Jocko Podcast #10 - with Echo Charles | STRESS--DEAL WITH IT, Use it

2016-02-18T00:30:06Z

0:00:00 – 1:02:18 – Book Review: “With the Old Breed,” by Eugene Sledge 1:04:20 – How do you balance Extreme Ownership with holding others accountable? 1:16:00 – What are the best ways a Police Officer can mentally condition themselves for unpredictable violence and confrontation? 1:35:06 – What martial art should I put my kids in? 1:42:45 – How to overcome friction as the new leader in a new organization. 1:51:36 – How to learn/practice detachment in real time. 2:01:00 – Cussing and Foul Language? 2:15:11 – Dealing with situational stress in life.

AI summary of episode

that's three to believe in it like you know you're gonna die in addition to the terror and hardships of combat each day brought some new dimension of dread for me I witnessed some new ghastly macrob facet in the kaleidoscope of the unreal as though designed by some fiendish ghoul to cause even the most hardened and calloused observer among us to recoil and horror and disbelief late one afternoon a buddy and I returned from the gun pit in the fading light we passed a shallow deflade we hadn't noticed previously in it we're three marine dead they were lying on stretchers where they had died before their comrades had been forced to withdraw some time earlier as we moved past my buddy groaned Jesus I took a quick glance into the depression and recoil and revulsion and pity at what I saw the bodies were so badly decomposed and nearly blackened by exposure this was to be expected of the dead and the tropics but these marines had been mutilated hideously by the enemy one man had been decapitated his head lay on his chest his hands had been severed from his wrists and also lay on his chest near his chin in disbelief I stared at the face as I realized that the Japanese had cut off the dead marines penis and stuff that into his mouth the corpse next to him had been treated similarly the third had been butchered chopped up like a carcass torn apart by some predatory animal my emotions solidified into rage and to hatred for the Japanese beyond anything I had ever experienced from that moment on I never felt the least pity or compassion for them no matter what the circumstances my comrades would feel stripped their packs and pockets for souvenirs and take gold teeth but I never saw marine commit that kind of barbaric mutilation that the Japanese committed if they had access to our dead like I said it's a glimpse into the darkest part of humanity and I want people to think about that and remember that it's real it's real that dark part of humanity that we don't want to exist it exists evil exists and this is coming from a guy you know when he says that he never had any pity after this again and you if you go and watch the Pacific and you watch interviews with this guy you can absolutely feel like I said the the kindness oozes out of him but even he when confronting the darkness had to explore his own darkness and I'm jumping now to the end on August 8th we heard that the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan reports abound for a week about a possible surrender then on 15 August 1945 the war ended we received news with quiet disbelief coupled with an indescribable sense of relief we thought the Japanese would never surrender many refused to believe it sitting in stunned silence we remembered our dead so many dead so many maimed so many bright futures consigned to the ashes of the past so many dreams lost in the madness that didn't gulf us except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy the survivors of the abyss sat hollow wide and silent trying to comprehend a world without war war is brutish in glorious and a terrible waste combat leaves and indelible mark on those who are forced to endure it the only redeeming factors were my comrades incredible bravery and their devotion to each other marine court training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive but it also taught us loyalty to each other and love that a spree decor sustained us until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others it will be necessary to accept one's responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one's countries as my comrades did as the troops used to say if the country is good enough to live in it's good enough to fight for with privilege goes responsibility and that is another look at war and it's something that we can't ever forget that war is awful and that war is the darkness that I talk about and as Eugene Sledge says the only redeeming factor is the incredible bravery and devotion to each other and I've talked about that before what made war to me an incredibly life-altering experience it wasn't the darkness that I saw but the light of the bravery of those on the battlefield and I will add another redeeming quality to war and it's a question and that is what is the alternative so what if we had not stopped the brutal imperial Japanese empire what if we had not stopped the Nazis what if we had not fought a war against ourselves to enslave and today there's still evil in the world there's still darkness ISIS the cult of child rapists and sadists and torturers and murders and if we don't confront that evil and that evil goes unchecked the darkness prevails and he's admitting that it came to a point where this this did not bother him at all back to the book within a few yards of this scene one of our hospital corpsmen worked in a small shallow deathdevil defile treating Marine wounded I went over and sat on the hot coral by him the corpsmen was on his knees bending over to young marine who just died on a stretcher a blood-soaked battle dressing was on the side of the Marines of the dead man's neck his fine handsome boy's face was asian what a pitiful waste I thought he can't be a day over 17 years old I think God his mother couldn't see him the corpsmen held the dead Marines chin tenderly between the thumb and fingers of his left hand and made the sign of the cross with his right hand tears streamed down his dusty, tanned grief-contorted face while he sobbed quietly obviously again we have a vision in our mind of what a service men is like what a marine is like and certainly that picture of a corpsmen which is actually a navy corpsmen if you don't know navy corpsmen work with the Marines and go into the field with Marines and train as Marines but you picture this navy corpsmen in trying to treat this man and losing him and out there in the middle of the battlefield battle field with tears streaming down his face that's what combat is moving to another section where you're about to see some near friendly fire here it is just then a marine tank took to our rear I'm sorry just then a marine tank to our rear mist took us for enemy troops as soon as my hand went up to drop the round down the tube a machine gun cut loose it sounded like one of ours and from the rear of all places as I peeped over the edge of the crater through the dust and smoke and saw Sherman tank in the clearing behind us the tank fired at 75 millimeter gun off to our right rear the shell exploded nearby around a bend in the same trail we were on I then heard the report of a Japanese field gun located there as it returned fire on the tank again I tried to fire but the machine gun opened up on us as before a surge of panic rose within me in a brief moment our tank had reduced me to from a well-trained determined assistant mortar gunner to a quivering mass of terror it was not just that I was being fired at by a machine gun that unnerved me so terribly but that it was one of ours to be killed by the enemy was bad enough that was a real possibility I had prepared myself for but to be killed by a mistake by my own comrades was something I found hard to accept it was just too much and that is what we call a blue on blue when friendlies shoot at friendlies and fraturicide is what it's called when brother kills brother and you know this is actually the opening of the book that late for my road extreme ownership the opening chapter is about this this happening and happening under my command to my guys when I'm the senior guy and that's why this idea that to be killed by mistake by my own comrades was something I found hard to accept this is the this is the mortal sin of combat and sometimes when I talk about my deployment to Ramadi and what it was like for us okay here's what's going on so I hope at some point I can I can help the military with that now in addition to that as you're trying to knock yourself to this violence and get used to this watch those YouTube videos watch those YouTube videos of street fights of stupid encounters with bars with drunk people and bouncer's with the shoot or don't shoot scenarios with cops military situations where they have helmet cams on and you can see things happening and what you want to do you want to watch those videos I knew I want to pay attention to the people to the humans and watch the reactions and watch their movements and watch their body language and watch their expressions on their faces and see and judge and predict and go to another video and hit pause and say this is what I see right here this is what I think is about to happen and educate yourself on human nature because human nature is what you're going to be dealing with and violence is a part of human nature and sometimes things go violent and sometimes they don't so how do you predict that and if you're unsure which you will be how do you protect yourself first and give yourself the maximum amount of time to make a judgment call so you don't have to rush on top of that it's awesome that you're doing Gjitsu do boxing do moitai do wrestling so you get used to getting hit so you start to see what a person's face looks like when they're about to hit you so you start to see what changes in their their their their posture makes when they're about to throw a punch those are all things that will help you Gjitsu is obviously great for the grinding physical grappling situation but a lot of times hopefully as a cop most of the time you're not in that situation you're standing at a little bit of a distance and or you're you know you've got a little bit more time to judge so fight as much as you can watch those law enforcement and military videos again see the reactions see the noise see the fear see the panic look at people's eyes judge them predict what they're going to do press pause and figure out if you were right or wrong watch horrible violence happen so that you can understand it better so that you can handle it when the time arises so this is kind of becoming a little bit of a chorus when I talk about leading be humble listen learn move methodically when it does come time to make change in a new situation most of the time I would say do it incrementally do smaller changes after you've assessed fully and you've got people a people's opinions and you've expressed and socialized your ideas so you're not trying to roll in there and change the world again now if we go into a hostile turnover situation or there's someone's been fired for cause or that's a different situation but for a normal transition into a new job be humble listen learn and lead that part where you're you're talking about playing out why they're doing the things that the way they are and stuff like that that part can be depending on certain people's personality like if you're coming in as the new guy and you and you ask start asking hey why do you guys do it like this if you come off with the wrong tone sometimes it'll sound like that you're questioning oh for sure you know so sure I remember when I worked at the nightclub we had a new manager and his name was Joel he he came in and he was strangely he was this whole list personified he came in is really friendly but really reserved but the one thing he did kind of to address what I was talking about right really good job he except as no it was my company I belonged in it and nowhere else most Marines I knew felt the same about their companies in whatever battalion regiment or marine division they happened to be in this was the result of or maybe a cause for our strong aspreet a core the Marine Corps wisely acknowledged this unit attachment men who recovered from wounds and returned to duty nearly always came home to their old company this was not misplaced sentimentality but a strong contributor to high morale a man felt that he belonged to his unit and had a niche among his buddies whom he knew and with whom he shared a mutual respect well didn't combat this sense of family was particularly important in the infantry where survival and combat efficiency often hinged on how well men could depend on one another a spree decor and now there's a section that I'm moving forward to and this section is called the stench of battle the sun board down on us like a giant heat lamp occasional rains fell on the hot coral merely evaporated like steam off hot pavement the air hung heavy and muggy everywhere we went on the ridges the hot humid air weaked with the stench of death a strong wind was no relief it simply brought the horned odor from an adjacent area Japanese corpses lay where they fell among the rocks and on the slopes it was impossible to cover them usually there was no soil that could be spated over them just the hard jagged coral the enemy dead simply rotted where they had fallen they lay all over the place in grotesque positions with puffy faces and grinning buck tooth expressions it was difficult to convey to anyone who is not experienced it the gassly horror of having your sense of smell saturated constantly with the putrid odor of rotting human flesh day after day night after night this was something the men of an infantry battalion got a horrifying dose of during the long protracted battle such as pelaloo in the tropics the dead became bloated and gave off a terrific stench within a few hours after death whenever possible we removed marine dead to the rear of the company's position there they were usually laid on stretchers and covered with ponchoes which stretched over the head of the corpse down to the ankles I rarely saw a dead marine left uncovered with his face exposed to the sun rain and flies somehow it seemed indecent not to cover our dead often though the dead might lie on the stretchers for some time and decompose badly before the busy grave registration crews could take them for burial in the division cemetery near the airfield added to the awful stench of the dead of both sides was the repulsive odor of human excrement everywhere it was all but impossible to practice simple elemental field sanitation on most areas of pelaloo because of the rocky surface field sanitation during maneuvers in combat was the responsibility of each man in short under normal conditions he covered his own waste with a scoop of soil at night when he didn't dare venture out of his foxhole he simply used to empty grenade can't destroy a ration cans and threw it out of his hole and scooped over it the next day if he wasn't under enemy fire that was not possible on pelaloo added to this was the odor of thousands of rotting discarded japanese and american rations at every breath one inhaled humid air heavy with countless repulsive odors I felt as though my lungs would never be cleansed of these valve vapors as I looked at the stains on the coral I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how gallant it was for a man to shed his blood for his country and to give life's blood for sacrifice and so on the word seemed so ridiculous only the fly is benefited so as patriotic and brave as Eugene sledge was the madness the madness even made him begin to question what this was all about and think about what these politicians would say and say that only the fly is benefited it's crazy how he went so detailed in the in the smells because you know when you watch movies and that's a part that you don't do it but if someone puts on head gear you know with a face mask and a whole nine yards shin guards and padded out fit on and people can attack them and you have to react to it the other good thing to do is do it in a situation where you know you don't let the guy know what's gonna happen you know he's got to keep his eyes closed until you say go when he opens his eyes there's someone there where the knife right in front of a fake knife right in front of him is gonna stab when he's got a draws weapon and shoot or defend himself somehow so you want to hit him with these unexpected drills with your weapons without your weapon shooting and moving so those those are those are the kind of things as soon as you get the opportunity to do it and I think what's important here is this is he's not a new leader like newly commissioned leader stepping up in the ranks he's in a new organization so he's stepping into a new organization is the new leader in a new situation we've kind of talked about stepping up from within the organization how are you going and stepping into a new organization now I'm gonna look at this from a perspective of like a normal transition into a leadership position and a new job or something like that not a hostile takeover situation maybe we can address that on a later time but not a situation where hey they fired this guy he had a bad reputation the things are going wrong you're gonna step in and change it because that that would take a different leadership approach then the one that I that I would take and that I have taken where you're stepping into a situation where things are going okay so I think if that can be clarified that you're not like questioning it because it seems like you know I want to make it seem like you know I know a better way right off the bat you don't want that tone you know but you don't know so be humble and check yourself you gotta be friendly to people but at the same time you gotta be reserved now this is this is tricky because you are trying to build relationships you absolutely are trying to build relationships that's what life is that's what business is that's what war is that's what everything is about building relationships with these other humans so you want to be friendly to people but at the same time from a leadership perspective you can't just come in and be Mr. Nice guy and best friends with everybody that's not gonna work out for you for a couple reasons number one you don't know the the face that people are gonna present you out of the gate is not necessarily the true face of that person so you may check in your first day and this guy so you start asking yourself how am I being perceived right now if you can just occasionally start asking yourself how am I being perceived right now how is echo singing me right now so all the sudden you you start to take other people's perspective which is it's a good start because it's not your own and the goal is to get outside of your own perspective and see yourself from some kind of a distance so you start asking yourself how am I being perceived and then start trying to watch yourself like what do I look like right now am I caught inside that madness and once you start to do that that's going to be like your that's going to be your little tool that you're going to use is getting outside and just watch yourself and saying

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jocco podcast number 10 with echo Charles and me, Jocco Willink.
[00:00:11] Assault into hell.
[00:00:16] We waited a seeming eternity for the signal to start towards the beach.
[00:00:20] This suspense was almost more than I could bear.
[00:00:24] Waiting is a major part of war, but I never experienced any more supremely agonizing suspense
[00:00:29] in the extruciating torture of those moments before we received the signal to begin the assault
[00:00:35] on Pelaloo.
[00:00:37] I broke out and a cold sweat as the tension mounted with the intensity of the bombardment.
[00:00:42] My stomach was tied in knots.
[00:00:45] I had a lump in my throat and swallowed only with great difficulty.
[00:00:50] My knees nearly buckled, so I clung weakly to the side of the tractor.
[00:00:55] I felt nauseated and feared that my bladder would surely empty itself and reveal me to be
[00:01:00] the coward I was.
[00:01:03] But the men around me looked just about the same way I felt.
[00:01:07] Finally, with a sense of fatalistic relief, mixed with a flash of anger at the navy officer
[00:01:12] who was our wave commander.
[00:01:15] I saw him wave his flag toward the beach.
[00:01:18] Our driver revved the engine.
