Jocko Podcast 304: How NOT to Lead. The Psychology of Military Incompetence Pt.2

2021-10-24T22:35:54Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles @davidrberke 0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:51 - On The Psychology of Military Incompetence. 2:33:17 - How to stay on THE PATH. JOCKO UNDERGROUND Exclusive Episodes: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Jocko Store Apparel: https://www.jockostore.com Jocko Fuel: https://jockofuel.com Origin Jeans and Clothes: https://originmaine.com/durable-goods/ Echelon Front: https://www.echelonfront.com 2:49:05 - Closing Gratitude.

AI summary of episode

yeah gets worse by the way within a few days of his performance at moderate where he confirms the worst the worst fears of his critics and even more disastrous battle of makers foretimes makers fun time sorry to the people of South Africa to the Afrikaans I'm sorry makers fun time especially for a Dutch guy should be doing a little bit better the boars were concealed in a narrow in narrow trenches in front of his objective they waited patiently until the British came within easy range surprise was complete when they opened fire hail of lead swept through the ranks of the highland brigade within minutes the ground is carpeted with dead soldiers including the highland commander George O'ow shop who's too much for the remainder despite their training and discipline despite the honor of the regiment despite all the factors which the high command finally believed would induce uneducated soldiers to sacrifice themselves for the short coming of their generals they broke ranks turn tail and fled as they did so they were further pounded and demoralized by hitherto undetected batteries of blue or artillery fast forward a little bit myth you and was by no means the most foolhardy of the generals jah there was general feather stoneaw who at the battle of Belmont insisted on riding up and down in front of his men in full regalia thereby announcing his importance to the enemy and effectively hampering the fire of his own men it was not long before the boo is rectified his error by shooting off shooting them off of his horse there was general heart who at the battle of colenso inflicted 30 minutes parade ground drill on his brigade before marching them shoulder to shoulder in barracks square precision across the open veld against the booer position since it was broad daylight has densely packed column provided an irisistable target for every booer gun and rifle within range this battle in this battle the British were defeated with a loss of 1,139 casualties and ten guns against the booer losses of six dead in 21 wounded fast forward a little bit it is at this point it becomes necessary to introduce another concept which is relevant to the contact of the South African war it is that of the effects of psychological stress upon decision making it is perhaps their resistance to stress and their ability to carry on when things go wrong that good generals are most easily distinguished from poor ones which by the way if you can detach that's what's going to allow you to do that by this standard general bulleter physically so huge failed dismaly it resolute from the outset the three defeats sapt whatever confidence he ever had from being weak and fearful he became a veritable jelly of indecision his plans became vague and indefinite his specific orders scarcely more enlightening his lack of moral courage and the face of adversity revealed itself most clearly in his propensity for making scapegoats of his unfortunate subordinates those admittedly incompetent generals who had blundered on without direction or assistance from above while taking none of the blame himself again the direct antithesis of extreme ownership the nearest to such admission was a reference to bad luck bad luck it may have been but worse luck was to follow in the shape of that 1,400 foot monument to military andeptitude spy and cop the totally unnecessary storming of this mini mountain was to the boor war what the charge of the light brigade had been in the crummy and war the details are as followed while still numbed by the series the defeats just recounted bullards army of 29,000 infantry 2600 mounted men eight field batteries and ten naval guns was enriched if that is the word by the arrival of a fresh division commanded by church sir Charles Warren fast forward a little bit the plan was went wrong for several reasons in the first place warrants division was far too small for the main attack the second reason for disaster lay in the character of Warren who's been described as a deletory yet fidgety overcocious yet is a res allute and totally ignorant regarding the use of cavalry he was also obsessive obstinate self opinionated and excessively bad tempered isn't an interesting how you hear bad tempered a lot when this guy is describing freaking knucklehead leaders this also included an obsession with enormous baggage train and fear that it might be destroyed by a non-existent enemy by non-existent enemy guns on the small mountains spy on cop so concerned was he with his baggage that he spent 26 hours personally supervising its transfer across the river the delay was invaluable to the boor and it's the really the first the first tank battle where tanks were used and this is just so important because there's so much resistance here in 1912 a private civilian inventor e l demol of Adelaide presented the war office with the design for a tracked vehicle which to put it at its simplest would help solve the major tactical problem of the first World War which hadn't even started yet how to get soldiers across no manland, barbed wire and enemy trenches without being shot the war office looked at demol's design and laid it on its on one side and 1915 through a total lack of personal protection British soldiers on the western front were dying at the rate of thousands a day demol was moved to resubmit his invention again it was ignored and by the way he didn't come up with this idea four runners of the tank can be traced back to Caesar's invasion of Britain Leonardo da Vinci had designed an armored fighting vehicle in the 16th century and the concept was advanced by H. G. Wells in his book the land iron clads polished in 1903 remember when I was a kid I saw that you know a road of enchanting I was pretty stoked on that it might be concluded therefore that his invention was put aside not just because it was a new idea which it was not nor because it was not needed which it was but because it conflicted with a mystical belief and the virtues of horse to cavalry and in the power of a prolonged military barrage now we get into some of the politics that was going on about the tanks while Churchill and Lloyd George were enthusiastic supporters of the tanks master general of ordinance general von Donop remained implacably opposed to any such development in the services the major proponents of the tank development included ironically a small group of naval officers the fact that the admiral to felt less quote threatened by tanks than the war office did was strikingly illustrated at one of those demonstrations where in proponents of a new idea strive to convert skeptics by confrontation with evidence of their senses after an impeccable display in which prototype tanks cut through barbed wire cross-chinch trenches slithered through mud and clawed their way out of craters a naval officer was heard to remark we ought to order 3,000 now so the navy guys like hey bro that looks like a pretty freaking good thing but the war office contingent remained cool once senior general retorting who is this damn naval man saying we will want 3,000 tanks he talks like Napoleon him and his detached point of view um they get some tanks they get some of them they use him in battle and and here's what happens of course how do they use him about this is like when you learn an eugenia to move like hey echo you know here's this new move so he kind of thought that we needed to take this this high ground spy on cop seems like a good call the men were ordered up the steeply sloping mountainside into a fog hardly less dense than that which clouded the minds of their commanders when in almost zero visibility they thought they had reached the summit the assault force altered congratulating themselves on the total absence of opposition raised the union track jack and tried to entrench the word the operative word is tried for the top was much like the rest of the mountain solid rock nobody had warned them of this by the way he didn't do a recon just FYI they decided to use sandbags only to find that no one had to remember to bring them while the miscued they did the best they could with pieces of rocks and clouds of earth only to well aware that this flimsy protection provided no overhead cover whatsoever if this gave them food for thought there was more to follow for with a further improvement in visibility they made a second disquieting discovery they were not where they thought they were instead of the summit they found themselves on a small plateau some way below the mountain top 1,700 men on a piece of ground 400 by 500 yards and above them on three sides the boars the enemy opened fire within minute the ground was littered with corpses many with bullet holes in the side of the head or body owing to the lack of overhead cover the losses from shrapnel were even greater trapped in the seemingly hopeless position without any guidance or directives from their general the 200 lane caster fuselures laid down the arms and surrendered to the boars this their place was taken by reinforcement sent up from below meanwhile Warren and Bullard did nothing to help the hard press troops no doubt appalled by what was happening to his army on the heights above Warren supined at the best of times went into a state that has been described as paralytic important note a war correspondent who had witnessed the dire events on top of the mountain hurry down to the commanding general but instead of receiving this admittedly unsolicited information with gratitude Warren flew into a rage and demanded that the journalist should be arrested for insolence name of the war correspondent was Winston Churchill but before moving on to the next example it's worth placing the cramian and boar wars in the same perspective both present a picture of what appears to be unreleaved stupidity but more interesting is the psychological pattern of these events here was a rich and powerful nation anxious to assert assert its rights first in Russia then in South Africa what did it do but send out highly regimented armies which endeavored to make up encouraged discipline and visual splendor what they lacked in relevant training technology and adequate leadership as to the latter in each case a commander in chief was selected who despite his deficiencies remained in order to be popular with his troops for far longer than he deserved both men were genial courteous and kind both were inexperienced is irresolute and lacking moral courage both were rich and well-connected but both when the occasion demanded were only too ready to divest themselves of all responsibility for the errors which they had made and the ones seemed quite unable to learn from the mistakes of the other from the moment it might prove how to keep in mind certain characteristics of the incompetence just described they include so here's as we get into a list of problems number one an underestimation sometimes bordering on the arrogant of the enemy hmm check in equating war with sport yeah it knew it was like he was freaking stoked so um leadership strategy in tactics field manual the code evaluation protocols discipline equals freedom field manual way the warrior can want to three four mickey in the dragons hack worth about face extreme ownership dichotomy leadership we have the leadership company where we teach leadership echelon front dot com if you need details on that that's where you can find out about our live events including the monster including field training exercises he f battle field um we have an online training platform you can hear us refer to it from time to time if you want to ask me a question go to extremo ownership dot com and enroll in the extreme ownership academy and you can ask me a question you can ask Dave a question you can ask Dave a question we're on there two three times a week we also have a bunch of courses you can take so check that out and if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families you can check out marklies mom mommily she's got a charity organization that does all kinds of amazing stuff if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america's mightywarier's dot org and if you want more of my boring blathering or you need more of echoes interjecting inquiries or you want Dave's enhancing estimations you can find us on the in the webs on twitter on the gram and on Facebook Dave is at David R. Burke echoes at aquatral's i am at jocca willink and thanks to all the men and the women of the military who are leading not from a psychopathic mind but trying to take care of their people and accomplish the mission and also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics EMT's dispatchers correctional officers board of patrol secret service and all first responders thank you for taking care of us by locking up the psychopaths of the world and to everyone else out there take care of your people take care of your people put them first and you don't take care of them by being easy well letting them cut corners or allowing a lack of training and allowing a lack of discipline you take care of them by helping them be the best they can be by helping them be prepared by listening to them by incorporating their ideas and by putting your own agenda and your own aspirations below there first go do that and until next time this is Dave and echo and jocco out okay where are you second dude what are we trying to do we certainly have not good enough troops to make certain of of taking bad debt Baghdad of our two divisions mine the sixth is complete the 12 has no guns or divisional troops and nixon takes them from me and lends him to gornion when he has to go anywhere I consider we ought to hold on to what we've got as long as we are held up as we are in the dardinels all these offensive operations in secondary theaters are dreadful errors in strategy the dardinels egypt messa patini a east africa i wonder and wonder at such expeditions being permitted in violation of all great fundamental principles of four especially the out of economy of force such as the violation is always punished in history so he's any got to prioritize next week why we do run around doing all these different things i'm afraid we are out in the cold here the messa patini and operations are a little noticed though we are fighting the same enemy as you have in the dardinels plus and appalling heat the hardship in France or nothing to that so this seems like a logical thing right towns like hey dude what are we doing like we already kind of got done or supposed to get done why are you pushing further let's hold what we got i don't have a bunch of troops i'm getting my my troops are getting pulled all over the place let's just kind of stand down but it's an interesting um there's another uh story in that writes the letter was completely in character it revealed a gift for strategic appreciation amounting to uh prescience it revealed towns in chronic tendency to criticize his superiors and his obsession with his own affairs to the exclusion of all others it revealed as a bit you will lack of general of generosity to his colleagues who whom he praised only if they were of inferior rank to himself his tendency to wine and almost embarrassing immodesty i think that's a hard reading of that letter and how quickly and this isn't like show the how smart i am it's like how easy it is to make the connection what you preface this was he kind of i think he listed three one was technology i forgot what the first one was and the third one was leadership and really the risk could just be one it's leadership but the title of this book is is the title of book is the psychology of it's the it's the it's the individual's person psychology and when we're talking about these things is how painful it is to sit from the outside and watch the whole that they dig or just how obvious and to your point of detachment how obvious it is it's not nuanced it's not like a slight little adjustment you're just sitting back you're watching this and there is you know there's zero chances it's gonna work not because we know the history but because of because of the setup that you're revealing this is the situation this is how these people make decisions this is the way they think like this is gonna fail this is gonna fail and how easy it is to attribute everything on one of those to a basic fundamental leadership behavior it's disturbing it's disturbing not the least of which is the one that repeats itself more than anything else which is what you talked about at the very beginning was humility just the inability to be humble it's it's it's it's it's hard to listen to you you know we're gonna do that or that's obvious or whatever so literally you know so nice start caring about like you know my the king of wherever and all these other you know personal interest whatever I'm gonna say something that I don't know maybe this makes me a psychopath if I would have been in charge of the British military I would have assembled a hit team and we would have gone and killed towns and like execution style and brought his body back and said hey leaders this is not how we lead into the question you asked too I think given the author's education he's using that term in the clinical sense like that is not like it's not a slang term for a dude is kind of messed up he's calling him he's he's referring to the psychopathic tendencies he means that in the the medical literal sense of that word I I saw this when when we developed and the machine was the example we used last time but when we developed stealth technology and it really became evident to the world and desert storm because nobody really most people didn't really know is going on and all of a sudden first on a desert storm we're flying to the top of Baghdad with airplanes that nobody could see and there was a level of disbelief going on there from the Iraqi defense system as there's bombs going off around them like I hear I hear airplanes those are jet engines flying over her as I can't see them right here them things are blowing up but there was an incapacity to to accept that he was happening because they didn't see it and this doesn't exist well unfortunately one of the byproducts of that was some people were paying attention to that and there's this massive shift from the early 90s to building stealth airplanes we have a bunch of them now guess who else has the rush in the Chinese are you know our primary enemies but the idea of being in a fight was something you can't see which is what's one of the things that stealth allows you to do is one of the most common things that you see when you're in the stair there plane is other people behaving as if you're not there when they know you're there they just can't see you and like well I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing like good lord but because of the machine gun fire which was causing heavy casualties the tanks were on their own with such perfect targets the German gunners opened fire one by one the tanks were hit while the crews worked desperately at the cumbersome gears to drive a zigzag course and the gunners tried to return fire but taking accurate aim in all the pitching and tossing was virtually impossible it was some minutes before the German guns had been pulled out of action but by this time 16 tanks had been destroyed with huge gaping holes in their sides most were on fire and those crew members who had not been killed outright by the blasting shells were burned to death there were no survivors through a pious fast forward through a pious and mistaken belief in the value of horse cavalry and a paralysis thought a case by years of trench warfare the brilliant breakthrough by the tanks was thrown away some ten days later the Germans counterattacked in a matter of hours they recovered much of the ground originally lost the British third army commanded by general Sir Julian being lost 6,000 men taken prisoner some thousands killed or wounded and a vast quantity of guns and other equipment the magnitude of this disaster was directly attributable to a feature of high-level military incompetence seen all too often the ignoring of intelligence reports which did not fit in with the preconceived ideas when at last news of the disaster reached Britain it was naturally assumed that the generals had failed again heg's reputation already low sank to a vanishing point the war cabinet demanded an immediate explanation heg's response was to endorse a report from general being that the third army had not been taken by surprise and that the failure to stem the German breakthrough was due to the shortcomings of those junior officers and CEOs and men who had been involved in the fighting what a freaking savage in the face of so much contrary evidence these views did not impress the critics to stifle further debate the war cabinet called in general smuts and this freaking savage smut stated and they go into what his relationships are he's he's just a just a real piece of shit smut stated higher command army or court command were not to blame everything had been done to meet such an attack he went on to say that the fault lay either with local commanders who might have lost their heads or with those lower down junior officers and CEOs and men of those two alternatives he preferred the latter explanation and so smuts in the fashion of the day blame those least able to answer back the youthful the junior and the dead again what corrections are we now making we're not making any corrections we're like and their and their true self comes out well good place to stop for today and we know we need to be looking on the lookout for people with psychopathic traits and the meantime you know maybe we try and avoid having those traits ourselves maybe we actually try and become something a little bit more positive something good maybe we try and make ourselves better echo Charles just a just little psychopsycopathy apparently from what I understand is it like it's like a thing in your mind like a normal seemingly normal person can be a psych and a clinical psychopath it has less to do with like crazy stuff that they do it's just the inability to if I'm not mistaken to empathize with people that's one of the big problems yes we should because you know what I want I want to be the king of Baghdad for you can discover easy man the thing about lessons learned lessons learned should open your mind not close your mind these guys are lying by the way secretary of state for indian army commander Bosra Joseph Chamberlain cable this statement honor rival wounded honor rival wounded Bosra please telegraph urgently particulars and progress so this guy's saying hey what's going on with the wounded you got and Nixon replies wounded satisfactory the disposed of many likely to recover medical services under circumstances of considerable difficulty worked splendidly but Nixon to admit for you just witnessed the arrival of 4,000 and the the mejade which is a ship with 600 casualties on board and two crammed 13 days and nights on her decks and on the exposed decks of her lighters men lay huddled in pools of blood urine and feces their bodies slime with excrement their wounds crawling with maggots their shattered bones splinted wood from whiskey crates and the handles of trenching tools and their thighs backs and buttocks lepros with source i mean while towns and he's got his guys safely up and cut it well all this is happening these guys are getting slaughter 23,000 casualties and towns ends up their kind of chilling over the period of the siege he evaded he evenced several characteristics it towns and communications were not however confined to those outside cut during the siege he had devoted much attention to issuing of communicates to his troops these were remarkable for three features a flagrant to soil t-tourds towards and criticism of his superiors of thinly veiled contempt for the valiant but unsuccessful relief force and a total absence of gratitude toward those who are losing their lives trying to rescue him towns and was always prepared to abandon his beloved command in the interest of either his own release or his own advancement on March 5th he had again requested promotion this guy's calling he's captured he's freaking in siege after causing himself to be there he's asking him to promote it on April 9th for the second time he had suggested that he should attempt escape to escape from caught and leave his division to its fate you imagine running that up the chain of command

Most common words

Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockelbontcast number 304 with echo Charles and me, Jockel willing. Good evening, I go.
[00:00:06] Good evening. Also Jonas tonight, Dave Burke, good evening, Dave.
[00:00:09] Good evening. We're going to continue our review of the book on the psychology of military incompetence.
[00:00:15] We started that on the last podcast, 303.
[00:00:19] Believe it or not, we only got through the forward and the preface and two chapters.
[00:00:27] So this one could take a while, but there's a reason.
[00:00:32] There's a reason I've been sitting on this book for a while. There's a reason I'm doing this podcast right now.
[00:00:37] And so today we're going to get through some of the first part of the meat of the book, which is the historical examples.
[00:00:47] And these historical examples are what get referred back to throughout this entire book.
[00:00:54] So each one of these, each one of these situations that we're going to talk about, they're broken into chapters in most cases, not 100%.
[00:01:03] But these are disastrous military engagements, engagements or battles or campaigns or wars.
[00:01:10] And each one of these events could be an entire book.
[00:01:15] And that means they could be each event could be a podcast or two or three.
[00:01:21] And some of them have been, you'll notice some of them that we'll talk about.
[00:01:25] We have done podcasts on because they're significant military events.
[00:01:29] Some of them, I'm sure, will come back and visit in the future.
[00:01:33] And I'm going to move, I'm trying to give enough information in from each one of these events.
[00:01:42] So that when he refers back to these events later, you get it.
[00:01:46] Because if you don't have the context, then you won't understand the references that he's making.
[00:01:51] So I'll try and condense the historical examples a little bit, but it's rough.
[00:01:57] And some of them are really obvious, for instance, the section on like World War I, considering what World War I is.
[00:02:06] It's relatively short.
[00:02:09] Why? Because most of us know the basic history of World War I, same thing with World War II.
[00:02:15] But then he gives more specific examples inside of each of those and outside of those wars that are definitely more detailed.
[00:02:24] And the this section of the book starts with an epic example of incompetence and tragedy.
[00:02:33] It is about the Crimean War, including the famous or infamous, depending on who read you the story, charge of the light brigade.
[00:02:44] So this war was fought between October 1853 and February 1856, between Russia on one side, who eventually lost to an alliance of France, the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain and Sardinia.
[00:03:00] And so we're going to get into it in the book.
[00:03:07] The Crimean War certainly marked an exceedingly low point in British military history. The poor quality of the officers, most of whom had bought their commissions and for whom no standard of education was required.
