Jocko Podcast 330 One Piece At a Time Until It's Built Into Something Worthwhile. Ben Milligan. Pt.2

2022-04-25T01:16:22Z

Underground Premium Content: https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Join the conversation on Twitter/Instagram: @jockowillink @echocharles 0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:00 - By Water Beneath The Walls with Ben Milligan. 2:53:15 - Final. How to say 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 3:04:22 - Closing gratitude.

AI summary of episode

and so when I wrote the uh initial draft of this chapter the the thing that I felt like I had to convey was that uh uh the senior commanders in World War II they had uh they had a serious problem uh when it came to uh amphibious warfare one they didn't have landing craft uh but two even if they did have landing craft they didn't know uh the army's commanders they didn't know how to put troops ashore and there were uh there were logistics problems they they knew that they would need to even if they uh were able to land um men even if they were able to put landing craft on beaches uh they needed to put um men on beaches and which there were beach exits so exits so you could drive vehicles off the beach I mean if you land on a beach that has you know cliff faces and you can't drive off the beach then uh what good is it that you you know had all these landing craft you have to have uh guys that can find beaches good beaches uh and then alert the army out to where those beaches are so you know can bring an entire landing force ashore the army has completely um in the interwar period from World War I to World War II they've done almost nothing uh when it comes to the development of amphibious doctrine nothing showcased uh the threat of all of that more uh then uh the terrible disaster at D.A.P which happens in August of 1942 that's the first time uh the allies attempt to land um troops on an enemy beach or a Nazi controlled enemy beach now the proponents of troops in the battle are Canadians there's a decent amount of British commandos uh there's a handful of American army rainders um they go ashore uh most of the Canadians are killed or captured um and part of the reason that uh this raid or this assault or this attempted you know uh address rehearsal of D.A. fails is because they don't have a good assessment of um what the beach eggs it's were like they don't know how uh when they got ashore the tanks either um they weren't able to get off the beach because the sand was too uh too loose they couldn't their their their treads um buried up to the hubs they couldn't get out they couldn't get off the beach the tanks that or the tanks and the vehicles that were able to get off the beach they ran into tank traps almost immediately so um um the idea was you know creating you know writing this whole chapter on you know the deep raid was just you know uh away from you to talk about uh you know all the imperatives that a uh a scouting radar force would need to um um solve yeah bring to bring to the table they they didn't have any decontriction they get stopped by British uh shore but patrol boats uh thinking that they're a German boat you know trying to send uh raiders ashore um and when the and when the um uh the coast guard comes aboard their their vessel uh all the British commandos are drunk so not only they get shot off the beach they drank the entire boats like or supply there you go how about the devil's brigade how was that played to this uh whole scene the devil's brigade or um they were just one they were one of those uh units that I was really interested in and I really I was almost trying like looking for an excuse to to write about them they were um they were a unit that uh was a it was a joint um uh Canadian and American uh unit and it was the kind of the brainchild of Mount Baton um Marshall had by and uh it was supposed to be a unit that they dropped into Norway on uh like snowmobiles or our snow tractors um that would lead raids and ultimately became a pretty adequate um uh semi-commando force uh it was an air sort of sort of sort of ranger sort of airborne um and Robert Frederick's uh became the commander of it and he was uh as um as interesting as Darby uh you know this um uh had you know as equally a story uh career I think he was uh wounded something like nine times uh during the course of the war um uh and what was the how come the devil's brigade didn't sustain well I mean the army special forces when they are um when they are claiming uh their their forefathers they always point to the devil's brigade and I don't really I was hoping you'd ask about him you could write a book about Red Mike that's uh Red Mike Hudson he's uh so when I was trying to you know sort through the the relevance of the Raiders the Raiders are important to the history of the seal teams because uh they're the first instance where the navy telegraphs its desire for its own rating force uh they want to um broadcast or they want to um franchise raids throughout the Pacific to draw the Japanese attention away from the areas that they're about to attack so Japanese defenses are too consolidated they want to spread them out on all these islands so uh when before uh the invasion of Guadalcanau uh it was the navy's idea to pull the Japanese attention all the way to the central Pacific you know 2,000 miles north um so the idea is launch some submarine raiders on these things and uh you know like I said spread the spread Japanese attention spread Japanese defenses and I was looking when I knew that you know I knew that that's that was the goal and there were two uh Raider battalions that do it or that there were designed to do it the first Raider battalion and the second Raider battalion now I knew the second Raider battalion had taken making and that was probably more in keeping with uh the the point that I needed to make uh to launch pad into my second chapter what I didn't like was that I would have to spend so much time with Evans Carlson now if you read the book Evans Carlson is one of probably the three most peculiar characters in the book uh he's really frustrating um and you know you you if you're writing history you know the goal is always to be objective with characters you don't want to telegraph to your reader that you don't like somebody uh Evans Carlson is a as a person it's hard not to dislike merit uh red mic heads in on the other hand is uh he's incredible like you I mean he's um but they uh after the second night they realized they're not going to be able to have a link up and uh three swimmers get left behind and they are three they're the as far as I know they're the only three missing um well there's there's a couple of others but um they're three on accountant for and SW members out there we still have not recovered their bodies we think um based off of the research of one uh archivist at uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh the national archives uh who's also uh Moonlight says a historian himself named patch he's put together a pretty uh pretty convincing argument the the bodies are probably a bubble through app um they're buried with uh handful of other uh captured American aviators but we have not not found them there's an effort right now uh by project recover uh to try and track their bodies down i i expected that um writing history of the seal teams or writing how the navy had you know been the first to create this type of unit i always expected that it'd be tough to justify how i put the you know the army or a marine court chapters and it wouldn't be tough to you know justify the navy chapters the navy chapters would just sort of write themselves i just had to say what happened just say what happened i found the opposite to be true because you know it was you know what the army chapters and the marine court chapters all you really just you know trying to show like why these units failed or why they um why the you know they're uh senior leaders pulled the rug out from under them the navy chapters you're you're having to you know show how um you know a unit like the NCD use which is you know created just a solve one problem and that problem is the obstacles in France where the obstacles on the coast how did that why is that relevant you know to the ultimate creation of go anywhere so i um it took a long time and it took multiple draft before i realized that the point of this whole thing or the the relevance to that story is not so much um you know the fact that they were uh you know just blowing up obstacles it's the fact that they left such an impression on the navy leaders after that you know there's you know there's you know all these um you know episodes of of naval bravery you know there's the experience of the uh uh the the the the the the the destroyers that ultimately save the day that pushed the army ashore these destroyers you know they're um they're on the outskirts of uh of the battle until um Admiral Hall uh uh uh the army the army is looking at what's happening on on a mobile beach there's there's there's successful landings on gold sword but I thought just going through some of the chapter it's going through the chapters and talking about some of the things that didn't quite make it uh chapter one is called the reluct by the way I was thinking about this as I was putting this together chapter one is called the reluctant creation and violent demise of the Navy's first commandos the Marine Corps Raiders your subtitles for each chapter indicate that you have a lot to say and this is going to be a long book like chapter one the reluctant you know my books have like chapter one get some you know boom we're done right chapter two get more like I'm an idiot you're over here the reluctant creation and final demise of the Navy's first commandos the Marine Corps Raiders that was my editors that was Julian Pavilion he he sort of insisted so each of my chapters or something like I don't know like it wasn't it wasn't as tight as like Carlson's Raiders but it was something like the the only one that I remember is for chapter five from my unit days it was like the the Merum and before before they had come up with the frogmen is like a moniker for them they were calling them like the really clunky oh god that's awful especially after that move what's that movie echo Charles which one uh Zulander you know what I'm talking about so in the movie Zulander which has Owen Wilson in it who's like one of my favorite people all the time that guy seems so chill and cool 're they're training them they're putting them through you know little little PT sessions like uh they're they're doing log PT's they're doing like little like group activities they stuff that you know uh either Jean Toney had pulled from the Marine Corps or uh that they had kind of uh developed along the way themselves which you know that's kind of plant a seed for later when you know the scouts and raiders uh uh conditioning curriculum gets compressed by driver coffin uh but they all volunteer for this uh this commando program they don't really know what it is uh I mean and to have to write about Darby critically um that wasn't easy to do I had the um it was the first time that I had to write about somebody who you know I knew to be you know a legitimate American hero um and write about them you know in a you know an a light that's not flattering and I'm not sure that anybody's ever done that before I'd read a lot of books about Darby and every single one of them they you know has they burnish as legacy they they consider him you know to be one of the the the founders are one of the the the most important you know greatest um contributors to American special operation history and that's true but there's also this other truth that Darby should have known better and he didn't um and I don't know why I mean I thought I spent a lot of time thinking about it like nobody in the US Army knew better than Darby what a raid was and how a raid could be successful and what elements would have to be put together for that raid to fail and but uh some of it's his personality some of it just he's got he's kind of ponderous like uh he's been boring like you know stuffy like uh one of the the things that I think is most telling the most descriptive uh episode I have a little vignette and the book is one one of his junior officers comes up to him and asks him for you know a few books uh to read uh that will help him understand you know the you know how to command or the military art better and and all the books the Carlson recommends are books that he's written they you gotta think a lot of yourself to tell somebody you know if they're looking for books to read these five that have written so he tried to read them huh no I thought Pete Ellis of Pete Ellis is relevant because Pete Ellis is the he's the Marine he's a first world war Marine who is he's the first Marine to articulate a vision for the Marine Corps that is more than just a subordinate service to the US Navy or the Navy's police force he imagines after he sees what the Marine Corps capable of on the Western Front the Marine Corps is the when World War I starts and the US military finds itself in the trenches not just in the trenches but then moving on the German Army the best force that the United States military has is the Marine Corps so there's all these marine officers staff officers, Marine commanders who suddenly by comparison with their peers in the US Army see that the Marine Corps is the best service the most capable service you know that we have so why not you know start thinking beyond you know just this idea of being you know the ship or the ship born utility force for the US Navy why not start thinking of the US Marine Corps as almost a rival to the US Army so in order to do that in order to justify that in Congress the Marine Corps had to articulate a mission for itself and that mission was you know it was essentially come up with by Pete Ellis Pete Ellis he identifies the enemy or at least you know he's writing this in 1922 20 years before World War II starts he knows that the next war the US is in is going to be with Imperial Japan he knows how rapacious Japan is he knows their ambitions to dominate all of Asia and if the US military wants to confront Japan it's going to have to have a force capable of doing that a force that's not just you know like I said the ship born utility force of Raiders or jungle fighters anything like that they're going to have to have all the logistics capable of supporting an amphibious army ashore artillery aircraft logistics ships landing craft all that stuff I was going to force a reader to kind of discover uh buckloom's relevance you know instead of like compressing buckloom into that final uh chapter and you know on the buckloom report and really you know instead of you know spreading spreading out your tanks you know consoling into one punch so the reader finally gets a sense of how important this person is I just didn't want to waste buckloom you know throughout the book I wanted to you know collect him all one thing but it took me you know almost until the book was entirely written no and everybody thinks 100 yards off the beach is freaking close everybody walks away or everybody you know comes away from you know the reading of Omaha Beach as this um as this victory of uh American infantry over you know the German obstacles um and that's true but there's also another truth and that's the um uh that's the commitment or that's the force that the Navy brought to bear on that day and then and the army would not have gotten off those killing fields or other killing beaches without the contribution of the US Navy but what I found was the point of this chapter was that with all of that with all of the the the the the contribution that the Navy had made with all the bravery um the the Navy walks away from that battle uh with knowing that the the greatest contribution that they'd given that day was with the naval over with with the NCDUs with the naval combat demolition units um they are awarded you know some this six Navy crosses um more silver stars and you can check a stick at they've got they they award the NCDUs only one of three uh presidential unit citations that are awarded from uh a naval unit on Omaha Beach um I I don't know what the the disconnect is because I find myself like whenever whenever I'm being instructed now or like I'm I find myself like I get real like I can't listen to this guy I gotta get out of here I'll find myself just leaving I would have thought you would have gone down the sniper because you have this you know super anyone that's you know going into archives and reading Carlson's third book on whatever communist leadership from 1932 now I didn't want to read it though like I remember looking at that book and just kind of like hanging my head like I got to read another one of these things I don't know what I don't know why I was compelled to do it

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Episode transcript

[00:00:00] This is Jockel podcast number 330 with echo Charles and me, Jockel Willink. Good evening, echo. Good evening.