[00:01:21] The treads churned up the water and we started in.
[00:01:23] The second wave is sure.
[00:01:26] We moved ahead, watching the frightful spectacle.
[00:01:31] Huge guisers of water rose around the amtrax.
[00:01:34] A head of us, as they approached the reef.
[00:01:37] The beach was now marked along its length by a continuous sheet of flame backed by a thick
[00:01:42] wall of smoke.
[00:01:45] It seemed as though a huge volcano had erupted from the sea and rather than heading for an island,
[00:01:51] we were being drawn into the vortex of a flaming abyss.
[00:01:55] For many, it was to be oblivion.
[00:02:00] Suddenly a large shell exploded with a terrific concussion and a huge guiser rose up right
[00:02:05] next to our front.
[00:02:07] It barely missed us.
[00:02:09] The engine stalled.
[00:02:10] The front of the tractor lurched to the left and bumped hard against the rear of another
[00:02:14] ramp track that was either stalled or hit.
[00:02:17] I never knew which.
[00:02:20] We sat, stalled, floating in the water for some terrifying moments.
[00:02:25] We were sitting ducks for the enemy gunners.
[00:02:28] I look forward through the hatch behind the driver.
[00:02:30] He was wrestling frantically with the control levers.
[00:02:33] Japanese shells were screaming into the air and exploding all around us.
[00:02:37] Sergeant Johnny Marmet leaned toward the driver and yelled something.
[00:02:41] Whatever it was, it seemed to calm the driver because he got the engine started.
[00:02:46] We moved forward again amid the guisers of exploding shells.
[00:02:51] Our bombardment began to lift off the beach and move inland.
[00:02:54] Our dive bombers also moved inland with their strafing and bombing.
[00:02:58] The Japanese increased their volume of fire against the waves of amtrax.
[00:03:03] Above the den, I could hear the ominous sound of shell fragments humming and growling
[00:03:07] through the air.
[00:03:09] Stand by someone yelled.
[00:03:12] Hit the beach, yelled an NCO moments before the machine lurched to a stop.
[00:03:18] The men piled over the sides as fast as they could.
[00:03:20] I followed Snaffu, climbed up and planted both feet firmly on the left side, so as to
[00:03:25] leap as far away from it as possible.
[00:03:28] At that instant, a burst of machine gun fire with white hot tracer snapped through the
[00:03:32] air at eye level, almost grazing my face.
[00:03:35] I pulled back like a turtle, lost my balance and fell awkwardly forward down under the sand.
[00:03:41] In a tangle of ammo bag, pack, helmet, carbean, gas mask, cartridge belt, and flopping
[00:03:46] canteens.
[00:03:48] Get off the beach, get off the beach, race through my mind.
[00:03:53] Shells crashed all around, fragments torn, word, slapping on the sand and splashing
[00:03:58] into the water a few yards behind us.
[00:04:01] The Japanese were recovering from the shock of our pre-landing bombardment.
[00:04:05] Their machine gun and rifle fire got thicker, snapping viciously overhead in an increasing
[00:04:11] volume.
[00:04:13] Up and down the beach and out on the reef, a number of amtrax were burning.
[00:04:18] Japanese machine gun burst made long splashes on the water, as they'll fling it with
[00:04:23] some giant whip.
[00:04:25] The guisers belched up relentlessly where the mortar and artillery shells hit.
[00:04:30] I caught a fleeting glimpse of a group of marines, leaving a smoking amtrak on the reef.
[00:04:38] Some fell as bullets and fragments splashed among them.
[00:04:43] Their buddies tried to help them as they struggled in knee deep water.
[00:04:50] I shuddered and choked.
[00:04:52] A wild desperate feeling of anger, frustration and pity gripped me.
[00:04:57] It was an emotion that would always torture my mind when I saw men trapped and was unable
[00:05:02] to do anything but watch as they were hit.
[00:05:05] My own plate forgotten momentarily, I felt sick into the depths of my soul.
[00:05:11] I asked God, why, why, why?
[00:05:16] I turned my face away and wished that I were imagining it all.
[00:05:20] I tasted the bitterest essence of war.
[00:05:24] The sight of helpless comrades being slaughtered and it filled me with disgust.
[00:05:33] That right there is from a book, an absolutely incredible book called, with the Old
[00:05:43] Breed by Eugene Sledge.
[00:05:48] Eugene Sledge was a Marine, who is a Marine in World War II and he ended up being a university
[00:06:00] professor and an author when he got done.
[00:06:03] He wrote this book.
[00:06:05] I read this book for the first time when I was on deployment to Iraq.
[00:06:09] My first deployment to Iraq.
[00:06:12] And it definitely kept me in check because it made me always remember that what we were
[00:06:24] experiencing, this war that we were in was something that men had always experienced and
[00:06:37] actually they have experienced much, much worse than I ever experienced.
[00:06:45] This book was later used to make the documentary, a PBS documentary called The War.
[00:06:55] And in 2000, I think it came out in 2010 was the HBO mini-series called The Pacific, which
[00:07:02] is an absolutely epic series.
[00:07:09] If you haven't watched The Pacific, it's phenomenal, get it and watch it.
[00:07:16] It's completely realistic.
[00:07:18] One of the things that struck me when I watched it for the first time was he talks about
[00:07:24] the waiting and the very first episode of The Pacific, you're waiting for something
[00:07:31] happened, they're showing the guy's prep and they actually land and you're waiting and
[00:07:35] waiting for something to happen.
[00:07:38] And it doesn't.
[00:07:40] It has this feeling.
[00:07:43] And I remember that feeling, especially being in Ramadi, when you'd be out in the streets
[00:07:48] and no shooting it started yet.
[00:07:50] And I would be, you know, everyone would have this feeling.
[00:07:53] You're waiting for it to start and every step you're waiting for it to start.
[00:07:57] So it does a very, it doesn't incredible job of portraying that and giving you that feeling.
[00:08:07] Now, what's important to remember about Eugene Sledge and that's another great thing about
[00:08:14] the Pacific is that they do interviews with these guys.
[00:08:22] They do interviews with them and you can see when you watch this, you will see that Eugene
[00:08:26] Sledge.
[00:08:27] And as I thought about how I would describe Eugene Sledge, he's, yes, he's a marine and
[00:08:33] you know, you get whatever ideas you get in your mind of what a marine is, you know,
[00:08:38] a tough guy filled with bravado.
[00:08:43] Eugene Sledge just will destroy that image because Eugene Sledge and if I think of the
[00:08:50] way I would describe him, it would be to say simply, he's a good man.
[00:08:59] And you can tell when he talks that he's an upright man and that he's a moral man and
[00:09:05] he's a gentle and a kind person.
[00:09:07] I mean, it is his gentleness and his kindness oozes out of him and he seems like and I don't
[00:09:14] use this word very often.
[00:09:17] But I will use it because this is how I would describe.
[00:09:20] He seems like a lovely human being.
[00:09:24] I mean, he just seems like a lovely person.
[00:09:30] And so as we go into this book, remember that this guy who went through this was just
[00:09:41] an absolutely incredibly good human and also an incredible warrior.
[00:09:54] And now the last podcast we talked about patent and war as I knew it and that is a
[00:10:01] genuals of view.
[00:10:02] And if you remember when we talked about when we went to Sri Lanka, that was that guy
[00:10:08] described the foot soldiers view as being a worms view because you're so in the front
[00:10:16] line that it's like a worm and that's what this is.
[00:10:18] This is a soldiers book.
[00:10:19] This is a troopers book.
[00:10:21] This is the absolute front lines.
[00:10:25] And it is a book that really unveils a lot about will and survival and the psychological
[00:10:37] nature of war and what it does to people and what people are capable of doing.
[00:10:48] And also I think it makes it very clear why we fight against evil.
[00:10:54] And I think that it's something that makes me think always about where we are in the
[00:11:01] world in a war against evil.
[00:11:10] So going back to the book.
[00:11:12] We started to move inland.
[00:11:15] We had gone only a few yards when an enemy machine gun opened up from a scrub thick
[00:11:19] it to our right.
[00:11:22] Japanese 81 mm and 90 mm mortars then opened up on us.
[00:11:26] Everyone hit the deck.
[00:11:27] I dove into a shallow crater.
[00:11:30] The company was completely pinned down.
[00:11:33] All movements ceased.
[00:11:35] The shells fell faster until I couldn't make out individual explosions.
[00:11:39] This continuous crashing rumbles with an occasional ripping sound of shrapnel tearing low
[00:11:47] through the air overhead amongst the roar.
[00:11:51] The air was murky with smoke and dust.
[00:11:53] Every muscle in my body was as tight as a piano wire.
[00:11:57] I shuttered and shook as though I were having a mild convulsion.
[00:12:03] Sweat flowed profusely.
[00:12:04] I prayed, clenched my teeth, squeezed my carbine stock and cursed the Japanese.
[00:12:10] Our lieutenant, a cape, a clousster, veteran who was nearby seemed to be in about the same
[00:12:16] shape.
[00:12:18] From the meager protection of my shallow crater, I pitted him or anyone out on that flat
[00:12:23] coral.
[00:12:25] The heavy mortar barrage went on without slacking.
[00:12:29] I thought it would never stop.
[00:12:30] I was terrified by the big shells arching down all around us.
[00:12:36] One was bound to fall directly into my hole, I thought.
[00:12:40] If any orders were passed along or if anyone yelled for a corpsman I never heard it in
[00:12:45] all the noise.
[00:12:47] It was as though I were out there on the battlefield all by myself, utterly forlorn and helpless
[00:12:53] in a tempest of violent explosions.
[00:12:57] All any man could do was sweat it out and pray for survival.
[00:13:03] It would have been sure suicide to stand up in that firestorm.
[00:13:08] Under my first barrage, the fast moving events of hitting the beach, I learned a new sensation,
[00:13:14] utter and absolute helplessness.
[00:13:17] The shelling lifted in about a half an hour, although it seemed to me to have crashed on
[00:13:21] for hours.
[00:13:22] Time had no meaning.
[00:13:26] This was particularly true when under heavy shelling.
[00:13:29] I could never judge how long it lasted.
[00:13:32] Orders then came to move up, move out and I got up, covered by a layer of coral dust.
[00:13:38] I felt like jelly and couldn't believe any of us had survived that barrage.
[00:13:48] So that feeling of helplessness and that is one of the worst things for humans,
[00:13:58] it's one of the worst human emotions, helplessness.
[00:14:05] I have experienced just a minor amount of shelling, of being murdered.
[00:14:17] It is definitely, I was in Iraq and my first deployment and we were on a fire base and
[00:14:24] we were trying to help with some sniper overwatch because this place had been being attacked.
[00:14:31] This was early in my first deployment, my first time going to war.
[00:14:38] We're thinking, hey, these guys are getting murdered.
[00:14:41] Cool, we'll go out there and kill these people out of morgue room and we'll take care.
[00:14:47] So we went out to this base on the outskirts of Baghdad and sure enough we started getting
[00:14:56] murdered and the insurgents that were firing the mortars knew exactly what they were doing.
[00:15:04] It was horrible because it was in the city and so the mortars were being shot at us
[00:15:12] from three or 400 meters away but they were from behind buildings and we could actually
[00:15:22] we could actually hear the mortars being launched.
[00:15:25] So you would hear the cring, cring, cring, you'd hear the noise and you could actually see
[00:15:32] the fire trail of the launch.
[00:15:35] So you knew.
[00:15:36] So there you are and you're sitting there and you're just waiting to get blown up and
[00:15:44] it was interesting because if you have overhead cover which means if you have some kind
[00:15:48] of a strong roof over your head, if you're inside of a building, a strong building that's
[00:15:51] made a concrete, it doesn't have to be a bunker or anything for smaller mortars.
[00:15:56] You're basically safe, you know, you're fine.
[00:16:00] And we didn't really understand that yet.
[00:16:03] So we had guys myself included that were exposed, that were outside that were on rooftops.
[00:16:09] And this is again, I want to emphasize this is nothing, this is nothing compared to what
[00:16:18] Eugene Slider just talking about.
[00:16:20] The only reason I'm bringing up is because I did experience it and my point is that even
[00:16:24] through one night where we took maybe, I don't know, maybe 10 mortar rounds in a night.
[00:16:32] It actually affected the guys a little bit one night one night and you could see it actually
[00:16:40] when we got back to our compound.
[00:16:44] We had a door on our tactical operation center that was an old piece of plywood and it
[00:16:49] somebody mounted a spring on there to keep it shut because it was hot and it was air conditioning
[00:16:52] in there and it was a strong spring.
[00:16:56] And so when you walked out and you let that go, it would slap and it would make a very
[00:16:59] loud bang.
[00:17:00] And I literally after one measly night of getting mortar, I watched guys shutter and at
[00:17:08] the slap of that noise.
[00:17:12] And so to imagine what it was like for these guys for, you know, half an hour of continuous
[00:17:20] shelling is it's just it's unbelievable and I'll tell you something else.