[00:03:21] Stood and marked contrast to the excellence of the men described by one observer as the finest soldiers I ever saw in stature, physique and appearance. So right out of the gate, we don't like this scenario. How do you get to be in a leadership position? You pay money.
[00:03:38] That's how you get to be in a leadership position. Your dad is a rich whatever.
[00:03:44] And so you're a spoiled punk ass kid and your dad wants you to have some cloud in the world. So he says, oh, I'm going to buy you a commission. And by the way, the more money he has, the more rank you get savage amongst, but yeah, he's also saying that the men were squared away.
[00:04:03] Amongst the officers, there seemed to be an inverse relationship between rank and efficiency. The more senior they were, the less competent they appeared at the apex of this pyramid of mediocrity stood or rather sat for he was always on his horse or in his quarters and being in order to leave shy rarely walked amongst his men, Lord Raglan.
[00:04:26] His qualifications for leading a British expeditionary force appear to have been his age. 67.
[00:04:34] His lineage used the youngest of Duke of Bufurt's 11 sons and his experience 25 years as military secretary to the Duke of Wellington.
[00:04:43] And then master general of ordinance. No one would accuse him of having a mind cluttered by any previous experience of command for he had none, not even of a company.
[00:04:54] So this guy, Raglan, which is a bummer because Raglan is a name of an awesome surf spot in New Zealand. It's also a name of one of my favorite restaurants in San Diego, which is named after the surf spot, not after not after Lord, not after the Lord.
[00:05:11] Lord Raglan, Raglan OB shout out.
[00:05:15] His appointment, however, was not wholly inappropriate for of him. It was said his chief merit was that despite his incurable habit throughout the campaign of referring to the enemy as the French, which by the way, the enemy was the Russians and and the French were on his side.
[00:05:35] He was admittedly and admirably adapted to less in the friction in coalition wars. So this is a guy that was sort of, you know, easy to get along with.
[00:05:45] Right. Oh, you got a bunch of people. We got the French. We got the Sardinians. We got the Ottoman Empire.
[00:05:50] We got England. Let's put somebody in charge of kind of can make friends. So that's his admirable quality.
[00:05:56] In fact, Raglan seemed to agree with the with most French proposals. It was a characteristic of the man that he hated conflict.
[00:06:06] There's so many weird things in all these different personalities. It is just.
[00:06:13] You know, it was on EF online today or sorry, extreme ownership academy today and a somebody brought up one of those personality tests.
[00:06:23] So he was saying, you know, we had a company off site and we did this personality test and it made me start thinking about, hey, when I'm interacting with someone else.
[00:06:33] I need to think about what type of personality they have.
[00:06:38] And try and relate things in a way that will best land on their personality. And I said, yes, absolutely. And then on top of that.
[00:06:48] I had 78 other items, who is this person? What's the personality type? Sure. What's their experience? What's their background? What kind of day are they having today? What's their what's their position in the organization?
[00:06:58] What's my relationship with them? Because what we're dealing with when you're dealing with other human beings is that that thing that we talked about on the underground podcast, which is.
[00:07:07] We're all insane because we all see the world a little bit differently. So when I'm relating to Dave, I can't just think, oh, it's just I need to relate to his personality.
[00:07:16] But how does he feel about this project? What's his passion level? What's his experience? How much does he know? Has he had bad experience with this department that he's going to go take charge of all those things you have to think about when you're going into these situations dealing with other human beings?
[00:07:32] So disaster.
[00:07:34] Yeah, we say, we say leadership's a human nature and never all the time.
[00:07:38] And this idea of even just contemplating how the other person is going to react is a huge step in the right direction.
[00:07:44] So it's shocking how many people, you know, that's really what you, that's really what you get when you get the young Eric's inexperience leader.
[00:07:50] They're seeing everything just through their own eyes and everyone just, what is wrong with everyone. Oh, I'll tell you what's wrong. They're humans.
[00:08:00] Yeah.
[00:08:02] Fast forward a little bit.
[00:08:04] Jacqueline and his staff constitute the nerve center of the army in the Crimea. The sinuse compromise a field force of five infantry and two cavalry divisions under commanders who for the most part did little to inspire confidence.
[00:08:18] Here to the problem was partly one of age.
[00:08:22] Apart from the 35 year old Duke of Cambridge cousin to the Queen, all the senior commanders would be between 60 and 70.
[00:08:30] With Sir John Bergoyne, chief engineer, topping the list at 72.
[00:08:36] Certainly it could be said of them that what they lacked in experience they made up for years.
[00:08:41] So am I in am I committing ages and right now by saying, hey, if you're 72 and you're in a war that's taking place in 1853,
[00:08:55] maybe you're not in the best to help, and maybe you shouldn't be running a war.
[00:09:01] Check.
[00:09:03] As I think a lot of times in these wars back in the day, like if you're a British lord or whatever, this is just going to check the box, right?
[00:09:14] Oh, you can go out and kill some natives and be a hero for the king or for the crown, right?
[00:09:21] Some of that is definitely going on.
[00:09:25] As has so often been the case, the next lower level of command did contain some leaders of vigor with a well talent for war, such one was Sir Colin Campbell.
[00:09:35] His command, unfortunately, was no larger than a brigade.
[00:09:38] As usual in those days, the cream of the crop of the army was the cavalry commanded, in this instance, by Lord Luke in,
[00:09:47] an impulsive man of moderate intellect and lacking experience.
[00:09:52] There you go.
[00:09:53] Let's go to the good way to start.
[00:09:55] Directly under Luke in, in charge of the heavy and light brigades, respectively, were James Scarlet and Lord Cardigan.
[00:10:04] The arrangement was not a happy one to select Cardigan for a position subservient to his brother-in-law, Luke in, was hardly less delicious than subordinating a mongous to his snake.
[00:10:16] So you have these two relatives that hate each other and one's been put in charge of the other.
[00:10:23] Lord Luke has been put in charge of Lord Cardigan.
[00:10:28] Fast forward a little bit.
[00:10:30] The prime characteristic of Lord Raglan, his almost compulsive non-participation, aristocratic, courteous and aloof, he seemed to display many of the characteristics of the extreme introvert.
[00:10:44] So distasteful, was it to have any direct contact with his fellow men that he could hardly bear to issue an order?
[00:10:52] And when he did so, it was couched in such a way to ensure a vast gulf between his wishes and the comprehension of those for whom it was intended.
[00:11:02] Think about that.
[00:11:03] You're giving orders that basically make no sense.
[00:11:07] It's insanity.
[00:11:10] It's the opposite of simple clear and concise.
[00:11:15] This first battle was won by England, but it was not exactly, it didn't exactly go the way they wanted it to.
[00:11:28] That battle was at Alma, despite the fact that Raglan watching from afar played little part and bringing about Alma was a victory for the allies.
[00:11:37] Thanks to the courage and superb fighting qualities of the soldiers and their junior officers.
[00:11:42] Through what one observer described as a great want of general ship, the victory was achieved with much unnecessary loss of life, even worse, and even worse, because of a total failure to follow it up,
[00:11:54] yielded few if any dividends for the campaign as a whole.
[00:11:58] So they were able to win the battle, this first battle, only because the soldiers and the junior officers were freaking square away and brave.
[00:12:05] And that's a thing that you get throughout these, but throughout this book is the bravery of the soldiers is undeniable, but they get put in situations that are just disastrous.
[00:12:19] There is one final point of some relevance to the thesis of this book. It concerns the matter of initiative.
[00:12:25] The idea of direction from those at the apex of a hierarchical authoritarian organization provides a special dilemma for those at lower levels in the chain of command.
[00:12:37] Confunded with the absence of clear cut orders, what are they to do? So you're in a hardcore hierarchy and there's no clear cut orders. What are you supposed to do?
[00:12:46] If they take the lawn to their own hands, they run the risk of being accused of the insubordination, particularly if their plans happen to miscarry.
[00:12:54] But if they do not show initiative, then they are equally likely to suffer for not having done so at all the field officers for want of higher direction use their own initiative with considerable success and doing so they save the day of not the campaign.
[00:13:10] This is what we set up in organizations when we're micro managing people.
[00:13:14] And all of a sudden you can't get the word out. What if what are people supposed to do?
[00:13:19] If you've trained them to get micro managed, they're not going to do anything.
[00:13:24] Fast forward a little bit trouble started in dividing command between the two generals Lord Luke and Lord Cardigan already mentioned them.
[00:13:31] Individually neither was fitted to his post together. They were disaster.
[00:13:35] That's one of their fellow officers wrote in his diary, the more I see of Lord Luke and Lord Cardigan, the more I thoroughly despise them.
[00:13:42] Such crass ignorance and such overbearing temper.
[00:13:48] Raghland did not excel in dealing with these men.
[00:13:55] Instead of loyally supporting Luke and he appeared to condone even the most flagrant accesses of the incorrigible Cardigan.
[00:14:02] So he's got the senior officer, which is Luke and instead of like, okay, you know what?
[00:14:07] You're just going to support the chain of command here.
[00:14:09] Instead he sort of lets Cardigan run wild as well.
[00:14:13] Not only did he allow Cardigan to bring his private yacht into Bala-Klava, where for weeks it took up valuable space in the congested harbor,
[00:14:23] but he also permitted him to live on board even while his brigade and divisional commander were roughing it ashore on rations under canvas.
[00:14:34] I like how Dave was just closing his eyes and shaking his head throughout this.
[00:14:39] By forefitting his position of authority and exacerbating the already bitter enmity between his subordinates,
[00:14:46] Raghland's las a fair handling of these relatively minor matters, so the sees of the ultimate disaster, the destruction of the light brigade.
[00:14:55] So look, we've heard some crazy stuff, but when your troops and your leadership and your subordinate leadership are living off rations,
[00:15:07] intense and you're in a freaking yacht in the harbor.
[00:15:12] You can't make that up dude.
[00:15:16] That is a level of crazy that you almost couldn't believe.
[00:15:20] And we were hearing stories about like they would bring pianos and like, you know, grandma phones and stuff like,
[00:15:25] wow, that's pretty excessive.
[00:15:27] And now you got my, I need my personal yacht in the harbor and I'm going to live on it.
[00:15:31] Yeah.
[00:15:32] Man, that's rough.
[00:15:34] I've even been on a yacht before.
[00:15:38] Not like a real yacht.
[00:15:39] No.
[00:15:39] Echo Charles?
[00:15:40] Yes, sir.
[00:15:41] I've been on a yacht.
[00:15:44] And let's just say it's not exactly rough.
[00:15:48] Oh, yes, sir.
[00:15:49] Very crazy.
[00:15:52] Fast forward a little bit.
[00:15:53] For behind the color and the glory behind the valor and the dash, the charge of the
[00:15:58] gear was a blunder of monumental proportions and an at object lesson in what can happen when the promotional machinery of a military organization is such as to put troops at the mercy of men like
[00:16:10] Raglan, Luka and Cartagoon.
[00:16:11] And there's a book actually, Leipzig wants to cover this book on on the podcast, the charge of the lip or date.
[00:16:16] But you get into the details of these.
[00:16:18] It's, it's insane.
[00:16:20] It's totally insane.
[00:16:22] Here's a little, a little brief of it.
[00:16:25] of the explanation of this curious lapse hinges upon the fact that Luke and had a press
[00:16:29] upon Cardigan that his job was to stay put and defend the position, attacking only such
[00:16:34] enemy forces as came within reach. Under the circumstances, Cardigan determined that he would not
[00:16:38] give his brother-in-law the slightest grounds for making a complaint should the attack fail.
[00:16:43] If it did, then Luke and should take the blame. Luke and in order came to defend the position
[00:16:48] and defend it, he would even if it cost him his life.
[00:16:50] If, haven't I said before, some people, they would rather die than let their ego get offended.
[00:17:01] Here's a classic example. It seems that the charge of the light brigade from which only 15%
[00:17:08] of the original force of 673 roadback was the end result of faulty communication between five men.
[00:17:15] Five men, Raglin, his quarter-master general, Erie, Lord's Luke and Cardigan and the impetuous
[00:17:21] captain Nolan, Raglin's contribution is that he issued orders the precise meaning of which
[00:17:26] has remained a matter for debate. The fourth and more disastrous of these orders, Erie wrote out on a
[00:17:33] flimsy piece of paper in doing so. He made no attempt to unravel the enigma posed by the words of his
[00:17:39] master. Trying to see if they have this in here. Raglin says cavalry to advance and take advantage
[00:17:48] of any opportunity to cover the heights they will be supported by the impetry which have been ordered
[00:17:52] to advance on two fronts. That is the vagus to vehicle, or straight there. As they're trying
[00:18:00] to sort through this witch front, what guns in its new written form, the order was then passed to
[00:18:05] the unbalanced captain Nolan who loathed both Luke and Cardigan. This glittering young officer
[00:18:14] of the 15th who SARS who made up in arrogance, what he lacked in, personality, delivered the order
[00:18:20] to Lord Luke and Luke and whose comprehension of Raglin's wishes seems to have been minimal,
[00:18:26] but who is not going to demean himself by bandying words with Nolan conveyed his interpretation of
[00:18:31] the order to Cardigan. This is like the telephone game you play when you're a kid. Cardigan
[00:18:36] with a bunch of ego. Cardigan, to give him his due, realizing that he was being asked to charge the
[00:18:42] Russian guns down a valley flanked by artillery, expressed considerable astonishment at what would
[00:18:48] so evidently be the coup de Graf for his brigade. But once again, communication foundered on the
[00:18:55] rocks of mutual dislike, pride and jealousy, joined and then overtaken by the irrepressible Nolan,
[00:19:02] Cardigan led his brigade into the jaws of death. There's a little section here on a portioning
[00:19:15] of the blame. Like what do you do? And he says this and it's a very interesting thing to be talking
[00:19:24] about in this book because well, you'll see, it's a very sad feature of authoritarian organizations
[00:19:31] that their nature inevitably militates against the possibility of learning from experience
[00:19:37] through the apportioning of blame. So these these authoritarian organizations can't learn
[00:19:44] from mistakes because they just blame each other. This is extreme, the opposite of extreme ownership.
[00:19:49] This is extreme dis-ownership. The reason is not hard to find since authoritarianism itself
[00:19:54] is the product of psychological defensives, defenses, authoritarian organizations are past masters
[00:20:01] at deflecting blame. They do so by denial, by rationalization, by making scapegoats, or by
[00:20:09] some mixture of the three, wow. This is why the book Extreme Ownership has hit a mark
[00:20:18] because it's the opposite of this. Denial rationalization, making scapegoats, or by some
[00:20:25] mixture of the three. However, it is achieved, the net result is that no real admission of failure
[00:20:31] or incompetences ever made by those who are really responsible. Hence, nothing can be done
[00:20:38] about preventing a reoccurrence. In this instance, as many others to be considered presently,
[00:20:45] scapegoats were found, one of them was Captain Nolan, an easy choice since he had very
[00:20:49] considerally allowed himself to be killed. You can't make this up. You can't make this up the fact
[00:20:59] that the book Extreme Ownership, and the concept of extreme ownership, is literally the opposite
[00:21:06] of the psychopathology of bad leadership. And the people, even in the, you know, I did a TED talk
[00:21:13] about extreme ownership and sort of part of that is no one takes ownership of the problems,
[00:21:17] and therefore the problems don't get solved. That's what this just said in more words,
[00:21:22] because no doctor Nixon is smarter than I am. Not the only problem. Another thing going on.
[00:21:33] I mean, meaning the charge of the light brigade was not the only bad situation that unfolded
[00:21:39] in the Crimean War. The Crimean mismanagement reached its apathy, not in the battle so far considered,
[00:21:46] but in the winter. And by the way, I'm skipping some battles. He gives more detail. Not in the
[00:21:50] battle so considered, but in the winter, which followed them. Despite the fact that between October
[00:21:56] 1854 and April 1855, there was no fighting whatsoever. Ragland's army suffered a 35% decline in
[00:22:03] its active strength. This loss would due to a total disregard for the army's physical welfare
[00:22:09] and refusal to ameliorate the cold and wet of a Russian winter. Men died of cholera, exposure,
[00:22:16] malnutrition. They died of untreated wounds of scurvy gangrene and dysentery. As one surgeon
[00:22:22] observed at the early losses at Bala Klava, we now bury three times the number of men every week
[00:22:29] and think nothing of it. And that's not from combat. That's just from people dying.
[00:22:39] According to one writer, what killed more men than Russian bullets? What made life miserable? What
[00:22:44] sent men in the hundreds to the hospital tent or the grave? They were frequently synonymous.
[00:22:49] Was a want to firewood. Without it, not only were men never warm, not only could they never
[00:22:54] cook their ration of cold grunter, but they were never dry. One of Ragland's kernels wrote,
[00:22:59] they go down to the trenches wet, come back wet, go into the hospital, wet, die the same night
[00:23:03] and are buried in the wet blankets the next morning. At an army surgeon wrote,
[00:23:08] I never thought the human subject would endure so much privation and suffering.
[00:23:15] And we have to remember, this is when freaking England is a superpower. This isn't like
[00:23:20] some rag tag military unit. What's exposure? You die of it. Like cold. Be they're cold. Hot.
[00:23:30] If you're out in the Tundra, the freezing Tundra you die of being too cold. That's exposure.
[00:23:34] If you're out in the desert, you're exposed to heat. You can die of that. The elements in general.
[00:23:39] Hellenic in general. You probably wouldn't know about that grown-up and Hawaii.
[00:23:46] No, it's because you're not going to die from exposure. No, I'm pretty cool. Sleep in exposure.
[00:23:51] Oh, hey. So good. Back to the book. Eventually after a winter of terrible
[00:23:57] privation, Ragland's army came to the last battles of the war, those of reddened.
[00:24:03] They involved the storming in capture of a fortress on the outskirts of Sebastopol.
[00:24:08] It seems that little had been learned. Again, there was gross underestimation of
[00:24:12] enemy's ability. Indeed, the forthcoming engagement was regarded with such an
[00:24:16] equanimity that it attracted a large assembly of sightseers.
[00:24:23] When the band of the rifle brigade played light music and audience of officers wives,
[00:24:28] traveling gentlemen, and even a number of serving soldiers took up position on surrounding hills.
[00:24:33] Ragland with his mind closed to all that had gone on before and in during overconfidence in
[00:24:40] his army chose only 400 of his 25,000 men for the first stage of the battle.
[00:24:47] The occupation of some quarries from which the assault on redden would be mounted.
[00:24:52] This proud economy in manfowler was his first mistake. So you have 25,000 people
[00:24:57] and you're going to use 400 of them. And by the way, there's people. There's a band playing,
[00:25:01] I don't even know what kind of music they're playing. What do you say, light, spirited music?
[00:25:05] If you're going into combat and you're not listening to a Metallica, you shouldn't bring a band.
[00:25:16] Ragland staff miscalculated the strength needed to occupy the quarries and to repel counterattacks
[00:25:22] reserves had been inadequate and unavailable when most needed little thought had been given to
[00:25:26] the selecting a troops to be used. The proportion of veterans was low. Many of the officers
[00:25:30] although unquestionably brave or young and inexperienced, but it was with the second stage of the
[00:25:35] battle, the main assault that things went really wrong. Again, Ragland and other high-ranking
[00:25:40] officers underestimated enemy strength and overestimated the effects of artillery bombardment
[00:25:45] with which the he preceded the attack. Nor did he appreciate that between the bombardment of
[00:25:52] the Russian fort and the dawn attacked forced upon him by the French commander. The enemy would
[00:25:56] well be able to repair their defenses and their guns. So you need to see the stakes are just
[00:26:03] piling up. Under the circumstances it was hardly surprising that the great volume of fire
[00:26:09] from the Russian guns brought the British attack to a very bloody halt. It was at this moment
[00:26:15] just when it was most needed that Ragland's artillery received in order to cease fire.
