjust and adapt and maneuver and get that person disarmed and you can flank them and then you’re going to win But that’s so interesting that that how this question is like that Like it seems like when like when I first read it I was like oh shoot that’s a good question you know when they’re and it is but in a different way because this question is essentially what it does is it like what do you call it like a strainer or whatever like it shifts it sift strains out the guy who’s not doing extreme ownership See how it says if they’re both exercising it but if they’re going against each other that means there’s some extreme ownership not being practiced somewhere in here We don’t know but we’re going to we can find out you know who’s going against who kind of thing If they’re both going against each other well maybe they both have it you know but there’s always going to be one person Well not always but there’s usually be one person that is got it that understands it and that’s going to be working and this guy is just so good and so smooth and so tactical and they’re going to win And that other person that’s like “That’s right You know why we’re winning? Cuz I got extreme ownership going on and I I took ownership of this project ” And you know what the guy says? The real the real leader is like “Absolutely man You did a great job with that ” And meanwhile he knows he just he just manipulated and flanked him and made it happen to the best of the best of for the team Yep He’s keeping the train going That’s good Yep Indeed Interesting Okay I think we got last question Yeah just maybe one more Maybe Uh Joo can you talk about fear of failure and how to overcome it? Fear of failure So obviously fear of failure can can keep you from taking risk and it can leave you just sitting there paralyzed into not taking any action at all And obviously that’s bad But I don’t actually want you to overcome the fear of failure I want I want you to be afraid of failure Fear of failure is good Fear of failure will keep you up at night planning and rehearsing and going over contingencies Fear of failure will keep you training hard It’ll stop you from cutting corners Fear Fear of failure will keep you working and thinking and striving and relentlessly trying to be more prepared for battle So I want you to be afraid of failing I fear failure But more important I want you to be horrified I want you to be terrified of sitting on your ass and doing nothing That is what I want you to be afraid of of waking up in six days or 6 weeks or 6 years or 60 years in being no closer to your goal You’ve made no progress That is the horror That is the nightmare That is what you need to be truly afraid of being stagnant So get up and go Take the risk take the gamble take the first step take action And don’t let another day slip by And I think that’s all I’ve got for tonight And if you got something out of the podcast tonight you want to hear some more well then maybe you should go ahead and support the podcast and echo how can the troopers out there best support the podcast Well one of the or the initial way is to support yourself at the same time and that is to supplement um on it On it has the best supplements Uh you know it’s one thing to say they have the best supplements cuz I like them but they have for real have the best supplements Like the legit read all the stuff about it’s it’s straight up the best Anyway if you want 10% off there so support your wallet as well So you’re supporting podcasts yourself and your wallet 10% off on it com/joo Yep Solid Um also if you want to passively support uh you can do the Amazon clickth through That’s you go to one of the websites jocast com or Joo or the Jaco store There’s an Amazon link on the top Now we have international because um every once in a while like people who are overseas or you know international hey what about this? Cuz it’s it’s a long story but nonetheless we have everywhere overseas it’s Canada The basically what I started the ones that people have actually told me you know like hey we’re here in the UK We want to you know be down with the thing or whatever And yeah so so I did those and um so those are up on both websites as well Thanks for hitting me up with that by the way Um overseas support Appreciate it Yes fully So dope And also speaking of Amazon the the new trooper tool that that’s pretty it’s a cool little tool Thanks again Brady for that one IT genius and jiu-jitsu student by the way Boy um nonetheless it’s like this tool You just click it You go there’s a link to it on the thing It’s called the called the Troop Chuck podcast trooper tool Chrome extension That’s what it’s called Awesome You click on the thing You just just like you click on the thing if you want to You click on the thing and it shows up this little icon Joo’s head and you can even hide that if you don’t want it on your browser or whatever You just hide it if you don’t want it there But it looks I think it’s kind of cool It’s up there whatever Anyway it helps you go to it makes you go to Amazon It helps it go through the affiliate link so you don’t have to go through the website anymore It does automatically for you I think it says some time right? You know uh also you know of course subscribe to the iTunes and YouTube I think we’re going to pump some more value in YouTube put some out takes on there I think I like that I like where you’re coming from Yeah Subscribe to the YouTube channel Subscribe to the YouTube channel That would be cool So we know that you’re out there and you’re going to receive these things that Ekko’s putting together Yeah And then also the uh the Joo podcast store Yeah If you like shirts if you wear shirts it jo com Josttore com Y some cool t-shirts I still I still have yet to see one in the wild Not someone I know So I’m looking forward to seeing that somewhere in the world somewhere on planet Earth I am thoroughly enjoying the pictures that people send Yeah they’re awesome You know what’s funny? The the the heather gray right? The the gray It’s like that’s the kind of shirt like you know a lot of lighter colored shirt they get real um like dark if you sweat in them or whatever you know? So there’ll be like pictures where I don’t even know why I think this