[00:17:27] If you go back further than that and you go to World War I where those soldiers who are
[00:17:34] in the trenches and they got bombarded for months and if you want to know what that does
[00:17:42] to a human go on to YouTube and Google World War I or go on to YouTube and search World
[00:17:51] War I shell shock and it is horrendous to see the psychological damage that it did to these
[00:18:00] guys and the worst part of it was that today we understand that we understand what it does
[00:18:10] to people psychologically and we understand that it's it's it's a psychological damage and
[00:18:19] in World War I they didn't know that so these guys that broke they were cowards they were
[00:18:30] called cowards and to think about that is sickening to me knowing that my guys after like
[00:18:40] I said a miniscule amount of receiving mortar and artillery fires, mortar fire but it's
[00:18:47] the same thing it's indirect fire that to know that that already had a little bit of effect
[00:18:53] to imagine what that did over time was was crazy and I was I got I got two moments in
[00:19:03] time that I remember that that I had the feeling of helplessness we were on I was on the
[00:19:12] rooftop and again this was in Baghdad and we had gone to the space to set up some sniper
[00:19:16] positions and help them eliminate their problem boy were we wrong so this rooftop was
[00:19:23] kind of divided up by concrete walls and to get to this to the furthest part away on the
[00:19:33] roof you had to go jump a bunch of these walls and you know you were traveling probably I
[00:19:39] don't know 50 meters across this rooftop to get to one of the corners and so I had you know
[00:19:44] I was checking the positions of all the guys and walking from position to position to see
[00:19:48] where they are and see what their field of fire was and making adjustments if needed
[00:19:52] checking with them etc so I get up to this I climb out get on the roof climb up this climb up
[00:20:01] this stairs to the roof jump a bunch of these you know little four foot walls just
[00:20:07] kind of get no over them takes two or three minutes to get and I finally get to this position
[00:20:11] where there's one of the one of the gunners has sit in there and as I get there I
[00:20:17] hear how's it going and what are you seeing we're having a little discussion and all of a sudden
[00:20:21] we hear the mortar launch shung shung shung and one of the other guys in the cartoon gets on the
[00:20:30] radio and he says he says that's three boys count them out meaning okay there's going to be three
[00:20:37] booms and again we have no overhead cover because I'm on the roof and I look at I look at the
[00:20:45] guy I'm with and he says you think we can make it back inside because you have time you know
[00:20:51] the mortar rounds going way up in the air he says do you think we can make it back inside and I said
[00:20:56] nope then he says what should we do and I said hope it doesn't land in our quadrant
[00:21:07] meaning this little area that we actually landed there we'd be dead but that's the feeling of
[00:21:11] helping us that that you have and luckily that didn't land in our quadrant I wasn't another situation
[00:21:17] this was now on the on the bagged at international airport where our base was and there was an attack
[00:21:24] on on one of the gates and we went there as a quick reaction force and we get out there
[00:21:31] and as the attacks happening and we're kind of showing up to see what we can do to help out all
[00:21:36] the sudden mortar start coming in and again I get down behind just a normal like a jersey barrier
[00:21:43] a concrete jersey barrier and it but we're in a pretty open area other than this jersey barrier
[00:21:50] and again I'm I'm hunkered down with one other seal and he looks at me and he goes what should we do
[00:21:59] and I go there's nothing we can do but sit here and suck it up and and that's really all you
[00:22:04] can do and and it's easy to look back and be like that that was funny you know but but that was
[00:22:11] that was a three minutes of mortar bombardment right and and so just to imagine the psychological
[00:22:19] trauma that these guys experienced it was it was just it's horrible to imagine and and the key
[00:22:29] point of all this I think is to to think about as as it pertains to people as it pertains to individuals
[00:22:35] as it pertains to us now to people in the civilian world what causes this intense anxiety and fear
[00:22:44] is the complete lack of control that's what causes it see what you're going to fire fighter you're
[00:22:50] getting shot at it's coming from somewhere and you can hide from it and you can get down and you can
[00:22:54] maneuver on it when it's when it's not that when it's just random death that you cannot control
[00:23:03] it's it's psychologically much much harder to deal with and thank god we didn't have to deal with it
[00:23:10] very often now again when we were in the body the guys that were over with the first the 506 on
[00:23:17] camp caragador those guys were getting more than all the time I mean they were they were feeling it
[00:23:22] you know again not as bad not world war one style but you know they were getting murdered every
[00:23:28] day there was mortars hitting the buildings so that that just randomness is what makes things so
[00:23:36] difficult those mortars when you hear that first ignition of them how long does it take to
[00:23:42] it depends on how far away they were but you know in this case it was probably like a minute
[00:23:46] maybe maybe a little less than that I'd have to sit here and think about it but it was like a minute
[00:23:50] maybe 30 seconds it might have been it might have been long it might have been shorter than that but it
[00:23:54] seemed like a lot because you're sitting there waiting for it to hit you and that was another
[00:23:58] I on the one that was in Baghdad I was sitting there in a home v and we had this we had weapons on
[00:24:06] the home v that could reach across the river so we were by a river and we were looking we could see
[00:24:12] some activity over across the river and so as we sat there are gunner I said hey can you see this
[00:24:18] and he's like yeah I can I can kind of see it and I go do you have a shot and he goes no
[00:24:21] because we were behind a behind a it bunk some kind of wall I go do you have a shot and he goes no I
[00:24:28] can't I don't have a shot yet so I said hey pull the home v forward so I told the driver we pull the
[00:24:33] home v forward like I don't know 30 feet maybe 35 feet and a minute later a mortar hit exactly
[00:24:42] where that one was luckily was only a 60 millimeter which is a tiny little tiny little mortar
[00:24:48] and no one even got fracked but I mean you know we were we were 30 seconds away or a minute away
[00:24:54] from just taking a mortar round right in the home v that we were all in so it's it's it's again I don't
[00:25:05] want to put anything that I experienced on any level with what these guys experienced the only
[00:25:12] reason I'm saying is to give a miniscule psychological impact that it has and just multiply that
[00:25:19] time is a billion to get to where these guys were and and what they went through so going back to
[00:25:28] the book here after the fighting it kind of settled um sledge Eugene sledge comes across some
[00:25:37] dead Japanese soldiers so now they're kind of patrolling and there's some other veterans that
[00:25:44] were with them and he's standing there looking at these dead Japanese bodies and a guy comes over and
[00:25:51] says sledgehammer don't stand there with your mouth open when there's all these good souvenirs laying
[00:25:57] around so he sees these dead Japanese and he's going to get some war booty he then removed a
[00:26:03] nambu pistol slipped the belt off the corpse and took the leather holster he pulled off the steel helmet
[00:26:10] reached inside and took out a neatly folded Japanese flag covered it with writing the veteran
[00:26:16] pitched the helmet on the coral where it clanked and rattled rolled the corpse over and started
[00:26:22] pulling through the combat pack the veterans buddy came up and started stripping the other Japanese
[00:26:28] corpses his take was a flag and other items he then removed the bolts from the Japanese
[00:26:33] rifles and broke the stocks against the coral to render them useless to infiltrators
[00:26:39] I hadn't budged or said a word just stood glued to the spot almost in a trance
[00:26:45] the corpses were sprawled where the veterans had dragged them around to get into their packs and pockets
[00:26:52] would I become this casual and calist about enemy dead I wondered would the war dehumanize me
[00:27:00] so that I too could feel strip enemy dead with such non-shalance the time soon came when it
[00:27:09] didn't bother me a bit I think again it's it's important to remember that this guy is a gentleman
[00:27:19] a kind soul and he knows and he's admitting that it came to a point where this this did not bother him at all
[00:27:27] back to the book within a few yards of this scene one of our hospital corpsmen worked in a small
[00:27:34] shallow deathdevil defile treating Marine wounded I went over and sat on the hot coral by him
[00:27:45] the corpsmen was on his knees bending over to young marine who just died on a stretcher a blood-soaked
[00:27:51] battle dressing was on the side of the Marines of the dead man's neck his fine handsome boy's face was
[00:27:59] asian what a pitiful waste I thought he can't be a day over 17 years old I think God his mother couldn't
[00:28:06] see him the corpsmen held the dead Marines chin tenderly between the thumb and fingers of his
[00:28:12] left hand and made the sign of the cross with his right hand tears streamed down his dusty,
[00:28:20] tanned grief-contorted face while he sobbed quietly obviously again we have a vision in our mind of what
[00:28:43] a service men is like what a marine is like and certainly that picture of a corpsmen which is
[00:28:59] actually a navy corpsmen if you don't know navy corpsmen work with the Marines and go into the
[00:29:03] field with Marines and train as Marines but you picture this navy corpsmen in trying to treat
[00:29:13] this man and losing him and out there in the middle of the battlefield battle field with tears
[00:29:18] streaming down his face that's what combat is moving to another section where you're about to see
[00:29:37] some near friendly fire here it is just then a marine tank took to our rear
[00:29:44] I'm sorry just then a marine tank to our rear mist took us for enemy troops as soon as my
[00:29:51] hand went up to drop the round down the tube a machine gun cut loose it sounded like one of ours
[00:29:57] and from the rear of all places as I peeped over the edge of the crater through the dust and smoke
[00:30:02] and saw Sherman tank in the clearing behind us the tank fired at 75 millimeter gun off to our right
[00:30:08] rear the shell exploded nearby around a bend in the same trail we were on I then heard the report
[00:30:15] of a Japanese field gun located there as it returned fire on the tank again I tried to fire
[00:30:21] but the machine gun opened up on us as before a surge of panic rose within me in a brief moment
[00:30:28] our tank had reduced me to from a well-trained determined assistant mortar gunner to a quivering
[00:30:35] mass of terror it was not just that I was being fired at by a machine gun that unnerved me so
[00:30:42] terribly but that it was one of ours to be killed by the enemy was bad enough that was a real
[00:30:49] possibility I had prepared myself for but to be killed by a mistake by my own comrades was something
[00:30:56] I found hard to accept it was just too much and that is what we call a blue on blue
[00:31:03] when friendlies shoot at friendlies and fraturicide is what it's called when brother kills brother
[00:31:13] and you know this is actually the opening of the book that late for my road extreme ownership
[00:31:22] the opening chapter is about this this happening and happening under my command to my guys
[00:31:31] when I'm the senior guy and that's why this idea that to be killed by mistake by my own comrades
[00:31:42] was something I found hard to accept this is the this is the mortal sin of combat
[00:31:49] and sometimes when I talk about my deployment to Ramadi and what it was like for us I say that
[00:31:56] basically every bad thing that could happen happened and this is definitely one of them
[00:32:05] is being in a situation where there was friendly fire and we were a number of situations like
[00:32:10] this none of them was bad as as the first one I talk about in the book and here's how these
[00:32:15] guys get it solved a volunteer crawled off to the left and soon the tanks ceased firing on us
[00:32:22] we learned later that our tankers were firing on us because we had moved too far ahead
[00:32:28] they thought we were enemy support for the field gun this also explained why the enemy
[00:32:34] shelling was passing over and exploding behind us tragically the marine who saved us by identifying
[00:32:41] us to the tanker was shot off the tank and killed by a sniper definitely one of the worst things in
[00:32:48] war you think you after worry about the enemy and things are so confusing and there's such
[00:32:55] mayhem out there that you you have to spend at least as much time if not more
[00:33:01] de-conflicting with your friendly troops as you do trying to figure out where the enemy is and
[00:33:06] killed them and it's it's it was definitely a fast learning curve for us in Ramadi learning and
[00:33:14] understanding and de-conflicting and wanting to be so absolutely certain of where everybody was
[00:33:25] and the term we would use and is used in military's front line trace where are your guys
[00:33:30] where is the most forward that they are and everybody needs to know that in fact and this might sound
[00:33:37] crazy so we'd have you know people have in their minds of a sniper position being you know two or three
[00:33:44] guys hidden very tactically and clandestine in Ramadi sometimes for our sniper overwatch position
[00:33:53] first of all sometimes we have 20 or 30 guys in there to secure a building so that the snipers
[00:33:59] and the machine gunners could work but on top of that in order to avoid there being a blue on blue
[00:34:05] we had giant aircraft marking panels so fluorescent orange 10 by 10 pieces of material that we
[00:34:16] would literally the guys would literally hang them over the side of the Overwatch positions to say
[00:34:21] here we are everyone don't shoot us oh bad guys you want to shoot us bring it and we'll kill you
[00:34:28] but that's that's the extent that that we would go to to ensure that you weren't going to get shot
[00:34:35] by American forces and there's you know life's got a a vignette in the book as well a story about
[00:34:42] that almost happening and I tell another one that that blue on blue stuff was a nightmare
[00:34:47] it was a nightmare to deal with and you know one thing I will say is we had that horrible
[00:34:53] one that resulted in an in an Iraqi soldier killed a friendly Iraqi soldier killed very early on in
[00:34:59] our deployment but we learned so much from it that we there was blue on blues that happened after
[00:35:04] that but then we never had them get out of control like that first event but again for those
[00:35:13] people that have never been in combat before and it was weird when life and I were writing the book
[00:35:17] you know we got done I said man we've got three stories that are based on some sort of blue on
[00:35:22] blue happening and we didn't plan it that way but again just to realize you know that's that's how
[00:35:29] much we were thinking about it that when we wrote about it three of the stories were just about hey
[00:35:35] preventing blue on blues having a blue on blue and then two of them were not preventing blue on blues
[00:35:40] and if you'd never been in a combat you would you would think about that it's so confusing
[00:35:47] it's so confusing that there were situations in Romadi where humvies fired on other humvies
[00:35:55] so so this is an American vehicle and it's not like the the insurgents had humvies I mean
[00:36:02] humvies a very distinctive looking vehicle and there were situations where in the confusion in the
[00:36:07] mayhem and with you know muzzle flashes humvies shot at other humvies that's how that's how crazy
[00:36:15] and chaotic combat can get back to the book moving forward and this is gonna go back into the
[00:36:26] shelling and I almost wasn't gonna talk about this but I had to there was nothing subtle or intimate
[00:36:35] about the approach and explosion of an artillery shell when I heard the whistle of an approaching one
[00:36:42] in the distance every muzzle in my body contracted I braised myself in a puny effort to keep from
[00:36:49] being swept away I felt utterly helpless as the fiendish whistle grew louder my teeth ground
[00:36:58] against each other my heart pounded my mouth dried my eyes narrowed sweat poured over me my breath
[00:37:06] came in short irregular gaskets and I was afraid to swallow less tight choke I always prayed
[00:37:14] sometimes out loud under certain conditions of range and terrain I could hear the shell approaching
[00:37:21] from a considerable distance thus prolonging this suspense into seemingly unending torture
[00:37:30] at the instant the voice of the shell grew the loudest it terminated in a flash and a deafening
[00:37:35] explosion similar to the crash of a loud clap of thunder the ground shook in the concussion hurt my
[00:37:42] ears shell fragments tore through the air tore the air apart as they rushed out worrying and
[00:37:49] ripping rocks and dirt clattered onto the deck as a smoke of the exploded shell dissipated
[00:37:57] and this is something I need to point out when you went when I when I before I was ever in combat
[00:38:06] and ever saw what mortars really did when you think of shrapnel and people think of shrapnel
[00:38:12] like how big do you think a piece of shrapnel is just take a guess so echo's actually
[00:38:19] a half two inches echo's holding up inch and a half two inches I actually thought smaller than that
[00:38:23] I thought you know what it's a little tiny thing and you get a scared to get to watch out these
[00:38:27] little tiny things on bigger artillery shells or mortar shells the the frag that comes off of them
[00:38:38] is a half an inch thick and it can be nine inches long 12 inches long jagged