[00:00:08] A little after midnight on Thanksgiving
[00:00:12] 1943 while patrolling the black waters off Cape St. George near New Guinea
[00:00:18] Berks five ship Wolfpack
[00:00:21] spotted a Japanese radar contact
[00:00:24] immediately and without permission
[00:00:27] Burke radioed his squadron
[00:00:30] hold your hats boys here we go
[00:00:35] into the dark and into the enemies guns
[00:00:37] Berks destroyers drop throttles to flank speed and launch torpedoes
[00:00:41] exploding two Japanese ships outright
[00:00:44] then wheeled to star bird
[00:00:46] like the Parthine courses archers
[00:00:50] into the face of three more enemy ships
[00:00:53] that immediately tucked tail and fled in the night long pursuit
[00:00:58] Berks dex sailors discharge and loaded their guns so fast
[00:01:01] and so long that many passed out in their turrets from the fumes
[00:01:06] and from sheer exhaustion
[00:01:09] when Berks squadron finally returned to port
[00:01:13] set a time magazine reporter every ship in the road stead turned up its search lights
[00:01:19] and every blue jacket in the fleet man the rails in tribute
[00:01:25] it was Halsey said afterward the classic
[00:01:28] c-action of this war
[00:01:33] for 13 months
[00:01:34] Burke commanded his destroyers like patented his tanks
[00:01:38] to every order he invariably responded
[00:01:42] preceding at 31 knots
[00:01:45] a boiler bursting pace said one historian
[00:01:48] that caught admiral William Bowel Hallsey's attention
[00:01:51] who addressed the few his future dispatches to 31 knot Burke
[00:01:57] the name stuck
[00:02:01] in the last two years the war Burke was forced to give up command of his own squadron
[00:02:05] in order to become chief of staff
[00:02:07] to mark missioner famous aircraft carrier admiral
[00:02:10] neither a pilot nor possessing any experience in aircraft carriers
[00:02:14] Burke was at first out of place in the new staff role
[00:02:17] an onlooker to the aviators and a jolt to his morale
[00:02:20] that almost immediately expanded to his waistline
[00:02:24] essentially confined to the flag plot the ship's tactical command center
[00:02:28] Burke was forced not only to learn everything he could about aircraft carriers
[00:02:32] and their tactics but also to elevate his operational understanding
[00:02:36] beyond the amateur's urge for the battle at hand in order to plan for the next one
[00:02:42] beyond the Marianas to the Philippine sea
[00:02:44] beyond that to late-a-golf then onto Ewo Jima
[00:02:49] when submarine intelligence told him the battleship
[00:02:53] Yamoto was spotted and route to an unknown location
[00:02:57] he spent all night hunched over his charge
[00:03:00] charts a caliper in hand then launched 400 planes against the spot
[00:03:06] where he would be if the rules were reversed
[00:03:10] and sank the ship with more than 3000 men aboard
[00:03:13] before his planes returned to Burke had already switched his attention to the next battle
[00:03:18] by the time they reached Ocanawa the final terrible fight of the World War of World War II
[00:03:24] Burke had settled into a punishing routine
[00:03:27] always up at 0 330 the sleep he did manage was usually interrupted by some 20 calls a night
[00:03:33] in his waking hours Burke watched nightmares unfold his only sanctuary the flashes of
[00:03:39] courage that for years to come set a biographer would seem to whisper to him
[00:03:43] something about the meaning of the US Navy
[00:03:48] the worst of these and the greatest was the final transmission of a newly commissioned
[00:03:54] ensin who had taken command of his crippled destroyer after everyone else in his chain of command
[00:04:00] had been killed
[00:04:03] before the ship sank and the transmission was caught off
[00:04:06] Burke heard the young man say quote
[00:04:10] I will fight this ship to the best of my ability and forgive me the mistakes I am about to make
[00:04:15] and quote
[00:04:19] that voice would haunt and steal him for the rest of his life
[00:04:24] and that is an emotion and a haunting that I think many of us feel
[00:04:43] did I do enough to train the young leaders that followed me
[00:04:47] and the answer always seems to be no I could have done more I could have passed on
[00:04:54] more lessons learned I could have done a better job teaching our operational history to the next
[00:05:00] generation so that they would not repeat the mistakes we made
[00:05:07] but there's so much to teach and there's so much to learn and there's so many lessons to pass on
[00:05:11] and sometimes lessons don't get passed on they get forgotten
[00:05:20] and only the deepest of dedication and research and commitment can bring
[00:05:27] those lessons back
[00:05:31] and that reading that I opened with was an excerpt from the book
[00:05:36] the book is called by water beneath the walls which was written by a friend of mine
[00:05:44] a seal teammate of mine by the name of Ben Milligan Ben has been on this podcast before
[00:05:51] it's podcast number 298 go listen to that if you haven't listened to it yet but on that podcast
[00:05:59] we discussed where Ben came from how he ended up in the seal teams
[00:06:01] and how we ended up writing this incredible book which took him seven years to write
[00:06:09] and the book is an amazing book I think this is the most important historical book
[00:06:14] I have ever read on the seal teams and I think it actually might be the most important book
[00:06:20] on special operations as a whole that I have read and if you haven't read this book
[00:06:26] by it immediately it is absolutely an incredible look at the history of the seal teams
[00:06:34] but it ties in so many other aspects of the military and special operations and the wars we've been through
[00:06:43] and the amount of commitment that it took to write this was one amount of commitment
[00:06:50] that can come from only someone with Ben's personality and his his drive to find out
[00:06:57] in unravel history and we're lucky enough to have Ben back with us to discuss
[00:07:04] more of these incredible accounts of histories history from the seal teams
[00:07:09] and of the entire community of special operations so Ben thanks for coming back man
[00:07:16] thanks Joko it's great to be here and thanks for that section to it's one of my favorite
[00:07:25] sections in the book one of the hardest things you do when you write a book is you have to
[00:07:33] edit it and you have to cut it and I think we talked about that last time this was one of those
[00:07:37] sections that I had probably 15 more pages just on berk that I had dropped my that chapter
[00:07:43] have been completely structured differently I had started with berk at his change of commands
[00:07:48] ceremony when he became the CNO and then I rolled into you know this you know 15 page just
[00:07:56] it was my biggest introduction of a character even bigger probably than draper off
[00:08:03] I justifi that and I have when I was writing it because I always felt like berk or at least
[00:08:07] when I discovered berk when I discovered his contribution to the creation of the seal
[00:08:11] teams I felt like next to Phil Buckleau early berk is the indispensable man he the seal
[00:08:21] teams would not have existed without him without and the it wouldn't have existed without his
[00:08:27] biography that he just consolidated into you know this complete preoccupation with keeping the
[00:08:34] navy connected to offensive warfare and and there was just example after example of his time in
[00:08:41] world war two you know there were he was in at least two two vessel pants shot out from under
[00:08:49] hammer two two vessels were sunk by the Japanese that he had to and he had to escape from and in each
[00:08:54] instance of his cape he was leaving behind every possession that he had every possession that
[00:08:59] he had gone through the war with and in the process he was rescuing guys around him
[00:09:03] and in one case wrist his life going into a completely smoke filled passageway to rescue a
[00:09:15] I think it was a semen like a radio radio man and he's the you know the chief staff of the ship
[00:09:21] and he had no business he get off the ship but he's you know saving the sailors around him
[00:09:25] but yeah he was like you like you mentioned in your you're opening the his commitment to passing
[00:09:42] on what he had learned not just what he had learned but his belief in what the navy was
[00:09:49] to that next generation that's what kept him as a seano for six years I guess say in the book it's
[00:09:55] two years longer than any even the closest competitor seano is normally just a two-year spot
[00:10:02] animal king who's the seano during world war two he serves for four but after king nobody
[00:10:08] else comes close except Burke and Burke's there for six years and whenever I know that you
[00:10:15] know you take pictures of your watch and you're still working at a fourth thirty just funny because
[00:10:20] I often thought that I should start taking a picture of my watch when I sit down like computers
[00:10:24] to writing I'm not sure would be motivating but whenever I hear somebody talk about how you have to
[00:10:32] get eight hours asleep and I sleep the most important thing like man I know that you're wrong
[00:10:38] and I know because of Burke I know because of every you know other people you hi achievers like
[00:10:43] somebody like Burke he never slept yeah that that why that passage stood out to me and look I've
[00:10:52] got so many marks in this book now from the last time we did this and just from reading it but that
[00:10:58] that idea that here's this guy who's listening to a young ensin go down with his ship and he's
[00:11:07] thinking to himself you know after this guy says forgive me the mistakes I'm about to make and you know
[00:11:12] Arlie Burke sitting there thinking he could have taught him he could have given him a heads up he could have
[00:11:17] given whoever that commander was or the lieutenant commander or the lieutenant that was above
[00:11:23] this guy in the chain of command all these guys could he could have taught them something that
[00:11:27] maybe they wouldn't be in this situation and just knowing that every effort that you gave
[00:11:33] to pass on the lessons they failed and now this this guy is just young man just young
[00:11:39] ensin is dying and he's gonna go down with his ship with all these sailors on board and
[00:11:44] there's there's just all these lessons and and I mean there's so many times where when I was in
[00:11:51] the teams well good example is Mike Thornton you know Mike Thornton came on this podcast a
[00:11:57] couple years ago and we went moment by moment and debriefed the the operation where he for which he
[00:12:06] was awarded the the Medal of Honor and it's it's three hours it's like a three hour debrief
[00:12:13] and I was in the sealed teams with at the same time as Mike Thornton I knew Mike Thornton
[00:12:21] I had met Mike Thornton several occasions I'd spent time with Mike Thornton
[00:12:26] but I'd never gotten like a full debrief of what happened and you think to yourself all those
[00:12:32] lessons that didn't get passed on until he came on the podcast and told me like all these
[00:12:38] little lessons and then you start thinking about someone like Burke or or this entire book that you've
[00:12:44] written where there's just all these lessons that are completely forgotten and well I should say they're
[00:12:51] almost completely forgotten I don't know if they're completely forgotten I know I know the point
[00:12:54] you're trying to make and I agree like um since the book has come out I've been keeping a list there's
[00:12:59] been 12 12 guys that I interviewed in the course of the book that aren't with us anymore and
[00:13:06] I always think like what what happened if I had started the book a year late or a year later
[00:13:10] than I did or what opportunities did I miss because I started the book when I did and not two
[00:13:14] years earlier like how many how many stories did I miss or how many lessons did I miss um
[00:13:20] the one thing that I think about when I think of like um you know somebody who's as young as
[00:13:26] that Ensign was in the section that you read um who's going down I mean that Ensign
[00:13:31] Mike Thornton when he's I think Mike Thornton was 25 when he rescued Tommy Norse
[00:13:37] he's not old enough I mean he's old enough to he's he's a he's a grown man I mean he's uh
[00:13:43] he has a 25 year old's perspective on life but he doesn't have all the context that you know
[00:13:47] that you and I have and echo we live long lives I mean we've we've been around here for a minute
[00:13:53] and we've collected stories and we've collected context um and we have uh you know enough um
[00:14:01] you know ammunition you know whether it's morally or or whatever to help us or to convince us
[00:14:09] to to to make right decisions um but somebody's 25 years old or this Ensign I imagine this
[00:14:16] Ensign you know probably 22 years old like I just didn't know anything doesn't know anything about
[00:14:21] the world he hasn't heard you know stories you know like the one that you just read um but what
[00:14:28] he does have uh he has this uh he's been imprinted by the institution that he served him and
[00:14:35] by the people that are around him um and that's I think that's an important um thing you know
[00:14:41] buddhas or bootcamp does you're you're taking uh young folks and you know from lots of
[00:14:47] different backgrounds and without you know the context that we have as you get older and you read books
[00:14:51] and you have these experiences but you imprint you know the values of that institution on these
[00:14:57] people and you give them uh new mandates for what's expected um and that's cool yeah and I appreciate
[00:15:06] that but you know like like I said this this Ensign wasn't in charge of the ship right there was
[00:15:14] uh there was an exo there was a seal there was an ops boss there all now dead and even with the
[00:15:21] imprints of kind of the broad value system that we have in the navy or the broad value system that
[00:15:29] you have in the Marine Corps the broad value system that you have in the army there are actual
[00:15:34] tactics that you can know that can save your ass in certain situations and you know when I was
[00:15:42] in trade at like I remember sometimes especially when I first got home from her body I would be
[00:15:47] watching a guy move through the streets in in Mount training right and I would feel like sick
[00:15:53] to my stomach if a guy wasn't taking cover and it's a really simple thing that hate someone tells