[00:26:20] It was this last plunder which transformed and aborted attack into a massacre, no longer intimidated
[00:26:26] enemy muskets poured a hail of lead into Ragland's stricken army. The latter parties moving like
[00:26:32] snails beneath their load were moaned down as they struggled up the slope. Thus ended the first battle
[00:26:38] for Redan until the most until then the most disastrous of the war. Ragland's army had no illusions
[00:26:45] as to the incompetence of their general and his staff. A staff officer wrote,
[00:26:49] we had been told from headquarters and other high authority that success was certain.
[00:26:54] That the arrangements for the plan of attack were so perfect that they must succeed.
[00:26:59] When they put to the test they turned out to be so excrabbly bad that failure was inevitable.
[00:27:07] Others described the battle as mismanaged, blotched, bungled,
[00:27:12] feeble, and ill-conducted bad business, a bungling disgraceful childless failure.
[00:27:23] Later Lord Wolosley wrote, upon this occasion what we asked from them was beyond the power of
[00:27:29] men to give our plan for the attack was simply idiotic and was bound to fail.
[00:27:34] Another writer has this to say, not only was it a question of defective tactics. At headquarters,
[00:27:40] there was merely ignorance, not merely ignorance, but an entire lack of vision. How was it possible
[00:27:46] that Ragland and those about him knowing as they ought by this time the remarkable Russian ability
[00:27:52] to repair damage overnight could believe that 2000 soldiers would be able to advance over a shell,
[00:27:57] swept glaciers, 250 yards in length, thread their way through an undistroid habitus,
[00:28:04] cross a ditch 20 foot wide and then a sale and a apartment without preliminary bombardment.
[00:28:15] Do I mean, can you even fathom that sort of operational planning? You have to find you have to think
[00:28:22] this is no thought. I'll be honest with you, I'm having a hard time listening to this
[00:28:30] and trying to even capture the the the criminal portion of this. I'm trying to get in my head like
[00:28:42] what is the most critical lesson from this of all these things that you keep piling on top of
[00:28:47] each other, but all these insane things. And there's a part of me that that finds it unbelievable.
[00:28:57] Like I am literally having a hard time believing this happened, knowing that it did.
[00:29:02] Of something I think is probably the biggest lesson in leadership and something you articulate
[00:29:06] to people all the time, which is you actually have to care about your people more than yourself.
[00:29:11] That that fundamental belief, not a tactic, not a like a tool, but the belief that your people
[00:29:21] matter more than yourself. And we see that people struggle with that, we see people struggle with that.
[00:29:26] We do and we try to help them and and there's an ego and there's selflessness and there's
[00:29:31] some natural tendency we have to fight against, but the depth, the gulf between that idea and this
[00:29:37] is so far apart that it's really hard to appreciate how, how little the perception is that the
[00:29:46] things that you're talking about aren't things, they're people, like human beings on your team.
[00:29:53] And hearing it is it's hard to comprehend how do you get so disconnected, you know, though the
[00:29:58] yacht was like sort of a funny little bit like sad story, but we all know the we I know it's coming.
[00:30:05] I know what the outcome is, so the culmination of that is how inconceivable it could be and then how
[00:30:09] there's a lesson inside there of if you don't care about the people around you, you're not going to
[00:30:13] listen to them and how far you can get from that. I mean this isn't this isn't a thousand years ago.
[00:30:21] Yeah, yeah, the like there's a billion different, the last section I read it's like,
[00:30:27] oh a tactical problem tactical problem tactical problem, tactical problem,
[00:30:29] we get that there's some tactical and people make tactical mistakes, how the question is how
[00:30:36] do you make all these tactical mistakes the answer is leadership, all your problems are leadership
[00:30:42] problem and the solution is leadership, the solution to problems is leadership and you end up with
[00:30:49] people that are bad leaders in these situations, they make bad decisions and things fall apart.
[00:30:54] And the other thing we have to think about too because this is a very it's a military thing,
[00:31:01] it's a military idea, but there's the men and there's the mission, right? And there's a priority
[00:31:11] sometimes people say well you know the mission is the most important thing. The reality is
[00:31:17] that's actually not true. If you prioritize the mission over the men you won't have any men left
[00:31:23] and you won't be able to execute any missions. So they're mutually supporting things that need to be
[00:31:31] both that both need to be addressed and taking care of. Yeah, if now look can you do can you get a
[00:31:38] mission where hey Dave you're going to take your assault team in and you're taking out this
[00:31:45] air defense node in North Korea and Jocco's team is going to take out the other defense node and
[00:31:51] Ecos team is going and if we don't take out these three defense nodes we can't like we're not going to
[00:31:57] strategically achieve this objective then it's like okay look we're going to be
[00:32:01] we're going to be taking some casualties and look at DDA that's what we did look at the Pacific Island
[00:32:05] campaign that's what people did but to look at a situation like this where there's about 10,000
[00:32:12] other ways to execute this mission is insane. Yeah and if and if and if you're going through that
[00:32:19] sort of mental arm wrestling over the men or the mission or the people and the mission the only way you
[00:32:24] actually get people to be willing to do that mission is for them to know that you care about them
[00:32:29] more than yourself and and that's too that's your point is you're not even saying the mission is
[00:32:35] as important as the people in like in a hierarchy you're saying that if you actually want to be
[00:32:41] able to accomplish the most difficult things the most difficult missions missions that almost appear
[00:32:46] unwinnable if you actually want to be able to do that which of course we do we're here to solve
[00:32:50] solve the problem we're here to complete the mission is to have people willing to do that
[00:32:55] and the only way to do that is for them to go oh they've actually cares about me more than just
[00:33:00] getting the check in the block that he knocked this thing out or took care of this one thing
[00:33:03] or got this mission solves we can tell us boss yeah mission accomplished and and you actually have
[00:33:07] a better chance of doing things that by right almost appear to be impossible. Yeah the the
[00:33:13] culture that you have inside your organization you can have a culture inside your organization where
[00:33:18] people are going to be willing to sacrifice their lives for your team right and if you look at
[00:33:24] this time period with the brits the Victorian the honor the glory the I mean when you know
[00:33:31] at the beginning phases of World War one when they would when they would if there was if you
[00:33:37] were a military aged male and you weren't in the military the women would give you the the white
[00:33:43] flower which meant you were a coward and so people like okay well where do I sign up right
[00:33:50] and that was kind of the deal um look at the look at the Japanese in World War two now
[00:33:55] were those guys what's this kamikaze pilot brainwashed well not even just brainwashed but
[00:33:59] what do they regret for again some cases they were but also they were committed culturally to
[00:34:05] this overarching thing here's the problem with that in both those cases if you as a leader
[00:34:14] continue to sacrifice people without making the progress you you end up having to say uh this isn't
[00:34:21] working out and the people will look at you and say wait a second we we tried this this isn't working
[00:34:26] the even if you got a different plan or we're not gonna do what you tell us to do um continuing
[00:34:37] on here for the student of the psychosomatic disease the aftermath of the battle is not without
[00:34:42] significance immediately following the defeat raglin will see seem to age visibly within a few days
[00:34:50] he had contracted cholera and before ten days had passed he was dead two his generals were similar
[00:34:56] similarly stricken raglin's demise added to the depression of the army had they known that his
[00:35:03] replacement would be 63-year-old general Simpson their grief might have been more acute it's not that
[00:35:10] Simpson was a harsh task masker master on the contrary he was a gentle old man but a very mediocre
[00:35:18] ability he was as devoid of useful experience as had been his predecessor his methods were
[00:35:24] rather simpler be than those of raglins presumably to avoid giving a wrong order he gave no orders
[00:35:30] at all and he devised no plan in the words of one observer he did not command the army
[00:35:37] on the day of his promotion he is credited with saying they must indeed be hard up when they
[00:35:42] appointed an old man like me how about you say no and by the way if the boss doesn't come up with a plan
[00:35:49] come up with one in fact the government was not so hard up as they had to entrust the army to this
[00:35:56] gout ridden old general a far better choice would have been the energetic and outspoken sur
[00:36:03] call in a camel a man of considerable ability and wide experience but cambal was a maverick
[00:36:09] and as such was unpopular with the military establishment he also came from a relatively humble background
[00:36:15] so instead of taking the freaking georgest pattern of the crew you take this loser
[00:36:22] under simsons quivering and in effect we'll hand the second battle for redden the last battle
[00:36:29] of the war proved even more disastrous than the first once again a massive bombardment was
[00:36:35] followed by a frontal assault across a heavily devoured defended triangle of ground flanked by
[00:36:39] Russian guns but this time the troops were younger and greener and despite all their training on the parade
[00:36:46] grounds of alder shot less inclined to valor than discretion having sustained 2447 casualties
[00:36:56] in two hours of fighting they turned tail and fled thus adding humiliation to defeat so that's
[00:37:02] what I was just talking about let y'all hey we're willing to sacrifice but there's a line yeah
[00:37:11] 2,447 casualties in two hours of fighting
[00:37:17] as an example of protracted military incompetence at a high level of command the cream
[00:37:21] commune war is not unfortunately unique it was however the prototype for subsequent ineptitude
[00:37:29] those small number in comparison with those of later wars the 18,000 who died owed their ultimate
[00:37:35] their untimely demise to end and mixture of poor planning unclear orders lack of intelligence
[00:37:43] in both senses of the word and fatal acquiescence to social pressures on the part of their
[00:37:49] commander that's a very interesting topic social pressures
[00:37:53] we see a lot of that going on in this current time in the military
[00:38:01] social and political pressures on war fighting units who have a job which is to fight
[00:38:10] they died because they were mismanaged by men whose positions in the military hierarchy
[00:38:15] owed less to their ability than to their wealth their place in society or their reputation for
[00:38:20] quote fitting in they died because soldiers were too readily regarded as expendable objects
[00:38:29] the crummy and wars the crummy and war was fought at a time of the greatest prosperity this
[00:38:35] country had ever known when British efficiency inventiveness and sheer entrepreneurial
[00:38:40] vigor knew no bounce as I said earlier this isn't like a rag tag crew
[00:38:44] why then was it fought so badly so badly that the casual observer might have been
[00:38:50] forgiving for thinking that at some level we did not really want to let win
[00:38:56] of course there are some obvious and immediate reasons governmental stinging is clearly played
[00:39:01] apart as did the deliberate policy of entrusting military matters to the
[00:39:06] to enter aristocratic rich but essentially amateur elite this on the grounds that such a
[00:39:12] class would need that would have neither the motivation nor indeed the skill to turn upon the state
[00:39:19] but this is only to touch the surface of the problem such reasons do not explain the
[00:39:24] passivity and non-participation the monumental errors of judgment the ludicrous appointments
[00:39:29] the paralytic ability to improvise or innovate they do not explain the staggering and ultimately
[00:39:35] self-destroying wastage of manpower which seems to have its origin in a curiously detached attitude
[00:39:41] toward human suffering finally they do not explain the even greater depths of incompetence
[00:39:46] shown on this occasion by the enemy of whom it has been said quote the Russians with more men in
[00:39:53] the field and immense potential reserves were even bigger muddlers than the iron veitors
[00:39:58] and seem to move in a vague dream of battle so this that whole last section is saying look
[00:40:06] there were some problems like maybe the government didn't support as much maybe there was some
[00:40:10] some some what do you say governmental stickiness right so there's some problems but you
[00:40:20] should not be losing like that it doesn't explain all these issues and especially that last part
[00:40:27] which has looked the Russians were like crap anyways it's not like they got beat by the freaking
[00:40:33] waffen SS in 1941 so there's issues next the next thing that he talks about in here and again
[00:40:48] there's so much more detail let's get this book there's so much more detail that is important
[00:40:55] the next section here chapter four talks about the bullrewore and we covered the bullrewore on
[00:41:02] podcast 233 the bullrewore the bullrew army consisted isn't an interesting statement about decentralized
[00:41:12] command the bullrew army consisted of 35,000 generals each combatant his own master defending his home land
[00:41:20] they were also they were also good marksman agile horsemen and determined members of a flexible
[00:41:26] knowledgeable gorilla force so that's what we're dealing with now the bullrewore's bullrew
[00:41:33] my compron remember that we wait for me to say it well kind of no that's the expression in
[00:41:40] an uh in in South Africa for the bullrewers it's like they're gonna come up with a plan the
[00:41:45] bullrew makes a plan that's my Afrikaans but that's the kind of people that you're fighting
[00:41:52] your fighting farmers you're fighting people that work with the land that ride horses that shoot that
[00:41:59] honk that's who we're fighting against freaking legit legit enemy fast forward a little bit
[00:42:09] largely because they issued any form of sartorial elegance that means clothing by the way
[00:42:16] and preferred the wearing of civilian attire dark cloaks and floppy hats to the sorts of
[00:42:23] uniforms affected by the British the boars were dubbed the rabble of the illiterate peasants
[00:42:27] and their army utterly ludicrous so these guys were just wearing like what they wore in the field
[00:42:32] this is like if you went to war with Texas and they showed up wearing freaking leave eyes cowboy hats
[00:42:38] and rangler shirts right and you're like well who do these guys how are we gonna find a good
[00:42:43] to underestimate them basically what they're wearing yeah fast forward a little bit as Lord
[00:42:52] Kishner said the boars are not like the Sudanese who stood up to a fair fight they're always
[00:42:57] running away on their little ponies they're good many foreigners among the boars but they are
[00:43:03] easily shot as they do not slink about like the boars themselves so here you are complaining
[00:43:07] kind of tactics are these what are they doing we had to be careful that
[00:43:11] like in Iraq was like oh they're running around just doing these i.e.d's that's cowardly it's like oh
[00:43:17] they work yeah how about that since they're not as easily shot you're complaining that they're hard to kill yeah
[00:43:24] check I guess maybe they know what they're they're doing yeah sounds like they have a good plan yeah
[00:43:31] and by the way we did this to him in the revolutionary war but just FYI they're England
[00:43:36] they're their Lord Kishner remember what happened at Lexington in Concord you know we were scurrying
[00:43:44] around too and we kind of kicked your ass so you should have maybe learned some lessons there
[00:43:50] which is one of the points of this whole book is the fact that there's no lessons learned yeah
[00:43:57] this then was the background of the attitudes of the experties the British army brought to the
[00:44:01] poor war and you residual doubts about it's unfittedness for the expedition tend to dissipate when one
[00:44:06] considers the behavior of the generals put in charge the leading character was the commander and chief
[00:44:11] general sir redverse bullet according to a contemporary description there could be no finer
[00:44:17] choice for the South African adventure there is no stronger commander in the British army than this
[00:44:24] remote almost grimly resolute completely independent utterly fearless steadfast and vigorous man
[00:44:31] big bone square jaw strong minded strong headed smartness sagacity administrative capacity
[00:44:39] he was born to be a soldier of the very best English type needless to say the best type of all
[00:44:47] freaking legit right here's the reality
[00:44:52] unfortunately this assessment was at variance with the facts in all but two particular firstly he
[00:44:58] wasn't indeed big secondly though sadly lacking in moral courage he was undoubtedly brave when it
[00:45:04] came to physical danger in this respect as in many others he was not unlike raglan of the
[00:45:10] kermian war and indeed some other commanders of subsequent years of sir reverse of bullet as he
[00:45:17] became to be known so instead of his his name is redverse they started calling reverse instead
[00:45:23] Kruger writes at the risk of marring the contemporary description it should be mentioned that his
[00:45:28] big bones were particularly well covered especially in the region of his stomach and that
[00:45:32] is square jaw was not especially apparent above a double chin so this is just like a fat dude
[00:45:38] and they're trying to make him sound like a badass
[00:45:40] um what was his attitude like fast forward a little bit bullet loss no time in trying to
[00:45:48] rid himself of any direct responsibility for the conduct of the war by handing over the
[00:45:52] reigns to subordinate commanders to to whom he gave no further directives
[00:46:00] bullet subordinate general mothu and with eight thousand men was very nearly defeated by
[00:46:05] three thousand booers the few ins objective was the modern river a natural defense line for
[00:46:11] booers accordingly without any reconnaissance he ordered his troops to make a frontal attack
[00:46:16] are we starting to get a we start to understand the frontal attack might not be the best move
[00:46:23] since he could not see the enemy he wrongly assumed that no enemy was there led by their officers
[00:46:28] the men advanced across the flat and open veled towards the river all went well until they were
[00:46:33] within easy range of the booers who had concealed themselves with what was subsequently described
[00:46:39] as a fiendish cunning below the deep banks of the river those of the thewans army who are not
[00:46:45] killed outright by the sudden blast of fire from the invisible booers spent the day lying
[00:46:49] prostrate under a scorching sun in a temperature of 110 unable to move forward or back they
[00:46:55] including the 70 wounded suffered extreme discomfort from thirst and slowly blistering skin
[00:47:02] the thewans remedy was to direct heavy artillery fire on the booer positions thanks to the
[00:47:08] ladders use of cover this braj had very little influence on the course of events apart from killing
[00:47:12] a number of his own troops through faulty range finding it was only under cover of darkness that
[00:47:18] the British evident eventually withdrew leaving behind 500 dead and wounded
[00:47:25] I keep falling into his little traps as I'm listening to you and the trap I keep falling into
[00:47:30] started up like hey here's this guy in charge and he's totally incompetent and he's he's going to
[00:47:36] relinquish the command of the control this whole responsibility to subordinates and I'm thinking
[00:47:40] awesome that's awesome I would love to be that subordinate cool I got an incompetent boss but at
[00:47:45] least he's letting me be in charge and the chap who keep falling into is how far down this goes this
[00:47:50] this sort of like illness of the organization at this leadership it isn't just the people of the
[00:47:54] very very top it's all the subordinate commanders as well because when I hear you say you have a weak boss
[00:48:01] I like that kind of fired up it cool this awesome three I'll be in charge this is great I can
[00:48:06] and I can do whatever I want because he doesn't seem to care but that's that's I've fallen in
[00:48:11] that trap a couple times down hearing you talk about how far down this goes of people that have
[00:48:16] should not be there for their dads or buying their position or whatever it might be
[00:48:21] I got to bring this up I'm bringing up right now there's a underlying this book this book
[00:48:29] catches so many of the themes that I talk about all the time and that we talk about all the time
[00:48:36] there's one theme that I've found throughout this book that never gets addressed
[00:48:42] never gets addressed in this book and it's an underlying theme that is so obvious as you read this book
[00:48:51] and that is the idea of detachment because every one of these military leaders
[00:48:58] as you read the decisions that they're making and you know that they're all caught up in their ego
[00:49:03] and their social structure and the hierarchy and the actual tactical engagement that they're in
[00:49:10] and what they can see they make it so you just sit there and think hey hold on a second you're
[00:49:14] gonna move crosses open feel the urnity like why you're doing this and the reason one of the reasons
[00:49:20] yes there's ego yes there's there's social structure and hierarchy and bravery and all those things
[00:49:27] yet they're all there but if you are in charge of something and you don't take a step back to actually
[00:49:34] assess what is happening how it's going to happen why you're gonna do it this way if you can't
[00:49:40] detach from these things you are going to fail and you're gonna fail all the time and that's one
[00:49:47] of the only themes that I talk about that we talk about that really doesn't get addressed here he never
[00:49:53] says hey and maybe I didn't catch it maybe we'll catch it the first time because I'm paying