[00:38:48] shards of metal you know they're just evil and and and that's why I would scary is the
[00:38:56] shrapnel oh yeah it can it can hit you and like puncture you like a bullet but it can also take
[00:39:02] your leg clean off or take your arm clean off or just just completely I mean just kill you instantly
[00:39:07] if it hits you in the torso but it's a it's a limb remover so it's much more horrifying than
[00:39:14] than than whatever envisioned it to be and and the reason the one of the reasons this sticks in my
[00:39:20] mind so well as getting morgard we were at in combat outpost falcon in downtown Ramadi we took
[00:39:28] some hundred twenty millimeter mortar shells in there and we you know the the company commander
[00:39:33] who was an awesome unbelievable guy he brought in a piece of frack and the thing I couldn't
[00:39:40] believe it when I saw it I was shocked at how huge it was he made a piece of like a random piece
[00:39:45] of the frack that had come off the mortar shells yeah blew off and you know bounced down the street
[00:39:50] didn't hit anybody and he picked it up and brought it in and said here's what's flying around the
[00:39:54] air wait so are these things that they load into the to the shell on the shell is the shell is
[00:40:01] in paste in metal and that's what the metal's for that when it blows up it just hits apart and
[00:40:06] gets people yeah you think when like when you see on TV about these I don't know these criminals
[00:40:11] or whatever they set pipe bombs yeah they put the down nails nails screws you think so this is like
[00:40:17] that times 10 yeah it's big and it's it's freaking horrifying dang that's another one I remember
[00:40:25] one of those same situation got hit with some mortars in cop falcon and laaf and his team were like
[00:40:35] 300 meters away on a rooftop of a building and frack landed on them you know it didn't have the
[00:40:43] velocity to hurt anybody but it was raining down on them so it's probably a hot too oh yeah
[00:40:49] yeah horrible back to the book to be under a barrage of prolonged shelling simply magnified
[00:40:57] all the terrible physical and emotional effects of one shell to me our territory was an
[00:41:04] invention of hell the on rushing whistle and scream of the big steel package of destruction was
[00:41:11] the pinnacle of violent fury and the embodiment of pent up evil it was the essence of violence
[00:41:20] and of man's in humanity to man I developed a passion a passionate hatred for shells to be killed
[00:41:27] by a bullet seemed so clean and surgical but shells would not only tear and rip the body they tortured
[00:41:35] ones mind almost beyond the brink of sanity after each shell was run out after each shell I was
[00:41:44] run out limp and exhausted during prolonged shelling I often had to restrain myself and fight back
[00:41:52] a wild inexorable urge to scream to sob and to cry as pelu dragged on I feared that if I ever
[00:42:00] lost control of myself under shell fire my mind would be shattered I hated shells as much for
[00:42:08] their damage to the mind as to the body to be under heavy shell fire was to me by far the most
[00:42:15] terrifying combat experiences each time it left me feeling more for Lauren and helpless more fatalistic
[00:42:24] and with less confidence that I could escape the dreadful law of averages that reduced our numbers
[00:42:32] fear is many fasted and has many subtle nuances but the terror and desperation endured under heavy
[00:42:40] shell are by far the most unbearable and I think again the key point of that if you want to take
[00:42:51] something from that and apply it to life because most people that are listening to this podcast
[00:42:59] won't have to endure shelling other than those troopers that are out there on the front lines
[00:43:04] today God bless them those guys are out there they may have to deal with us and they will but for
[00:43:14] civilians from normal people it's the feeling of helplessness it's the feeling of lack of control
[00:43:20] that makes it so horrifying and so when you come up against things that you cannot control that's
[00:43:29] something to recognize that it is something that you cannot control that's what's scaring you that's
[00:43:35] what the fear is coming from and making it infinitely worse than something that you can control yeah
[00:43:43] you know another thing that they had to help them deal with the fear was the camaraderie
[00:43:59] and he talks a little bit about this talking about his company I realized that company k will
[00:44:06] killo I realized that company k had become my home no matter how bad a situation was in the company
[00:44:15] it was still home to me it was not just a lettered company in a numbered battalion in a number
[00:44:20] regiment in a numbered division it meant far more than that it was home it was my company I belonged
[00:44:29] in it and nowhere else most Marines I knew felt the same about their companies in whatever battalion
[00:44:37] regiment or marine division they happened to be in this was the result of or maybe a cause for
[00:44:43] our strong aspreet a core the Marine Corps wisely acknowledged this unit attachment
[00:44:49] men who recovered from wounds and returned to duty nearly always came home to their old company
[00:44:55] this was not misplaced sentimentality but a strong contributor to high morale a man felt that
[00:45:03] he belonged to his unit and had a niche among his buddies whom he knew and with whom he shared a mutual
[00:45:11] respect well didn't combat this sense of family was particularly important in the infantry
[00:45:18] where survival and combat efficiency often hinged on how well men could depend on one another
[00:45:30] a spree decor and now there's a section that I'm moving forward to
[00:45:36] and this section is called the stench of battle the sun board down on us like a giant heat lamp
[00:45:49] occasional rains fell on the hot coral merely evaporated like steam off hot pavement
[00:45:55] the air hung heavy and muggy everywhere we went on the ridges the hot humid air
[00:46:02] weaked with the stench of death a strong wind was no relief it simply brought the horned odor
[00:46:10] from an adjacent area Japanese corpses lay where they fell among the rocks and on the slopes
[00:46:16] it was impossible to cover them usually there was no soil that could be spated over them
[00:46:22] just the hard jagged coral the enemy dead simply rotted where they had fallen they lay all over
[00:46:30] the place in grotesque positions with puffy faces and grinning buck tooth expressions
[00:46:37] it was difficult to convey to anyone who is not experienced it the gassly horror of having
[00:46:42] your sense of smell saturated constantly with the putrid odor of rotting human flesh day after day
[00:46:50] night after night this was something the men of an infantry battalion got a horrifying dose of
[00:46:57] during the long protracted battle such as pelaloo in the tropics the dead became bloated and
[00:47:04] gave off a terrific stench within a few hours after death whenever possible we removed marine dead
[00:47:14] to the rear of the company's position there they were usually laid on stretchers and covered with
[00:47:19] ponchoes which stretched over the head of the corpse down to the ankles I rarely saw a dead
[00:47:25] marine left uncovered with his face exposed to the sun rain and flies somehow it seemed
[00:47:31] indecent not to cover our dead often though the dead might lie on the stretchers for some time
[00:47:39] and decompose badly before the busy grave registration crews could take them for burial
[00:47:45] in the division cemetery near the airfield added to the awful stench of the dead of both sides
[00:47:53] was the repulsive odor of human excrement everywhere it was all but impossible to practice simple
[00:48:00] elemental field sanitation on most areas of pelaloo because of the rocky surface
[00:48:06] field sanitation during maneuvers in combat was the responsibility of each man
[00:48:11] in short under normal conditions he covered his own waste with a scoop of soil
[00:48:16] at night when he didn't dare venture out of his foxhole he simply used to
[00:48:21] empty grenade can't destroy a ration cans and threw it out of his hole and scooped
[00:48:24] over it the next day if he wasn't under enemy fire that was not possible on pelaloo
[00:48:34] added to this was the odor of thousands of rotting discarded japanese and american rations
[00:48:41] at every breath one inhaled humid air heavy with countless repulsive odors I felt as though my
[00:48:49] lungs would never be cleansed of these valve vapors as I looked at the stains on the coral
[00:49:00] I recalled some of the eloquent phrases of politicians and newsmen about how gallant it was for a man
[00:49:09] to shed his blood for his country and to give life's blood for sacrifice and so on
[00:49:15] the word seemed so ridiculous only the fly is benefited so as patriotic and brave
[00:49:30] as Eugene sledge was the madness the madness even made him begin to question what this
[00:49:42] was all about and think about what these politicians would say and say that only the fly is benefited
[00:49:57] it's crazy how he went so detailed in the in the smells
[00:50:04] because you know when you watch movies and that's a part that you don't do it
[00:50:08] I'll try and everyone's in the guise covering his nose or something that indicate this smells bad
[00:50:13] but that doesn't stick in your mind the whole time maybe if they add like flies or something
[00:50:20] but how he illustrated how this was going on to the point where I never thought I'd ever catch a
[00:50:28] fresh breath you know basically this is going to stand it really adds that element of hell you know
[00:50:36] and they say that smell is one of the most impactful senses you have that can like spark memories
[00:50:42] the strong is you know no doubt about it and there's there is a smell there's a smell in Iraq obviously
[00:50:47] wasn't as bad as this but it was it's it's a bad smell yeah and for sure when something hits me
[00:50:55] if you're in a you know a strange place or a place where there's no it's not sanitary
[00:51:01] you can get that momentary remembrance of that smell yeah and this section called the stench
[00:51:11] combat is beyond just the smell which we'll get into now the grinding stress of prolonged heavy combat
[00:51:23] the loss of sleep because of night nightly infiltration raids
[00:51:26] the vigorous physical demands forced on us by the rugged terrain and the unrelenting
[00:51:35] suffocating heat were enough to make us drop in our tracks how we kept going and continue fighting
[00:51:42] I'll never know I was so indescribably weary physically and emotionally that I became fatalistic
[00:51:51] praying only for my fate to be painless thinking he's going to die and there's only prayer is that
[00:52:00] it's painless yeah that's three to believe in it like you know you're gonna die
[00:52:06] in addition to the terror and hardships of combat each day brought some new dimension of dread for me
[00:52:13] I witnessed some new ghastly macrob facet in the kaleidoscope of the unreal
[00:52:19] as though designed by some fiendish ghoul to cause even the most hardened and
[00:52:25] calloused observer among us to recoil and horror and disbelief
[00:52:34] late one afternoon a buddy and I returned from the gun pit in the fading light
[00:52:41] we passed a shallow deflade we hadn't noticed previously in it we're three marine dead
[00:52:47] they were lying on stretchers where they had died before their comrades had been forced to
[00:52:51] withdraw some time earlier as we moved past my buddy groaned Jesus I took a quick glance into the
[00:53:00] depression and recoil and revulsion and pity at what I saw the bodies were so badly decomposed
[00:53:09] and nearly blackened by exposure this was to be expected of the dead and the tropics
[00:53:14] but these marines had been mutilated hideously by the enemy one man had been
[00:53:21] decapitated his head lay on his chest his hands had been severed from his wrists
[00:53:27] and also lay on his chest near his chin in disbelief I stared at the face as I realized
[00:53:35] that the Japanese had cut off the dead marines penis and stuff that into his mouth
[00:53:40] the corpse next to him had been treated similarly the third had been butchered
[00:53:47] chopped up like a carcass torn apart by some predatory animal my emotions solidified into rage
[00:53:56] and to hatred for the Japanese beyond anything I had ever experienced from that moment on
[00:54:02] I never felt the least pity or compassion for them no matter what the circumstances my comrades
[00:54:10] would feel stripped their packs and pockets for souvenirs and take gold teeth but I never saw
[00:54:16] marine commit that kind of barbaric mutilation that the Japanese committed if they had access to
[00:54:23] our dead like I said it's a glimpse into the darkest part of humanity and I want people to think
[00:54:42] about that and remember that it's real it's real that dark part of humanity that we don't want
[00:54:54] to exist it exists evil exists and this is coming from a guy you know when he says that he never had
[00:55:09] any pity after this again and you if you go and watch the Pacific and you watch interviews with
[00:55:19] this guy you can absolutely feel like I said the the kindness oozes out of him but even he
[00:55:30] when confronting the darkness had to explore his own darkness and I'm jumping now to the end
[00:55:49] on August 8th we heard that the first atomic bomb had been dropped on Japan
[00:56:02] reports abound for a week about a possible surrender then on 15 August 1945 the war ended
[00:56:12] we received news with quiet disbelief coupled with an indescribable sense of relief
[00:56:21] we thought the Japanese would never surrender many refused to believe it
[00:56:28] sitting in stunned silence we remembered our dead so many dead so many maimed so many bright
[00:56:39] futures consigned to the ashes of the past so many dreams lost in the madness that
[00:56:47] didn't gulf us except for a few widely scattered shouts of joy the survivors of the abyss
[00:56:56] sat hollow wide and silent trying to comprehend a world without war war is brutish
[00:57:08] in glorious and a terrible waste combat leaves and indelible mark on those who are forced to
[00:57:17] endure it the only redeeming factors were my comrades incredible bravery and their devotion to
[00:57:26] each other marine court training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive
[00:57:32] but it also taught us loyalty to each other and love that a spree decor sustained us
[00:57:45] until the millennium arrives and countries cease trying to enslave others it will be necessary to
[00:57:51] accept one's responsibilities and be willing to make sacrifices for one's countries as my comrades did
[00:57:58] as the troops used to say if the country is good enough to live in it's good enough to fight for
[00:58:07] with privilege goes responsibility and that is another look at war
[00:58:19] and it's something that we can't ever forget that war is awful and that war is the darkness that
[00:58:35] I talk about and as Eugene Sledge says the only redeeming factor is the incredible bravery and
[00:58:49] devotion to each other and I've talked about that before what made war to me
[00:58:58] an incredibly life-altering experience it wasn't the darkness that I saw but the light of the bravery
[00:59:13] of those on the battlefield and I will add another redeeming quality to war
[00:59:19] and it's a question and that is what is the alternative so what if we had not stopped the brutal
[00:59:31] imperial Japanese empire what if we had not stopped the Nazis what if we had not fought a war against
[00:59:41] ourselves to enslave and today there's still evil in the world there's still darkness
[00:59:51] ISIS the cult of child rapists and sadists and torturers and murders and if we don't confront that evil
[01:00:05] and that evil goes unchecked the darkness prevails so we have to be a force of light against the
[01:00:18] darkness and as Eugene Sledge transformed partially in his brain we have to use the darkness and
[01:00:30] the evil ourselves to prevail that's the paradox and we have to remember that when men get so close to evil
[01:00:44] it leaves a mark and it leaves a scar and we must forgive them their trespasses and help them to
[01:00:54] heal if they need it so to the men and women who are fighting or who have fought against forces of
[01:01:03] evil in the world thank you if we were gonna dive into that to apply or think about that in context of
[01:01:19] normal people I would say just remember how horrible things can be and and enjoy that sunrise in the
[01:01:38] morning again that book is called with the old breed by Eugene Sledge and I hit some highlights
[01:01:50] but the entire book is incredible the HBO many series is called the Pacific watch it it's incredible
[01:02:01] and remember remember remember remember
[01:02:18] all right let's get to some questions some questions from the intro webs
[01:02:25] yes in that question okay and by the way there's been late in the game but good evening echo Charles
[01:02:32] good evening and thanks for joining thanks yeah I don't know when I start timing in no I'll get
[01:02:39] with with a book like this I mean I'm coming over here to the studio and it is in my mind I'm
[01:02:47] fired up and and I picture when I want to listen to a podcast I want to sit down I want to
[01:02:58] put the headphones on I want to press play and I want to get it I want to get after it I want
[01:03:05] something to get in my brain and start to make me think and that's what I was tonight when I got
[01:03:12] on track I said I said hey this is the this is the podcast and here we go and I just went into it
[01:03:19] yeah no you know there was no echo Charles in my brain at that note I know offense no no no no I
[01:03:25] don't want to be in your brain Brad do you think I like to listen anyway I don't know when
[01:03:29] a time in in fact I do know into time in one I have a question that's true that's true
[01:03:34] there's no reason so no I'll hear you say hey echo oh oh oh oh how's it going yeah let's cut
[01:03:42] out the small talk and let's get down to business we can small talk now now that I've released
[01:03:48] the the passion that I had and I was had brewing up in my brain because get remember I'm
[01:03:57] prepping these things so I'm going through this book for a week or two and I'm delving into it