[00:16:00] you like listen man only move from cover to cover don't ever be in a spot where you're standing
[00:16:04] and you're not in cover don't ever let that happen when you're not behind cover you're moving
[00:16:09] that's the way it is obviously wasn't instinctual to a bunch of people coming through you know
[00:16:14] advanced seal training coming coming through work up there would be out of every 10 new guys there
[00:16:20] would be three of them that would stand around in the open like nothing's gonna happen to them
[00:16:24] and so there's there's instincts and that's why when I read this past I was like
[00:16:28] the feeling of the sickness that I can only imagine it's even worse for him because he's thinking
[00:16:34] here's another ship with however many 300 souls going down on it and I know that
[00:16:43] I could have had them you know do do whatever they could have done differently and the
[00:16:48] lessons just didn't get passed on and and that's why to me this book that you've written is so
[00:16:53] important because it does have lessons that I saw us relearn some of the lessons that you've
[00:17:00] gotten this book I watched this happen and so I'm glad I'm look I wish you would have written it earlier
[00:17:08] right I wish you would have written it 10 years ago or 15 years ago but you didn't because you're lazy
[00:17:16] but it took you seven years to write this thing and the lessons are just they're just
[00:17:22] awesome and they're important and you know you know the whole dynamic when you understand the
[00:17:29] whole dynamic of where where this personality comes from where this mode of operating that
[00:17:39] that is sort of look the seal teams everyone every sales a little bit different but there's some
[00:17:43] core things there that are that they're gonna be there no matter what seal you talked to from what
[00:17:47] generation they've got this they got a couple things in their soul and when people start to on those
[00:17:54] think conveyed but when people start to understand where that thing that little nugget in their soul
[00:17:59] where that came from and they go oh that's actually not just a that's not just a rock that's a cornerstone
[00:18:04] and we should focus on that we should remember that we should know where that came from we should
[00:18:07] know why that was important that we had that characteristic or we had that that that way of thinking
[00:18:13] about things and for me this book illuminated so many threads of the thought process that we have as
[00:18:21] seals where they came from to make sure when someone says well you know we need to just fall
[00:18:26] in mind with an answer actually we don't need to just fall in mind there's a reason that we think this
[00:18:31] way there's a reason that it's beneficial there's a reason that it's beneficial to keep an open mind
[00:18:35] there's a reason that it's beneficial to utilize decentralized command there's a reason for those
[00:18:39] things and we should never forget where they came from and the more we understand where they came from
[00:18:43] the more we can act upon them correctly all right so with that I'm sorry your book it's
[00:18:51] me super far to put about some stuff on the same thing so this uh my idea and I don't know how
[00:18:59] well we're gonna be able to stick this idea um because you have way too much freaking you have
[00:19:04] way too many facts and stories running around in your head and I've got too many questions running
[00:19:08] around in mind but my idea was to try and go through some of the chapters and like you just said you
[00:19:13] just said you got about 15 pages cut out 15 pages of early book by way did you actually write those
[00:19:18] 15 pages yeah they're written oh yeah I mean I had that's horrible some of it's like you know
[00:19:23] extremely some of it's like some of it's notes no no no I mean it's all written and it's all like I
[00:19:27] mean I mean I have not a paragraph but I have a couple sentences on Birch's wife like
[00:19:34] all right I need not all of the states you know but when you find like yeah I don't know
[00:19:40] your experience but when you're editing like if you're writing a novel I expect like the
[00:19:45] the uh the impulse when you're you know cutting stuff is that you know you have a turner phrase
[00:19:51] that you're really liking you're like oh man that is I mean that's the best thing that's been
[00:19:55] written since the Bible and you want to get rid of it and your editor tells you well nobody gets
[00:20:00] what you're trying to say it sucks you know you need to lose it but I think when you're you know
[00:20:05] when you're writing history uh and you're you've done all this research you've followed you know
[00:20:11] you know you know so many rabbit holes you've done so many requests the Navy yard or wherever you've
[00:20:15] gotten your material uh and you've found what you know think you think is this incredible document
[00:20:20] you want to use that stuff you you mean you fought for it you mean you want to put it in there
[00:20:26] I mean I have a lot of detail in these sentences I and I don't do that you know to
[00:20:33] make a reader you know frustrated I have it because you know I'm the way that I'm writing
[00:20:39] as I have four note cards that I'll sit in front of me and those four note cards you will usually
[00:20:43] have you know two or three points on them all star which one which point I have on each not
[00:20:46] note card and be like I want to put that that net in one sentence how do I do that I had a
[00:20:52] way fit all that you know stuff in there so yes I did I cut probably between ten and fifteen pages
[00:20:57] of Berks biography however when I when I rewrote the chapter I didn't completely lose that I mean
[00:21:04] I try to say that I I left as much on the field as possible I just you know compressed it into
[00:21:09] this really really you know tight diamond of of information but yeah everybody I mean I there were
[00:21:16] whole characters that I cut and I got better as time went on so um not when I was thinking about
[00:21:22] how we were going to do this and I started to go back through you know chapter by chapter you know
[00:21:26] what were sections that I cut what were sections that I lost and um you know not just characters
[00:21:31] but entire episodes I saw um I saw in these chapters my notes that I was putting together we're
[00:21:37] getting shorter and shorter and shorter each chapter because I was learning as I was doing this
[00:21:42] whole book and I did my research and I did my writing chapter by chapter I would research and write
[00:21:47] one chapter I would go back to an archive I'd collect all the stuff and I'd write that next chapter
[00:21:51] and then I'd do it again for the third chapter for whatever I was doing and I got better as I went
[00:21:57] um I'd rather identify what what was going to fit and also you must have seen a better
[00:22:03] of clear vision of the story arc yes and so you knew what was important and what was not
[00:22:07] much better and much better idea of the story and much better um respect for my reader
[00:22:14] because I was you know when I was reading this I was completely in love with my own pen
[00:22:19] I thought everything I wrote was fantastic I wrote the first chapter as the well
[00:22:22] and I'm I probably should just send this off to the Pulitzer Committee so they have just you
[00:22:27] know have this thing up front they'll they'll know what's coming eventually um but you know when I
[00:22:34] reread that chapter six months after I'd written it and I saw it's like I'm not sure why that
[00:22:39] character is in here it's like oh that I don't know about him either I found myself I had like
[00:22:44] I I did five introductions of five different characters in that first chapter before I really got
[00:22:51] to Carlson and his readers like that was I doing like I don't even know why I spent all that time
[00:22:57] doing it like I was just but I was learning you know even you're you're learning the process and
[00:23:01] you're learning how to get better as you go um but yeah you seem to think about the
[00:23:08] you seem to think about the reader a lot more than I do or you're like I don't want to put the
[00:23:12] reader through this I'm like well I'm the reader I mean I'm the reader I'm my imaginary I mean
[00:23:16] I'm I'm my own reader like I wrote like I said I wrote the book that I wanted to read and I you know
[00:23:23] but like you you have to think about your your reader you have to I released I felt felt like I have
[00:23:30] to think about my reader because otherwise I'm writing a diary I don't want to write a diary I
[00:23:33] want people to read what I'm writing I guess it closest I would come to you like a does this
[00:23:37] would this make sense if I was reading it so yeah I guess yeah you're you're you're about the
[00:23:40] reader a little bit you're your reader you're I mean I don't think about the reader sounds like
[00:23:44] you think about the reader sympathetically they're getting no sympathy for the reader you're
[00:23:47] like well I don't want to put the reader through some like I had the reader but I don't know if I
[00:23:53] like I my reader was I wanted it to be I wanted my reader to be you know a teen guy I wanted
[00:24:02] this book to be for this he was but I wanted my mom to be able to read it to so that when I was
[00:24:06] thinking like when I wrote this paragraph up was it sufficiently dense was it sufficiently what was
[00:24:13] there was there enough material and enough interesting things on that to you know to make me like
[00:24:18] oh that's that's good stuff but was it also written well enough that my mom could understand it
[00:24:23] that's what I was thinking about well also the last time that we were on here you asked me what my
[00:24:28] mom did and I just said that she was a housewife how that girl didn't go over creation so what's the
[00:24:33] real deal yeah I don't I don't have a great my mom was ever just said everything you set yourself up
[00:24:40] and that's the right thing she was got she was the chief of staff there you go that's a that's
[00:24:47] sounds better than housewife I guess yeah I'm unless you're a badass housewife in which
[00:24:51] case you're like yeah I'm a badass housewife what's up we know what that entails that means
[00:24:55] I'm the the the chief staff officer the chief financial officer the troop motivator you're everything
[00:25:02] yeah get an after it so there you go mom's so now she can stop being met at me it's a
[00:25:08] second let's later all right so my my thought was we go through this and talk about some of it
[00:25:13] because you know you and I had conversations during the during the podcast after the podcast
[00:25:17] about the amount of people the same thing you're saying right now you had to just cut things out
[00:25:20] cut stories out yeah and so many of these things can can be their own book can be their own store
[00:25:26] you could peel pull back the pull the thread or any of these characters and you can you could
[00:25:30] have your own book you have another book on just about any of these characters um but I thought just
[00:25:36] going through some of the chapter it's going through the chapters and talking about some of the
[00:25:40] things that didn't quite make it uh chapter one is called the reluct by the way I was thinking
[00:25:46] about this as I was putting this together chapter one is called the reluctant creation and violent
[00:25:50] demise of the Navy's first commandos the Marine Corps Raiders your subtitles for each chapter
[00:25:54] indicate that you have a lot to say and this is going to be a long book like chapter one the
[00:25:59] reluctant you know my books have like chapter one get some you know boom we're done right chapter two
[00:26:06] get more like I'm an idiot you're over here the reluctant creation and final demise of the
[00:26:10] Navy's first commandos the Marine Corps Raiders that was my editors that was Julian Pavilion he
[00:26:14] he sort of insisted so each of my chapters or something like I don't know like it wasn't it wasn't
[00:26:20] as tight as like Carlson's Raiders but it was something like the the only one that I remember is
[00:26:25] for chapter five from my unit days it was like the the Merum and before before they had come up with
[00:26:29] the frogmen is like a moniker for them they were calling them like the really clunky
[00:26:33] oh god that's awful especially after that move what's that movie echo Charles
[00:26:38] which one uh Zulander you know what I'm talking about so in the movie Zulander
[00:26:43] which has Owen Wilson in it who's like one of my favorite people all the time that guy seems so
[00:26:50] chill and cool and it also has Ben still or so Ben still plays like I was really dumb model
[00:26:57] a man model right and he comes from some fregan mining town in Pennsylvania or something
[00:27:04] and he's in this bar with his daddy's trying to be like more manly and his dad's in there
[00:27:10] and his dad's played by John Void John Void for dinner all they're all like covered in mine dust
[00:27:16] and Vince Fonds and there are no lines he's no line just no line just being tough and so Ben still
[00:27:23] is in there trying to be tougher and a and a commercial comes on the TV and it's him advertised
[00:27:30] some like fragrance and he's dressed up like a mermaid and his dad's like can't have you running
[00:27:36] around here as a damn mermaid and he says not a mermaid dad it's merman so that's what I thought
[00:27:44] of what I saw that's the I was reading through it just like did we really have to go there with the
[00:27:48] merman clunky's at the least all right so so but my yes so his point was you need to give the
[00:27:55] reader some idea of what's in store for them like if you start a chapter on the if you okay so
[00:28:03] imagine your reader you're picking up a book ostensibly about the Navy seals and that first chapter
[00:28:09] is you know you're reading paid you know three pages and it's all about the Marine Corps what the
[00:28:14] hell are you doing you have to give you know your reader some idea of what this is about and you know
[00:28:20] when I when I thought about you know I completely made sense because you know now I'm I'm not just doing
[00:28:25] the you know the reader you know help on chapter one with the Marine Corps raiders but I'm going to
[00:28:30] help I'm going to be helping the reader when it gets to the army rangers and everything else like
[00:28:34] it has to tie back and each of these chapters have to tie back and to the seal teams it had to be