[00:49:57] attention to it as we read it but he never says hey no one took a step back and looked at this plan
[00:50:01] doesn't really say that which is a huge red flag you know we were talking about this
[00:50:10] this commercial is that what it's called advertisement right we shot right but advertisement
[00:50:18] echo Charles wasn't charged of an advertisement you making a video for for jockel fuel gonna get some
[00:50:25] go right and I had a small role you know small role come one line right sure one line yep
[00:50:33] well when I I showed up so you guys are kind of done with the filming and I showed up to deliver my
[00:50:38] one line right and when I came in I kind of changed the script of not of my line but of the
[00:50:45] the I would say the lead actors was lying the straight up ending yeah well as I was
[00:50:51] I was trying to explain is like that's not because I'm smarter it's not because I'm funnier it's
[00:50:57] not because I'm better at writing it's because I when I came in your mind is filled with you know
[00:51:02] first of all four five hours of prep what you think the shots are gonna be right and writing
[00:51:09] and then you've been on scene for how long were you an hour there yeah so you're on there for an
[00:51:13] hour you got all these different components in your head you're trying to assemble what it's
[00:51:17] gonna look like I strolling you know fresh off of like a jocco go I'm kind of hyped ready to deliver
[00:51:26] my line and I hear the ending and I go but I'm detached and so I'm seeing it from a bigger perspective
[00:51:33] and I go hey the closing line should be this and you were like a little bit of resistance little bit
[00:51:41] of resistance because I know her hurts a little bit well okay go ahead go ahead I was gonna say the resistance
[00:51:46] was more like the feeling of momentum you know like okay we got to be getting we got everybody here
[00:51:52] it's warm the beginning then we got the the middle you know and the end is right after this so it's
[00:51:56] kind of like things are coming along you know so we're ready and we're kind of writing momentum
[00:52:01] and you change it it's like oh sure we got a kind of shift pivot as it were so it was kind of that a
[00:52:06] little bit but I did recognize immediately the thousand good ending and the only reason I was able
[00:52:12] to see that is because I was detached and as I came in kind of looked at the thing and saw how it's
[00:52:17] going to say okay and luckily your humble person you were like check you weren't like you know
[00:52:24] what your hey jocco you don't know how the whole thing goes together hey you know hey that's not
[00:52:28] well we're looking you know you could have given me 87 different excuses that I would have been like
[00:52:33] okay you know what I mean I'm not gonna impose on you and just be like change it because this isn't
[00:52:38] you know it's not like you're gonna win an Oscar for this freaking add a little baby you know so so
[00:52:45] but luckily your humble and you are you are detached enough to go hmm okay cool so that's what
[00:52:52] that's one thing that I see that I don't see in this book I don't see Dixon talking about the fact that
[00:52:57] one of the best skills for a person to have to overcome all these other problems is being able to
[00:53:05] detach take a step back yes I was just thinking about and we got we talked about detachment all the time
[00:53:18] all the time and I I was thinking about the situations you just described two of them you know
[00:53:23] between those two conflicts the cremian or in the bullrewerr is this idea that detachment only
[00:53:28] works at the people on your team or actually prioritizing the team being successful over these
[00:53:32] other things like the social pressure or or these other things that I know they sound outlandish
[00:53:38] I know that they sound outlandish the way you're describing this but but even inside these organizations
[00:53:45] it does Dave like oh man I kind of work for Jocco this is kind of his company and and I don't want to I don't want to make him mad so go go
[00:53:55] yeah yeah here's the interesting about what you're saying you because of what we do for a living
[00:54:03] you're already aware of those things right a person that's you're not you even what you just said like wait
[00:54:09] it's chocolate if that's a detachment you're assessing what's going on most people are just they're so
[00:54:14] caught up they're like I'm not gonna let Dave Burke get control this operation that that's what they that's
[00:54:18] the end state yeah the end state is I'm not gonna let Dave Burke run this thing or echoes I'm not
[00:54:24] gonna let Jocco cheat that's that's it I'm not gonna let Jocco change the way this script is going that is
[00:54:29] it he's that's the firefight right there in his head I'm not gonna let Jocco dictate what's happening
[00:54:34] I'm in charge hey Jocco we're doing it my way that's that's what happens that's what happens
[00:54:40] these guys yeah the fact of the matter is they they don't detach so they can't see it
[00:54:48] so it's yes you're right in the fact that you're right in the fact that they they aren't
[00:54:56] considering it but the reason that they're not considering it is because they can't even see it
[00:55:00] because it's all around them it's just the way they're thinking it's the way they're thinking
[00:55:05] which is freaking horrifying yeah that's the little horrifying part yeah
[00:55:13] gets worse by the way within a few days of his performance at moderate where he confirms
[00:55:17] the worst the worst fears of his critics and even more disastrous battle of
[00:55:21] makers foretimes makers fun time sorry to the people of South Africa to the Afrikaans I'm sorry
[00:55:29] makers fun time especially for a Dutch guy should be doing a little bit better the boars were
[00:55:34] concealed in a narrow in narrow trenches in front of his objective they waited patiently until
[00:55:41] the British came within easy range surprise was complete when they opened fire hail of lead
[00:55:46] swept through the ranks of the highland brigade within minutes the ground is carpeted with
[00:55:49] dead soldiers including the highland commander George O'ow shop who's too much for the remainder
[00:55:56] despite their training and discipline despite the honor of the regiment despite all the factors
[00:56:00] which the high command finally believed would induce uneducated soldiers to sacrifice themselves
[00:56:05] for the short coming of their generals they broke ranks turn tail and fled as they did so they
[00:56:11] were further pounded and demoralized by hitherto undetected batteries of blue or artillery fast forward
[00:56:20] a little bit myth you and was by no means the most foolhardy of the generals jah
[00:56:28] there was general feather stoneaw who at the battle of Belmont insisted on riding up and down in
[00:56:35] front of his men in full regalia thereby announcing his importance to the enemy and effectively
[00:56:40] hampering the fire of his own men it was not long before the boo is rectified his error by shooting
[00:56:47] off shooting them off of his horse there was general heart who at the battle of
[00:56:51] colenso inflicted 30 minutes parade ground drill on his brigade before marching them shoulder to
[00:56:58] shoulder in barracks square precision across the open veld against the booer position since it
[00:57:04] was broad daylight has densely packed column provided an irisistable target for every booer gun
[00:57:09] and rifle within range this battle in this battle the British were defeated with a loss of
[00:57:15] 1,139 casualties and ten guns against the booer losses of six dead in 21 wounded
[00:57:29] fast forward a little bit it is at this point it becomes necessary to introduce another concept
[00:57:33] which is relevant to the contact of the South African war it is that of the effects of
[00:57:38] psychological stress upon decision making it is perhaps their resistance to stress and their ability
[00:57:44] to carry on when things go wrong that good generals are most easily distinguished from poor ones
[00:57:49] which by the way if you can detach that's what's going to allow you to do that by this standard
[00:57:54] general bulleter physically so huge failed dismaly it resolute from the outset the three defeats
[00:58:01] sapt whatever confidence he ever had from being weak and fearful he became a veritable
[00:58:09] jelly of indecision his plans became vague and indefinite his specific orders scarcely more
[00:58:15] enlightening his lack of moral courage and the face of adversity revealed itself most clearly
[00:58:19] in his propensity for making scapegoats of his unfortunate subordinates those admittedly incompetent
[00:58:24] generals who had blundered on without direction or assistance from above while taking none of the
[00:58:28] blame himself again the direct antithesis of extreme ownership the nearest to such admission was
[00:58:37] a reference to bad luck bad luck it may have been but worse luck was to follow in the shape of that
[00:58:45] 1,400 foot monument to military andeptitude spy and cop the totally unnecessary storming of this
[00:58:53] mini mountain was to the boor war what the charge of the light brigade had been in the crummy and war
[00:58:59] the details are as followed while still numbed by the series the defeats just recounted
[00:59:05] bullards army of 29,000 infantry 2600 mounted men eight field batteries and ten naval guns
[00:59:11] was enriched if that is the word by the arrival of a fresh division commanded by church
[00:59:17] sir Charles Warren fast forward a little bit the plan was went wrong for several reasons
[00:59:24] in the first place warrants division was far too small for the main attack the second reason
[00:59:29] for disaster lay in the character of Warren who's been described as a deletory yet fidgety overcocious yet
[00:59:36] is a res allute and totally ignorant regarding the use of cavalry he was also obsessive
[00:59:44] obstinate self opinionated and excessively bad tempered isn't an interesting how you hear bad
[00:59:49] tempered a lot when this guy is describing freaking knucklehead leaders
[01:00:03] this also included an obsession with enormous baggage train
[01:00:07] and fear that it might be destroyed by a non-existent enemy by non-existent enemy guns on
[01:00:15] the small mountains spy on cop so concerned was he with his baggage that he spent 26 hours
[01:00:19] personally supervising its transfer across the river the delay was invaluable to the boor so
[01:00:24] yeah this is the guy that had you know pianos longhorned gramophone's chests of drawers polo sticks
[01:00:32] like this is one of those guys and so he's trying to make sure that all of his baggage is
[01:00:36] getting where it needs to be and personally supervising this freaking savage fast forward a little bit
[01:00:46] so while the general stayed below the men were ordered up the steeply sloping mountainside so
[01:00:50] he kind of thought that we needed to take this this high ground spy on cop seems like a good call
[01:00:56] the men were ordered up the steeply sloping mountainside into a fog hardly less dense than
[01:01:00] that which clouded the minds of their commanders when in almost zero visibility they thought they
[01:01:05] had reached the summit the assault force altered congratulating themselves on the total absence of
[01:01:09] opposition raised the union track jack and tried to entrench the word the operative word is tried
[01:01:17] for the top was much like the rest of the mountain solid rock nobody had warned them of this
[01:01:21] by the way he didn't do a recon just FYI they decided to use sandbags only to find that no one
[01:01:26] had to remember to bring them while the miscued they did the best they could with pieces of rocks and
[01:01:32] clouds of earth only to well aware that this flimsy protection provided no overhead cover whatsoever
[01:01:38] if this gave them food for thought there was more to follow for with a further improvement in
[01:01:42] visibility they made a second disquieting discovery they were not where they thought they were
[01:01:48] instead of the summit they found themselves on a small plateau some way below the mountain top
[01:01:54] 1,700 men on a piece of ground 400 by 500 yards and above them on three sides the boars
[01:02:04] the enemy opened fire within minute the ground was littered with corpses many with bullet holes
[01:02:09] in the side of the head or body owing to the lack of overhead cover the losses from
[01:02:14] shrapnel were even greater trapped in the seemingly hopeless position without any guidance or
[01:02:18] directives from their general the 200 lane caster fuselures laid down the arms and surrendered to the
[01:02:25] boars this their place was taken by reinforcement sent up from below meanwhile Warren and
[01:02:32] Bullard did nothing to help the hard press troops no doubt appalled by what was happening to
[01:02:36] his army on the heights above Warren supined at the best of times went into a state that has been
[01:02:40] described as paralytic
[01:02:42] important note a war correspondent who had witnessed the dire events on top of the mountain
[01:02:49] hurry down to the commanding general but instead of receiving this admittedly unsolicited
[01:02:54] information with gratitude Warren flew into a rage and demanded that the journalist should be
[01:02:58] arrested for insolence
[01:02:59] name of the war correspondent was Winston Churchill
[01:03:12] but before moving on to the next example it's worth placing the cramian and boar wars in the
[01:03:18] same perspective both present a picture of what appears to be unreleaved stupidity but
[01:03:24] more interesting is the psychological pattern of these events here was a rich and powerful nation
[01:03:30] anxious to assert assert its rights first in Russia then in South Africa what did it do but send out
[01:03:37] highly regimented armies which endeavored to make up encouraged discipline and visual splendor
[01:03:42] what they lacked in relevant training technology and adequate leadership
[01:03:47] as to the latter in each case a commander in chief was selected who despite his deficiencies
[01:03:52] remained in order to be popular with his troops for far longer than he deserved both men were
[01:03:58] genial courteous and kind both were inexperienced is irresolute and lacking moral courage
[01:04:03] both were rich and well-connected but both when the occasion demanded were only too ready to
[01:04:08] divest themselves of all responsibility for the errors which they had made
[01:04:13] and the ones seemed quite unable to learn from the mistakes of the other
[01:04:17] from the moment it might prove how to keep in mind certain characteristics of the incompetence
[01:04:24] just described they include so here's as we get into a list of problems number one an
[01:04:32] underestimation sometimes bordering on the arrogant of the enemy hmm check
[01:04:36] in equating war with sport oh that's a good one and inability to profit from past
[01:04:46] experience hello a resistance to adopting and exploiting available technological
[01:04:54] technological and novel tactics this is just a list of freaking what not to do
[01:05:02] and a version to reconnaissance coupled with a dislike of intelligence in both sense the word
[01:05:08] and i probably skipped over there's a lot of situations where they don't do any recon
[01:05:13] they're like oh yeah we know it to do and they just go and execute great physical bravery but
[01:05:18] little moral courage and apparent imperviousness by commanders to loss of life and human suffering
[01:05:25] a month that rank in file or it's converse and irrational and incapacitating state of compassion
[01:05:35] and indecisiveness in their senior commanders a tendency to lay blame on others boom
[01:05:40] a love of the frontal a sight assault boom a love of bull and we we covered a bit of this but
[01:05:49] we brought up the term chicken shit actually someone sent a great i forget what document
[01:05:54] they got it from but the the term chicken shit is exactly i should have brought that definition
[01:05:59] it's exactly what i was trying to describe the the technical definition of chicken shit is
[01:06:04] perfect like meaningless imposed discipline for the sake of discipline um i love a smartness
[01:06:14] i love a bull smartness precision and strict preservation of the quote military pecking order
[01:06:20] a high regard for tradition and other aspects of convert conservatism a lack of creativity
[01:06:28] improvisation inventiveness and open-mindedness
[01:06:34] a tendency to issue moderate risks for tasks so difficult that failure might seem excusable
[01:06:41] and last but not least procrastination this is a good little filter to run yourself through
[01:06:48] once a week to see where you're at just a check on your damn self what do you got Dave
[01:06:56] i'm literally writing what the so as you went through that list i tried to just as quickly as i
[01:07:02] could just make the connection humility humility innovative depth default aggressive humility
[01:07:06] cover-move dichotomy cream ownership direct approach innovative depth detached
[01:07:10] debauchable and how quickly and this isn't like show the how smart i am it's like how easy
[01:07:16] it is to make the connection what you preface this was he kind of i think he listed three
[01:07:21] one was technology i forgot what the first one was and the third one was leadership
[01:07:25] and really the risk could just be one it's leadership but the title of this book is
[01:07:33] is the title of book is the psychology of it's the it's the it's the individual's person psychology
[01:07:38] and when we're talking about these things is how painful it is to sit from the outside and watch
[01:07:43] the whole that they dig or just how obvious and to your point of detachment how obvious it is
[01:07:51] it's not nuanced it's not like a slight little adjustment you're just sitting back you're watching
[01:07:54] this and there is you know there's zero chances it's gonna work not because we know the history
[01:07:59] but because of because of the setup that you're revealing this is the situation this is how
[01:08:04] these people make decisions this is the way they think like this is gonna fail this is gonna fail
[01:08:08] and how easy it is to attribute everything on one of those to a basic fundamental leadership
[01:08:12] behavior it's disturbing it's disturbing not the least of which is the one that repeats itself
[01:08:18] more than anything else which is what you talked about at the very beginning was humility
[01:08:23] just the inability to be humble it's it's it's it's it's hard to listen to you man yeah
[01:08:29] it is very difficult and it's about to get worse
[01:08:32] chapter five Indian inerlude which also includes a little section on afghanistan
[01:08:43] from the data considered so far it might be thought that military incompetence is confined
[01:08:47] to intraracial conflicts white against white unfortunately as suggested by the following
[01:08:53] account of a minor incident at the time of the Indian mutiny this particular prediction is not born
[01:08:58] out when it comes to interracial conflict a pattern of incompetence is little changed
[01:09:05] here is the story of fort ru y'all as recounted by p scott o'conner general wall poll
[01:09:12] wall poll who it appears that never before held the independent command was ordered to lead
[01:09:19] next position up the left bank of the gong gongi's river from luck now to rohick land rohil land
[01:09:32] to clear the rebels out from that part of the country the brigades set out from luck now
[01:09:36] on the seventh of April 1858 and on the morning of the 15th found itself in the vitty vicinity of
[01:09:42] fort ru y'all the troops had marched nine miles that morning but wall poll anxious to win his spurs
[01:09:49] with the least possible delay sent his force immediately to the assault the fort was the
[01:09:55] residents of a rebel landholder named narpatsing he had but three hundred followers at his command
[01:10:03] but taking advantage of the troubles which beset the british in india in the dark days of 1857
[01:10:09] he unfurled the flag of rebellion at ru y'all and bade the government defiance his stronghold
[01:10:15] was nothing very formidable on its northern eastern faces was strongly defended by a high mud wall
[01:10:21] and a broad and deep ditch covered by dense jungle but from the west in south it was open to attack
[01:10:28] as the wall on those sides were but a few feet high the defenders relying mainly on the jahil
[01:10:33] the waters of which lapped the fort to protect them from their enemies coming from that direction
[01:10:40] there were two gates to the fort and these open on the sides just mentioned and there is no
[01:10:46] doubt the general wall poll delivered the assault from the direction of the fort must have been
[01:10:51] quickly reduced with but a fraction of casualties which actually occurred it was the month of April
[01:10:58] and the water of the jahil was everywhere very shallow and in many places dried up so that the
[01:11:06] only obstacle to an assaulting party from that side was lacking so there's a place where you can
[01:11:10] assault this thing pretty easily because they're supposed to be a river there or some kind of a
[01:11:14] pond there but it's all dried up so that's the obvious place usually you use that for defense
[01:11:21] but it's not there it's like you have a moat but the moat is dried up okay well so that's where we're
[01:11:27] gonna attack however back to the book but general wall poll took no trouble to reconnoiter and even
[01:11:33] without a cursory examination of the position launched his men in a blundering haphazard manner
[01:11:38] against the strongest face of the fort the rebels it was reported were prepared to evacuate the
[01:11:45] place after firing a few rounds but when they saw the British advancing against the face which
[01:11:50] could be defended they changed their minds and determined to show fight now wall poll under the
[01:11:57] mistake and impression that there was a gate on the east side of the fort directed captain
[01:12:01] Ross Grove to advance with a company of the 40 second highlanders through the wood in that
[01:12:05] direction and to hold the gate and prevent the enemy from escaping the company advanced in
[01:12:10] skirmishing order through the jungle before them and dashing across the open space of ground
[01:12:15] which lay between the forest and the fort found their progress impeded by the ditch which had
[01:12:20] up until that point been invisible there was no alternative but to lie down on the edge of the
[01:12:25] counterscarp and there and as there was only a few paces between them in the enemy and no shelter
[01:12:32] whatsoever they were exposed to a galling fire and suffered severely they held onto their position
[01:12:39] however in a most heroic manner awaiting the development of the attack and the other directions
[01:12:43] but finding after a time that no other attack was being made groves and word to the general
[01:12:48] tellin that there was no gate and requested scaling ladders for the nestled do don't talk about a brave
[01:12:53] individual they're freaking under withering fire and there happens to be no gate and said
[01:13:01] hey dude we're out of here's like hey can you send us ladders maybe?