[01:04:03] and I'm doing other watching YouTube videos of the bell-o-lou battle it's in my brain and it's
[01:04:09] wanting to get it's wanting to come out yeah yeah really so you just get trumped by that no offense
[01:04:17] nope none taken alright questions jocco how do you balance extreme ownership
[01:04:27] with holding others accountable for their actions and avoiding them using you so this is actually
[01:04:35] a question that I end up responding to on a fairly regular basis and there's really a couple
[01:04:42] different angles here that are going on the one of the the points here is the balance of extreme
[01:04:50] ownership versus holding others accountable and what that really means and or what another
[01:04:56] way of looking at that is it's really extreme ownership versus decentralized command so decentralized
[01:05:04] command is it's one of the laws of combat that life and I write about in the book decentralized command
[01:05:13] and what that means is everybody leads that means everybody's a leader and that's what you want
[01:05:18] and that is a that is a the complete opposite of extreme ownership so if extreme ownership
[01:05:26] I'm gonna own everything decentralized command is I'm gonna let everyone else lead so there's a real
[01:05:33] a real contradiction a real dichotomy there so what you have to do is balance it you have to balance
[01:05:41] that's the only way to to sort of rectify or or reconcile those two opposing forces
[01:05:50] because you do you do have to have extreme ownership of everything that is true and at the same
[01:05:56] time you have to have decentralized command because you can't be everywhere once and you have to
[01:05:59] let your frontline leaders lead so you have to balance them so that's one part of it is that you
[01:06:09] should if you feel yourself for instance if you feel like you can't get everything done and you're
[01:06:15] losing control or you're you're not able to execute everything because there's too much on your
[01:06:21] plate it means that you're not delegating enough it means that you're not your frontline
[01:06:26] troopers aren't stepping up and leading now so you've gone too far in one direction now if your
[01:06:33] leaders or if all of a sudden you're having to tell your leaders like hey you need to get this
[01:06:39] done hey what are you doing why aren't you taking initiative then that means you've gone too far
[01:06:43] in the other direction so you have to find the good balance and that's the that's the goal and
[01:06:47] again and I'll say it over and over again that's what makes leadership hard leadership the hardest
[01:06:52] thing about leadership is that there's opposing forces that you have to balance and if you could just
[01:06:57] pick the extreme and go with it and that made you a good leader anyone could do it but it's not it's
[01:07:01] it's the balance that makes you a good leader it's the balance that's challenging so now the other
[01:07:09] word so that's part of the question the other word is accountability and holding people accountable
[01:07:18] for their actions now this is where I'm gonna throw something out that people are not going to
[01:07:26] expect me to say because people always talk about accountability and I hear that all the time in
[01:07:34] businesses and they say yeah we really need accountability accountability accountability and years
[01:07:41] the issue I have with that you don't want to have to rely on accountability accountability
[01:07:51] is actually a grudge it's a tool and I'm not saying you never use it because sometimes you do have to
[01:07:58] use it you have to implement it if people aren't doing what they're supposed to do you have to hold
[01:08:01] them accountable but I will tell you this what you what you don't want is people that are doing
[01:08:10] their job only because you're holding them accountable that's not what you want you want people that
[01:08:18] take initiative and ownership of their job and they do it not because you want them to or because
[01:08:24] you're going to inspect them they do it because they own it they take extreme ownership of it that's
[01:08:32] what you want so if you were to ask people that work for me if I held them accountable and they would be like
[01:08:41] hmm not really I mean for instance weapons inspections so you know I'm in charge of a
[01:08:50] platoon or I'm in charge of a task unit and there's you know a couple hundred weapons or whatever a bunch of
[01:08:56] weapons and if you don't take care of those weapons and people don't maintain them and clean them and
[01:09:03] lubricate them properly they can rust very easily and so you know one of the things that you may have to do is
[01:09:10] do weapons inspections to make sure that my guys are cleaning their weapons and I can tell you
[01:09:18] I rarely if ever conducted actual weapons inspections the reason my guys my guys did it my guys
[01:09:32] owned it my guys wanted to be the best they wanted to always have the best possible reputation
[01:09:40] and so I don't have to go around inspecting their weapons because I knew that they were going to do it
[01:09:47] I knew that that my guys who were on board who understood why we were doing what we were doing
[01:09:55] who understood that we wanted to be the best and who were on board with trying to be the best
[01:10:01] said you know what you know we are going to make sure these weapons are the best possible and I learned this
[01:10:08] when I was in my second platoon my boss was an awesome guy and this is a guy that I've talked about
[01:10:15] before he was huge influence on me he was a prior enlisted seal who became an officer he was a combat
[01:10:23] veteran from the warnernada and he was a very humble guy and he's actually the guy that inspired me to
[01:10:31] become an officer because I said to myself well this guy is this guy made our lives so good maybe I could
[01:10:37] do that for 16 guys and a platoon someday but what I realized about him is he never held us accountable
[01:10:45] for anything but at the same time he infused accountability on us because what we wanted more than
[01:10:53] anything else was to do a good job for him and for them platoon that's that's how you get troops
[01:11:02] and teams aligned not by holding them accountable with imposed accountability but where they are
[01:11:11] inspired themselves to hold themselves accountable and I had a coaching call with a team the other
[01:11:19] day that was they were saying hey you know we really we would like to have you you know coach us
[01:11:26] because we're lacking in these areas and we really need we know what to do but we really need someone
[01:11:32] to hold us accountable to do it and I I was like listen I charge a lot of money and you guys would
[01:11:43] be stupid to give it to me you guys just simply lack the discipline to work for the team and make
[01:11:51] it happen and I threw this example I said you know if you're competing against another team and
[01:11:57] what I did was I moved into your house and I woke you up in the morning and I held you accountable
[01:12:01] for what you're supposed to do and I made you do it so we put the ultimate in accountability on top
[01:12:06] of them I said who would do better you guys with me waking you up in the morning and
[01:12:13] beating you until you accomplish what you're supposed to do I held you to the up the highest
[01:12:18] standard of accountability or a team that was hungry themselves that was going to go the extra
[01:12:27] mile that was going to do more work it was going to stay up later that was going to get up earlier
[01:12:31] not because somebody was holding them accountable but because they had the desire for victory
[01:12:39] who's going to win that contest and the answer is very simple those with the innate and intrinsic
[01:12:46] desire to win will win over those that have imposed discipline and accountability put on top of them
[01:12:54] yeah now because there's a dichotomy to everything and because there's a balanced everything
[01:12:59] there are times where an leadership position you do need to inspect and make sure that you
[01:13:06] hold people accountable and an example I have that is we had when we got to Ramani we had our
[01:13:11] radios and generally the radio men knew how to program the radios and and get them synced up so
[01:13:18] they could talk to other radios and all that and I told the guys I'm like listen everybody in the
[01:13:23] troop needs to know how to program your radio yourself and everyone says oh okay and
[01:13:32] it was so critical that they know how to program these radios because if you're out in the field
[01:13:36] and you get separated from your unit and all of a sudden your radio gets zeroized or it has a
[01:13:41] problem and you don't know how to fix it yourself what are you going to do you can't talk to anybody
[01:13:44] and you're doomed you're going to die so because it was that critical I actually after the first
[01:13:50] briefing I called a couple guys up and I said give me a radio and I zeroized their radios and I said okay
[01:13:57] reprogram it now and couple didn't know how to do it and I said okay listen up guys no one is going
[01:14:04] on operation if you can't reprogram your radio and so the guys had to sit down and go and figure
[01:14:09] how to do it so there's times where you you do have to hold people accountable and in that situation
[01:14:14] I knew that even though I was saying hey it's important they didn't realize how important it was
[01:14:20] because you know it was oh you got to know how to work your gear they kind of took it like that I
[01:14:23] knew that guys didn't really understand the nature of how important it was to be able to
[01:14:28] operate and reprogram your entire radio and sync it with the army radio and all that I knew that
[01:14:34] they didn't quite understand how important it was and so I had to I had to hold them accountable
[01:14:39] but generally 98% of the stuff I didn't have to hold people accountable I didn't inspect things I
[01:14:47] expected things and they delivered and and that's that's people will follow your lead if you take
[01:14:58] ownership that's how my guys have always been they've always seen that and and known what the
[01:15:08] expectations were and finally if if you're sitting there and you keep saying to yourself I
[01:15:15] got to hold people accountable I got to hold people accountable most likely you don't need to hold
[01:15:21] them accountable you need to lead them you need to make them understand why they're doing what they're
[01:15:29] doing why it's important how it impacts the strategic mission how it impacts the team how it impacts
[01:15:36] them that's leadership not accountability it's leadership accountability is just a tool and it
[01:15:44] is a it's a crude tool compared to real leadership so use it if you have to but try and use
[01:15:56] leadership instead next question juggle I'm entering the police academy in a few short weeks
[01:16:10] and I'll be a police officer after six months I have no military background and have very little
[01:16:16] experience with true confrontation in violence one of the best ways of police officer can condition
[01:16:22] themselves to violence and confrontation I currently change it to but I'm not I am but I am curious
[01:16:29] what else I can do to keep myself and others safe from unpredictable violence this is not a self-defense
[01:16:35] question or either a mental condition in question very cool question I appreciate that question
[01:16:44] because this individual recognizes that there's a little bit more to it than just the physical
[01:16:51] self defense and that's the mental and he's 100% right so here's some things that you can do
[01:16:57] when you get the opportunity you got to get some realistic training going and I've talked about
[01:17:08] a little bit on here with a kind of realistic training that we did in the SEAL teams there's things
[01:17:13] that up the intensity greatly some ammunition or like a paintball scenario another good thing is getting
[01:17:21] you know it's really heavy sparring equipment on so face gear you know and really go to town
[01:17:29] where you're trying to attack someone and take them down and do it you know three on one four on one
[01:17:36] gotta be careful not to get hurt you don't go that extreme but if someone puts on head gear you know
[01:17:42] with a face mask and a whole nine yards shin guards and padded out fit on and people can attack them
[01:17:51] and you have to react to it the other good thing to do is do it in a situation where you know you don't
[01:17:56] let the guy know what's gonna happen you know he's got to keep his eyes closed until you say go
[01:18:00] when he opens his eyes there's someone there where the knife right in front of a fake knife right in
[01:18:03] front of him is gonna stab when he's got a draws weapon and shoot or defend himself somehow so you want to
[01:18:09] hit him with these unexpected drills with your weapons without your weapon shooting and moving so those
[01:18:16] those are those are the kind of things as soon as you get the opportunity to do it and it's even good I
[01:18:19] mean if you've been in a in a in a in a in a shooting drill with like a barricade a shooter which is
[01:18:29] you know you put a shooter at the end of a hallway and he's hidden but he's shooting at you with paintball
[01:18:34] and you get you get the intensity up very high it's getting shot with paintball hurts and if you're
[01:18:39] getting nailed and you've got to do something and people are like I got to make all go do something you
[01:18:43] got to make it happen how you're gonna stop this guy you can get your intensity up and you can get used to that
[01:18:48] you can inoculate yourself someone to that stress and learn to detach yourself from it and not let it affect you
[01:18:57] and not let it grind on you so that's the realistic training and honestly I when I watch
[01:19:06] some of the police videos of the bad shootings now we know police officers throughout the country
[01:19:15] every day are under a burden of hostility and they do an outstanding job over and over again
[01:19:25] making great arrests and helping people and saving people that are suicidal incredible amount of things right
[01:19:31] of course no one releases those videos and they don't go viral the videos that go viral
[01:19:37] and the videos that people watch are the bad ones the bad ones and I hope that the police departments
[01:19:47] across America are doing something to inoculate their troopers from the stress because
[01:19:54] that when I watch these videos that is what I see happening the the stress level and the the
[01:20:04] inexperience of the stressful situation and there's one video that I watched which is awful
[01:20:12] and the guy gets a call you see is you see his the first thing you see oh no it's the whole thing
[01:20:19] is a body camera and and forgive me if someone pulls this video up and I'm not 100% accurate but
[01:20:23] he gets a call it's at a 7-11 guy with a gun guy pulls a new 7-11 the cop pulls into the 7-11
[01:20:30] as he gets out of his car and he sees a guy kind of walking one direction out of the 7-11
[01:20:35] turning and walking another direction guys got a hoodie on he's walking away so the cop gets out
[01:20:41] he's yelling at him hey stop stop stop the guy doesn't stop finally he's he's now approaching him
[01:20:48] and he's standing in the open and this is something that I see in a lot of these videos these
[01:20:52] cops they stand in the open when if you imagine that the other guy has a gun why would you stand in
[01:20:59] the open take cover you take cover that's the first thing you do if you're even if you're trying
[01:21:06] to stop somebody or trying to yell at someone you take cover so if they turn around or have a gun
[01:21:10] you only have a small portion your body exposed and you don't get scared because you're hanging
[01:21:15] out in the open so so anyways this guy is approaching he's standing out in the open he's yelling at
[01:21:21] the guy finally the guy turns around and when the guy turns around he reaches in his jacket
[01:21:27] and boom the cop shoots him the guy falls down he kind of rolls into a curb the cop comes over
[01:21:36] as soon as the cop comes over you very quickly realize what's going on and that is that the guy
[01:21:42] head headphones on underneath his hoodie and he couldn't hear the cop yelling at him and then
[01:21:47] as the cop searches him he pulls out of his pocket his iPhone and so he was just listening to music
[01:21:53] reaching his pocket to turn it off and he got shot horrible situation so how do you
[01:22:03] inoculate yourself to that you've got to put yourself into training situations where you do
[01:22:07] have the instinct to take cover will you do have the instinct to see what people's hands are
[01:22:11] will you do have the instinct to realize that you put yourself in a better situation
[01:22:15] where if the guy does pull out a gun you have time to react to it and you can react to it
[01:22:22] from a safer distance you know as so there's a lot of things I would love to start to and I don't
[01:22:30] know how you know I don't know how I'm I don't know how to go about this but I would love to start
[01:22:35] working with police departments and some manner to get some training set up like the training we had
[01:22:41] in the sealed teams which was the training that I set up in the sealed teams was psychotic
[01:22:46] how stressful we would make it so that these guys were overwhelmed they were as explosions
[01:22:52] machine gunfire paintball sitting in them smoke everywhere screaming civilians screaming wounded
[01:23:02] actors we'd hire actors that were amputees that have blood spurting all the places it was
[01:23:06] incredibly realistic and that way when guys got into combat like one of the first time I ever
[01:23:11] got shot on I was like okay here's what's going on so I hope at some point I can I can help the
[01:23:16] military with that now in addition to that as you're trying to knock yourself to this violence
[01:23:25] and get used to this watch those YouTube videos watch those YouTube videos of street fights
[01:23:31] of stupid encounters with bars with drunk people and bouncer's with the shoot or don't shoot
[01:23:41] scenarios with cops military situations where they have helmet cams on and you can see things
[01:23:47] happening and what you want to do you want to watch those videos I knew I want to pay attention
[01:23:51] to the people to the humans and watch the reactions and watch their movements and watch their