[00:28:39] relevant to you know how the Navy had you know created this first yeah well there's why we have the
[00:28:45] clunky that's why you have the big long big long title for your chapters and you you're one of
[00:28:50] these guys that pulls off like hey if I'm just really nice maybe juggle will leave me alone you're
[00:28:55] like you gave this rooper nice explanation now I kind of feel bad like no that's a good title
[00:29:00] you did good you put me in check all humble and I'm all I got a major I'll just go I'll leave you
[00:29:05] so uh Marine Corps let's talk about this chapter I know one of the guys that you mentioned to me
[00:29:15] as a guy named Pete Ellis Pete Ellis he didn't make the cut huh no I thought Pete Ellis
[00:29:23] of Pete Ellis is relevant because Pete Ellis is the he's the Marine he's a first world war
[00:29:28] Marine who is he's the first Marine to articulate a vision for the Marine Corps that is more than just a
[00:29:37] subordinate service to the US Navy or the Navy's police force he imagines after he sees what the
[00:29:42] Marine Corps capable of on the Western Front the Marine Corps is the when World War I starts
[00:29:49] and the US military finds itself in the trenches not just in the trenches but then moving on the
[00:29:55] German Army the best force that the United States military has is the Marine Corps so there's all these
[00:30:02] marine officers staff officers, Marine commanders who suddenly by comparison with their peers in the
[00:30:08] US Army see that the Marine Corps is the best service the most capable service you know that we have
[00:30:15] so why not you know start thinking beyond you know just this idea of being you know the ship or
[00:30:22] the ship born utility force for the US Navy why not start thinking of the US Marine Corps as
[00:30:27] almost a rival to the US Army so in order to do that in order to justify that in Congress
[00:30:34] the Marine Corps had to articulate a mission for itself and that mission was you know it was essentially
[00:30:40] come up with by Pete Ellis Pete Ellis he identifies the enemy or at least you know he's writing this in
[00:30:46] 1922 20 years before World War II starts he knows that the next war the US is in is going to be
[00:30:54] with Imperial Japan he knows how rapacious Japan is he knows their ambitions to dominate all of Asia
[00:31:01] and if the US military wants to confront Japan it's going to have to have a force capable of doing that
[00:31:07] a force that's not just you know like I said the ship born utility force of Raiders or
[00:31:15] jungle fighters anything like that they're going to have to have all the logistics capable of
[00:31:20] supporting an amphibious army ashore artillery aircraft logistics ships landing craft all that stuff
[00:31:29] so he is the one that comes up with this plan problem with Pete Ellis is he is a personal disaster
[00:31:37] he is nobody that I wrote about is as much of a liberty risk I mean he is
[00:31:43] he suffers from depression something they call niraznia and he whenever he when he's writing this
[00:31:52] plan the advanced base operations for Micronesia when he's writing when he's drafting this plan
[00:31:56] for the Marine Corps he's doing periodic bouts at the mental hospital in Washington DC he
[00:32:05] was eventually what he doing World War I he was a staff officer but I I wasn't completely clear on
[00:32:11] his combat record I got the sense that he actually saw a decent amount of combat he he wrote a plan
[00:32:20] of operations for I can't remember which assault it was I think it was on the blockmonks section
[00:32:24] of the hidden bird line but it was it was supposed it was supposed to be a brilliant operational
[00:32:29] plan and it was it was totally successful and it was I think it was noticed by purging at one point
[00:32:37] it was called one of the best plans in the war but after that you know when he's you know
[00:32:44] during this period of the 20s after one bout in a mental institution he convinces the secretary
[00:32:51] the navy or the undersecretary the navy which is the hero's about junior at the time to send him
[00:32:55] on a like on an island hopping survey of the central pacific so he can justify or so he can prove
[00:33:02] what he suspects which is the Japanese are building all these island readouts throughout the
[00:33:07] center throughout the pacific he gets the authorization by a tenoros of el junior he goes out there
[00:33:15] something happens at one of these island bars he starts announcing his intentions of well he's on a
[00:33:22] bender the spies trying like a collective and going to pack off he managed to it manages to escape
[00:33:32] escapes the island makes his way to another island then drinks himself to death there's a you know
[00:33:38] there's a whole cottage industry of writers out there that you know say that he was poisoned or he was
[00:33:45] killed by the Japanese I think he was just a drunk and he just sliver couldn't handle it
[00:33:50] your train I don't know what the name of the place is but for a while we were using some
[00:33:57] facility and I don't want to name it but you'll know what I'm talking about that was used to be
[00:34:02] an institution like a mental institution you're training that place I was familiar
[00:34:08] and for a while we in the teams were going to some place that was formerly a mental institution
[00:34:13] and it was creepy creepy like you'd go into certain it's in the middle of the country kind of
[00:34:27] man it was weird you'd go into rums and you'd just like look around and there'd be weird
[00:34:34] it was weird it was really weird you know like you get a little bit of scary that's you know
[00:34:41] saying we're you know it's night and you you're with like one other dude you're standing
[00:34:46] some weird hallway and there and it's it looks like it's from 1922 that's what maybe think of it
[00:34:51] like 1922 well you know you start talking about what a mental institution was like in 1922 it's not
[00:34:59] like what it's like now right now it's you know probably they've got nice windows and they want to
[00:35:06] make things safe and open for people to understand and learn and feel good about themselves this was
[00:35:11] not the scenario in this place where I trained at at all man like what like in a asylum yes
[00:35:16] no 100% it was kind of yeah it was like an asylum he thought it was haunted that's what you're
[00:35:20] scared kind of I think it's probably just a file or even think that too I mean when you you see
[00:35:26] like not just you know a silence but there's this been there's been the story of this
[00:35:31] orphanage in Canada you know that had all these indigenous children they're finding just mass
[00:35:37] mass of burial plots now of all these kids that were killed there it's horrific yeah well that was
[00:35:45] uh I'm not an expert on that right yeah well that was that was one of the goals was to just
[00:35:49] reeducate the children see it happening now right now with our school systems kids are getting
[00:35:55] reeducated in a new way speaking of ending up in the silence so uh there's another character
[00:36:06] that's uh yeah a guy named Red Mike yeah I was hoping you'd ask about him you could write a
[00:36:17] book about Red Mike that's uh Red Mike Hudson he's uh so when I was trying to you know sort through the
[00:36:25] the relevance of the Raiders the Raiders are important to the history of the seal teams because
[00:36:30] uh they're the first instance where the navy telegraphs its desire for its own rating force uh they
[00:36:37] want to um broadcast or they want to um franchise raids throughout the Pacific to draw the
[00:36:44] Japanese attention away from the areas that they're about to attack so Japanese defenses are
[00:36:49] too consolidated they want to spread them out on all these islands so uh when before uh the invasion
[00:36:56] of Guadalcanau uh it was the navy's idea to pull the Japanese attention all the way to the central
[00:37:01] Pacific you know 2,000 miles north um so the idea is launch some submarine raiders on these things
[00:37:11] and uh you know like I said spread the spread Japanese attention spread Japanese defenses
[00:37:17] and I was looking when I knew that you know I knew that that's that was the goal and there were
[00:37:21] two uh Raider battalions that do it or that there were designed to do it the first Raider battalion
[00:37:25] and the second Raider battalion now I knew the second Raider battalion had taken making and that
[00:37:30] was probably more in keeping with uh the the point that I needed to make uh to launch pad into
[00:37:36] my second chapter what I didn't like was that I would have to spend so much time with Evans Carlson
[00:37:41] now if you read the book Evans Carlson is one of probably the three most peculiar characters in the
[00:37:48] book uh he's really frustrating um and you know you you if you're writing history you know the
[00:37:54] goal is always to be objective with characters you don't want to telegraph to your reader that you
[00:37:58] don't like somebody uh Evans Carlson is a as a person it's hard not to dislike merit uh red mic
[00:38:06] heads in on the other hand is uh he's incredible like you I mean he's um I mean uh he he was incredible
[00:38:17] before the war in Nicaragua he he he he he fought he fought through all these little banana wars
[00:38:21] like I know that the Marine Corps has this love affair with uh chesty polar um there's no reason
[00:38:28] that uh they should have any less affinity for red mic heads and he's everywhere uh during World War
[00:38:36] II um lead some of the most daring um assaults of the war he's at uh to la guadal canal he's at
[00:38:43] tarawai I mean three major uh uh battles in Marine Corps history he's got a I think he had two navy
[00:38:51] crosses a metal on her silver stars I mean he was he was incredible um and he's got a terribly
[00:38:58] tragic end he um it's bizarre it is bizarre did you read about him he yeah he uh he he he leaves the
[00:39:07] navy he leaves the Marine Corps uh under protest when uh during the other revolt of the
[00:39:12] animals uh after World War II right before the Korean War um when the army and the air force kind of
[00:39:18] collaborated to uh strip the navy in the Marine Corps of funding uh he resigns the Marine Corps
[00:39:23] and protests so he can uh protest more loudly um he has a series of jobs and eventually he
[00:39:31] commit suicide and his garage he um I don't know I mean I that's one of those you don't hear a lot
[00:39:37] of uh World War II veterans that uh that the the made that decision um uh I mean it stands to the
[00:39:45] reason you know considering everything that we're going through right now I mean someone who has gone
[00:39:50] through as much as you know red mic Edson did had suffered as many blast injuries as he no doubt
[00:39:56] you know suffered um I think he was probably dealing with all the same uh same things that
[00:40:01] so many of our friends are yeah so yeah I think that idea of resigning in protest and what you get
[00:40:10] from it where where it ends up is a tough thing to talk about because once you're done yeah you're
[00:40:17] done you're done and actually um I think it was a green during the Vietnam War addressed it
[00:40:23] who he was like the common on the Marine Corps I can't I forgive my memory but you know he was
[00:40:29] getting interviewed well why did you you know leave because you got Mac Mara who's a jackass you
[00:40:33] got LBJ who's a total jackass maybe it's time just to you know make your statement hey I
[00:40:38] and he said look I'll be in the news for for 48 hours and then that's it that'll have another guy
[00:40:42] and I'll have no influence and that's you know I've often talked about hack or through in the same
[00:40:47] thing Vietnam you know he could have been a division he could have been a brigade commander could have been
[00:40:51] a division commander would have had whatever thousands of troops underneath him that he could have
[00:40:55] fought in a different way but instead he sort of resigned in protest and and yeah you know there's
[00:41:03] there's another um the commanding officer of uh I want to say the hospitality in World War I but
[00:41:13] he was a metal of honor recipient and he killed himself after the he was one of the Paul Bears
[00:41:22] at the tune for the tune of the unknown soldier and you know that happened I want to say like
[00:41:30] 1919 was when they actually had everything set up for the to dedicate the tune with the unknown
[00:41:35] soldier he was has a metal of honor recipient he was one of the guys that um that was one of those
[00:41:43] Paul Bears and then I think it was about a year later he booked a uh C passage from New York to
[00:41:52] Cubar's New York to Florida or something and then wrote a note and disappeared you know killed
[00:41:57] himself did you read that Patrick go down all the what is it called I can't remember what it
[00:42:04] what it's called I was just one that I had seen it was it looked interesting what's it about
[00:42:09] it's about the tune of the unknown soldier okay no I did not read it I'll be curious to read it it's
[00:42:14] about I think it's about all all the Paul Bears in that uh oh wow there's a problem
[00:42:23] and it will a little bit what what was it that you didn't like about Carlson so much Carlson
[00:42:30] he's just man Carlson is um Carlson there were lots of characters that I came in contact with
[00:42:46] then are other Carlson's their characters that you you know they've they've done and they've done
[00:42:55] an incredible amount for their country and but you can you have the benefit of hindsight you have
[00:43:02] the benefit of perspective and you have to um you have to weigh in on their legacy so
[00:43:09] Carlson done more than me yeah Carlson done more than you I mean he's he's he's he's
[00:43:15] lost through world or two I can't me he's he's not even close like yeah there's nothing we can't
[00:43:21] compare you know our contribution to somebody like Carlson he's he's he's in the first one of the
[00:43:29] first raids of the entire war and then he fights in successive battles the what's important about Carlson
[00:43:36] though is that the Marine Corps um loses all respect for him after the making island raid
[00:43:42] they give him another chance with the long patrol on Guadalcanal and he does admirable work there
[00:43:46] but it's not enough to overshadow uh the the defeat and the uh the aftermath of the making island raid