[01:13:06] meanwhile captain cave holy unaware of the ditch which had checked grove in his advance
[01:13:12] came up with his seeks and dashed into it with no ladders to help them out again they were
[01:13:17] shot down without mercy by the enemy no orders yet reach grove nor were their scaling ladders
[01:13:23] forthcoming so a second messenger was dispatched to the general asking for reinforcements the general
[01:13:28] apparently now alarmed at the consequences of his own rashness hastily sent the heavy guns around
[01:13:32] to the west and ordered a bombardment of the fort from that side I'm sure if you're tracking this you
[01:13:39] can see what's coming a very natural result followed some of the balls from the guns going over the
[01:13:44] fort fell among our men on the other side for they had not yet been withdrawn a report to this
[01:13:50] effect was carried to Adrian hope who it once an Adrian hope by the way this is like the the son of
[01:13:57] of Earl John hope who's like a royal and a very respected heroic soldier from the peninsula wars
[01:14:05] so Adrian hope a report to this effect was carried to Adrian hope who it once rode off to inform
[01:14:11] wallpole but from what followed it appears that ladder doubted the accuracy of the statement
[01:14:17] for hope immediately returned to see for himself to another thing that you're going to hear in this
[01:14:25] book is when you hear something that doesn't quite fit in you deny it this is something we see every
[01:14:30] damn day oh it doesn't match your uh near your narrative cool ignore it good god general
[01:14:39] exclaimed grove on seeing him this is no place for you you must lie down but the kindly warning
[01:14:45] came to late for even at that moment hope fell back into the speakers arm shot through the chest
[01:14:50] soon after came the order to retire and general wallpole road back to camp onto the cover of
[01:14:56] darkness that night the rebels slipped out of the fort and made good their escape the loss
[01:15:02] the loss the country sustained by the death of will be Douglas Bramley Harrington and of the
[01:15:07] hundred and odd men uselessly sacrifice to before ruyah was great but the loss of Adrian hope
[01:15:13] was a cause for national sorrow his death was mourned on the spot by every man in the camp
[01:15:18] loud and deeply incentives against the opposite stupidity which it caused it
[01:15:31] general wallpoles on half the expedition was not the first disaster to be too
[01:15:34] a fall the British army in India 16 years previously in 1842 a catastrophe occurred beside which
[01:15:40] the events at for ruyah seemed scarcely worth a mention quote the road was strewn with mangled corpses
[01:15:47] of their comrade's and the stench of death in the air all along the route they had been passing
[01:15:52] little groups of camp followers starving frostbitten and many of them in a state of gibbering idiocy
[01:15:58] the afghans not troubling to kill these stragglers had simply stripped them and left the cold
[01:16:05] to do its work and now the poor wretched were huddling together naked in the snow striving
[01:16:10] hopelessly to keep warm by the heat of their own bodies there were women and little children among
[01:16:15] them who pitiously stretched out their hands for help later the afghans were to report with relish
[01:16:21] that the unhappy fugitives in their blind instinct to perform preserve life a little longer
[01:16:26] had been reduced to eating the corpses of their fellows but they all died in the end
[01:16:35] the British retreat from kaboole in the first afghan war was described by field marshaled sur general
[01:16:40] templar as the quote most disgraceful and humiliating episode in our history of war against the
[01:16:46] against an Asian enemy up to that time and quote judging from the details of how a British army of
[01:16:52] 4,500 men was wiped out by what was in comparison with the British strength the handful of afghan
[01:16:58] tribesmen the field marshal's words were are nothing of an overstatement
[01:17:07] i'm gonna fast forward a little bit so so what did the British do wrong how did they end up in
[01:17:11] this situation in afghanistan in this worst possible site the British laid out a camp so they
[01:17:16] they had to figure out where they were going to build a camp and the worst possible site the
[01:17:19] British laid out a camp to the worst possible design not only was the two was the two mile perimeter
[01:17:25] a purely nominal obstacle consisting of a low wall and narrow ditch far too long to be defended
[01:17:30] by the numbers it enclosed but the whole was open at it northern and do a compound of dwellings
[01:17:36] for the British envoy and his staff this hops this hatch patch of houses positively invited
[01:17:42] infiltration by even the least intrepid of enemies to complete this incurigible behavior there had
[01:17:48] been one final act of such unbelievable stupidity that its repercussions were to lead to the
[01:17:53] death of an army by the orders of the commanding officer will be caught in the army's
[01:17:58] commissarth store stores were constructed a quarter mile outside the contandement
[01:18:05] so they have their camp and they build they put their supplies a quarter mile outside the camp
[01:18:11] the consequences of this division decision were tragic and inevitable when the afghans finally
[01:18:16] rose up against the British the army were promptly cut off from their supplies thus it was under
[01:18:21] the threat of starvation that they ultimately capitulated to akbar kong the afghan leader and
[01:18:26] began to retreat which cost them all their lives
[01:18:38] I'm really glad you brought up the concept of detachment being maybe he gets absent from from
[01:18:44] at least from an explicit sense of you but you're trying to piece together how this is possible
[01:18:50] from a from a professional maybe the most professional military in the world at least historically
[01:18:56] at that point yes you know what I mean like you said not a bunch of just jv dude trying to put
[01:19:00] things something is together and the only thing I can get in my head is what you you talked about
[01:19:05] earlier is is the the inability to to recognize the potential and so the disbelief of hey if we do
[01:19:14] this you know um they could attack us and kill us all and like nope can't happen cannot happen
[01:19:19] and being unable to acknowledge that if something isn't the way you think that it is and
[01:19:24] some of going okay I gotta think someone's going hey boss do you think we should bring it inside
[01:19:28] the lines because it could create some potential risk for us and the answer is that can't happen
[01:19:34] or some I'm trying to create in my mind some version of that where the disbelief is so high
[01:19:39] that they don't even recognize I can't come up with another way to understand how it could be so bad
[01:19:44] other than when you made that connection of detachment and how do you deal with with information
[01:19:50] that you can't process you just deny that it happened how old is your oldest daughter 12 okay so
[01:19:57] if I said you're oldest daughter and what type of military training is she had you know what I'm saying
[01:20:03] like you take a 12 year old girl that plays guitar and is on the freaking softball team whatever
[01:20:12] yeah and you say hey listen I want you to design a fort to defend yourself from bad guys
[01:20:19] here's what you have here's the supplies that you have there's zero chance zero chance
[01:20:25] that your daughter says you know what here's where we're gonna put all of our guns and all of our
[01:20:29] army and we're gonna put our supplies way over here there's no chance that that happens freaking ridiculous
[01:20:38] the power of the psychology of of disbelief or whatever I'm coming up with the term of
[01:20:43] you say something I'm like that can't be possible so my only choice is to dismiss it yeah and
[01:20:50] and again the detachment piece if you sit there and come up with a plan yourself you're not
[01:20:56] gonna see these things you've got to even if you have even if you have to let your 12 year old
[01:21:00] daughter come up with a plan but dude is it is it is it's so unreasonable for me to just say hey man
[01:21:06] can you at least put your supplies inside the lines from a professional military I have no idea
[01:21:12] why that decision was made it doesn't really talk about it you know is it like hey well I mean
[01:21:17] I can't even really think of a reason right now right um hey we don't want the stores to be
[01:21:24] attracting bears I mean I don't know unless like that's why you might not stay with your food if
[01:21:31] you're in Alaska right I don't know what they're thinking it's it's craziness but if you're all
[01:21:39] wrapped up in it you can't you're not gonna see it I guess the other thing that you might not see
[01:21:44] is if you're too far away from it if you're the boss and you're like hey just go ahead and put
[01:21:46] the stores wherever you want and you know you're like well you know I want this to look like an
[01:21:50] organized camps I don't want a bunch of crabs sitting around here so we're gonna move it out there
[01:21:53] and I don't pay attention to it yeah so maybe there's too much detachment my guess is not enough
[01:21:59] well I mean I think there's some validity to that comment though it's certain elements
[01:22:02] throughout this you're talking about people that are so far detached there they're they're miles
[01:22:07] so they're so far away that there's not even a connection to the potential risk that come from that so
[01:22:12] I think you're right I think there is elements of this is like I don't the the boss doesn't
[01:22:17] doesn't doesn't seem to care about these critical fundamental things because he is like oh I got to
[01:22:21] make sure my personal gear gets across this river for 28 hours and this guy is so detached from
[01:22:27] things while he's so focused it on and these other things yep yep and there's a dichotomy for sure
[01:22:34] oddly enough uh the government of India chose this moment to a point major general William George
[01:22:43] Keith Elfin Stone as commander and chief in Afghanistan he was to say the least and an
[01:22:50] fortunate candidate described at the time as quote the most incompetent soldier that was to be found
[01:22:55] among the officers of requisite rank and it sucks because we're laughing and you're going to
[01:23:04] see what happens and it's freaking heinous even if necessary as qualifications were certainly
[01:23:08] not sufficient they were they were that he was quote of good repute gentlemanly manners and aristocratic
[01:23:17] connections so that's why he's getting hired he's good repute he's gentlemanly manners and the
[01:23:22] aristocratic connections this is like the opposite of the of the BTF Tony in case a war break loss
[01:23:29] like hey I got to you got to scrap you want me to go you want to take a bunch of people and live
[01:23:33] out in the middle of you know bad guy country this is not I don't want anyone with gentlemanly
[01:23:38] manners I want somebody with that can knows how to throw a hatchet yeah plan what that nice guy who's
[01:23:43] well connected no I don't want that guy he had last seen active service at waterloo 25 years
[01:23:50] previously and head since been on half pay he was elderly and so stricken with gout that he could
[01:23:55] scarcely move like general sir redverse bullard half a century later Elfin Stone had no
[01:24:04] illusion about his unfitness for the job and it pleaded that his health made him quite unsuited
[01:24:08] to the demands that would be put upon him but Lord Auckland the governor general was adamant and
[01:24:14] so the gentle courteous Elfin Stone was shipped off to Kabul once there whatever shreds of
[01:24:19] self-confidence he may have had were speedily removed firstly by the ludicrous nature of the army's
[01:24:24] contonement and secondly by encountering for the first time his new second in command
[01:24:31] Brigadier Shelton a rough brute of uncertain temper so appalled with Elfin Stone by the army's
[01:24:38] location that he offered a biopster rounding lands so he could then clear the suitable fields of fire
[01:24:43] his generous offer was refused about Shelton he could do nothing so he kind of showed up and recognize
[01:24:48] there in a bad spot fast forward a little bit there's a there's another area and he goes
[01:25:00] trying to figure these things out Elfin Stone ordered Shelton to march on the fortress this is
[01:25:05] another area no sooner had this order been received though that it was counter-mandered Shelton
[01:25:11] on impressed by this stop-go policy reported retorted that we're torred sharply that if there was
[01:25:17] an insurrection in the city it was not a moment for indecision and recommended that Elfin Stone
[01:25:23] at once decide upon what measure we should adopt Elfin Stone then counter-mandered his counter-man
[01:25:28] and once more ordered Shelton to march at once to balahasar that's an area where they were
[01:25:34] having issues but barely at Shelton started before he was overtaken by another order to the effect
[01:25:39] that he should halt and remain where he was but no sooner had this order been received reducing
[01:25:43] the second in command to a state of approaching apolexie that it was followed by the inevitable
[01:25:49] counter order it seemed that he was after all to proceed with his men to the fort and this
[01:25:54] surprisingly he did meanwhile Elfin Stone was canvassing opinions as to what the do next I mean this
[01:25:59] is just a freaking disaster when Elfin Stone if did act when eventually Elfin Stone did act it was
[01:26:05] a case of two little two late Macnaught and a brave there's a guy that tries to sort of
[01:26:13] figure out a negotiated deal a guy named Macnaughton it says Macnaught and a braveer man the
[01:26:18] Elfin Stone tried to double cross the afghans it was murdered first pains and there's another
[01:26:24] like British British civil servant that gets murdered fast forward a little bit more again
[01:26:34] we'll get these books so you can understand these a little bit more fully while rage and a
[01:26:38] thirst for revenge consumed the lower ranks of the army those at the top became increasingly
[01:26:43] indecisive and anxious to appease inevitable inevitably the afghans surrender terms stiffened
[01:26:49] until finally Elfin Stone in response to empty promises of safe conduct found himself agreeing that
[01:26:55] his army without its ordinance but in combat by 12,000 non-combatants including many women and
[01:27:02] children would go back the way they had come so they decided to give up arms this may sound
[01:27:11] familiar to everyone right now there in afghanistan they decided oh if you let us out of here
[01:27:16] will give up our arms and and when we go to give up our arms that's okay but we also have a bunch of
[01:27:22] our wives and children with us and I don't know if I made that clear yet this is the old school
[01:27:28] you know imperial idea you go on deployment you're gonna go for years you're gonna take your wife and
[01:27:33] family with you having decided upon the disastrous plan of trying to reach jallolabad in the
[01:27:43] depths of winter across mountain ranges infested with hostile tribesmen Elfin Stone proceeded to
[01:27:48] make matters worse by further procrastination right up to January 6, 1842 he remained in agony of
[01:27:54] mind as to whether or not he should commit any commit his army to the march and win on that
[01:27:58] faithful day they eventually set off he changes mind when half the force were already on their way
[01:28:03] like you can't make this up like if I told you that this guy was changing his mind every 20
[01:28:07] minutes or every day you just wouldn't believe me it doesn't sound real he tried to stop them but
[01:28:13] now his order to hold was disobeyed for good or ill the die was cast it was for ill so here's this
[01:28:20] group walking unarmed through afghanistan again this may sound familiar they walk here we go
[01:28:29] without food firewood or or any shelter beyond that provided by whole scraped in the snow many died
[01:28:35] each night by day as they traversed grim passes thousands more died at the hands of
[01:28:41] murderous guilt's eyes which is a pasting tribe like hill people at the end of four days with
[01:28:48] 70 miles still to go only 850 remained of the original 4,500 soldiers by the end of the tent they
[01:28:55] their number had been reduced to 450 throughout this pitiful adventure Elfin Stone despite the trail
[01:29:01] of corpses which lay behind him retained a pathetic and wholly unjustified faith in the afghan
[01:29:06] leaders promise of safe conduct hmm by the end of the fifth day the total losses of soldiers
[01:29:17] and civilians had risen to 12,000 and one officer described it this was there was literally a
[01:29:23] continuous lane of poor wretches of men women and children dead and dying from the cold or wounds
[01:29:29] unable to move and treated their comrades to kill them to put an end to their misery
[01:29:43] I mean it's just it's horrible how did this something how did this unfold here's Elfin Stone
[01:29:48] this refined and gentle creature manifested what at first sight may appear to be some curiously
[01:29:54] inconsistent characteristics by his own admission he sought the bubble reputation in India and yet
[01:30:00] when given important command shrank from the responsibilities it entailed he was hopelessly
[01:30:05] indecisive lacking in moral courage and suggestible yet could on occasions manifest irrational
[01:30:12] pig headiness he wobbled when he should have been firm yet was rigid when he should have been flexible
[01:30:17] one nightmare that is finally he was courteous and kind retaining the affection of many of his
[01:30:25] followers right up to the end yet could be totally lacking in compassion for many of those who
[01:30:31] had suffered at his hands this is this thing to watch out for by the way people that are super nice
[01:30:40] and get along really well with everybody but they make bad decisions a lot and people just
[01:30:45] kind of like can't get mad at him just to just to wrap this section up to conclude this account
[01:30:59] of the total dissolution of an army on January 13th 1842 soldiers on guard at the British
[01:31:05] Fortan in Jalalabad saw a single horsemen riding toward them with all the speed that his
[01:31:12] main and worn out horse could muster it was the surgeon doctor Bryden the only man it seemed to
[01:31:19] survive the fearful journey from Kabul and the footnote here is that Bryden was the only European
[01:31:27] to arrive at Jalalabad but in the days after his arrival a few Indian soldiers and a number of
[01:31:32] followers also completed the journey elephant stone himself died of dysentery after being made captive
[01:31:38] of Akbar Khan we were laughing a couple minutes ago and I don't know I wish I could remember
[01:31:51] the word there's a word that described like when your reaction doesn't actually match what
[01:31:55] you're feeling and I forgot what that word is but it's it's the level of disbelief it
[01:32:02] made this reaction that I'm having adhering this when you're laughing at the description
[01:32:06] comes from like the level of tragedy this is this is a lot because I didn't read this you know
[01:32:13] I had actually I had this book I mean I knew I kind of knew this was coming but I didn't do
[01:32:17] the what you did I didn't do this cover to cover depth I kind of spun around and you would
[01:32:20] share some things with me the depth of here is much more than I kind of anticipated and
[01:32:27] you still have for me is still this hard time connecting the behavior and the tolerance of the
[01:32:31] behavior to the outcome which is real human life that that's the piece and if you look at it
[01:32:36] kind of the in the larger sense of of the precursors to World War I it makes it even that much more
[01:32:45] difficult to believe because if you were going to give any potential free pass would be you didn't
[01:32:56] see this coming if you were if you if somehow that could be the case and so whatever potential
[01:33:02] nail in the coffin is left on hit is you didn't see this coming and this is just tail upon tail
[01:33:08] upon tail upon tail of of of of a total disregard and the hardest part about that is what you
[01:33:15] set at the very beginning is they don't learn any lessons from it yep and I think that's where
[01:33:20] the disbelief from me comes from where I'm laughing like almost in in literal disbelief of
[01:33:24] there's no way this is going to happen again knowing what this all leads up to as well and let me tell
[01:33:29] you how easy this is how easy this is and this is what's so freaking crazy you and I look at
[01:33:36] a situation like this and we go uh there's one thing wrong bad leadership bad leadership oh you
[01:33:42] got a problem like that it's bad leadership did they pick a bad spot why they pick a bad spot
[01:33:46] because they got bad leadership like this is just bad leadership bad leadership bad leadership so
[01:33:50] at some point you look at these disasters and you say hey our freaking leadership selection training
[01:33:59] is wrong we're doing something wrong we need to fix it instead what do they do they blame the
[01:34:04] troops they blame the weather they blame the enemy that's what they do and that's accepted
[01:34:10] up and down the chain of command it's a freaking disaster it's crazy and this was look I
[01:34:16] yeah we'd have a bad serial opportunity coming through zero times zero times did I say wow the
[01:34:24] troops are all jacked up wow the E5s don't know how to work the machine guns wow the freaking
[01:34:31] the the the corpsman doesn't know how to work on people the the point man doesn't how to
[01:34:37] navigate zero times did I say that now would you have a bad free-compoint man occasion that
[01:34:42] we get lost yeah and you know what good leadership would say hey dude you're going to
[01:34:46] wear a scared you're right now you know we won't work on your did you have somebody that
[01:34:49] wasn't maybe not too great on a machine gun what they do the leadership said hey bro you need
[01:34:53] to go out do some extra machine gun called classes and courses you need to run some drills so you're
[01:34:57] better never did I say well you know this puttune is gonna fail this block of training because
[01:35:03] their machine gunners because their riflemen because of any other reason then the freaking
[01:35:09] leader is jacked up totally that's what's going on and either the leader figures it out or you
[01:35:13] got to replace them and that's a hundred percent of the time that's a hundred percent of the time because
[01:35:17] if you're even if you're in a fantasy world you had a platoon come in where all the machine gunners
[01:35:21] are terrible all the people are fat and out of shape no no all of that you could be traced back to oh
[01:35:26] is there is there genetic makeup in this this seal between somehow different than all of our
[01:35:30] ones or is there actually a leader who for the last 18 months has been tolerating or not holding
[01:35:37] a standard or not not training or not what has allowed this to happen first of all we know it
[01:35:41] doesn't happen but even if it did is there's something unique about those people that doesn't
[01:35:45] allow them to operate a machine gun or is it a leader tolerating this behavior to let that
[01:35:51] place to get to a state that's so bad that they're incompetent and again I'm even saying that just
[01:35:56] just to reinforce the idea that we know that it happens 0% of the time but even if it did in a
[01:36:02] fantasy world it still comes back to the exact same reason why there's a leader allowing that to happen
[01:36:07] at some point in my career probably when I read about face for the 19th time and he talks
[01:36:12] about the fact that there's no bad teams only bad leaders that that changed my perspective for the
[01:36:19] rest of my life because you look at a jacked up organization a platoon a task unit a team
[01:36:26] a battalion a company a business you look at it and you see problems you go oh it's oh I already know
[01:36:33] what the problem is I already know what the problem is and yet as to your point
[01:36:40] despite these failures in India in Afghanistan in Crimea in the Boer Wars in South Africa despite