[01:23:56] body language and watch their expressions on their faces and see and judge and predict and go
[01:24:03] to another video and hit pause and say this is what I see right here this is what I think is about
[01:24:08] to happen and educate yourself on human nature because human nature is what you're going to be
[01:24:15] dealing with and violence is a part of human nature and sometimes things go violent and sometimes they
[01:24:21] don't so how do you predict that and if you're unsure which you will be how do you protect yourself
[01:24:29] first and give yourself the maximum amount of time to make a judgment call so you don't have to rush
[01:24:39] on top of that it's awesome that you're doing Gjitsu do boxing do moitai do wrestling
[01:24:47] so you get used to getting hit so you start to see what a person's face looks like when they're
[01:24:52] about to hit you so you start to see what changes in their their their their posture makes
[01:24:59] when they're about to throw a punch those are all things that will help you Gjitsu is obviously
[01:25:05] great for the grinding physical grappling situation but a lot of times hopefully as a cop
[01:25:12] most of the time you're not in that situation you're standing at a little bit of a distance
[01:25:16] and or you're you know you've got a little bit more time to judge so fight as much as you can
[01:25:25] watch those law enforcement and military videos again see the reactions see the noise see the
[01:25:31] fear see the panic look at people's eyes judge them predict what they're going to do press
[01:25:38] pause and figure out if you were right or wrong watch horrible violence happen so that you can
[01:25:44] understand it better so that you can handle it when the time arises yeah I would um and
[01:25:51] just kind of to add on some of the stuff you're saying I would even say compete if you can
[01:25:57] because a lot of times in training you can especially if you're training every day or
[01:26:01] pretty often you can get into the mindset that I can just train casual today and if a guy taps
[01:26:07] me out which everyone says it doesn't matter that much you know so when you compete that's that's
[01:26:12] one of the significant things that I got um more that I realized when I was competing it's your
[01:26:18] your your your senses are heightened because everything matters if you get taken down it matters
[01:26:23] if you go for a submission and you don't get it it matters in in competition so you have that
[01:26:29] that mindset more so and you'll get used to that mindset and to your point I tell this guys at
[01:26:35] GJ2 when you're training for competition no matter what we do just about no matter 98% of the time
[01:26:44] I can't get two guys in training to go as hard against each other as they're going to in competition
[01:26:50] as someone when someone gets a grip of your gear in competition yeah it is 10 times stronger
[01:26:57] then it is when you're training because if you rip if I get a grab your gear collar and you go
[01:27:03] through some effort to rip it away and we're training and we'll let it go because I don't care
[01:27:07] if it happens in competition and I only have seven minutes to work and get you submitted I'm
[01:27:12] hanging on to that thing I'm gonna hang on to it hard and I'm not gonna let go and so you end up with
[01:27:17] a much much much more intense seven minutes in a competition or three minutes in a boxing
[01:27:26] sparring match or in a moitai the intensity you cannot simulate the intensity in training that
[01:27:34] you're gonna get in in competition and take that one step further when you get into a life and
[01:27:39] death struggle you're gonna have the same level of jump to the intensity that's gonna be there so
[01:27:46] that's a good point as well yeah and that kind of goes for moitai as well I'm not even necessarily
[01:27:49] saying competing moitai but moitai is a good one because you brought you get cracked in your body
[01:27:54] in your legs and you get to feel some pain and if you're not used to that okay before I even
[01:28:00] started moitai I went and you remember Terry so could you he was like hey you know we we've trained
[01:28:08] jujitsu together so I was like hey I'm training MMA today come let's spar with me my other partner
[01:28:12] doing and I was like hey I don't have any striking experiences like oh I don't care you know
[01:28:15] jujitsu so just train with me so yeah so that he punched me in the face really hard and that was
[01:28:22] you know and I was like man just how you're talking about this crash grenade before it was kind of
[01:28:27] like that just the fact that I got played didn't knock me out it didn't days meet in that way it was just
[01:28:32] the fact that dang I wasn't used to this I didn't know he was just gonna start punching me in my face
[01:28:37] you know I thought we were just gonna warm up so that's actually the main thing that made me go into
[01:28:43] moitai specifically so he used to get cracked yeah because I was like I'm not even I thought I was
[01:28:49] pretty good at jujitsu so I figured you know like I was I was solid you know but it was so what if I
[01:28:55] get into something you know outside of the gym like I cracked me in my face and I'm not used to it yeah you
[01:29:01] know so man so the what the moitai did help is when you get hit in the face it's like jujitsu
[01:29:08] someone grinding on you and they're breathing all in your nose or they're sweating all in your
[01:29:12] eye or whatever that doesn't bother you at all you barely noticed it and jujitsu doesn't matter
[01:29:17] right so the same thing with moitai when you get punched in the nose and it's bleeding and you see
[01:29:22] your own bladder whatever but if you're not used to that you that'll mess you up and if you notice
[01:29:27] back in the day like they're old UFC's or whatever guys will get cracked in the face like
[01:29:31] three four times hard and they'll be the whole tap and hold me calm you know because they're just
[01:29:34] not used to it nowadays guys were just but they won't they won't shut the other referee got a
[01:29:39] stop because they're used to it rarely does anyone tap and UFC front strikes yeah very rarely unless
[01:29:44] they're like injured even then you won't worry McDonald did no yeah so anyway so the point is
[01:29:52] so moitai situation and specific because that's where you feel the most pain like more than boxing
[01:29:58] like even even I mean you'll take brain injury for sure but it's not actual pain
[01:30:01] moitai get kicked in the leg and they teach you to hide the pain and to not let it affect you
[01:30:07] and go in the end and the ribs like body like knees to the ribs is super painful when you get used to
[01:30:13] that I think that out because like if you're in a situation street some cracks you hard in the face
[01:30:17] you know what's interesting about that though is that there are some people that can can
[01:30:25] easily or more easily take the pain of moitai or boxing like it's okay with them
[01:30:34] then then they then they can take the grind of jujitsu and some people can take the grind of jujitsu
[01:30:41] all day long but they can never take the striking pain so it's there's just some genetic or mental
[01:30:49] situations but to your point you need to be comfortable with both those situations yeah and at the
[01:30:56] very least just familiar with it oh like I said that's first punch that I took in my face
[01:31:02] and grinded it was I wasn't ready for him to just bail I mean you played a fun football too yeah
[01:31:06] I mean so you've been hit you've been knocked out before on the field. So it's kind of if I
[01:31:12] would try to remember it it was a combination of sure that physical impact but just the fact that
[01:31:18] this guy just punched him in my face right now so it's almost like dang it just punched me
[01:31:22] my face right now I thought we're gonna yeah I didn't like that but yeah after a while
[01:31:27] it doesn't man the hardest I ever got punched in the face was from Greg right in the like right
[01:31:31] between my eyes and it was like happens since he threw a real solid one as I went to kind of
[01:31:37] shoot he was kind of coming up off his knees kind of and I went to shoot like I got from off my back
[01:31:44] and then forward and shot forward and he just went boom and the the the the force of me shooting
[01:31:49] forward and went boom and I felt it in my neck is really bad but it was in a hard part yeah lucky
[01:31:55] other than K-Ode but yeah fully that was a K-O punch it just happened to be in that really hard part um
[01:32:01] but I had been through that before I trained my way before and it didn't it didn't even slow me down
[01:32:06] I remember thinking that was probably the hardest punch I ever took and it was with the MMA
[01:32:10] glove it wasn't with a big boxing glove well yeah back in the old days we used to just spark
[01:32:15] full on with just MMA gloves on a regular basis yeah stupid yeah and but don't do that folks yeah
[01:32:23] yeah don't do that that's a whole but what I'm saying is that that was you are used to it good again
[01:32:28] I was used to it it didn't slow me down if that was like the situation where I took that kind of hard hit
[01:32:34] in a you know or a cop would take that kind of hard hit and they're used to that in training
[01:32:37] whatever that's not gonna slow him down that's not gonna stun him unless it's physically stuns
[01:32:41] like it's some of the jobs yeah and that's you know even if you're trained that's that's that's
[01:32:46] gonna um that's gonna change in fact if you train too much and you get yourself hit too often you'll
[01:32:52] actually decrease your ability to withstand punishments yeah you've careful about that
[01:32:58] yeah you want to train enough that you're used to it you want to know that you can take it but
[01:33:02] then you don't want to over train at all yeah you never get better it take well no let me phrase that
[01:33:09] you get better at taking punches for a short period of time and then it goes starts to go backwards
[01:33:14] yeah you know unfortunately that's just the way the the body's built and you can see as some of the
[01:33:19] older UFC fighters get older you know there's no doubt they don't have the chin that they
[01:33:24] once had and that's when they usually you know decide to hang it up if they if they if they get
[01:33:29] the right counsel from people yeah but nowadays people are sparring a lot less and they're trying
[01:33:35] to not take all that punishment because everyone realizes that you have a you have a limited number
[01:33:42] of hits you can take to the to the head and then it starts to go backwards and it's a you know
[01:33:48] a lot of this information is coming from the the soldiers overseas the Marines overseas that have
[01:33:54] taken concussions and ID strikes and they're realizing that that is a permanent you know downgrade
[01:34:01] of their systems and they they you know so they so they that's where a lot of this information
[01:34:07] came from about football this concussions stuff and football a lot of that is coming from
[01:34:11] the the ID's that are soldiers and Marines have taken overseas and they've realized that this
[01:34:17] terminated traumatic brain injury is problematic and so we need to we need to watch out for it so
[01:34:23] yeah especially if you're being a cop and you gotta be alert yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but that's why
[01:34:27] and that's why like the Muay Thai that's why I personally I did because it was a lot of like
[01:34:32] clinching knees and that's if you if you've never done it you would think that being punched in the
[01:34:38] nose square and the nose real hard would be probably one of the more painful things but it wasn't
[01:34:43] compared to the ribs and the legs man so if you're kind of used to just just taking impacts and pain
[01:34:49] yeah you just you just and not to mention the physical part but just mentally like when that one
[01:34:55] that comes about you can just just keep on keeping on now yeah because you're used to it
[01:35:00] or you're not even me from a yeah inoculate inoculate yourself inoculation okay next question
[01:35:07] dockle I have three little girls and I'm really intrigued by Brazilian jujitsu what form of martial art
[01:35:16] would you put your kids in that's an easy yeah put your kids into jujitsu do it immediately
[01:35:26] we kind of covered this last podcast and that is the fact that if you if you've got a
[01:35:31] teacher gets luck don't get in a street fight don't get into a fight in the playground if someone
[01:35:35] wants to fight you run away and that's what they should do and you know later when they start to
[01:35:42] become mature enough to make real decisions that should guide them and occasionally as a man
[01:35:49] you may have to stand your ground and fight and that's understandable but as a little kid who might be
[01:35:56] getting picked on by bigger kids hey oh somebody gets in your face run away if you really think
[01:36:02] you're gonna get hurt run away so you have that self defense mechanism already what you don't have
[01:36:08] and what you are not born with is when that bully grabs you and pulls you to the ground or
[01:36:15] grabs you and holds onto you and won't let you leave that is when you need to know how to grapple
[01:36:20] and jujitsu is what teaches you how to grapple so eventually like you just said you do want your
[01:36:26] kids to spar a little bit you do want your kids to know how to throw some good combinations there right
[01:36:33] I mean they should know how to do that you know actually the other night I was working with Dean
[01:36:38] we were working with a couple people and just going he was going over some basics of defense and there
[01:36:41] are some legit basics self defense moves that people should know you know someone bear hugged you
[01:36:47] someone had blocks you now we don't think about them at the high level of jujitsu because we we welcome
[01:36:54] someone head locking us well come that stuff because we're so used to it it's we have an advantage
[01:36:59] when we get there but to a kid you get thrown into a headbock a first street fight I ever got the first
[01:37:04] guy kick all the street fight the first time I ever got to a fight was you know like four for fifth grade
[01:37:09] and this kid who was definitely way stronger than me grabbed me in a headlock was holding me on the
[01:37:16] ground and punched me in the head and I did couldn't do anything and you know it got broken up after
[01:37:21] twenty seconds by the principal but oh okay you know okay that that wasn't cool so what you want
[01:37:27] your kid because if that kid would have tried to attack me when I was standing up I could just run away
[01:37:32] from him but once he grabbed a hold of me all of a sudden I can't do anything so that's why
[01:37:36] jujitsu is the first thing you want to learn it's also as I said last time it's the most technical
[01:37:40] thing there's the most to learn it's never ending knowledge quest so you want to get on that
[01:37:49] quest as early as possible now on top of that and what's really good about jujitsu and again this
[01:37:56] is something that I've talked about before but when you talk about traditional martial arts and you
[01:38:02] imagine you know a traditional martial arts dojo where people in plain white guise are standing in a
[01:38:12] very clean and Spartan facility with samurai swords hanging on the wall and they're bowing to the
[01:38:19] sensei that implies a certain amount of knowledge will be passed and a certain amount of
[01:38:29] etiquette will be passed and the etiquette and the knowledge that we passed will be toughness
[01:38:36] and confidence and humility and as a matter of fact if you go to a traditional martial arts school
[01:38:44] and you bring your kid in there and you say I want my kid to train what will he get out of it
[01:38:49] one of the things they're going to say is he's going to learn to be confident or she's going to
[01:38:53] learn humility and they will teach them that verbally it will be a lesson it will be a
[01:39:03] book almost a book lesson on this is humility and this is confidence and hold your head high
[01:39:15] jujitsu teaches those things not theoretically but for real because in jujitsu you will get humbled
[01:39:27] you will get humbled by a person that's smaller than you by someone that's weaker than you they will
[01:39:32] submit you they will hold you down and you won't be able to do anything about it and that is
[01:39:38] humility and that is where you learn humility and jujitsu and same thing with confidence you know
[01:39:46] you will learn as you get better jujitsu that hey I know something and I know I can handle myself
[01:39:55] in bad situations so it truly teaches humility and confidence not theoretically but in a very
[01:40:06] practical sense yeah so get your kids down to the jujitsu school get them enrolled and you know we
[01:40:15] we did a podcast where we talked about how to find a good jujitsu school so find a good reputable place
[01:40:20] and get your kids down there and you know what when you bring your kids in to start jujitsu get your
[01:40:25] dang self on the mat too because you gotta know it and it's everybody should know it yeah and
[01:40:31] except for bullies and evil people they should be banned do jujitsu because it's too powerful yeah yeah
[01:40:37] way too much another element that you might not think of right off the bat but the fact that you'll
[01:40:46] meet friends because jujitsu for whatever reason I mean it just might be the culture in general but
[01:40:53] when you go to like the jujitsu mat you go on the mat it's not like how you're saying like a traditional
[01:40:58] martial arts school where you're like don't talk bow be rigid stand like this while the
[01:41:03] senses talking say yes or no sir it's it's really I mean in my experience that I've been to a
[01:41:07] lot especially here in in Southern California there that's where most of them are um it's real
[01:41:12] even though the more rigid ones are casual before class you can talk even during class as long as
[01:41:18] you're not talking while the instructors yeah do you want to do that in a school you wouldn't
[01:41:22] do that anywhere yeah exactly you know but you know your practicing moves it's it's um of course
[01:41:28] he don't want to deviate too much from the lesson but it's just more social and so you talk after