[00:43:54] the making island raid um it is really known how uh disaster disaster it is until 1943 a whole year
[00:44:02] later when uh U.S. forces retake the island and they discover that the um that the Marines that
[00:44:10] uh they believe to have been drowned uh in the uh evacuation weren't drowned but captured and killed
[00:44:16] it'd be headed by the Japanese um so it's sort of a uh sort of a uh a failure that kind of unfolds over time
[00:44:24] but when the the full scope of the failure the making island raid is understood um the Marine
[00:44:30] Corps never lets Evans Carlson command troops ever again now that's perfectly you know find for
[00:44:36] the Marine Corps leadership they was there something about his personality that is a personality yeah
[00:44:42] but it's also as politics he was uh I think he was a borderline uh communist he was definitely a
[00:44:47] populist um definitely like a uh a socialist populist um but he was um um by the end of the war uh
[00:44:56] he's advocating for the Chinese uh the not the national's Chinese the kind of the Chinese communist
[00:45:03] eventually he he dies and disgrace penniless because he uh he he he he he resigned from the Marine Corps
[00:45:10] well I can't remember exactly what happens to him in the aftermath but I know he has no money
[00:45:15] and Teddy Roosevelt has to pay for his funeral not Teddy Roosevelt um James Roosevelt
[00:45:21] but uh some of it's his personality some of it just he's got he's kind of ponderous
[00:45:25] like uh he's been boring like you know stuffy like uh one of the the things that I think is most
[00:45:31] telling the most descriptive uh episode I have a little vignette and the book is one one of his junior
[00:45:37] officers comes up to him and asks him for you know a few books uh to read uh that will help him
[00:45:42] understand you know the you know how to command or the military art better and and all the books
[00:45:49] the Carlson recommends are books that he's written they you gotta think a lot of yourself
[00:45:56] to tell somebody you know if they're looking for books to read these five that have written so
[00:46:01] he tried to read them and they're all in penetrable boring books of the Chinese like he gave up
[00:46:07] well I'm very thankful right now for the book about face by Colonel David Hachworth
[00:46:11] because when ever somebody says hey what we know what's a good book for me to read about leadership
[00:46:15] and I have said oh yeah I read about face because otherwise I'd be pulling their Carlson
[00:46:18] and telling the leading stream owners of leadership strategy and tactics I'm a loser
[00:46:24] now you don't like me too I'm right up there with Carlson I didn't say well if it wasn't for
[00:46:28] hackworth I'd be right up there with Carlson oh and hang on you haven't seen the books that Carlson
[00:46:33] wrote true I had to read them oh and they just nasty they're just boring do you remember any titles of them
[00:46:40] did you read the whole thing or you like this is ridiculous I get the idea you know since
[00:46:44] a dork in the beginning I did and the beginning I had everything collected I read books that I
[00:46:49] knew that Carlson had read just because I wanted to think like he was thinking he was fascinated
[00:46:55] with Mao so I was reading Mao when he when I was writing this chapter so I got better with my
[00:47:01] research as I went on but at the time like when I wrote chapter one I had not yet stepped into an
[00:47:08] article I wrote the first draft of chapter one just based off of out of books that existed from
[00:47:15] online archives I was able to find a ton of material online on the make and island raid so there
[00:47:20] I mean you pay you know 20 bucks a month you have access to fold three and a couple of other archives
[00:47:26] and you can find the after action report of the USS not all of us or the USS are arguing on
[00:47:31] so you know not having stepped into an archive I was taking advantage of everything else that
[00:47:38] was available to me all the books that Carlson written books that Mao had written you know things
[00:47:43] things like that so I was I was saturated with all this stuff is sort of extraneous as I got
[00:47:47] better you know in my research so chapter two is the first time I stepped foot into an archive and I was like
[00:47:52] oh I can do this better all right well let's get the chapter two chapter two which is called
[00:48:04] the sidelining of the armies and phibia soldier scouts and the call-up of the navy second string sailors
[00:48:12] I think that's pretty good. It's pretty good. Pretty good. All right for the second string sailors that's a nod to
[00:48:17] you know these guys all of these second string sailors were all members every single one of the
[00:48:24] initial navy contingent of the scouts and raider program are all NFL veterans they've all been
[00:48:33] Bucklew he's not only a not only was it college football star not only an NFL star but he was
[00:48:41] uh he was building his own team right he he he founded the Columbus bullies and it would have
[00:48:49] probably been a a successful NFL franchise had it not been for the start of World War II that is a
[00:48:56] freaking legit name to Columbus bullies yeah man if I would have notes if I would have known that
[00:49:04] tasking a bruiser might have been tasking a bullies I guess doesn't quite work quite as well does it
[00:49:10] you know seems kind of sinister yeah but today's I guess I guess especially in today's climate
[00:49:16] you'd be like politically incorrect to call yourself the bullies. I'm a bully. He looked like a bully.
[00:49:23] Do you see pictures of there I mean I went through you know like piles of pictures of Bucklew
[00:49:29] and you know every every picture especially in those World War II days he just looks like a
[00:49:34] like a dick he's like it looks like but that's completely opposite of what everybody I talked to said
[00:49:41] of actually said help you right he said they they all described him as the nicest guy like he was he was
[00:49:47] just so much fun to be around uh was super humble um but yeah every picture he managed it's like you know
[00:49:55] go from what I assume is a you know pretty loving guy and two you know has this big scale in his face
[00:50:00] and so what I meant to go down the spaffee little bit of Carlson so Carlson's personality
[00:50:06] what was he a dick was he an arrogant guy no he was he was uh how do you end up on these
[00:50:12] failing missions was it a lack of experience I think it was it was a couple of things he um he was
[00:50:19] infatuated with the Chinese and the Chinese operational system he was the the the the the the the
[00:50:24] Marine Corps are the the slogan the Marine Corps slogan of Ganghaw came from Carlson he that's his
[00:50:30] love that's his lasting legacy to the Marine Corps we understand Ganghaw to me an expression that
[00:50:36] it you know epitomizes you know Marine Corps tenacity in Marine Corps what he what he
[00:50:42] re-consured the machine gun that's yeah it means uh but what up and what it really means
[00:50:47] work together right it's the Chinese expressions of a very I'm not sure if it's even accurate but
[00:50:52] he took it from his time on the long march with Mao's guerrillas yeah it means work together
[00:51:00] but I'll say what when we pick apart uh some of Mao's work on the podcast the thing that's crazy
[00:51:05] about Mao's work is it's basically it's essentially he's saying you need to utilize decentralized
[00:51:10] command to win in military operations and I'm like hey bro Mao you that applies to everything dude
[00:51:17] like you can't have decentralized organization in order to win a war and then centralized your
[00:51:24] government as soon as you're done and think that you can explain how many you know what what
[00:51:28] every farmer in the in the country's supposed to grow and how much we're gonna sell whatever
[00:51:31] we're gonna sell it for like it's crazy that they came to that conclusion I don't understand you
[00:51:35] know there's so many contradictions like that in Molder 2 I mean how are the Germans who are the
[00:51:40] most you know higher archical government system you know on the planet and they managed to produce
[00:51:45] a military they was able to use initiative decentralized command yet at the top they're stultified
[00:51:50] they they don't they can't accomplish anything I mean they can't you know release the panzers
[00:51:55] and d-day like I mean there but yeah at the lower level there you know able to do you know
[00:52:00] able to be dynamic and fluid and agile and all the rest you know what you're when your ego starts
[00:52:04] to get out of control you start to think I better control everything that's what happens
[00:52:09] and you could see I mean it seemed like Hitler did that throughout World War II the more he won
[00:52:14] the more he thought why better control everything see it's working I better just keep doing this and
[00:52:17] by the end it was all on him hey we're gonna we're gonna attack Russia even those generals
[00:52:21] were saying hey bro not a good idea no we're doing it yeah the Carlson the the other thing
[00:52:27] that Carlson did was he was he was so in fact he was the Chinese system that he was
[00:52:32] he would eat with his men he would have these like town hall discussions he would
[00:52:36] he essentially abolished rank except for like in certain aspects he but when he got on the
[00:52:46] I mean when he was you know on the actual make in island raid you can see a clear
[00:52:53] misunderstanding of what the mission was which told me I mean you're that is conveying to you
[00:53:00] he doesn't know what his mission objective is he hasn't thought through he spent two weeks
[00:53:04] sitting on a submarine you know driving across the Pacific under you know completely miserable
[00:53:10] conditions you know sweating you know through his you know yeah like and he finally gets there
[00:53:16] I was on modern day self that had a sea and there are super clean and we're not worried about
[00:53:21] getting depth charges drop them your freaking head imagine it till we transit I can't
[00:53:27] go to a few all up in there and he gets there they get on the island and they look around
[00:53:34] and there's you know there's nothing really to raid I mean just the fact that they landed there
[00:53:39] the fact that they were able to assault the Japanese position and win mission accomplished
[00:53:45] get off the island there's nothing else that you have to do here there's no intelligence that
[00:53:49] you're really gonna gather but he he just he's paralyzed which just you know like I said it conveys
[00:53:54] that he doesn't know what he's doing he doesn't really know what the the purpose of this mission is he
[00:53:59] hasn't connected you know the navy's planners vision you know to their actions on on that island
[00:54:07] and then you're comparing that to Bucklew who was like a good guy a nice guy even though he looked like a
[00:54:14] bully so what you wait what you said this is when you started going into the archives for the
[00:54:20] first time was chapter two chapter two yeah so I couldn't spend enough freaking time invested
[00:54:25] in in research just on just on online reading Carlson's books so you wanted more you're a glutton
[00:54:33] I don't know I mean if I had known so there were two things that I got from chapter one writing
[00:54:38] that I was like I was encouraged because I felt like I was a good researcher I'd put you know
[00:54:45] a compelling chapter together were you a sniper no I was a calm guy in a breacher Jay attack type
[00:54:55] yeah I was a calm guy too but I'm just thinking from a patience perspective yeah I'm really
[00:55:01] antsy it's I find my yeah I I don't know what the the disconnect is because I find myself like
[00:55:06] whenever whenever I'm being instructed now or like I'm I find myself like I get real like I can't
[00:55:12] listen to this guy I gotta get out of here I'll find myself just leaving I would have thought
[00:55:16] you would have gone down the sniper because you have this you know super anyone that's you know
[00:55:20] going into archives and reading Carlson's third book on whatever communist leadership from 1932
[00:55:29] now I didn't want to read it though like I remember looking at that book and just kind of like
[00:55:33] hanging my head like I got to read another one of these things I don't know what I don't know why
[00:55:38] I was compelled to do it I was though and I wanted I just wanted to get it right I wanted to I wanted
[00:55:42] to have a good idea of who this guy was and I also didn't have the benefit of reading Carlson's
[00:55:48] you know letters like I did with other people you know say like a bucklue or how is that
[00:55:52] because Carlson didn't have letters no he has I just didn't go to the archive so now that's the
[00:55:56] archives yes I know you start to find real I'm finding real documents I'm finding like I'm
[00:56:01] getting I know bucklue I know how important because I'm I'm reading their letters I'm reading like
[00:56:05] I'm reading you know the letters of the the the folks that you know created the scouts and
[00:56:11] raiders like pedicord and you know not just you know reading their letters but I'm talking
[00:56:16] to family members talking to people that actually knew them I'm getting a real sense of who they
[00:56:20] are you completely changed how I researched but it it also told me one thing I was not going to
[00:56:25] be able to you know write this book from my basement which is terrifying I was going to have to go
[00:56:30] place as I was going to have to you know hunt for stuff and it was terrifying in the beginning
[00:56:34] and talk to people talk to people the worst you know that that did become like you know the one nice
[00:56:41] thing about you know writing a book about world war two is you don't have anybody arguing with
[00:56:48] what you're going to write about you know they don't exit the rock because I'm around anymore
[00:56:52] yeah when you get to Vietnam I'll tell you I'll tell you a story later in the podcast there's
[00:56:58] people who are still alive that I wrote about the dough like what it was written about the
[00:57:02] couch but you know you you insulate yourself from you know the criticism by your due diligence you
[00:57:09] make sure that you get it right if you don't shame on you but in chapter do you have to retract
[00:57:15] anything no there's nothing that I retracted nothing there's nothing that I would I've
[00:57:19] communicated with with folks you know after um and the one case he the the person I wrote about he