[01:36:49] all these failures failure upon failure upon failure upon failure which is freaking
[01:36:56] a red flashing light when you look at it with hindsight and you go it's leadership leadership leadership
[01:37:01] and yet you're gonna see they're not they're not even developing their leaders properly
[01:37:06] they're making any changes and by the way let me throw this out there I've worked with the brits
[01:37:11] the freaking brits are outstanding totally the brits are freaking outstanding soldiers there are some of the
[01:37:16] most professional human beings never even mind military there are some of the most professional
[01:37:21] human beings have ever interacted with in my life so obviously now they've made some steps but
[01:37:28] and just just another thought I keep having and this came up for me we talked about it
[01:37:34] during wars a racket 300 that is is is these are hard stories to listen to these are hard
[01:37:43] stories for me to sit here as an as an audience member of this podcast listening to you talk about it
[01:37:48] is to make sure that that we don't fall into the trap of oh this is jacotone the story
[01:37:52] about a bunch of other incompetent leaders the the ease with which we've we can as leaders especially
[01:37:59] we get put in charge how easy it is to slide into some of those habits maybe not to this degree
[01:38:04] maybe not to this magnification but this is not a story to be to be taken about what's wrong
[01:38:09] and everybody else it's how easy a regular human being can be placed into a position and fall into the
[01:38:14] trap of being a bad leader through things like humility humility humility humility detachment
[01:38:20] and that these are tales that that that the lens that you got to look at is is is a mirror
[01:38:28] as much as anything else like hey do I do I do some of these things yet we do leaders fall into
[01:38:35] these traps yeah make yourself that checklist that's right am I doing this yeah
[01:38:43] all right this brings us two chapter six which is the first world war
[01:38:47] and
[01:38:54] here we go only the most blankered could deny that the first world war exemplified every aspect of
[01:39:00] high-level military incompetence for sure lack of imaginative leadership inept decisions
[01:39:08] ignoring of military intelligence under estimation of the enemy delusional optimism
[01:39:14] and monumental wastage of human resources has surely never had it equal
[01:39:24] can you imagine looking at what's happening and you see all those things occurring
[01:39:33] in an age when it has become fashionable to question authority it may well seem strange that a
[01:39:39] bare 60 years ago a millions of ordinary men living in indescribable conditions could
[01:39:49] with courage with a courage fortitude and cheerfulness past human comprehension
[01:39:56] meekly carry out the lethal decisions of well fed generals comfortably housed many miles
[01:40:03] behind the place where their orders were being translated into several kinds of pointless death
[01:40:13] a politics for this period found good things to say of some jett some of the generals who took
[01:40:18] part we are told that haig did the best he could given the conditions of the western front
[01:40:24] that he was rock-like and tenacious joffery saving grace so it has been said was that he was a
[01:40:32] skilled politician and the only man with enough prestige to dominate frances allies
[01:40:38] and to quote a j-p-taylor even served john French was supposed for some time to be a great military leader
[01:40:47] other views have been less charitable quote stupid obstinate blimps butchers
[01:40:53] ossified brains and donkeys are just a few of the unkind epitets which have been applied to those
[01:40:59] who bore upon their immaculate shoulders the responsibility of committing a generation of young
[01:41:04] men to various forms of mutilation on the battlefield a contemporary expression of this point of
[01:41:11] view puts it thus it is hard for a connoisseur of bad generalship surveying the gray ways of world war
[01:41:18] one to sink about anyone commander as especially awful there were dozens on both sides
[01:41:25] incompetence took several forms these included the implementation of a plan for the disposition
[01:41:34] of the British expeditionary force that had been devised three years before the outbreak of
[01:41:38] hostilities and remain unmodified in the light of subsequent events you said this on the last
[01:41:44] podcast Dave you're like oh machine gun oh they're shooting a machine gun at us stop everyone
[01:41:51] go back to the planning room that's how long it takes to figure that out we we receive a burst of
[01:41:57] machine gun fire and we go hey blow the whistles and stop and everyone go back to the
[01:42:01] church and we need to figure some shit out two a tenacious clinging to the age old practice
[01:42:14] of frontal assaults usually the enemies strongest points skipping had a little bit of three the
[01:42:22] underuse and misuse of available technology heigs opinion that two machine guns per battalion
[01:42:29] would be quite sufficient and the attitude of some reactionary elements to the development of tank
[01:42:36] of the tank are cases in point and you're we're going to get into some of that reactionary
[01:42:41] when when people figured out what the tank was I don't know if that's a good thing doesn't seem
[01:42:45] like a good idea for a growing belief in the value of prolonged bombardment before launching attack
[01:42:53] besides being enormously expensive such bombardments necessarily sacrificed the vital element of
[01:42:58] surprised made the intervening ground almost impossible to the subsequent assaulting infantry
[01:43:03] and provided numerous convenient craters to which the enemy machine gunners might be take
[01:43:08] themselves from their deep dugouts after the Holocaust was over there to wait the solely moving
[01:43:14] ranks of attacking infantry I had to detail that one because as I read that I was like hmm
[01:43:20] why is that bad right oh there's the reasons
[01:43:26] a tendency on the part of high command to ignore evidence which did not fit in with their wishes or
[01:43:32] preconceptions here's one that you might not anticipate number six a terrible crippling obedience
[01:43:43] and man if I don't have to go over this over and over again with people you don't want
[01:43:47] subordinates that are just going to obey you don't want that there was even at the highest levels
[01:43:55] of command and attitude of mine so pathological and unrealistic that on occasions even army
[01:44:00] commanders dared not express their doubts about the viability of a particular order of venture
[01:44:04] preferring to conceal evidence from their superiors rather than be fought wanting and courage or loyalty
[01:44:11] it's better to say you forgot it thank you do yes sir we will go and assault that trench yes
[01:44:19] as ladel heart wrote of the third battle of e-praise it would seem that none of the army
[01:44:25] commanders ventured to press contrary views with the strength that the facts demanded one of the
[01:44:31] lessons of the war exemplified a passion dale is certainly the need of allowing more latitude
[01:44:37] in the military system for intellectual honesty and moral courage there's something very wrong
[01:44:46] in your organization if it requires moral courage to push back against the boss right I get it
[01:44:53] moral courage is important but if we have an organization and a culture where you only push back
[01:45:00] if you have tremendous moral courage that's freaking wrong yeah how much of a mismatch occurs in our
[01:45:05] relationship if it requires moral courage on my my part to ask you hard question said I go
[01:45:10] hey dude hey real quick and you're like yeah what's up yeah how much how much of a disconnect is
[01:45:15] there between you and me if I have to muster courage and face what is the reason that I'm being
[01:45:22] courageous because I'm afraid I have to deal with this anyway because there's fear involved what
[01:45:26] does that say about a relationship I'm afraid to say something and you you you talked about those
[01:45:31] ignoring of evidence and then the be the willingness to just agree with your leadership how convenient
[01:45:37] is it when the the thing you have to grapple with your own mind is well I'm not going to be there
[01:45:41] anyway I'm not going to be one of the leaders that gets mode down so this isn't nearly as hard
[01:45:47] for me as it would be if I'm like whoa hang on I have to be out in front of this assault that's a very
[01:45:52] different story than I have to send my men to go do this is there are two very different things
[01:45:56] yeah they they should be it should be worse should be worse should be thinking hey hold on a second
[01:46:02] Dave hold on a second sir I'm not sending my guys I'll go but I'm not sending my guys it should be
[01:46:08] the opposite but it's not and you know we talked about this a couple times and and you've referenced
[01:46:14] or well I mean it's really point for the book of this reference technology and and I made a
[01:46:18] little connection to my mind because a theme that keeps coming through here is is and I wrote down like
[01:46:24] disbelief of the evidence hey the evidence is showing you this you're like I cannot process
[01:46:29] process I can't process that so I'm I'm going to just I'm not going to accept it it's even a thing
[01:46:34] there's disbelief in that I I saw this when when we developed and the machine was the example
[01:46:41] we used last time but when we developed stealth technology and it really became evident to the
[01:46:45] world and desert storm because nobody really most people didn't really know is going on and all
[01:46:50] of a sudden first on a desert storm we're flying to the top of Baghdad with airplanes that nobody
[01:46:54] could see and there was a level of disbelief going on there from the Iraqi defense system
[01:47:00] as there's bombs going off around them like I hear I hear airplanes those are jet engines flying
[01:47:05] over her as I can't see them right here them things are blowing up but there was an incapacity
[01:47:11] to to accept that he was happening because they didn't see it and this doesn't exist well
[01:47:18] unfortunately one of the byproducts of that was some people were paying attention to that and
[01:47:23] there's this massive shift from the early 90s to building stealth airplanes we have a bunch of them
[01:47:28] now guess who else has the rush in the Chinese are you know our primary enemies but
[01:47:33] the idea of being in a fight was something you can't see which is what's one of the things that
[01:47:39] stealth allows you to do is one of the most common things that you see when you're in the
[01:47:42] stair there plane is other people behaving as if you're not there when they know you're there
[01:47:47] they just can't see you and like well I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing like
[01:47:52] good lord you were just going to allow things to unfold because you cannot you cannot come to grips
[01:48:00] with what is happening even though I know it's the wrong choice of words even though you know
[01:48:04] what's happening and that machine gun example is probably the best real-time example of
[01:48:09] there's a machine gun in shot of us I know but we're just going to keep going down this path
[01:48:14] we're going to get to a single four in the second world war and when single four goes down the
[01:48:20] the Japanese attack with their aircraft and it's a night attack and there's like a 30 minute warning
[01:48:27] of hey there's an enemy inbound and a bunch of the leaders were like no the Japanese don't attack
[01:48:33] a night they didn't do anything they didn't launch aircraft they didn't do anything they just sat there
[01:48:37] like oh no that's no the enemy the Japanese don't attack they don't fly their aircraft
[01:48:41] a night it's not them it's not happening it's exactly what you're saying it's exactly the same thing
[01:48:44] this isn't happening this isn't happening yeah a detachment from reality
[01:48:52] is not good the kind of detachment we don't like I think it's the one kind of detachment I don't
[01:48:56] like detachment from reality and number seven a readiness to accept enormous casualties in terms of
[01:49:01] number of lives lost relative the ground gained the the actions of the first World War make
[01:49:06] dismal reading in the first two hours the battle of lose we lost more men than were last lost
[01:49:12] by all services together in the whole of D day on 1944 that's two hours on the first day of the
[01:49:19] Psalm offensive the British army suffered 57,000 casualties on the first day the biggest loss
[01:49:27] ever suffered by any army in a single day and yet as one of the story has put it to see the ground
[01:49:33] gained one needs a magnifying glass and a simpler scale map the we he'll cover some of the
[01:49:47] World War one stuff but it's a pretty brief as I said in the beginning today as he goes into
[01:49:53] more well known events like World War one he doesn't go into his much detail because we already know
[01:49:59] about it but he does go into some detail this next chapter is about a cambrae which there is a battle
[01:50:06] of cambrae and it's the really the first the first tank battle where tanks were used
[01:50:14] and this is just so important because there's so much resistance here in 1912 a private civilian
[01:50:21] inventor e l demol of Adelaide presented the war office with the design for a tracked vehicle
[01:50:28] which to put it at its simplest would help solve the major tactical problem of the first World
[01:50:33] War which hadn't even started yet how to get soldiers across no manland, barbed wire and enemy
[01:50:38] trenches without being shot the war office looked at demol's design and laid it on its on one side
[01:50:44] and 1915 through a total lack of personal protection British soldiers on the western front
[01:50:48] were dying at the rate of thousands a day demol was moved to resubmit his invention again it was ignored
[01:50:59] and by the way he didn't come up with this idea four runners of the tank can be traced back to
[01:51:03] Caesar's invasion of Britain Leonardo da Vinci had designed an armored fighting vehicle in the
[01:51:08] 16th century and the concept was advanced by H. G. Wells in his book the land iron clads
[01:51:14] polished in 1903 remember when I was a kid I saw that you know a road of enchanting I was pretty
[01:51:22] stoked on that it might be concluded therefore that his invention was put aside not just because
[01:51:28] it was a new idea which it was not nor because it was not needed which it was but because it
[01:51:33] conflicted with a mystical belief and the virtues of horse to cavalry and in the power of a prolonged
[01:51:39] military barrage now we get into some of the politics that was going on about the tanks while
[01:51:49] Churchill and Lloyd George were enthusiastic supporters of the tanks master general of ordinance
[01:51:56] general von Donop remained implacably opposed to any such development in the services the major
[01:52:03] proponents of the tank development included ironically a small group of naval officers
[01:52:07] the fact that the admiral to felt less quote threatened by tanks than the war office did
[01:52:14] was strikingly illustrated at one of those demonstrations where in proponents of a new idea
[01:52:20] strive to convert skeptics by confrontation with evidence of their senses after an impeccable display
[01:52:27] in which prototype tanks cut through barbed wire cross-chinch trenches slithered through mud and
[01:52:33] clawed their way out of craters a naval officer was heard to remark we ought to order 3,000 now
[01:52:39] so the navy guys like hey bro that looks like a pretty freaking good thing but the war office contingent
[01:52:45] remained cool once senior general retorting who is this damn naval man saying we will want
[01:52:51] 3,000 tanks he talks like Napoleon him and his detached point of view
[01:52:56] um they get some tanks they get some of them they use him in battle
[01:53:06] and and here's what happens of course how do they use him about this is like when you learn
[01:53:09] an eugenia to move like hey echo you know here's this new move and I teach you the
[01:53:15] freaking whatever some armlock variation you go try it for the first time how does it work
[01:53:21] not that it doesn't work so you're like oh I'm never using this again similar activities here
[01:53:28] the small cooper cooper writes the small part played by the tanks however successful on the local
[01:53:35] scale was overlooked in the general sense of failure doubts which many staff officers had previously
[01:53:40] expressed as the value of tanks turned to scorn instead of trying to plan an intelligent use of
[01:53:45] the superior weapon that had been put in their hands the military leaders could only make minor
[01:53:51] criticisms of minor details you don't jokers or mock i was totally off battle you know whatever
[01:53:57] instead of you saying hey you know i need to make some adjustments the way i'm employing this
[01:54:01] can you help me instead you just go do them not not your you move socks
[01:54:07] don't you let me you always say how when you implement anything new yes kind of
[01:54:11] lose efficiency it's the first thing that happens you become less bad happens all the time
[01:54:15] to me and you did to some new move that i'm starting to work i get smashed by everyone oh yeah
[01:54:20] and you're even it jams up other parts of your game totally because you're thinking way more
[01:54:25] way less than than you would and then yeah just be like oh yeah jiu jitsu sucks now yeah or
[01:54:31] that messed up my game that whole part of my game is not not not doing that anymore
[01:54:39] fast forward a little bit frustrated by failure and unable to admit their own contributions to
[01:54:44] defeat by the way when they lost this battle when they used tanks for the first time what was the
[01:54:47] problem oh it was the tanks there wasn't anything that they didn't mistake that they made
[01:54:52] they did what all what the highly prejudice do and such a circumstance vented their feelings upon
[01:54:57] the original subject of their prejudice and in doing so precluded any chance of learning from
[01:55:01] the exercise fast forward a little bit meanwhile the futile third battle of
[01:55:09] e-brays continue to consume the lives of intramu in infantrymen at the rate of more than 2000
[01:55:15] a day never to last the general headquarters blame the waste of life upon the few tanks that
[01:55:24] had been used i mean this is pretty can't make this shit up it seems they they disappeared into
[01:55:30] the model along with everything else now here we get to this chapter something the cam bri
[01:55:36] cam bri tank offensive on November 20th 1917 occurred in three stages the first was
[01:55:42] eminently successful 380 tanks operating on ground suited to caterpillar tracks achieved to
[01:55:47] suspect a killer success over running three strongly held lines of enemy trenches
[01:55:53] whereas previous offenses had been measured in yards gained for tens of thousands of lives lost
[01:55:59] the cam bri offense advance was four and a half miles on a six mile front with negligible casualties
[01:56:07] so there you go they freaking use the tank they're like hell yeah this worked but if the first phase
[01:56:14] first stage was an unprecedented victory the second showed a beginning of the rot which was
[01:56:19] to turn victory into disaster there were various contributary factors the first was general
[01:56:26] harpur whose 50 first highland division had been given the task of capturing key objectives
[01:56:31] in the center of the attack the village of flesky rays sorry everybody about high pronunciation
[01:56:39] unfortunately harpur who'd been described as a quote a narrow-minded soldier of the old school
[01:56:45] was one of those who disapproved of tanks consequently not only were his troops given little training
[01:56:50] in working with the new weapon but they were instructed in tactics contrary to those recommended
[01:56:55] by the tank corps even worse harpur delayed his assault by one hour because he did not believe
[01:57:01] that the first objective the hindburg main line would be captured so quickly so this guy's just a
[01:57:06] hater out of the gate can you imagine you get a tank and you're like hey I'm not going to get my
[01:57:11] people proper training on it the unnecessary delay allowed the Germans in an hour
[01:57:18] allowed the Germans an hour in which to bring up and sight field guns on the ridge here in one
[01:57:26] here's one description of what followed the tanks continued blifely onto the crest of the ridge
[01:57:32] in line of rest as instructed they came to the top huge dark shapes silhouetted against the
[01:57:38] skyline and there before them were the German field guns had the infantry been close behind the
[01:57:44] tanks as fuller had planned they could have easily dealt with these guns in a matter of minutes
[01:57:49] but the infantry were far behind not only held up by having to find their way through the wire
[01:57:54] but because of the machine gun fire which was causing heavy casualties the tanks were on their own
[01:58:00] with such perfect targets the German gunners opened fire one by one the tanks were hit while the
[01:58:06] crews worked desperately at the cumbersome gears to drive a zigzag course and the gunners tried to
[01:58:11] return fire but taking accurate aim in all the pitching and tossing was virtually impossible
[01:58:17] it was some minutes before the German guns had been pulled out of action but by this time
[01:58:22] 16 tanks had been destroyed with huge gaping holes in their sides most were on fire and those
[01:58:28] crew members who had not been killed outright by the blasting shells were burned to death
[01:58:34] there were no survivors
[01:58:44] through a pious fast forward through a pious and mistaken belief in the value of horse cavalry
[01:58:49] and a paralysis thought a case by years of trench warfare the brilliant breakthrough by the tanks
[01:58:55] was thrown away some ten days later the Germans counterattacked in a matter of hours they recovered
[01:58:59] much of the ground originally lost the British third army commanded by general Sir Julian
[01:59:05] being lost 6,000 men taken prisoner some thousands killed or wounded and a vast quantity of guns
[01:59:11] and other equipment the magnitude of this disaster was directly attributable to a feature of
[01:59:17] high-level military incompetence seen all too often the ignoring of intelligence reports which
[01:59:22] did not fit in with the preconceived ideas
[01:59:29] when at last news of the disaster reached Britain it was naturally assumed that the generals had failed
[01:59:35] again heg's reputation already low sank to a vanishing point the war cabinet demanded an immediate
[01:59:41] explanation heg's response was to endorse a report from general being that the third army had not
[01:59:48] been taken by surprise and that the failure to stem the German breakthrough was due to the
[01:59:52] shortcomings of those junior officers and CEOs and men who had been involved in the fighting
[01:59:59] what a freaking savage in the face of so much contrary evidence these views did not impress the
[02:00:06] critics to stifle further debate the war cabinet called in general smuts and this freaking savage
[02:00:17] smut stated and they go into what his relationships are he's he's just a just a real
[02:00:23] piece of shit smut stated higher command army or court command were not to blame everything had
[02:00:29] been done to meet such an attack he went on to say that the fault lay either with local
[02:00:34] commanders who might have lost their heads or with those lower down junior officers and CEOs and men
[02:00:39] of those two alternatives he preferred the latter explanation and so smuts in the fashion of the day
[02:00:44] blame those least able to answer back the youthful the junior and the dead again what
[02:00:53] corrections are we now making we're not making any corrections we're like oh yeah as the team's fault
[02:00:57] and by the way the team who fought with bravery that is unquestionable all in all this black
[02:01:07] episode raises several matters of great rebel relevance to the theory of military and
[02:01:12] competence presented later in this book stupidity does not explain the behavior of these generals