[01:41:33] class and you'll find that that the atmosphere is really conducive to gravitating towards people
[01:41:40] that that have the same interests of you even outside of jujitsu and kids especially men because
[01:41:46] usually the teachers are way more lenient with kids when they're running around and you know you
[01:41:50] you're telling them go do this move and they might be talking a little bit about something or
[01:41:54] whatever if they're having fun which it is very fun um they're just gonna want to do it some more
[01:42:00] my daughter's two and we found a place that that could facilitate a two-year-old situation and
[01:42:05] she would always look forward to because the issues think it's just one big display house the
[01:42:09] rough housing the whole time it's the ultimate dream for a kid yeah a room with padded floors and
[01:42:14] padded walls yeah you can grab the clothes rough house all you want yeah people to the ground yeah
[01:42:19] you're not gonna get punched or cake or you know yeah it's um yeah so there is a
[01:42:26] good community aspect to jujitsu yeah it's very much so which echo likes very much so
[01:42:34] sometimes I don't even want to roll I just want to come and talk sometimes that's often the
[01:42:42] situation with that jujitsu juggle willing so basically being a new leader overcoming friction
[01:42:52] in the new organization that's this that's what this guy is he's there you know he's a new leader
[01:42:58] overcoming friction in the organization and penetrating insights yes and I think what's important here is
[01:43:03] this is he's not a new leader like newly commissioned leader stepping up in the ranks he's in a new
[01:43:08] organization so he's stepping into a new organization is the new leader in a new situation
[01:43:15] we've kind of talked about stepping up from within the organization how are you going and stepping
[01:43:21] into a new organization now I'm gonna look at this from a perspective of like a normal transition
[01:43:28] into a leadership position and a new job or something like that not a hostile takeover situation
[01:43:34] maybe we can address that on a later time but not a situation where hey they fired this guy
[01:43:41] he had a bad reputation the things are going wrong you're gonna step in and change it because that
[01:43:47] that would take a different leadership approach then the one that I that I would take and that I
[01:43:53] have taken where you're stepping into a situation where things are going okay and you put your
[01:43:58] coming in and you've got some goals and there's so you're taking over leadership position it happens
[01:44:02] all the time so a couple of things about this first of all you stepping to a new leadership role
[01:44:11] you gotta talk to people but you mostly gotta listen you gotta find out why they're doing
[01:44:19] things the way they are because a lot of times there might be reasons for the way things are
[01:44:23] happening that you don't understand or that aren't really particularly evident so you really want
[01:44:28] to not make the judgments because you're bringing your own experience and you've done this a
[01:44:33] thousand times and that's why you're the new leader and that's why they put you in here you
[01:44:36] got to set that aside and say okay explain me why this process is in place or where did this process
[01:44:43] come from what is this process trying to prevent so that way you're getting smarter and you're learning
[01:44:48] and you're not being you're not imposing your ideas which you don't have any background for you
[01:44:56] don't you know you may have been a leadership in a different company or a different unit before
[01:45:02] and you think you know but you don't know so be humble and check yourself you gotta be friendly
[01:45:09] to people but at the same time you gotta be reserved now this is this is tricky because
[01:45:15] you are trying to build relationships you absolutely are trying to build relationships that's what
[01:45:21] life is that's what business is that's what war is that's what everything is about building
[01:45:26] relationships with these other humans so you want to be friendly to people but at the same time
[01:45:32] from a leadership perspective you can't just come in and be Mr. Nice guy and best friends with
[01:45:38] everybody that's not gonna work out for you for a couple reasons number one you don't know
[01:45:47] the the face that people are gonna present you out of the gate is not necessarily
[01:45:55] the true face of that person so you may check in your first day and this guy hey it's great to meet
[01:46:00] you so good to have you on board heard a lot about you and you go wow this guy's and he's
[01:46:04] ticked starts giving you some back-own information about things that are going and by the way we got
[01:46:07] a couple things that are a little messed up you know and I can point them out to you but that guy
[01:46:11] might be working as a gender so you gotta be cautious as you go in and the other piece of that is
[01:46:20] it is much easier to reel back in slack or sorry it's much easier to give out that friendship
[01:46:27] later then it is if you go overboard and you become everyone's best friend and now you got to
[01:46:31] cut it off yeah that was done you become a jerk yeah so it's much easier to to
[01:46:38] give out the slack when you want to later then it is to give out a bunch of slack and then try and
[01:46:43] reel it back in and be a jerk yeah and it makes it hard for both parties that's why in
[01:46:48] that case yeah but it's gonna be really hard the only reason you're pulling back the friendship
[01:46:53] thing is because it started going sideways and that makes it even harder it's a nightmare
[01:46:58] uh gotta watch out for the gossip because everyone's gonna want to whisper in your hair the
[01:47:05] things about the things about the people and this and that so you gotta be careful nod your head
[01:47:09] take it and but unbored but take it with a great assault definitely don't encourage it
[01:47:16] yeah and that can be a hard part for certain types of people will say because let's face him and
[01:47:22] that can be some interesting stuff yeah and there can be some knowledge to be gained there but you
[01:47:26] just have to be careful you want to hear some insights right but be careful when the insights
[01:47:33] crossover into gossip yeah and be careful that the insights are coming from people that might have
[01:47:38] agendas in fact they are coming from people that have agendas because everybody has agendas
[01:47:44] and maybe the person has a positive agenda which is to improve the company or improve the unit or
[01:47:49] improve the team but they also might have a agenda of improving their own station in life so you
[01:47:56] have to be careful of that they are watching you they are watching you and you coming to take over
[01:48:04] they are watching you so act accordingly think about the fact that they are watching you
[01:48:11] like I said use caution informing these new relationships you gotta find out who's who you want to
[01:48:20] establish things but again you gotta watch out because people might not necessarily be who they
[01:48:29] make themselves out to be in the beginning so this is kind of becoming a little bit of a chorus
[01:48:36] when I talk about leading be humble listen learn move methodically when it does come time to
[01:48:44] make change in a new situation most of the time I would say do it incrementally do smaller changes
[01:48:55] after you've assessed fully and you've got people a people's opinions and you've expressed
[01:49:01] and socialized your ideas so you're not trying to roll in there and change the world again now
[01:49:07] if we go into a hostile turnover situation or there's someone's been fired for cause or that's a
[01:49:12] different situation but for a normal transition into a new job be humble listen learn and lead that part
[01:49:19] where you're you're talking about playing out why they're doing the things that the way they are and
[01:49:24] stuff like that that part can be depending on certain people's personality like if you're coming in
[01:49:33] as the new guy and you and you ask start asking hey why do you guys do it like this if you come off
[01:49:38] with the wrong tone sometimes it'll sound like that you're questioning oh for sure you know so
[01:49:42] sure I remember when I worked at the nightclub we had a new manager and his name was Joel he
[01:49:49] he came in and he was strangely he was this whole list personified he came in is really friendly
[01:49:57] but really reserved but the one thing he did kind of to address what I was talking about right
[01:50:02] really good job he except as no no okay nothing I'm saying an example of how he
[01:50:09] clarified that he's not questioning the way we're doing stuff he's not saying hey where are you doing it like that
[01:50:14] because this way sucks it didn't have that tone but he came for me and I saw him do it to the other guy
[01:50:21] where he he came in and said hey I'm I'm gonna be asking a lot of questions because obviously I'm new here
[01:50:26] you know just so I can understand and and get on board with what you're doing so it can be ultimately
[01:50:32] what we are doing that's what he said he said in a little bit differently obviously but
[01:50:38] that's what he said and that right away so no matter what question he asked it was almost like
[01:50:41] should I want to tell this guy how it's working you know because he's he's he's he's on my team
[01:50:45] automatically told me that and he was on my team so I think if that can be clarified that you're not
[01:50:50] like questioning it because it seems like you know I want to make it seem like you know I know
[01:50:56] a better way right off the bat you don't want that tone you know I know just from on a receiving end
[01:51:01] I don't want that to know because I'm gonna be on yeah so anyway yes yes yes in the last thing I kind of
[01:51:07] had written down here was enjoy it it's it's it's awesome stepping into a new leadership position
[01:51:16] and it's challenging to do what you just talked about to transition people into your leadership
[01:51:22] realm and to do it in a subtle way that brings them on board with a positive attitude so
[01:51:30] enjoy that challenge yeah because it's it's pretty fun it's challenging and most importantly
[01:51:35] it's rewarding yeah next question juggle how do you learn slash practice detachment in real time
[01:51:48] detachment so I this is something that I have talked about a lot and
[01:51:55] it is definitely a very important part of leadership and it's a very important part of
[01:52:07] of finding your way successfully through life it's an important part of navigation
[01:52:14] of the world so and if you haven't heard me talk about this this is the idea that you are not
[01:52:22] caught up in the emotions and the chaos and the and the tactical fire fight that's happening
[01:52:30] you detach so you can make good judgments about things so how do you do it how do you learn it
[01:52:37] now do you practice it step number one is awareness awareness of yourself so you start asking yourself
[01:52:49] how am I being perceived right now if you can just occasionally start asking yourself how am I being
[01:52:57] perceived right now how is echo singing me right now so all the sudden you you start to take other
[01:53:05] people's perspective which is it's a good start because it's not your own and the goal is to
[01:53:14] get outside of your own perspective and see yourself from some kind of a distance so you start
[01:53:19] asking yourself how am I being perceived and then start trying to watch yourself like what do I look
[01:53:25] like right now am I caught inside that madness and once you start to do that that's going to be like
[01:53:35] your that's going to be your little tool that you're going to use is getting outside and just
[01:53:40] watch yourself and saying okay I am aware of what I'm doing right now I am aware of what I am doing
[01:53:47] right now and then what you want to do is you want to set some kind of alerts because you don't
[01:53:55] walk around and walk around detached from myself all the time I'm not I mean otherwise you would have
[01:54:00] no joy and you would have no you'd have no pain you'd have no emotions because you'd be detached from
[01:54:05] so you don't walk I don't walk around just detached all the time but I do have some alerts some
[01:54:13] little red flags and little triggers that happened in my mind that when I feel them I know okay
[01:54:22] you're starting to go too far and you're losing the perception of yourself
[01:54:29] what's your trigger there a couple of them number one is like some strong emotion yeah like
[01:54:38] anger yeah yeah you know anger you start feeling sorry if you start clenching your fist or you
[01:54:43] start raising your voice that should be a warning okay you are not thinking clearly right now
[01:54:48] detached from this get away from these emotions some kind of chaos like chaos happening
[01:54:56] and you're in it whether it's in a supermarket whether it's you know something bad something
[01:55:02] violent something mob if you're getting in that situation you start feeling that
[01:55:07] detach yourself from it because you can get caught up and it's any overwhelming excitement
[01:55:13] will be it now here's a good red flag here's a good red flag good alert
[01:55:19] is the 27th time you bang your head against the wall attacking a problem whatever that problem is
[01:55:28] you know and I actually made this joke the other day of your jiu jiu jiu because we're talking
[01:55:32] about passing someone's guard and people will try and try and try one way one way one way one two three four five
[01:55:38] and I'm like listen after your 27th attempt to pass someone's guard the same way
[01:55:43] go ahead and try another way so this happens a lot where if you find yourself beating your head
[01:55:50] against the wall after the 27th time go ahead and let that be a little alert that you need to
[01:55:57] detach you need to get because there's some reason that you're doing this maybe it's an emotional
[01:56:01] reason maybe it's just your two close to the problem maybe it's that the problem has a
[01:56:07] hold of you and you don't recognize it but let that be in alert a trigger that tells you hey buddy
[01:56:15] detach take a look around and see if there's another way now another huge thing that requires
[01:56:27] detachment is your ego your big nasty powerful ego it's one of the biggest things that you
[01:56:40] have to utilize detachment to overcome and let me tell you some of the things that will warn you
[01:56:48] that your ego is now in the game and when your ego is in the game when your ego is in the game
[01:56:54] it will very easily win it will beat you so when you're feeling jealousy likely that's going to
[01:57:05] be your ego and actually heard somebody on Twitter hit me with this the other day and it was
[01:57:10] something along the lines of if you're feeling jealous instead of saying I'm jealous of this person
[01:57:20] say what can I learn from this person wow great statement right because that's when you set your
[01:57:27] ego that's when you detach from your ego and you say okay I'm not going to be jealous of this person
[01:57:33] they can teach me something when you start feeling frustrated when you start feeling disgust or anger
[01:57:39] where is that emotion coming from very high likelihood it's coming from your ego so you need to
[01:57:48] put that ego into check do you think that's the hardest one do you think oh yeah although
[01:58:01] they can all be pretty hard I mean because you know when you get emotional about a relationship
[01:58:08] yeah I mean that's not always your ego that can be your ego especially if there's another person involved
[01:58:13] right but a lot of times that's not your ego that's that's your emotion that's hurting
[01:58:18] and causing problems but yeah the ego I actually find the ego because it's so clear it's so
[01:58:27] clear that you're just being an idiot with your ego I always go God I'm stupid why am I doing this
[01:58:37] and I think it is usually pretty I think the ones that are harder a little bit a little bit more
[01:58:41] subtle you know yeah yeah and that's kind of what I mean because the ego is like that's how powerful it
[01:58:47] is because any extreme situation or extreme example of any one of these like you can feel it really
[01:58:55] angry it's easy to see I lost my temper right there I'm just an ad on that shouldn't it yelled at
[01:59:00] you know whatever or if your ego's prevalent in this really just to end it real strong way it's
[01:59:08] obvious and of course not but the ego I feel like it's like that subtlety of it makes it hard
[01:59:14] because you know that last part of it's like if you want to remove your ego it's almost like a
[01:59:19] bucket of sand where you gotta get the last corner of your ego out for it to work otherwise
[01:59:24] your ego still in the game no you know it was always in the game and and I don't encourage people
[01:59:29] to I'm not like the boot of it says completely a limited your ego because your ego is what's
[01:59:33] driving you in many cases to perform well to win there's nothing wrong with that you know and if
[01:59:38] you but the part of the end of in the end of what's that book anyways just like ego is this
[01:59:49] God bless the ego you know this and it's pretty powerful because that's what drives you that's the
[01:59:55] individual effort the problem is there's a dichotomy of everything and sometimes your ego will
[02:00:03] get the best of you and that's what you need to watch out for and that's when you get a learn to
[02:00:06] attach from it yeah so it's like each situation you have a certain sized cup that can only hold
[02:00:13] so much ego to get it done and then any even one drop it's gonna jam you up if it's one
[02:00:19] if you're one drop overflowing you know and you could make bad decisions with your ego yeah
[02:00:23] if you let it get in the way yeah and that's the hard thing because and I think that's probably
[02:00:27] the reason because you need your ego to kind of function and get test done and excel and all this
[02:00:34] stuff so you have to basically find that fine line that you have to get rid of you know the
[02:00:40] the at that what point do you get rid of enough ego to still have enough ego to get the test done you
[02:00:47] know so the dichotomy yeah sometimes you're gonna be like yeah not that I ever have that problem