[00:57:31] had just passed away his family read about what I wrote about them it's nothing you know
[00:57:37] particularly damning or anything like that but they weren't they weren't thrilled to hear that
[00:57:43] they're dad had you know not completely succeeded in Vietnam and had kind of run off with a nurse
[00:57:51] in second so what I said to them is you know they they were I think the the note that they sent me
[00:58:00] said you know we were disappointed to learn about you know what you perceive as our dad's failure
[00:58:05] and Vietnam I responded I don't think your dad was a failure absolutely not he prepared
[00:58:09] seal team one for war he failed in this one narrow narrow context and that context being
[00:58:18] did he advance or did he advance the naval special warfare toward you know what they ultimately
[00:58:24] became land focus commander Raiders and and that context no he didn't and another he did he was
[00:58:29] success but you know I I told him I you know even though he failed in that you know
[00:58:41] particular moment every lots of people were failing in that particular moment nobody really understood
[00:58:46] what you know what they were getting their hands into yeah it's really easy to look back
[00:58:50] with hindsight absolutely I would though obviously we should have done this instead of that it's like
[00:58:54] very easy look back and say that you know right and so I ultimately told him I was like I'm
[00:59:00] I'm proud to call him my teammate I mean I I look at his legacy and you know I I see you know
[00:59:06] mistakes that I made like I'm not perfect either nobody is so anyway so so we get the second string
[00:59:13] sailors these are the tuna fish right yeah these are the tuna fish whoa these are all guys that
[00:59:19] have gotten kind of roped into the US Navy kind of accidently like Bucklew he joins the Navy
[00:59:26] because the army and the Marine Corps won't take them because he's a human Gus I mean he's too big
[00:59:30] he tries to volunteer for the paratroopers he's too big yeah and the the quote from from his oral
[00:59:38] history is that the recruiter told him that the the army could take two instead of based on just his
[00:59:43] weight but it's completely accurate and Bucklew isn't even the biggest one big John Trips and when you
[00:59:50] see pictures of Bucklew and Trips and next to each other Trips and is a head taller than Bucklew
[00:59:54] how tall do you think Trips and was I have a six seven probably I mean he's massive he's a
[00:59:58] mountain of a man she's six seven and he's just big yeah we had this conversation over the last
[01:00:06] podcast because imagine being six seven like 260 270 in 1940 right I mean no one's even lifting
[01:00:15] bro no no these guys are just jacked through nature through football they're playing a lot of
[01:00:20] football like and Halpern who I wrote about he's the smallest one Halpern was the you know he's the
[01:00:27] Jewish guy that you know went to play for Notre Dame and I think he was like six two two twenty five
[01:00:33] something like that and he's the smallest of the smallest of the tune of the story yes well these guys
[01:00:38] end up in the navy which and they're thinking hey we're gonna figure something out because we're
[01:00:45] jacked we're physical we're kind of beasts yeah they they pull them in to be like calisthenics yeah
[01:00:50] yeah I'm sorry that's what they get pulled they think that that's what they're gonna do they think
[01:00:53] they're you know joining to go you know do this like you know whatever commando program and they get
[01:00:58] you know roped into you know Jean Toney you know Jean Toney is you know he's a famous character
[01:01:04] himself he's the he's the two time boxing champion he beat helped me out Joe was no not Joe was
[01:01:17] this is terrible because I wrote I wrote two whole pages about Toney's fight in Philadelphia
[01:01:23] uh with um I can't think of it I know that I know that you wrote about the fact that he'd like
[01:01:30] trained he was the first person that trained yeah he's the hard guy that like that that that was going
[01:01:36] through physical training in order to get good and he was able to he only fought like three times though
[01:01:44] and two of those were championship fights jacked MC that's right so all right so now we got these guys
[01:01:52] so yeah so they they're in uh Jean Toney's regime of physical fitness instructors they're kind
[01:01:58] of getting uh they're taking navy recruits they're they're they're training them they're putting them through
[01:02:04] you know little little PT sessions like uh they're they're doing log PT's they're doing like
[01:02:10] little like group activities they stuff that you know uh either Jean Toney had pulled from the
[01:02:15] Marine Corps or uh that they had kind of uh developed along the way themselves which you know that's
[01:02:22] kind of plant a seed for later when you know the scouts and raiders uh uh conditioning curriculum
[01:02:28] gets compressed by driver coffin uh but they all volunteer for this uh this commando program they
[01:02:35] don't really know what it is uh but then they get hoodwinked again from you know Toney's regime
[01:02:40] uh to being landing craft skippers for army commandos you know the the raider uh section of the
[01:02:46] scouts and raider program um that would piss me off so uh wouldn't it oh man they find themselves
[01:02:52] out there and they're like all right you guys are gonna be in charge of the boats
[01:02:57] I would be angry what's the character you got some guy named Weats Leban
[01:03:02] oh somebody that you caught you were taught me about his guy what's his guy uh of its lathe
[01:03:07] and so when I wrote the uh initial draft of this chapter the the thing that I felt like I had to
[01:03:13] convey was that uh uh the senior commanders in World War II they had uh they had a serious problem
[01:03:22] uh when it came to uh amphibious warfare one they didn't have landing craft uh but two
[01:03:28] even if they did have landing craft they didn't know uh the army's commanders they didn't
[01:03:33] know how to put troops ashore and there were uh there were logistics problems they they knew
[01:03:38] that they would need to even if they uh were able to land um men even if they were able to put
[01:03:44] landing craft on beaches uh they needed to put um men on beaches and which there were beach
[01:03:50] exits so exits so you could drive vehicles off the beach I mean if you land on a beach that has
[01:03:56] you know cliff faces and you can't drive off the beach then uh what good is it that you you know
[01:04:01] had all these landing craft you have to have uh guys that can find beaches good beaches uh and then
[01:04:09] alert the army out to where those beaches are so you know can bring an entire landing force
[01:04:15] ashore the army has completely um in the interwar period from World War I to World War II they've
[01:04:22] done almost nothing uh when it comes to the development of amphibious doctrine nothing showcased
[01:04:27] uh the threat of all of that more uh then uh the terrible disaster at D.A.P which happens in
[01:04:35] August of 1942 that's the first time uh the allies attempt to land um troops on an enemy beach
[01:04:43] or a Nazi controlled enemy beach now the proponents of troops in the battle are Canadians there's a
[01:04:49] decent amount of British commandos uh there's a handful of American army rainders um they go ashore
[01:04:56] uh most of the Canadians are killed or captured um and part of the reason that uh this raid or
[01:05:02] this assault or this attempted you know uh address rehearsal of D.A. fails is because they don't have
[01:05:08] a good assessment of um what the beach eggs it's were like they don't know how uh when they got
[01:05:14] ashore the tanks either um they weren't able to get off the beach because the sand was too uh
[01:05:20] too loose they couldn't their their their treads um buried up to the hubs they couldn't get out
[01:05:24] they couldn't get off the beach the tanks that or the tanks and the vehicles that were able
[01:05:27] to get off the beach they ran into tank traps almost immediately so um um the idea was you know
[01:05:34] creating you know writing this whole chapter on you know the deep raid was just you know uh
[01:05:39] away from you to talk about uh you know all the imperatives that a uh a scouting radar force would need to
[01:05:46] um um solve yeah bring to bring to the table yeah you for the for the for the mission right
[01:05:53] you needed to find a beach you know that you could land on you know the sand is dense enough uh
[01:05:58] that had beach exits uh and that you could you know signal the rest of the fleet for
[01:06:04] cut it all gone all of it's gone what's if it's labin was one of those characters he was
[01:06:08] one of the architects of uh you know Hitler's initial push to fortify um the the Atlantic wall uh
[01:06:17] I don't know why but that's labin on my nose but he was he was a character that I got sucked into
[01:06:21] because he was one of those guys that he hated Hitler uh and yet he still did everything he could
[01:06:26] to you know fortify the coast he was ultimately one of those guys that uh participated in the
[01:06:32] July 20th plot to kill Hitler and he ended up uh getting executed by dang from a meat hook um
[01:06:38] anyway that's a little bit of a rabbit hole isn't it every one of these freaking characters is like
[01:06:47] I know it's a lot I mean it's a lot but you know all these things are just you know they're
[01:06:52] there yeah what what's the what's the problem with buckloom the problem with buckloom is everywhere
[01:06:58] meaning what he's too he's moving around too much now trying to do too much what no no no he like the
[01:07:03] the the the buckloom presents a problem presented a problem for uh for a writer not for anybody
[01:07:09] else buckloom uh uh and I uh I wrote you know sections about buckloom and chapter two I wrote
[01:07:16] sections about buckloom and chapter four sections about buckloom and chapter six I mean a whole
[01:07:22] chapter about him on uh in the buckloom report and then again he he comes on the stage in uh
[01:07:29] in my chapters on Vietnam when he's the commander of naval operational support group he's everywhere he
[01:07:34] is the indispensable person in uh the history of naval special warfare what was uh the the problem
[01:07:41] that I ran into is that if I had talked about him a little bit here and I talked about him a little
[01:07:47] bit here and then a little bit there I was kind of wasting ammo on him I was going to letter I was
[01:07:51] going to you know I was going to force a reader to kind of discover uh buckloom's relevance you know
[01:08:00] instead of like compressing buckloom into that final uh chapter and you know on the buckloom report
[01:08:06] and really you know instead of you know spreading spreading out your tanks you know consoling
[01:08:10] into one punch so the reader finally gets a sense of how important this person is I just didn't
[01:08:16] want to waste buckloom you know throughout the book I wanted to you know collect him all one
[01:08:21] thing but it took me you know almost until the book was entirely written and then I had to go
[01:08:25] back through the book and I cut buckloom cut buckloom so I could you know yeah because otherwise you're
[01:08:31] kind of giving away the story because buckloom doesn't become but you know he wasn't buckloom out
[01:08:36] of the gate I mean he was a stud sure it was awesome wasn't like Phil H buckloom right which is what
[01:08:42] the where seal training takes place is called the Phil H buckloom Center for Naval Special Warfare
[01:08:46] right our schoolhouse is named after this guy but he didn't come out of the gate that way
[01:08:51] came out of the gate as a guy and he never kind of shines in the way that other characters did so
[01:08:57] I was always frustrated because I knew that I had to talk about buckloom and I knew the buck
[01:09:00] was so important but he never you know he's not the first guy I sure like how important is he's not
[01:09:07] he's not the the ground force commander in China like how important is um but he's there he's always
[01:09:13] there like all the you know like some some other characters too so but I just didn't want to lose the
[01:09:18] was he was he younger is that why he was still around when Vietnam gets comes in the play they were
[01:09:24] all about the same age I think he was younger than helping help him was the old man of the group
[01:09:28] helping was 34 I think he used 34 when he enlisted as a semen right helping us and he was a
[01:09:35] Notre Dame graduate and NFL player and all those other crazy stuff NFL player he was running his
[01:09:40] dad's commercial light company in Chicago it was developing a clothing store I mean he was kind of like
[01:09:44] kind of the jacco like he kind of you know a lot going on and he just enlisted as a semen he was married
[01:09:50] like and he and he and he was a professional you know sailboat racer he was a competitive sailboat racer
[01:09:55] on like Michigan I don't know if you remember in the in his epitaph but I write in the book he was
[01:10:01] Halpern was he was in the 1960s Olympics for sailing a lot of bronze metal what a freaking stud yeah he's
[01:10:08] incredible and he was 34 when he had swim a semen old the 1960s he's old and the pictures of him
[01:10:16] like he was 60 years old in the Olympics he's the oldest man there was competing at that time
[01:10:22] but by then Halpern has developed I mean Halpern is you know he's more than he's got his friends
[01:10:28] with his friends with Samatra he knows everybody like he's running you know he founded LL being
[01:10:35] like he's by that point in his life I mean he's wait Buck Halpern founded LL being
[01:10:40] yeah explain that to be a little bit that's as much as I know I know he was one of the
[01:10:45] found finally I got to the end of when you rabbit holes you were you didn't have the freaking
[01:10:48] iron vault to dig in won't you tell me well maybe if you know if it wasn't for the fact that I have
[01:10:54] a factory up in Maine where we produce stuff near LL being maybe that's a little bit of a
[01:10:59] important deal we could have known a lot more about the frogman history and LL being well
[01:11:02] I'll give him some props I'll get to the bottom of that before I think he sold his shares
[01:11:09] but Buck Buck Lou and he doesn't he doesn't he doesn't quite you know outshine you know
[01:11:13] Halpern and or other other guys and all these other episodes so but he does you know like he finally