[02:01:18] so great was their fear of loss of self esteem and so imperative their need for social
[02:01:24] approval approval that they could resort to tactics beyond the reach of any self-respecting donkey
[02:01:32] from their shameless self-interest lack of loyalty to their subordinates and apparent in
[02:01:38] difference to the verdict of pro posterity a picture emerges of personalities deficient in
[02:01:44] something other than intellectual acumen so can these people aren't stupid how about that phrase
[02:01:53] a lack of loyalty to your subordinates and how often we fall into the idea like that's supposed
[02:01:59] to work the opposite direction they should be loyal to me because i'm in charge i'm the commander
[02:02:04] and it's the lack of loyalty to your subordinates as the cause of why this happens
[02:02:09] sickening as to how they look to a contemporary chronicle here is the following passage
[02:02:17] and so the white washing went on to protect armchair generals who in the main have little
[02:02:23] conception of what the front line was like and had no intention of going there to find out one
[02:02:28] of those infantry men so blamed was jh Everest during the two days when he and his fellow soldiers were
[02:02:36] being pushed back by the Germans they had no water to drink and no food to eat at the end of the
[02:02:40] second day while waiting in a transfer renewed attack Everest went up to his company commander and
[02:02:45] asked for permission to search for water my request was refused Everest wrote in the letter
[02:02:51] nonetheless i went over the top and found some water in a mud hole thus ending two days of torture
[02:02:57] shortly afterwards Everest was wounded and found himself in the australian general hospital at abbey
[02:03:02] ville but the most bitter pill on top of this was to be blamed for their commanders own mistakes
[02:03:10] you imagine reading those freaking articles about how jacked up you were
[02:03:26] another world war one example here chapter eight the siege of cut
[02:03:33] if the degree of military incompetence is indicated by the ratio of achievement to cost
[02:03:37] then the activities of expeditionary force d under the command of major general surchalls
[02:03:44] towns and merit examination firstly there was a 250 mile discrepancy between what was designed
[02:03:50] to do and what it tried to do secondly the cost of this discrepancy was large
[02:03:56] to reach cut cost towns in seven thousand casualties during the ensuing siege of further
[02:04:01] 1600 died attempts to relieve his force accounted for another 23 thousand casualties
[02:04:07] when he eventually surrendered to the Turks 13 thousand of his troops went into captivity
[02:04:12] and seven thousand of these died while still prisoners of war all of this went for nothing
[02:04:19] not one inch of ground or any political advantage nothing that is beyond corpses suffering
[02:04:24] and ruined reputation so you have this this take place this is an Iraq
[02:04:35] in Mesopotamia i mean this is I guess current day Iraq in Mesopotamia there were
[02:04:41] four enemies the Turkish army marauding Arabs the terrain and the climate all four
[02:04:47] played their part in hazarding the lines of communication and bringing about into feet which cost
[02:04:51] much and gain nothing but the real instigators of this tragedy were neither the climate nor geography
[02:04:57] neither the Turks nor the Arabs but three generals general bowshomp death commander in chief
[02:05:05] india general nixon army commander bazaarah and major general towns in commander of the sixth
[02:05:10] division through an admixture of self-interest personal ambition ignorance,
[02:05:17] obscenity and sheer craft to pity this trio sealed the fate of some thousands of British
[02:05:22] and Indian soldiers i kind of wanted to fast forward through this part but
[02:05:31] this one is insane
[02:05:36] nixon who made up an ambition for what he lacked for an intelligence ordered towns in a
[02:05:41] capture amara a township on the Tigris some hundred miles north of bazaar towns in
[02:05:46] equally ambitious but by no means stupid did is as he was bit and doing so he and nixon were
[02:05:52] already exceeding the directive of the British government so they're kind of pushing the envelope down
[02:05:56] there little glory see can happening as well as occupying amara towns in struck westward and took
[02:06:04] nausea ria nixon's appetite for glory was wedded by these easy victories with no thought to the
[02:06:11] risks involved he pressed towns into continuous advance a further 90 miles to cut in this he was
[02:06:18] backed by duff who had never visited messin patini and tanya and had no idea of the conditions
[02:06:24] prevailing there but towns in had he wrote to general sir James wolf mary in England
[02:06:33] by the way towns in is about to become a villain he of horror that you've likely can't even
[02:06:39] understand I believe this is this so this is towns in runnyback I believe I am to advance to amara
[02:06:47] to cut to l amara the question is where are we going to stop in messa patini so this is sounds good
[02:06:53] right okay where are you second dude what are we trying to do we certainly have not good enough
[02:06:59] troops to make certain of of taking bad debt Baghdad of our two divisions mine the sixth is complete
[02:07:06] the 12 has no guns or divisional troops and nixon takes them from me and lends him to gornion
[02:07:13] when he has to go anywhere I consider we ought to hold on to what we've got as long as we are held
[02:07:19] up as we are in the dardinels all these offensive operations in secondary theaters are dreadful
[02:07:26] errors in strategy the dardinels egypt messa patini a east africa i wonder and wonder at such
[02:07:31] expeditions being permitted in violation of all great fundamental principles of four especially
[02:07:35] the out of economy of force such as the violation is always punished in history so he's
[02:07:39] any got to prioritize next week why we do run around doing all these different things i'm afraid
[02:07:44] we are out in the cold here the messa patini and operations are a little noticed though we are
[02:07:50] fighting the same enemy as you have in the dardinels plus and appalling heat the hardship in
[02:07:54] France or nothing to that so this seems like a logical thing right towns like hey dude what are we doing
[02:08:02] like we already kind of got done or supposed to get done why are you pushing further let's hold
[02:08:05] what we got i don't have a bunch of troops i'm getting my my troops are getting pulled all over
[02:08:09] the place let's just kind of stand down but it's an interesting um there's another uh story in
[02:08:17] that writes the letter was completely in character it revealed a gift for strategic appreciation amounting
[02:08:22] to uh prescience it revealed towns in chronic tendency to criticize his superiors and his obsession
[02:08:29] with his own affairs to the exclusion of all others it revealed as a bit you will lack of general
[02:08:33] of generosity to his colleagues who whom he praised only if they were of inferior rank to himself
[02:08:38] his tendency to wine and almost embarrassing immodesty i think that's a hard reading of that letter i
[02:08:45] i think that's a little bit strong uh but the most extraordinary feature in the letter was that
[02:08:50] for all its strategic prescience it bore little relationship to towns and subsequent behavior i guess
[02:08:56] that's what makes it interesting though he clearly realized that he was being asked to undertake
[02:09:01] a major campaign with the logistics of a subsidiary defensive operation he said nothing of this
[02:09:06] to his superiors 17 days after writing to Murray towns and not only enthusiastically accepted
[02:09:11] Nixon's orders that he should advance a further 90 miles to cut but also entirely of his own bat
[02:09:17] talked of pursuing the enemy another 190 miles and possibly beyond that to Baghdad
[02:09:26] indisputably he was a man ambitious to the point of ego mania man whom the lower of promotion
[02:09:32] had goaded throughout his career to such an incest and intriguing and important it lighter writing
[02:09:38] that he'd incurred constant snubbing and rebuked yet he had persisted to such a man the smallest
[02:09:45] hint of condemnation seems enthusiastic approval closing his mind to to his own for
[02:09:53] buildings towns and his unsuspecting troops pressed on once again the Turks were defeated
[02:09:59] and the British occupied cut so they do they press into cut but this battle's not easy because
[02:10:04] remember i said those earlier battles were kind of easy at cut it's not easy and the it's not easy
[02:10:10] for towns and troops is not easy for the the Turks either says about the Turks the Turks
[02:10:16] though suffering many casualties they were not destroyed they escaped and then they were the British
[02:10:22] wounded here's what's going on with the British wounded the wounded suffered frightfully
[02:10:26] untended they lay freezing all night some to be stripped and murdered by Arabs and when daylight
[02:10:31] came were placed on supply carts unsprung iron slatted and drawn across a cruelly uneven surface
[02:10:36] to the riverbank there and fearsome they languished until they could be crammed on the decks of iron
[02:10:41] barges and towed very slowly downstream to amoura what little water they were given was impure
[02:10:49] what little treatment they could be given was ineffective their wounds went gangrene
[02:10:54] and they lay in a morass of their own blood and extra and excreta a sailed by millions of flies
[02:11:00] quite unnecessarily many of them died now towns and they also say this for another he was
[02:11:13] despite his appraisal of realities loath to relinquish his own dream of becoming lieutenant general
[02:11:18] serial towns and lord Baghdad and so grossly unequipped he marched his men beyond the point of no return
[02:11:25] towards Baghdad he never reached that fabled city for a army of 13,000 Turks lay across his path
[02:11:34] Nixon received Nixon received intelligence that a second Turkish army 30,000 strong
[02:11:39] and led by the redoutable calil pascha was also converging but because this news did not
[02:11:46] accord with his desires Nixon chose to ignore the report is untrue 30,000 people heading to take
[02:11:51] on your whatever you have 12,000 the battle marked the end of towns in sluck through his conduct
[02:12:02] though his conduct of the fight was exemplary if not brilliant he sustained 4,000 casualties
[02:12:07] and again did not succeed in routing or destroying the enemy he withdrew his force to cut
[02:12:12] cut which he knew to be without defense so this this town of cut is not like a really great
[02:12:19] defensive position and towns and knows it towns and new found delusion regarding the virtues of cut
[02:12:25] may well have had its origins in a much earlier event the siege of shetrawl when intractable
[02:12:33] desires are thwarted by reality there is a tendency to hark back to the memory of early earlier
[02:12:38] gratifications and shetrawl epitomized for towns and just such gratification here so this is towns
[02:12:44] and as a young officer of the indian army he had withdrawn into a fort and and captain his
[02:12:51] small force throughout 46 days of siege when eventually he did emerge it was to find himself a hero
[02:12:58] beloved by queen in country so that's what happened to him as a young officer he goes into this
[02:13:03] place they look and locked down and they hold out for 46 days so now he's going to do the same thing
[02:13:08] at cut that's his plan you can now overlook the shortcomings of cut and see in his smelly collection
[02:13:15] of mudhuts the key to ultimate success another inconsistency in towns and behaviors that he had
[02:13:22] always prided himself upon the fact that he drew upon the lessons of history identifying himself
[02:13:27] as the occasion demanded with such great captains this animal Napoleon and Wellington but we joke about
[02:13:33] that when you think you're freaking Wellington or Hannibal or Napoleon there was nothing he liked
[02:13:40] better than to quote the precepts of famous military commanders to such precepts were to make wars
[02:13:45] to attack and movement as the law of strategy but here was towns and towns and as heedless of
[02:13:51] Frederick the Great as he was death to the council of Marshall Fark for the bottle himself up in
[02:13:56] cut was to assume a positive defense as stationary as was passive so why is he doing this?
[02:14:01] Well he's doing it because he remembers that he had the big victory back in the day
[02:14:07] and it was unnecessary for there was still time to fall back on the safety of ours so he could have
[02:14:11] still made it out of there that he did not do so cannot be ascribed as stupidity or to ignorance
[02:14:17] of the principles of war for towns and was neither stupid nor ignorant his first move toward
[02:14:21] hastening his rescue was so was so to manipulate his would be rescuers so they felt compelled to
[02:14:27] try and relieve the siege before they were ready thus he persuaded his army commander at Balsra that
[02:14:31] since he had only a month supply of food for his British troops and early relief was essential
[02:14:36] to sustain this lie and force Nixon's hand he deliberately refrained from rationing either as
[02:14:41] British or Indian troops nor did he make any attempt to unearth the stocks of Arab grain concealed
[02:14:46] within the town so he's out of the gate he's just telling lies hey you better get him coming
[02:14:49] us before someone run out of food just a freaking lie well does Nixon do well Nixon trying to help out
[02:14:58] okay do you don't want my people to starve Nixon ordered the unfortunate lieutenant general
[02:15:02] ailmer to break through the Turkish defense forces and relieve cut there's a whole section on
[02:15:10] here talking about how that goes down ailmer failed time and time again to achieve the impossible
[02:15:14] thanks to the combined efforts of the man he was trying to rescue and those of Nixon the man
[02:15:19] large the man largely responsible for rescue being necessary the relief force suffered 23,000 casualties
[02:15:26] nearly twice the number of those invested so this guy tells lies they're like hey we need to
[02:15:33] go help them we're not ready yet but just run in there anyways and they take freaking 23,000 casualties
[02:15:39] more than they try to say a 12 yeah double the people that are in there
[02:15:42] remember I think it was a debrief podcast we talked about you talked about you made a list
[02:15:53] of things that keep you from being successful in the future and one of them was lessons learned
[02:15:59] yeah you always liked that one I did because it was something I didn't expect it the way and
[02:16:04] not just the way you were going through the list because the list was like obvious ones or or
[02:16:09] let me say that more carefully what appeared to be obvious ones and you got to that and it's so easy
[02:16:15] now once I've heard you say it to just transpose that idea of lessons learned actually if you're
[02:16:21] and you didn't say don't take lessons learned of course not but they can be an impediment especially
[02:16:27] if like the paradigm or the scenario with which that lesson was learned doesn't actually apply
[02:16:34] to the scenario that you're in but it's not the same city well must be the same situation cool
[02:16:39] we'll just take that and we'll just I did this back in the day when I was 23 and I was a hero
[02:16:44] watch this and of course it's easy to see now because I'm sitting in a detached position but
[02:16:52] you wrote down I wrote down you said it delusion disbelief and desire
[02:16:58] God bless hearing that the Lord how bad and if that third one might be the worst one of like
[02:17:07] I want to be a hero I want to be what do they call himself the king of a Baghdad or
[02:17:11] king of Baghdad or whatever yeah that desire and go we're losing no we're not
[02:17:17] hairlatt number no we're not hey we shouldn't do this yes we should because you know what I want
[02:17:21] I want to be the king of Baghdad for you can discover easy man the thing about lessons
[02:17:28] learned lessons learned should open your mind not close your mind these guys are lying by the way
[02:17:37] secretary of state for indian army commander Bosra Joseph Chamberlain cable this statement
[02:17:43] honor rival wounded honor rival wounded Bosra please telegraph urgently particulars and progress
[02:17:50] so this guy's saying hey what's going on with the wounded you got and Nixon replies wounded
[02:17:55] satisfactory the disposed of many likely to recover medical services under circumstances of
[02:18:00] considerable difficulty worked splendidly but Nixon to admit for you just witnessed the arrival of
[02:18:09] 4,000 and the the mejade which is a ship with 600 casualties on board and two crammed
[02:18:36] 13 days and nights on her decks and on the exposed decks of her lighters men lay huddled in pools of
[02:18:43] blood urine and feces their bodies slime with excrement their wounds crawling with maggots their
[02:18:49] shattered bones splinted wood from whiskey crates and the handles of trenching tools and their
[02:18:54] thighs backs and buttocks lepros with source i mean while towns and he's got his guys safely
[02:19:08] up and cut it well all this is happening these guys are getting slaughter 23,000 casualties
[02:19:13] and towns ends up their kind of chilling over the period of the siege he evaded he
[02:19:21] evenced several characteristics it towns and communications were not however confined to those outside
[02:19:27] cut during the siege he had devoted much attention to issuing of communicates to his troops
[02:19:32] these were remarkable for three features a flagrant to soil t-tourds
[02:19:36] towards and criticism of his superiors of thinly veiled contempt for the valiant but unsuccessful
[02:19:41] relief force and a total absence of gratitude toward those who are losing their lives trying to
[02:19:46] rescue him towns and was always prepared to abandon his beloved command in the interest of
[02:19:55] either his own release or his own advancement on March 5th he had again requested promotion
[02:20:02] this guy's calling he's captured he's freaking
[02:20:06] in siege after causing himself to be there he's asking him to promote it on April 9th for the
[02:20:11] second time he had suggested that he should attempt escape to escape from caught and leave his
[02:20:15] division to its fate you imagine running that up the chain of command hey boss I'm good
[02:20:21] I think I should just try and get out of here and whatever happens with the division kind of happens with
[02:20:24] the division three times he had suggested negotiation to exchange caught and it's guns for the release
[02:20:31] of himself and his men though he must have known that only he would be allowed to go twice he had
[02:20:36] sent ingratiating letters to the enemy commander in the field and once had insisted that no attempt
[02:20:41] be made on the life of an enemy field marshal any doubts to the correct interpretation of these
[02:20:50] unedifying facts are dispelled by three subsequent events the first is a minor one but nonetheless
[02:20:55] revealing when towns had learned that that ale mayor's successor Garringe had been promoted to
[02:21:01] Lieutenant General he burst into tears and wept on the shoulder of a shrinking subaltern
[02:21:07] because he knew that Garringe's promotion meant none for him the second is the fact
[02:21:15] that he did leave his division to die as prisoners of the Turks and the third is that neither
[02:21:21] then nor later did he so much as left a finger to ameliorate their plight for a present
[02:21:27] purpose as little remains to be said after 147 days towns and food supplies which he'd originally
[02:21:32] stated would only last a month ran out confident from his exchange with the Turkish commander
[02:21:38] that he would be treated generously he capitulated on April 19th 1916 and handed his weak
[02:21:45] starving men over to the not so tender mercy of the Turks then it was where their paths diverged
[02:21:53] while he was transported in the greatest comfort to Baghdad and then to constant a noble
[02:21:58] his 13,000 men began their 1,200 mile march across the air and waste and freezing heights
[02:22:05] of Asia Minor and while he was wind and dined honored and entertained as the personal
[02:22:11] guest of the Turkish commander in chief his men died in their thousands of starvation
[02:22:16] dysentery, cholera and typhus and from the whips of their bad tempered Kurdistan guards
[02:22:22] they died of the heat by day and of cold by night they died because they we read of staying alive
[02:22:30] dropping out of the column to be set upon by marauding Arabs who have robbed them
[02:22:36] filled their mouths with sand and stones in all 70% of the British and 50% of the Indian troops
[02:22:43] perished in captivity but towns in it was spared these sword details for he traveled by train and
[02:22:53] arrived at Constantinople on June 3rd was met by the general commander of the Turkish army his staff
[02:22:59] members of the war office in a crowd of respectful locals he felt very flattered he was even more
[02:23:04] flattered to be entertained later at Constantinople's best restaurant then escorted by a detachment
[02:23:10] of cavalry to the waterfront where a naval pinnus waited him his baggage staff and servants aboard
[02:23:18] he sailed 10 miles down the sea of marmarah to the fashionable island of halkey where
[02:23:25] high on a cliff he took up residence in a comfortable villa that same day in the building the
[02:23:29] Turks called the hospital those of towns and troops still too ill to march from samara
[02:23:34] were being allowed by their captors to die in agony there was no treatment for them and very
[02:23:40] little food and those who found their beds were given an injection of brandly color fluid after
[02:23:45] which they stopped fouling their beds because they were dead by that same day more than a third
[02:23:52] of the British troops to whom towns had had vowed he was leaving them only to procure their
[02:23:56] reparation had died yeah I don't know for getting any worse than that
[02:24:09] back to the point of this book in conclusion one point demands particular emphasis
[02:24:24] and the mismanagement of the messa patonian campaign sheer stupidity played a relatively
[02:24:30] minor role certainly duff was no genius and Nixon was on intelligent but towns and was not
[02:24:35] men's fates were decided for them not so much by idiots as by commanders with marked
[02:24:41] psychopathic traits stupidity and ignorance there may have been but it was the ambitious
[02:24:49] striving of disturbed personalities which accounted for the loss of towns and force
[02:24:56] in such matters as vanity personal ambition dishonesty lack of compassion
[02:25:04] towns and was not unique where he differed from others was in possessing charm intelligence
[02:25:11] and professional expertise in a world of the square the pompous and the desperately unfunny towns
[02:25:17] and hound a reflection laid light touch but underneath the agreeable veneer they lay a fatal
[02:25:25] flaw which showed itself in ravenous self destructive hunger for popular acclaim
[02:25:31] though its origins remain obscure towns and gave the impression of a man who at some time had
[02:25:39] suffered traumatic damage to a self esteem which resulted in an everlasting need
[02:25:47] to be loved well
[02:25:53] that kind of wraps up the world war one phase but there you go you got a smart man
[02:26:04] a charismatic man a guy with combat experience and a guy with psychopathic traits
[02:26:14] and we take those first one smart man charismatic man right that guy would breeze through
[02:26:21] uh officer so you know if we're looking for an officer like this guy's very charismatic he's
[02:26:26] very intelligent right oh but let's sign him up let's put him in charge of something
[02:26:32] and not only do we bring him in but then he's gonna rise through the ranks because he's
[02:26:37] charming and he's smart right and he's he he as things go well when things are going well he's
[02:26:47] freaking fantastic but the minute things went bad the the psychopathic monster comes out
[02:26:58] that's what we need to avoid that's what we need to look out for that's what we need to prevent