[02:00:53] nothing like that you're just saying it it's seen like you know or that problem unfortunately
[02:00:58] okay juggle what do you think of people in leadership rules who cuss I see it in coaching
[02:01:10] guys either totally use it or totally against it so swearing
[02:01:18] and crossing using foul language I think this is a pretty straightforward question I can tell you
[02:01:28] that by no means am i a saint and and you know I was in those seal teams for 20 years
[02:01:39] and when you've heard the term swear like a sailor there's actually a level beyond that
[02:01:44] and that's swearing like a seal and so I you know there's times in the seal teams where
[02:01:50] literally you know every single word in a sentence would be you know a swear word
[02:02:00] and and that's something that when I go back and brief the tea brief the seal teams right now
[02:02:05] on something I go almost right back into that mode you know not not quite as bad as I would
[02:02:12] probably was at the high point of my career where I was well rehearsed and well trained at
[02:02:21] foul language but uh but hey here's the deal on a forum like this where we're on a podcast where
[02:02:26] you know many many people listen to this including kids and my kids and um I try and utilize
[02:02:38] better language now and I'll tell you what I actually had a point where I sort of said to myself
[02:02:45] me I'm not gonna do that and I heard a podcast but you're not gonna do what I'm not gonna swear
[02:02:50] a lot I'm not gonna be in I'm not just gonna swear the whole time in the podcast and this
[02:02:54] actually happened because I heard a podcast I listened to a podcast where it was actually it was
[02:03:00] a conversation you know normal podcast there was a conversation going on between two people and
[02:03:05] there were swearing so much that I just said to myself man this sounds ridiculous they just
[02:03:14] sounded it sounded completely ridiculous and I just decided after and this was before we started
[02:03:21] up I this was you know maybe like two years ago I mean it was a long time ago I heard this podcast
[02:03:25] I just said to myself and these people sound stupid with so much swearing and um and it wasn't
[02:03:32] the thing is like you listen to Joe Rogan or like a comedic podcast and they're swearing and
[02:03:37] and some people like friends and Joe Rogan he swears he does it at the right time and it has
[02:03:44] comedic impact or it has value when he does it so so that's understandable but I've heard people
[02:03:50] that they just it's it's just it doesn't it ends up having no impact other than just to make you
[02:03:57] say this person's not very smart right so with that you know I just try to keep it clean
[02:04:04] actually it's not even almost like I don't consciously sit there and try and keep it clean but
[02:04:10] you know I try and keep it clean yeah is that kind of like you know people most of us have this
[02:04:17] I don't say problem but we always say like like you know like very similar like how it just did
[02:04:22] yes and I'm doing that it's still kind of like that yeah it is it's the same thing where when you
[02:04:27] hear someone saying like like like it's soon as you you might not even recognize it at first
[02:04:36] because we're so used to hearing it yeah but if you pick up on it and you're listening to a podcast
[02:04:41] and you start to hear someone do that it's the same thing you just say wow this person really sounds
[02:04:48] stupid and they might be smart but this person sounds really stupid and I'm not gonna sound like that
[02:04:58] so that's pretty much where where my opinion comes from and why and if you know when I have
[02:05:05] had a couple people hit me up and say you know hey this is the only podcast that I listen to that my
[02:05:10] kids can listen to yeah and that's that's kind of cool you know I appreciate that it's it's pretty
[02:05:15] it's pretty humbling to hear that people are you know sitting there listening to podcasts with
[02:05:22] their kids yeah and I guess humbling is the wrong word which somebody hit me up on Twitter it's an
[02:05:28] honor right and it's an honor that doesn't feel like I deserve but it's an honor here somebody's
[02:05:35] sitting around and say oh you know I listen to this podcast with my daughter or I listen to your
[02:05:38] podcast with my son and it's so many good lessons to learn and that that feels pretty good yeah
[02:05:42] yeah and so if I was to throw that out the window so that I could drop some F-bombs yeah
[02:05:49] doesn't really seem worth it because what kind of a linguistic command do I have if the only
[02:05:56] way I can get my point across is by is by using foul language you know if the funny thing is too is
[02:06:05] well I used to go you know when I was in the SEAL teams I would go and literally like I said
[02:06:11] my I would have whole sentence construction that would be nothing but F-bombs right and I would
[02:06:18] come home and in front of my six six year old kid or whatever I never sworn in front of my kids
[02:06:25] and people would be kind of surprised like if I had a seal buddy over and they'd hear me talk
[02:06:31] in my house and they'd say how do you even do that how do you and I don't know why I've just been
[02:06:35] able to do it so that was another thing you know these podcasts when you go on the interwebs
[02:06:41] they're there for I hate to say it but they're there forever you know and you can take them down
[02:06:48] but these are going to be these are out there so if you if you want to be represented that way
[02:06:55] for the rest of your life then you had to be a little bit careful about what you're saying
[02:07:02] yeah yeah that's um because I kind of like it's not like too swear but I like when
[02:07:11] people swear and stuff I think it's but just like how you were saying like for example Joe Rogan like
[02:07:15] he'll swear and sometimes it'll swear a lot but it's perfect isn't it's funny when it needs to be
[02:07:19] funny it emphasizes you know a certain emotion when it needs it's it's perfect and that's kind of
[02:07:25] the reason why I like it because sometimes it can be really funny it can be fun to do but overall
[02:07:31] there's a certain kind of you can't help but kind of respect someone who doesn't like
[02:07:36] use the word like all the time or that doesn't say um all the time or who doesn't say you know
[02:07:42] all the time or no I'm saying or whatever and and can can control that and I think swearing is yet
[02:07:48] another one of those things that some people it's more of a weakness where they kind of they don't
[02:07:53] don't know how to use it right they just swear because they swear and you know my parents were
[02:07:56] so I swear who cares kind of thing and on top of that you do have to consider who you're talking to
[02:08:03] and in a podcast situation you're essentially talking to everybody regardless of the
[02:08:06] you you're trying to talk to who you think or want your audience to be it's everyone and anyone who
[02:08:11] presses the button is going to be listening so if you don't care how you come off then good didn't that's
[02:08:16] that's great but I think you do have more of a control on how you come off when you can control
[02:08:22] how much you swear it don't swear well I haven't had anybody you know hit me up on Twitter and say
[02:08:27] hey you really need to swear on mom right it doesn't happen didn't know one said hey you need to say
[02:08:32] um or or you need to say like more people don't need to hear that they accept it because
[02:08:39] it's there and I'll tell you a funny the first time I took my just to take my son out occasionally
[02:08:44] to various seal training sites you know in order to unoccupate him to violence and fire arms
[02:08:53] and machine guns and war and and yes you people can all call child services on me
[02:09:00] but it was funny the first time you know he watched a single-polled tune do some event
[02:09:09] and I think he was at a out of urban training facility and they got done and I was debriefing
[02:09:15] them and you know this is my son who had never heard me swear and you kind of used at that age where
[02:09:22] you know a swear word was like it was worse than ever and he you know he was standing there and I debriefed these
[02:09:29] guys and I debriefed them in the proper seal technique and I got done he had a look at his face
[02:09:38] that said wow this guy is a little bit different than what I knew it was pretty shocked and it was
[02:09:47] uh it was a pretty funny scenario so you know he say you don't swear in front of your kids um
[02:09:51] um why is that because you don't want them to swear or or yeah I mean there is you know if
[02:09:59] you ever see a and and I do now that my daughters are a little older I'll drop some swear words
[02:10:06] and I'm in occasionally for impact or for humor you know or for whatever so so I will do it but
[02:10:14] if you ever see a young girl swearing you see a young boy you know it very much seems
[02:10:26] disrespectful in my opinion so I don't want my kids to be running around with a foul mouth
[02:10:36] now I took my son and a couple of his buddies went a little surf trip and they were sleeping in a
[02:10:41] tent outside of and I was in the I was in the camper and I woke up at when I normally wake up and
[02:10:50] they were what they were up early to go surfing as well but I was standing outside their tent and I was
[02:10:54] pretty impressed with you. Oh you're the wife you're ready a foul language that they produced.
[02:10:59] Yeah yeah and that's kind of a thing too right so it doesn't if you'd never swear to your kids it's
[02:11:05] not like you have protected them for swearing so that's that's my point is that after I stood
[02:11:11] out there for a while and I listened to them and then I said something along the lines of
[02:11:15] hey are you guys done and are you ready to surfing and my son says how long have you been out there
[02:11:21] dad and and I swore back at him I swore back at him and said I've been out here long and then
[02:11:29] they kind of remain quiet for a second and then they started laughing I said all right boys let's go so
[02:11:34] I'm not a goodie to choose I understand and you know we talked about Pat and Patton swore.
[02:11:42] Incessantly amongst the troops and then when he'd get in front of the politicians he would not and I guess
[02:11:48] I would hope to behave that way and I just got too I used to go there was when we got back
[02:11:54] for a money I had to go and brief the secretary of the navy I had to go brief the congrent
[02:11:59] joint caucus I mean I had to go and brief some high level governmental officials and whatnot
[02:12:04] and I was just walking there or not obviously you're not going to swear for them so I think that's another
[02:12:10] another situation where you've got to know and understand when to swear and when not to swear and
[02:12:18] I just hopefully I'm making the right decisions and like I said no one has no one has
[02:12:25] hit me up and said you really need to use more foul language and you know there's times where we've you know
[02:12:31] we've used foul language on the podcast because hey it's a reality it's a reality of
[02:12:38] Vietnam it's a reality of all wars yeah so to exclude it like it doesn't exist is not what I'm trying to do here
[02:12:47] Yeah and that's kind of a big in my opinion a big deal when someone you can tell they're
[02:12:53] they're actively pursuing not swearing where in any kind of especially in a casual conversation where
[02:13:00] they're about to say something and then they then they use like I don't know sugar I don't know
[02:13:07] you know those reap obvious replays and which is it's nothing wrong with it but it does kind of
[02:13:12] kind of make you think oh wait like we so we can't just be ourselves right now like we I don't know
[02:13:16] it feels like you may feel free to relate to it yeah you know what's interesting is you see
[02:13:21] full metal jacket and just an amazing movie about the Marine Corps and the whole the whole first 45 minutes is boot camp
[02:13:31] and it's played by Lee Raymy I think is his name and he does he was a real general instructor and so he just
[02:13:37] nails it and I remember when my son was six or seven years old I thought to myself I'll play him some of
[02:13:42] this movie I'll just find some parts that don't have any foul language there are no parts well
[02:13:47] everything is just completely over the top and it's awesome so so there's definitely a time in a
[02:13:57] place where the other thing is for me honestly it's you know I was I'm always trying to do better
[02:14:04] it stuff there's a challenge be in trying to find words that are gonna have impact without just
[02:14:13] going right to the easy button on the on the big f-bomb because that's gonna have impact but
[02:14:19] if that's what you need to use then that's just a little easy out that I want to take every single
[02:14:24] time and presents itself yeah I'll tell you when I get when there's been a couple times with my
[02:14:29] kids where they've stepped over line there's something out of line and when I when I've sworn at them
[02:14:36] it was like I slapped him in the face because it was having that much impact when I was just
[02:14:41] thrown around all the time it's taken away the impact right right yeah so strategically it's
[02:14:45] a secret yeah patting apparently was from what I read he he when he'd get people fired up he
[02:14:52] do that on purpose oh and then like even just in normal conversation he didn't really swear that
[02:14:56] much this one thing so he used it as a specific tool you know to get certain things done
[02:15:00] it's for as influence goes yeah I can't believe we've talked for 10 minutes about swearing right
[02:15:06] it needed to be talked about anyway that's the question I think we got time for one more
[02:15:13] okay last question juggle what techniques do you use to deal with situational stress from battlefield
[02:15:22] to boardroom well first of all and I don't mean to minimize the stress that people face but
[02:15:30] imagine imagine what Eugene sledge that we talked about tonight imagine what he went through on
[02:15:38] pellelu in the tens of thousands of marines that suffered debt unimaginable horror
[02:15:50] and then you imagine hackworth who he talked about here who wrote about face assaulting enemy
[02:15:56] positions in korean he was wounded over and over again on the line and still went back for more
[02:16:05] and he got Alan Seeger the poet who in World War I went over the top over and over again
[02:16:17] to make his rendezvous with death and there's been thousands and hundreds of thousands of millions
[02:16:28] of warriors that have been in very stressful situations and faced evil and faced death
[02:16:38] much worse than the situation I'm in or urine that we might consider stressful and
[02:16:47] I even did this when I was overseas when I was on deployment when I was a combat leader
[02:16:53] I was feeling stress and you know what we took casualties and it was awful and it was heartbreaking
[02:17:05] but there were other soldiers and warriors throughout time that had been in much worse situations
[02:17:13] getty's burger, vix burger, the battle the bulge and in all those horrible situations
[02:17:26] they prove really that humans can withstand almost unimaginable stress
[02:17:33] which meant to me that I could too and you can and the first step for me is doing that taking that
[02:17:48] look to gain some perspective and then in order to gain perspective you got to do something
[02:17:56] that we already talked about you got to detach you've got to detach from the problems or the
[02:18:01] stress that you're experiencing so that you can get that perspective of them
[02:18:09] now there's a couple different types of stress now if it's something that you can control
[02:18:18] that's causing you stress well why aren't you getting control of it generally it's a lack of
[02:18:25] discipline so you've got to have the discipline to grab control and make it happen and when I say
[02:18:32] you need discipline for that what that means is these stresses that you're avoiding they're not
[02:18:40] going to go away if you avoid them so take the discipline to face the stressful situation get ahead of
[02:18:47] it don't be afraid of it now there's also stress that's caused by things that you cannot
[02:18:55] control and if you remember talking earlier about artillery and how horrible that was and what made
[02:19:04] it so horrible was that there's no control over so if you can't control something and you can't get
[02:19:12] control of it you have to at least embrace what you can and I'm not saying you're going to embrace
[02:19:22] artillery showing but I'll tell you what when it comes to things like artillery or for us in
[02:19:29] Ramadi was IEDs and we could do everything we could do to mitigate that risk but eventually
[02:19:36] there's only so much you can do and you cannot completely eliminate it but you can't control it so
[02:19:43] why you're going to worry about it why you're going to stress about it if there's something that's
[02:19:49] completely beyond your control you cannot you've got to detach from it and not let yourself
[02:19:55] get stressed about it and on top of that if it's something that you can't control how can you
[02:20:04] look at it in a different light how can you see it in a way that you could actually take advantage of it
[02:20:09] how can you take that stress and make it into some kind of ally you know the chaos of combat
[02:20:23] is something that I couldn't control but I had to embrace it so I could try and figure out how to
[02:20:27] take advantage of it so when it comes to stress don't fight it turn it on itself and you
[02:20:39] use it use it to make yourself sharper and more alert and use it to make yourself think more
[02:20:48] and learn more and get better and use that stress as a catalyst to make yourself better
[02:20:58] and I think that's all we've got for tonight so thanks to everybody for tuning in and listening to us
[02:21:13] thanks for the feedback through the interwebs to me at Jocco Willink and to Echo
[02:21:21] who is at Echo Charles thanks for leaving reviews of the podcast and the book on iTunes and on Amazon
[02:21:31] because those are very helpful and most of all thanks to everybody for getting out there
[02:21:37] and getting after it so until next time this is Jocco and Echo out