[01:11:19] takes center stage you know during the Buckley report and his whole biography is compressed into that
[01:11:25] into that report but that's getting ahead of the story all right we roll into chapter three and this was
[01:11:32] um I mean it's a rough one to read I was listening to and and re-reading and I was listening to the
[01:11:40] podcast we did on it man this is a freaking hard one to read because it's um well the name of the
[01:11:46] chapters the US Army's first commandos and the raid that wasn't so this is not a bad this one of
[01:11:52] your more abbreviated titles so so we give you credit for that uh I don't want your laughing
[01:11:59] well you know echo has no doesn't even say anything I try and keep this I try and keep it tight
[01:12:06] that's not even talking so once I mentioned it I can't unsee it like oh we shouldn't warm up it
[01:12:14] I told you he's going off here it's kind of like when Phil Vaughn said you look to you halfway
[01:12:18] through the podcast and says like what about you your name is echo you haven't said anything yet
[01:12:22] okay for echo you sure don't see much yeah there you go well's a good observant
[01:12:31] situation this was a rough one because well I guess because of because of what happened with the
[01:12:38] Rangers right in the beginning what was what was it like right in this chapter um this is a
[01:12:45] this was the fifth chapter I wrote so I felt like I was I was further along I was better
[01:12:52] uh than um I was with some of the earlier chapters I don't I I don't know if that accounts for
[01:12:57] you know why I think the the chapter has such a great arc to it but I or it's just because the
[01:13:03] you know the history itself has such you know such a tragic arc um it was hard to write this in the
[01:13:12] the sense that I was I always assumed that I'd be rooting for the navy like throughout the book
[01:13:19] rooting for you know the the navy chapters and then I'd get to an army or marine court chapter and
[01:13:24] I'd be like see I told you so like I know you know I knew that you guys were going to you know
[01:13:29] screw up and there'd be an opportunity for the navy I found the opposite to be true or not
[01:13:32] maybe not the opposite but I found myself you know just you know empathizing with these guys
[01:13:41] so much like there were I mean this the Ranger contribution um in World War II is
[01:13:51] it's remarkable the contribution of guys like Darby remarkable I mean and to have to write about
[01:14:00] Darby critically um that wasn't easy to do I had the um it was the first time that I had to
[01:14:09] write about somebody who you know I knew to be you know a legitimate American hero um and
[01:14:15] write about them you know in a you know an a light that's not flattering and I'm not sure
[01:14:19] that anybody's ever done that before I'd read a lot of books about Darby and every single one of
[01:14:23] them they you know has they burnish as legacy they they consider him you know to be one of the
[01:14:30] the the founders are one of the the the most important you know greatest
[01:14:36] um contributors to American special operation history and that's true but there's also this other truth
[01:14:43] that Darby should have known better and he didn't um and I don't know why I mean I thought
[01:14:49] I spent a lot of time thinking about it like nobody in the US Army knew better than Darby
[01:14:56] what a raid was and how a raid could be successful and what elements would have to be put together
[01:15:03] for that raid to fail and that raid I mean there's so many you know kind of warning bells about
[01:15:10] the raid on the stern of the should have alerted Darby and the rest of the chain of command that
[01:15:14] this was this was a disaster waiting to happen and yet you know nobody threw the brakes on
[01:15:19] this is one of the ones where you do a little psychological kind of profiling of Darby
[01:15:24] I actually want wanted to read this section part of it I read on the last one but it's worth reading again
[01:15:29] um because part of it I didn't read on the last one black hair blue-eyed wide mouth as a duck
[01:15:35] Darby had a ruddy face divided into equal parts forehead and chin
[01:15:42] his left cheek borham mysterious brilliant red scar not particularly muscular he nevertheless
[01:15:48] affected chest out shoulders back posture in which his arms always seemed cocked to the rear as if
[01:15:55] never more than a moment away from snapping to attention son of a printer in a musician
[01:15:59] the second child between two sisters he grew up scouting the Arkansas woods and playing the
[01:16:05] saxophone when in high school his older sister died in Texas he married then divorced in spite of
[01:16:10] disappointment and tragedy his attitude remained just as ever been good humor and irresponsible
[01:16:16] or sorry in irrepressible in personality just like in posture he was direct forceful and never
[01:16:21] vacillating had the military gene not dominated and driven him to a life of soldiering he would have been
[01:16:28] been a salesman he is the ideal commando leader wrote Colonel Vaughan at the end of the course
[01:16:36] he possesses the energy keenness and personality which produces the best out of those under his command
[01:16:43] graduated from west point in 1933 at the apex of the bell curve ranked 177 out of a class of
[01:16:49] 346 he was originally assigned as a field artillery officer like all soldiers who graduated then
[01:16:56] and with that assignment he embarked on an eight-year career punctuated by the peace time artillery
[01:17:01] corps's elements boredom and horse manure the 1941 he was one of the few soldiers who attended the
[01:17:07] joint army marine corps amphibious exercises in Puerto Rico disappointed at not snagging a combat command
[01:17:14] in the wake of the pearl harbour attacks in mid-January 1942 he was made assistant to major general
[01:17:20] Russell P. Hardle commander of the 34th infantry and assigned to northern island the staging
[01:17:27] area for a theater of operation still two years in the future anxious to get into the war when
[01:17:32] assigned to escort general trust got on his base tour and Ranger recruitment drive Darby made the most of it
[01:17:39] trust got duly rewarded Darby's professionalism and interest with an offer to command the first
[01:17:45] Ranger battalion few offers have been accepted so enthusiastically at first glance Darby's
[01:17:51] Rangers viewed him as a pencil pushing a decamp and why not he was after all little more than a
[01:17:58] peace time artillery officer not even an infantryman this perception died a quick death
[01:18:05] throughout their training Darby slung a standard M1 overs shoulder and rotated between companies
[01:18:12] marching climbing shooting doing whatever the men were doing and doing it better after an
[01:18:17] intelligence officer from headquarters brief the Rangers on the allied procedures for surrendering to the
[01:18:23] enemy Darby bristled and took the floor this formation this information you have just heard is
[01:18:28] all very well for those troops who are going to be captured but that is not for Rangers
[01:18:33] if there's any capturing to be done he continued it is the Rangers who will do it within two months
[01:18:41] of training together the men were reverently calling him Eldarbo by the end he would defy comparison
[01:18:48] and army staff officer waiting ashore at Sorrento in 1943 and 1943 would find a man wearing a
[01:18:55] Ranger patch and ask where he might find Darby smirking the Ranger would reply you'll never find him
[01:19:01] this far back if the ideal army officer was equal parts confidence bravery energy and obedience
[01:19:11] Darby was all these things but perhaps too much the last and that that sent and stuck with me
[01:19:20] you know from a leadership perspective of course because it's about balance right and you do
[01:19:26] need to be obedient but at the same time if you're too obedient you're yeah there's a
[01:19:34] you're too obedient right there's a famous quote by one of Frederick the Great's generals
[01:19:40] he says to a young officer the king gave you a commission so you because he assumed what
[01:19:49] that you would know when to break orders and that's all part of initiative I mean that's all like
[01:19:59] if there was one trait that I sort of settled on as being the reason that the
[01:20:06] the Navy seemed to be ahead of the game where at least a ahead of its peers when it came to
[01:20:13] the creation of special operations units it was because the Navy had this culture of latitude
[01:20:18] and this decentralized command and an initiative that enabled subordinates to feel like they had
[01:20:28] the flexibility to make decisions on the fly or adjust to the realities that they were facing
[01:20:35] whereas somebody like Darby is in the US Army and one thing that I wrote is you know the
[01:20:46] chain of command in the US Army has never been it's never been de-linked it's only been
[01:20:55] progressively thick and over time and you see that not just in not just today but you can kind of
[01:21:01] see it happen gradually and I would see it you know a little bit in World War II and I kind of got
[01:21:06] that my first sense of it here reading and writing about the Rangers but I also saw it you know
[01:21:12] in my Korean War chapters and I would come across you know an army general like Edwin Walker who
[01:21:18] he's flying above his troops above his soldiers in a little spotter plane with a bullhorn
[01:21:25] telling individual units which one you know which one to move like I mean in some sense that you know
[01:21:33] that says to you the reader you know what a cool what a cool general that he's you know willing to
[01:21:38] you know put himself out there for the same time like that's also like awful that's taking
[01:21:42] all the initiative away from your guys and you're you know you're you're not only telling them
[01:21:47] where they should advance but you're also telling them that they don't have the authority to
[01:21:51] to retreat either if they need to or to you know gain a tactical advantage by maneuver
[01:21:56] centralized command that it's worse right there absolutely and the last time we we you were
[01:22:02] on we talked about the fact that hey when you're in the navy you know throughout history and you
[01:22:07] know if bends in charge of this ship you're gonna go sail away from me as the Admiral I can't talk
[01:22:13] to anyone like you're you you've got the mission you're gonna do it to the best of your ability
[01:22:17] the other thing that's interesting about this is sometimes the ocean is going to dictate what
[01:22:25] you're going to like it out there are certain times where you cannot you cannot proceed you cannot
[01:22:31] continue the ocean is going to stop you you know you can get some really really extreme examples
[01:22:37] where weather could inhibit you on land from making the type of progress you want to make but you
[01:22:43] right a river swollen right a river swollen but those are extreme examples right the out in the
[01:22:49] ocean that's kind of a regular thing you know there's giant sea states that come through it's it's
[01:22:56] so so you have to have some more ability to adapt because you are look if you're in a sailboat
[01:23:03] the wind's not blowing you're not going anywhere right that's what's happening you can't maneuver
[01:23:09] to the north because the direction of the wind or the direction of the sea state you can't do it's
[01:23:13] not going to happen so you have to have some level of flexibility whereas more so on the ground
[01:23:19] you can power through a lot of weather events and again I'm going back to you know times before
[01:23:26] radios and before before motors where you're just going to make this happen so it seems like yeah
[01:23:34] unfortunately that Darby was a little heavy on the obedience and it's not always a positive thing
[01:23:43] no I mean I'm not just on not just on obedience but on
[01:23:49] on paragatives that's not that's not the right word either but protocol I would say so he gets
[01:23:56] one of the one of the the shocking things that I saw when he was putting the the sister in a
[01:24:03] raid together was he put in charge of the entire assault element a an officer who'd never been
[01:24:09] with the Rangers who would just because he was in the rank yeah just because he he had a date of rank
[01:24:15] you know the proceeded you know the the Rangers that he'd been working with since they'd been
[01:24:22] training together in Scotland these were Rangers that knew what being a Ranger was they these
[01:24:27] guys have been trained by the British Commandos they knew what a raid was they knew the you know
[01:24:32] how a raid would succeed and how it would fail and what then the and instead of you know putting
[01:24:37] one of his you know one of his Rangers that he knew from Scotland in charge he selected the guy
[01:24:43] who'd never been a Ranger not and he's not a bad leader he's an excellent leader and he
[01:24:49] equates himself you know incredibly during the battle but he also doesn't know as as Daylights
[01:24:56] creeping up on these guys and they have a sense of we are in the middle of a German division
[01:25:04] there is we can't do this we can't accomplish this he does not have the confidence to say
[01:25:09] guys we're turning around and so um speaking of British Commandos I know one of the one of the
[01:25:18] people that you had to kind of cut was Mount Baton yeah Lord Lewis Mount Baton this dude is like
[01:25:27] the British of all British right he he is but he's not like the one thing that I thought was
[01:25:34] interesting about Mount Baton is their Germans the Mount Baton family their their Germans his
[01:25:41] his father believe it's his father he becomes the first Lord of the Admiralty but he's born in
[01:25:47] Germany he serves in the German Navy he doesn't emigrate to England or to the United Kingdom until
[01:25:55] he's a bit older and then he rises up through the ranks of the British Navy becomes the first Lord
[01:26:00] but Mount Baton so Prince Philip Prince Philip who just passed away he was a Mount Baton so Lord
[01:26:07] Louis Mount Baton was his uncle yeah so Mount Baton means a fascinating character he's he by the time
[01:26:17] he's put in charge of combined operations headquarters of the the entity that commands all
[01:26:23] British Commandos he's been I think he's been shot out from under two ships or he's had two ships