is funny but it’s interesting because the other one is charcoal gray That’s a dark gray So they’ll be like “Yeah I got my discipline here ” And I see the bottom like looks like a stripe I’m like “Wait what? That’s weird how the lighting is or there’s a stripe on the bottom of your shirt but it’s not the charcoal gray one It’s you know they they were getting after getting after it Yes very much so Anyway I don’t know why I thought that was funny but it’s it looks funny Not funny like I’m laughing at him but it’s interesting how it looks like a shirt and it’s like optical illusion ” Anyway chocoltore com There’s some other shirts on there if you like them Coffee mugs and stickers Awesome Bumper stick Also if you like the podcast and you want more of this information there’s a book that I wrote with uh my brother Leif Babin It’s called Extreme Ownership You can order it through Amazon or you can get anywhere books are sold It’s available in hardcover digital and audio format And the audio format Leif and I actually read So get some of that If you want to talk to Ekko and I you can find us on the interwebs at Twitter Echo is echo Charles And I am Jaco Willilink We’re also on the Facebooky and some of that Instagram I got a Snapchat thing I signed up for it or whatever but I haven’t done anything with it yet Yeah So I got to explore that But man the social media stuff takes some time and and I can’t If you want me find me on Twitter That’s the best way Ask your questions on Twitter Hit me up on Twitter That’s the most common thing that I use Uh I do I do check Facebook I mean I re everything that has ever been sent to me I’ve read I might not have responded to it because I can’t literally can’t respond to every single thing that gets sent to me Uh which is what’s nice about on Twitter I can just hit that I like it you know so that people know like oh he read it Cool On Facebook I read it but there’s nothing to press to say I read your thing So um maybe I should figure something out like that But anyways yeah you tweet you’re solid on tweet Like you get back to people and stuff which is cool because there’s some people you can tell it’s not them It’s like their their social media person Yeah Well it’s me and I was just out where where I just was there was very limited internet So I was able to get like a tweet out in the morning a couple tweets out in the morning But when I’d go to start responding it was you know 3 minutes to to look at the tweet from somebody So I’m backed up right now for like five days four days behind or something like that Five days behind actually Yeah But see you mean you’re saying that like that you’re like backed up? It means like that you’re you know you’re engaged man That’s good Yeah But even then I was reading and I I do man If you send me something on Twitter I’m gonna see it I’m gonna read it I might not respond to it directly but I might Bro I’ve had a day actually more than once too But I’m remembering a very specific time a day where I wasn’t going to go to jiu-jitsu I wasn’t going to go I was you know today’s rest day or what? I don’t know whatever I wasn’t going to go We call we call that weakness Maybe call it what you want Nonetheless um when you see pictures of I saw a p I I don’t know the the the name of the specific person but I saw a picture first day of jiu-jitsu and I’m like you know how you get that feeling when like let’s say you weren’t at jiu-jitsu and I took a picture of me on the mat saying f I’m here without Jaco I’ll do that every once in a while to like my friends I’m here without Jaco and you kind of like you have this feeling like dang I wish I was there right now just to whatever I kind of got that feeling that weird competitiveness you were talking about It’s more like “Oh I want to be there with you ” Maybe maybe a little bit Oh by the way I don’t know if you knew this Um you know like guys will be like “Hey I want to come visit you at at the gym or whatever ” Right And to to me it’s like “Oh you a guy showed up when I was out of town ” Yeah And you know I I I say the days like I go on this these days typically and whatever So just hit me up whether it be on Twitter or whatever if you’re in town And but he did And because the the reason that’s significant one of the main reasons what I said too is where was he from? Um Arizona So Arizona His name is Abby Maybe the man showed up rolled money Yeah So cuz a lot of people in life I’m not saying just on Twitter I’m just saying in life they always will be like “Hey oh you do ” So yeah I’m going to come by and you can show me or I’ll roll or whatever And I would say a good 95 to 99% of the time they don’t they don’t come Yeah Well a lot of times they’re hitting you up from the place farther than the way than than Arizona I’m even talking about like before the podcast and stuff I’m saying like your friends you know just friends or whatever you know Oh yeah Yeah you do Hey yeah I’m going to come check it out Sounds cool you know And they never had this dude rolled before Abby AB AB Yeah Um was he a jiu-jitsu player? Yes Yeah Yeah Yeah He’s a jiu-jitsu player Uh yeah He was like a three straight white belt or something like that We didn’t know coming up Yeah Nice guy you know Anyway he was cool What’s up baby? My man Thanks for coming Yeah Yeah Um Yeah And and obviously I just want to give a shout out We talked about some soldiers today but I want to give a thanks to all the police out there I I hear a lot from police officers all over the country and thanks to you guys for doing your duty to keep us safe Same thing for the firefighters I’ve actually hear a lot from fire There’s all kinds of firefighters and all you guys that are protecting us on the home front Obviously much appreciated And then of course the military folks out there especially those that are deployed right now taking the fight to the enemy be aggressive and crush them And we’ll see you when you get home And finally to all the to all the Jaco podcast troopers out there thank you for the support across the board with all this We appreciate it And what we really appreciate more than anything is you out there in your life taking ownership of your world and getting after it So until next time this is Echko and Joo out