[02:27:04] and the only way we can do that is to study the past and try and understand it to the best of our
[02:27:10] ability
[02:27:16] anything else Dave that's a rough one this is just this has been a downhill adventure from the word
[02:27:23] go man and it's hard to listen to you you set it up I think really well at the very beginning of
[02:27:29] the last podcast this is these are not stupid people and it gets reinforced just like that final
[02:27:35] that little conclusion you just express your like this understanding these are not dumb people
[02:27:39] and the psychopathic trade of the psychopathic tendency the thing that might trigger that in us
[02:27:47] connected to the idea of humility is the fear of being exposed for not being smart or the
[02:27:51] fear being exposed for not knowing what to do or the fear being exposed for not understanding what's going
[02:27:56] on and how powerful that fear can be to get you to behave in a way I wouldn't I probably wouldn't
[02:28:05] use the word psychopathic very often to describe too many people and it's totally appropriate here
[02:28:11] yeah well it's weird when you think a psychopathic you think of someone that thinks of their own
[02:28:15] self so they murder someone so they make this move and and do whatever they're going to do
[02:28:23] that negatively impacts you know some other person or maybe a few people you don't think of it
[02:28:32] of where it impacts 12,000 people right it's just 23,000 people or 23,000 people it's just insane
[02:28:39] yeah and and just the thing I was thinking about too and and I'm trying to just make some
[02:28:44] of an objective reconnection to the things we teach this idea of leadership is god I wish I
[02:28:51] were to down but the the the the the the respect for your subordinates loyal to the loyalty to your
[02:28:59] subordinates the belief in their just their basic welfare and this kid's just their basic welfare
[02:29:05] how liberating it is if you're surrounded by people that know that you care about them to like hey
[02:29:10] fellas I don't know the answer to this one and I'm like no factors where we'll figure it out
[02:29:16] hey I'm not really sure what we should do here so no problem that we can we got this and how many
[02:29:24] times the best thing I ever did was tell my my subordinates my junior Marines that were junior
[02:29:30] to me in the hierarchy that senior NCOs, mid grade NCOs and be like hey Goney what do you think I should
[02:29:36] do here so I've seen this ten times here's what I think you should do cool right on and just the
[02:29:41] willingness to reveal that you're not smart or reveal that you don't have the answer or the willingness
[02:29:46] it just be get past the fear of what what will I look like if I don't know and it's actually
[02:29:51] the best thing you can do the best thing you can do is go hey Jaco dude I don't know what to do here man
[02:29:57] and if I actually care about your welfare and they know that Jaco will solve that problem for me
[02:30:03] help me figure it out or or or come up with a thousand different ways that we could try to make this
[02:30:08] thing work out but if I said come to that fear of maybe this cost me my my desire to be the king of
[02:30:17] Baghdad maybe this is the one that exposes me and I cannot let that happen the ends the lengths that
[02:30:22] people are willing to go to and I think you said it that people are willing people are willing to
[02:30:28] die before tell me what you said I just they would rather die than take an injury to there you go
[02:30:35] then take an injury to their ego yeah they would rather die than take an injury to their ego and
[02:30:38] and this is the case where it's not their death it's the death of tens of thousands of their
[02:30:42] other people because they don't see them as human beings and the heart's part is is all the lead up
[02:30:47] of the crami and war the borrower like a world of two world of one's common world of one's
[02:30:53] common we're not going to learn in these lessons and you just see this this tragedy coming because
[02:30:57] you know what happens in history and like is this really going to happen and yeah this is this is
[02:31:02] really going to happen and that's I think that's what's made this so hard for me is like man
[02:31:07] we're not gonna we're not gonna fix this in history so I just got to listen to this story knowing
[02:31:12] exactly what's gonna happen yeah you can't change what you know is coming you already know where
[02:31:16] this story is going and you can't change it and the the other really scary thing about this is
[02:31:22] like I just said these are people that you know I like towns and he burrieses through office or
[02:31:28] selection he's freaking class president oh yes right he's smart he's got some dapper tomb he's
[02:31:35] friendly he's charming this guy is just a you know winner all day yeah and he's surrounded by
[02:31:40] people that aren't so he stands out oh yeah you know people say I started off all these podcasts
[02:31:48] by saying sometimes and this is certainly true in the seal tapes out if you're in the seal
[02:31:51] teams you know everyone thinks that someone is in the seal teams they're like incredible human
[02:31:55] incredible whatever people think that about everybody that's in the military all this person was a
[02:32:00] general this person wasn't admiral they must be freaking awesome and look there are tons of awesome
[02:32:05] seals and tons of awesome admirals and tons of awesome awesome generals and kernels yes we get
[02:32:11] that but occasionally look at when you go she's what just happened where did that come from and
[02:32:15] here's where it came from because inside these organizations they if you're up you know what I said
[02:32:22] this thing about I don't know for you what podcast I said it on but I was talking about the fact
[02:32:27] oh it was with their Cooper in a bad organization the worst person rises to the top like the
[02:32:36] person that is willing to just be totally ruthless is gonna like if you take the Nazis who's gonna
[02:32:42] ride to the top the guys that are willing to do whatever those ones that ride to the top they
[02:32:49] become the leaders of the mob who's willing to go out and kill people and that because those
[02:32:54] the people that rise to the top and unfortunately sometimes even in a good organization a person with
[02:33:01] those traits that can kind of kind of hide those traits they can still make it through the
[02:33:07] wickets and rise to the top and it's until they get put under pressure that they go whoa
[02:33:14] and their and their true self comes out well good place to stop for today and we know we need to be
[02:33:22] looking on the lookout for people with psychopathic traits and the meantime you know maybe we try and
[02:33:31] avoid having those traits ourselves maybe we actually try and become something a little bit more
[02:33:35] positive something good maybe we try and make ourselves better echo Charles just a just
[02:33:42] little psychopsycopathy apparently from what I understand is it like it's like a thing in your mind
[02:33:50] like a normal seemingly normal person can be a psych and a clinical psychopath it has less to do
[02:33:56] with like crazy stuff that they do it's just the inability to if I'm not mistaken to empathize
[02:34:02] with people that's one of the big problems yeah so yeah so it kind of makes sense where I mean
[02:34:07] I don't know if he's making a clinical claim clinical assessment coppathy or whatever but
[02:34:13] if you if these people were psychopathic that's what it would look like I'm gonna say yeah if
[02:34:20] you do what towns and did yeah and you're in a villa while your men are being butchered starved
[02:34:27] tortured killed you're a freaking psychopath right while telling her leadership hey I think I should
[02:34:33] get promoted and get evacuated yeah it's like you just don't I mean oh and do you think this and
[02:34:38] maybe this is like maybe goes without saying or maybe kind of obvious or whatever but
[02:34:43] is this one of those situations where you know how like you're such so ahead of all the competition
[02:34:49] and your organization or whatever your team or whatever is so big where victory is almost like a
[02:34:56] foregone conclusion and you start caring about other stuff like you get like these individual
[02:35:02] self-interest that's spring up because the real goal and the real like worry is kind of like
[02:35:09] on the back burner now you I think you're right I think that that's the British army thought that they were
[02:35:14] just right right yeah the British military thought it was in municipal right so they're just more
[02:35:20] concentrated yeah like okay we know we're yeah you know we're gonna do that or that's obvious or
[02:35:26] whatever so literally you know so nice start caring about like you know my the king of wherever and
[02:35:32] all these other you know personal interest whatever I'm gonna say something that I don't know
[02:35:36] maybe this makes me a psychopath if I would have been in charge of the British military
[02:35:41] I would have assembled a hit team and we would have gone and killed towns and like execution
[02:35:47] style and brought his body back and said hey leaders this is not how we lead
[02:35:55] into the question you asked too I think given the author's education he's using that term
[02:36:00] in the clinical sense like that is not like it's not a slang term for a dude is kind of messed up
[02:36:05] he's calling him he's he's referring to the psychopathic tendencies he means that in the the medical
[02:36:11] literal sense of that word right yeah exactly that's what it felt like to where it's like yeah
[02:36:15] you know 20 from 1000 people dying in this guy didn't care he cared about the one we set up
[02:36:20] the last podcast this guy's background right oh see what's funny is I knew when you guys are
[02:36:27] start making jokes about that I didn't know when I didn't know who which is interesting it was
[02:36:32] Dave Burke good deal Dave apparently but either way yes I'm here now that you're now I'm here now
[02:36:39] yeah I'm here to let you guys know how to avoid psychopath we're moving right into the
[02:36:43] title of the topic behavior because I don't know if one can avoid actual psychopathy I think
[02:36:49] you're either psychopath or not okay okay but how can we at least make ourselves a little bit better
[02:36:54] it's like avoiding celiac disease you know celiac disease so it's like you can't avoid celiac
[02:37:00] disease but you can avoid gluten you see I'm saying correct anyway so we talk about discipline
[02:37:07] the supplement now not necessarily just discipline as discipline the supplement okay discipline go
[02:37:12] ready to drink energy drink a new era of energy drink a new idea of energy drink
[02:37:19] indeed gluten free by the way nice nice sugar free sugar free gluten free chemical free
[02:37:27] um so conservative free because it's it's pasteurized yeah so we're not gonna put any chemicals in your body
[02:37:33] yeah into your temple yes exactly right so so what you need what you want what you expect from
[02:37:40] an energy drink the good parts you get that no downside but you don't get the job
[02:37:46] exactly right the downside there's no downside see so me I just drink three okay I'm saying I drink
[02:37:51] three today you drink three today okay I'm more healthy than I was
[02:37:57] before that's a good feeling that's really good right okay many different flavors wrapped
[02:38:02] to what seven flavors that one now I think we're at seven what's the best one mango
[02:38:07] 100% Dave what's the best one it's not you're at mango yeah well hey look hey
[02:38:16] mango's good I'm gonna say it right now I like mango I can and it's one of the better
[02:38:21] flavors I would say yeah so you know how like different people like different flavors like
[02:38:26] my middle daughter tax average all day Dakota what you got it's like all day obviously
[02:38:30] my son sour apple sniper not the fake about that I understand but my wife
[02:38:35] going going to this and she's cracking open all kinds she's of she's mixing it up mixed party
[02:38:40] party mix well the new season they're all good technically you're not gonna really drink
[02:38:45] one to be like oh this one sucks it's gonna be pretty rare that's gonna happen so I dig it
[02:38:49] and I understand but technically yeah man but either way whatever flavor you guys like look this is
[02:38:54] the new the new era the new what do you paradigm right this word of energy drinks don't have to
[02:39:00] worry about all that bad stuff so yeah get get that you also stuff for your joints this is
[02:39:07] important you might not think about it every day might I excite some of us like other supplements
[02:39:12] might but when your joints start acting up then you'll be excited to have them not act up
[02:39:20] say you take joint warfare super krill oil get on a routine too you want up to everybody you're
[02:39:24] enjoying it anymore there you go but the vitamin D3 called war we got extra protein if you need it
[02:39:30] in the form of milk that's the one to get excited which you could call protein we could call dessert
[02:39:36] let's face it bro it is so tasty you're gonna eat in some elk which by the way we're eating
[02:39:41] not the only cow sold right now kind of a lot but sometimes you get done you're like hmm I
[02:39:46] wouldn't mind some dessert to go on top of that fine meal I just have hey but I don't want to eat ice
[02:39:54] cream I'm definitely not eating cake because we're not cake eaters over here no no no no no
[02:40:00] do you Dave Burke do you put um like no you just got actually you know what I knew that I think
[02:40:08] you told me that already here's the thing that the frozen banana the frozen like overly right
[02:40:14] banana so everyone's at all you won't blend it up quite as good as I need to make a Tulsi
[02:40:19] gabber dot like drink we got I think we got by the guppinana coming maybe that needs to be the Tulsi
[02:40:25] gabbered flavor signature signature flavor of milk it's what is it called it's called overwriping
[02:40:32] frozen banana yes there you go tea put that in if it was sometimes you don't blend it all the way let's
[02:40:37] say you're in a hurry or whatever or maybe just how this thorough that day whatever and then you'll
[02:40:41] get the little chunks of the frozen banana in there and it kind of feels like ice cream
[02:40:46] it's a little treat you can trick your kids with that too personally they think it's ice cream
[02:40:50] all right you can get the drinks you meet all these things if I'm in shop you can get all these things
[02:40:54] at jockelfuel.com you can also get the drinks at wawa we're working on a bunch of other stores right now
[02:41:03] so check it out there you go also the free shipping situation yeah and the super what kind of a big deal
[02:41:10] would you call it a subscription it is a super good thing okay they subscribe to any of these things
[02:41:15] like let's subscribe to for sure join warfare subscribe to that for sure d3 you probably don't
[02:41:22] need to subscribe to d3 because yeah that's got like 360 pills in there so like what are you going
[02:41:30] to super yearly subscription is going to show up no you don't really need to subscribe to that but
[02:41:35] super krill join warfare definitely and then whatever you go to malk flavor yeah probably worth it
[02:41:42] yes especially if you're lifting because it resistance training but if you're lifting this list
[02:41:47] faces you're a malk that's that's going to be the jam 100% all right what else also
[02:41:52] or junior essay is where you can get your american made like for real american made for real american
[02:41:57] made jeans boots geese of course for the kids oh yeah planning rascarks also for the
[02:42:04] geogits yeah in hoodies you know like crash in pants otherwise sometimes known as spads we had that
[02:42:11] oh this gosh you're never worth spats no ever nope the privacy of your own home why would I
[02:42:19] wear spats in the privacy of my own home you never know okay no whatever bro you know there's some
[02:42:24] stuff that you do in the privacy of your own home they ain't just not gonna just talk about free
[02:42:28] the same well okay yeah don't act like you know that's like a dune just catch me right there it's like
[02:42:34] one of the dumbest things I've heard you know what are you even talking about wait did that
[02:42:38] could or could or that may or may not be limited or not limited two spats is what I'm saying
[02:42:42] just saying origin spats I take all you two or two different spats I take it when I think when
[02:42:48] that talks really rapidly you know you you know you know okay no no you know you know anyway
[02:42:54] American made spats if you're into spats whether or not chocolate is or not there is that
[02:43:00] they actually come out with a lot of cool stuff and also like that heavy hoodie that they got the heavy
[02:43:07] the heavy like it's not like heavier warmer hoodies is like a new thing but the heavy yeah
[02:43:14] it's kind of a new thing it seems to be a good stuff over there or any winner winner arrived
[02:43:21] by the way an SD yeah I transitioned this morning to jockel white tea at the morning like a warm
[02:43:27] jockel white tea that is not a dish so that's a little it's a little chilly got out got to get
[02:43:32] out that heavy uh origin USA dot com origin USA dot com if you want to get me that stuff
[02:43:37] true um yeah cool also we have a store jockel has a store we we all it's all it's kind of
[02:43:43] all of our store now at this point uh called jockel store so you go to do a jockel store dot com
[02:43:49] so you can get by the way our store is not located one quarter mile outside of our camp right we're
[02:43:56] not located in our camp no we will not run out of supplies in our camp no it's uh yeah well you know
[02:44:03] it's online so I guess it's relative but either way this one equals freedom shirts hoodies
[02:44:10] some hats on there a lot of good stuff on there uh if you want to represent while you're on this path
[02:44:15] while we are on this path you want to represent hard or just a little bit jockel there dot com we also
[02:44:23] have a subscription scenario some good these heights coming out some good designs on that
[02:44:29] if you get a new shirt every month uh with some cool fun kind of layered ideas going on your shirts
[02:44:37] some good stuff good feedback on that one yeah so far people are doing that one out also subscribe
[02:44:42] to this podcast the jockel one rambling podcast that do with the Darryl Cooper DC grounded podcast
[02:44:48] which we haven't done a long time warrior kid podcast I know I owe some of those you can
[02:44:53] also join us on jockeloneground.com that's an alternative amplifying podcast with some it's
[02:45:01] Q&A answer a lot of questions from y'all there's a way to ask questions through that
[02:45:05] we're on question we're done hundreds of questions so far so if you want to turn into that
[02:45:10] we also talk about like I said ancillary but impactful topics and it's also uh we're we're
[02:45:16] setting up this platform dock on aground.com in case in case things get a little bit wild in case
[02:45:25] we lose control which we would be losers if we didn't have a contingency plan right you could be
[02:45:32] look we I had it attached I was looking at some of the things that were happening the world
[02:45:35] and I was like we might get this might turn into a problem yeah I remember I called you
[02:45:41] I was like hey dude we need to freaking back up plan you're like it's gonna cost money we
[02:45:45] got to do this and I was like okay well let's people get in the game so if you want to get in
[02:45:50] the game it's eight dollars and eight cents a month if you can't afford that we still want you
[02:45:53] in the game email assistance at jockeloneground.com if you want to just support if you want to
[02:45:58] have a place to go if we get banned uh what else could we get caught off and indeed it
[02:46:05] indated outside with outside interest yeah all those things do you want to hear do you want to
[02:46:10] hear uh the podcasts with uh advertisement for a mattress right as we're talking about
[02:46:19] you know a tank battle you don't want to hear that you also by supporting that you keep
[02:46:25] advertising out of this thing yeah it's true also we have YouTube channel video version of this
[02:46:33] podcast you didn't know what Dave Burke looks like boom you can know so yeah or you know or
[02:46:38] like a lot of people a lot of people watching and listening at the same time it's true new
[02:46:43] newer ish medium kind of either way if you want to watch on YouTube you can't we have
[02:46:48] YouTube channel also some excerpts on there so if you just want a little nuggets medium nuggets we'll
[02:46:54] say okay origin USA has a cool podcast to subscribe to as well psychological warfare I made an album
[02:47:01] for echo Charles kind of yeah kind of yeah fully really if you have a little issues little moments
[02:47:07] weakness uh press play on your phone after you download it from any MP3 place and I'll tell you how
[02:47:13] to how to push through that moment of weakness flipside canvas dot com to color my making cool stuff
[02:47:17] to hang on your wall got a bunch of books final spin you better pre order that thing right now
[02:47:22] if you want that first edition that's what I recommend um it's getting some good reviews right now
[02:47:29] from the from the kind of like the Terminator review people people that like to smash you in their
[02:47:36] reviews have given it really crazy good reviews yeah so final spin Dave what you review
[02:47:45] good
[02:47:47] that's so good check DC gave me a review the other day because I gave it to DC yeah
[02:47:55] it knew it was like he was freaking stoked so um leadership strategy in tactics field manual
[02:48:01] the code evaluation protocols discipline equals freedom field manual way the warrior can
[02:48:05] want to three four mickey in the dragons hack worth about face extreme ownership dichotomy
[02:48:09] leadership we have the leadership company where we teach leadership echelon front dot com if you
[02:48:16] need details on that that's where you can find out about our live events including the
[02:48:19] monster including field training exercises he f battle field um we have an online training platform
[02:48:27] you can hear us refer to it from time to time if you want to ask me a question go to extremo
[02:48:32] ownership dot com and enroll in the extreme ownership academy and you can ask me a question you can
[02:48:37] ask Dave a question you can ask Dave a question we're on there two three times a week
[02:48:42] we also have a bunch of courses you can take so check that out and if you want to help
[02:48:47] service members active and retired their families gold star families you can check out marklies mom
[02:48:52] mommily she's got a charity organization that does all kinds of amazing stuff if you want to
[02:48:57] donate or you want to get involved go to america's mightywarier's dot org and if you want more of
[02:49:02] my boring blathering or you need more of echoes interjecting inquiries or you want Dave's enhancing
[02:49:10] estimations you can find us on the in the webs on twitter on the gram and on Facebook Dave is at
[02:49:16] David R. Burke echoes at aquatral's i am at jocca willink and thanks to all the men and the women
[02:49:21] of the military who are leading not from a psychopathic mind but trying to take care of their people
[02:49:29] and accomplish the mission and also thanks to our police law enforcement firefighters paramedics
[02:49:34] EMT's dispatchers correctional officers board of patrol secret service and all first responders
[02:49:38] thank you for taking care of us by locking up the psychopaths of the world and to everyone else out there
[02:49:47] take care of your people take care of your people put them first and you don't take care of them by being
[02:49:53] easy well letting them cut corners or allowing a lack of training and allowing a lack of discipline you take
[02:49:59] care of them by helping them be the best they can be by helping them be prepared by listening to them
[02:50:06] by incorporating their ideas and by putting your own agenda and your own aspirations below there
[02:50:14] first go do that and until next time this is Dave and echo and jocco out