[01:26:28] that were sunk you know we you that's a second time you've made that statement about hey this
[01:26:36] guy had two ships shot out from under him and it sounds really cool right now right yeah like damn you
[01:26:43] know because we're like you know we think that's kind of cool but I wonder if there's any negative
[01:26:48] where someone's like dude this guy's laws two ships row one's raw with you yeah I wonder I
[01:26:54] don't think about oh he kept getting promoted yeah we had the political connection he's he's really
[01:26:59] young he's really dynamic he's one of the few people that is able to not dominate Churchill but
[01:27:05] he's able to like Churchill thinks he's just I mean he's this cavalier and so he's the one that
[01:27:12] grew up in Germany that's his dad that's his dad yeah so Louis Mount Baton he grows up he's his
[01:27:19] British it's a I don't know he's British he's British and he seems to have like all the
[01:27:25] stereotypical kind of British personality absolutely yeah he's he he's he he's he's he's he's
[01:27:37] I mean he's he's playing polo and writing books and polo and stuff like this I mean this is it man
[01:27:42] he's hanging out with a king and queen he's got a cigarette holder I mean he's he's British he's the
[01:27:48] quintessential British but the commandos themselves who we who we kind of who we throw in with the
[01:27:55] sort of who who played the biggest role in in creating the creating the British commandos is that
[01:28:01] is that Clark oh yeah Dudley Clark he's the guy who initially comes up with the idea he's another
[01:28:06] weirdo really fun to learn about really fun to write he's he was a he was a British army officer
[01:28:13] he'd grown up I believe in Palestine he had seen me not only he had seen British Raiders during
[01:28:24] the first World War it kind of experienced what some of that was like I think he he was friendly
[01:28:29] with Ward Wingate he was a oh yeah one of the one of the things one of the ways that he got the
[01:28:40] idea for British commandos was he was in fact you would with an Napoleonic War history and
[01:28:44] in fact it was a real student of Wellington's Peninsula Wars and all of the partisans that
[01:28:51] Wellington had hired and and sent against the French forces so he when after the disaster at
[01:29:01] Dunkirk you know Dudley Clark who's a bit you know bit of an oddball in the military
[01:29:07] hierarchy I think his hobby is he's a he's an amateur actor but he puts a little paper together
[01:29:15] and he sends it up to Churchill and it's the paper is essentially create special troops
[01:29:22] that are capable at sea and send them on all of these little raids against the the coastline
[01:29:30] spread out German defenses not you know to similar from what the Navy was trying to do in the central
[01:29:34] Pacific Churchill is the he Churchill's you know completely infatuated with any idea that
[01:29:44] his generals do not like this is one of them he he thinks this is a the great idea not just because
[01:29:51] you know this is going to spread German defenses out but you know more importantly than that it's
[01:29:55] going to energize the British people the British people have just suffered this terrible you know
[01:30:01] the feet at Dunkirk they need a win they need a series of wins so yeah he agrees to it he
[01:30:10] is pushes the entire British establishment to create these commandos what he does not expect
[01:30:19] and what his general stone expect as that these raids start being successful so successful that
[01:30:26] they they want to develop more of them and so the by by the end of or by 1942 there's not
[01:30:35] just British commandos at this point there's Canadian commandos it's French commandos and they're all
[01:30:38] sort of operating under this the COHQ I have you ever read the book Rogue Heroes it's a book about
[01:30:46] the British SAS North Africa it follows them all through the war but point if you want a book that is
[01:30:54] kind of outside of you know the American special operations experience that is that's the one
[01:31:01] it's it's interesting because you know it's even I would say it's the the SAS experience the SAS
[01:31:09] and the SBS experience during World War II establishes a type of commando that we're not familiar with
[01:31:19] like and it establishes a legacy of expectations that you know we don't really have like our
[01:31:25] we have sort of a no fail expectations on our commando operations the SAS the SBS they were
[01:31:31] willing to just try stuff and if they lost an entire team well that's the price of doing business I mean
[01:31:38] and I think they kind of carry that cavalierness through today like I think I mean if you've ever
[01:31:44] worked with SAS or SBS I'm sure you have I mean I don't know if you noticed that and then I certainly
[01:31:50] noticed that when we worked with the SBS these guys are you know maybe not as I wouldn't say
[01:31:56] they're not they're less well trained but they are willing to they they have an expectation of risk
[01:32:02] that I was not familiar with and I think they pulled that directly from this experience in World War II
[01:32:07] so check what else was it that made Dudley-Curt Clark an odd ball I mean the dudes in actor
[01:32:16] and we know Ecos and a bit of an actor I don't think he's odd
[01:32:22] was there some other was there some other thing that dragged you into this or that you
[01:32:27] started getting the feeling this guy's a little strange yeah he leads the first commando raid
[01:32:31] and it's a completely I mean so he has this idea you know not much different than Carlson
[01:32:38] you know to come up with these you know commandos but and I like Carlson he leads one of the first
[01:32:43] raids and like Carlson he's completely unsuited to do it I mean he's not an operational commander he's
[01:32:50] the thinker I think he kind of he suspects that but he's willing to you know put himself on the line to
[01:32:55] prove you know his his idea he ends up going through the war and coming up with he hands up being
[01:33:05] a really capable spy not spy master but like deception officer he's able to convince the
[01:33:12] Germans that you know different points during the war that we're about to attack and in this in this
[01:33:17] spot which forces the Germans to move troops to an area but he leads that first commando raid
[01:33:23] um and they don't really raid anything I think they stumble across to German bicyclists
[01:33:29] they kill both of them they forget to search them they don't know what they were even guarding
[01:33:35] and then on his on his particular raid they one of the one of the guys accidentally
[01:33:41] uh checks a magazine onto a beach right when there's an approaching German patrol the Germans
[01:33:47] counter ambush them and they have to race into the the water to get back to their boats
[01:33:52] when they get back to their boats deadly clock realizes that his year has been almost been shot off
[01:33:56] and a sailor has to stitch it back in place for the transit back to uh uh back to England
[01:34:03] damn yeah getting that year stitched back on by a by a little by a pedi off
[01:34:09] even like in like a freaking zodiac or something yeah and the mission is so badly planned when they get
[01:34:14] when they finally get back uh to the coast back to they they they didn't have any decontriction
[01:34:19] they get stopped by British uh shore but patrol boats uh thinking that they're a German boat
[01:34:25] you know trying to send uh raiders ashore um and when the and when the um uh the coast guard comes
[01:34:30] aboard their their vessel uh all the British commandos are drunk so not only they get shot off the
[01:34:37] beach they drank the entire boats like or supply there you go how about the devil's brigade how
[01:34:44] was that played to this uh whole scene the devil's brigade or um they were just one they were one of
[01:34:50] those uh units that I was really interested in and I really I was almost trying like looking for
[01:34:56] an excuse to to write about them they were um they were a unit that uh was a it was a joint um
[01:35:03] uh Canadian and American uh unit and it was the kind of the brainchild of Mount Baton um Marshall
[01:35:10] had by and uh it was supposed to be a unit that they dropped into Norway on uh like snowmobiles or
[01:35:16] our snow tractors um that would lead raids and ultimately became a pretty adequate um uh
[01:35:23] semi-commando force uh it was an air sort of sort of sort of ranger sort of airborne um and Robert
[01:35:29] Frederick's uh became the commander of it and he was uh as um as interesting as Darby uh you know this um
[01:35:37] uh had you know as equally a story uh career I think he was uh wounded something like nine times uh
[01:35:45] during the course of the war um uh and what was the how come the devil's brigade didn't
[01:35:52] sustain well I mean the army special forces when they are um when they are claiming uh their
[01:36:01] their forefathers they always point to the devil's brigade and I don't really I don't really see a
[01:36:05] connection between uh army special forces and the devil's brigade's getting it in here except
[01:36:11] for the fact that these guys are in the army well they're in the army and they're and they're airborne
[01:36:16] qualified so but they're not leading partisans or anything like that they're shock troops um
[01:36:22] they're more like rangers then they're more like rangers but just like marils marauders
[01:36:25] marils marauders or you know when I set out to write a chapter on the rangers and to talk about
[01:36:30] how the rangers opened a gap for the navy to fill I didn't think that I'd be covering
[01:36:35] Darby other people who had covered Darby before and I was like I kind of want to avoid that I'd
[01:36:39] I'd rather focus on you know a a a ranger legacy that hasn't you know that's less well known and
[01:36:45] my idea initially was to cover the 5307 which is marils marauders in Burma I really wanted to
[01:36:52] instead of sustain a cover the the battle of Mijkina which is an isolated hilltop in Burma
[01:36:58] that the marils marauders sees and there's some you know pretty interesting characters in
[01:37:02] maril he's a he's another odd ball I think he by that point in the war he's been removed because
[01:37:08] he's already had two heart attacks in Burma he stayed in the field no was another excuse for
[01:37:13] you know to talk about still well so was another character that I always you know kind of had a
[01:37:17] soft spot in my heart for but they just didn't fit because you know the reason that I had to cover
[01:37:23] her sister and the reason that that I had to talk about sister and as opposed to point to hawk or
[01:37:27] Mijkina or another one of these really important ranger battles is because sisterina is the one
[01:37:35] that leaves its impression on the army hierarchy on the chain of command even when you have
[01:37:43] a success as incredible as point to hawk even when you have a success as incredible as Kabanatawan
[01:37:49] and the rescue of all those POWs it doesn't leave its legacy or it doesn't leave an impression on
[01:37:53] the army chain of command like sisterna does so sterna clouds an entire generation of hostility
[01:38:01] of regular conventional army leaders to the concept of elite commandos if that makes sense
[01:38:08] yeah that's definitely that that section of the book I'm again I read it on the last the last time
[01:38:13] we were together on this podcast it's just it's it's it's it's very different it's
[01:38:19] tough to difficult even read and and what's incredible about it is it's it's the notes from the
[01:38:25] radial room these are these are transcripts of what was actually said between Derby and his front
[01:38:32] line leadership who are being overrun and slaughtered and you can you can read exactly what they were
[01:38:38] saying to each other it's yeah another just incredible a lot of the a lot of that's taken from
[01:38:45] you know like like you said the transcripts which I that's one of the few times that I was at an archive
[01:38:49] going through it going through a document and not just you know quickly taking a photo and moving on
[01:38:54] that was one of those times where I was like I was trying I mean I knew what happened and I'm
[01:39:00] I was reading it like it was a novel like and I was you know tensing up like knowing what each page
[01:39:07] that each page was gonna get worse and worse and worse and then I was I was watching this unfold in
[01:39:13] an archive you know eight years after the fact but it was you know it was every bit is real to me
[01:39:18] well maybe not every bit is real but you know you're these are you know fellow fellow Americans
[01:39:23] you know doing the absolute best they could for their country for each other and you know the guy
[01:39:28] on the other end of the radio was watching his friends die around him and then before we move
[01:39:33] your chapter for what about what about Charles Shunstrom what's that guy's deal he got cut completely
[01:39:41] out of the book is that right yes sort of I mean he got so he he's responsible for writing the
[01:39:48] Shunstrom report which is the it was there's a report written only well if I do the math
[01:39:57] right probably a month after sisterna so he's one of he's one of the guys that was captured
[01:40:04] in the in the final moments of the the raid he was he had been with Darby all the way through
[01:40:11] the the the rangers experience so he'd been one of the handful of rangers trained
[01:40:16] by the British commandos in actin of carry Scott Scotland fought through north Africa fought
[01:40:22] through Sicily fought through Italy the winter line then he's one of the officers captured he's
[01:40:29] won he's the officer who's driving Darby in jaila when Darby is in the back with a 50 cow
[01:40:35] or with the the recoil is rifle and destroys the Italian tank that turns Darby from Darby into Darby the
[01:40:41] legend so he's with Darby throughout you know the everything he's he's as you know he's as
[01:40:51] incredible or as anyway he he's captured at sisterna escapes two weeks later
[01:41:03] makes it back to friendly lines and from from his escape he's able to write the report of what
[01:41:09] actually happened he's one of the few guys that got out and he drafts this I can't remember
[01:41:14] the ten page report so a lot of what's in those final pages is drawn from the shunström report
[01:41:21] now he has a really tragic end to his life he I can't remember how he passes away I think he's dead
[01:41:29] with in ten years though of of this event he after World War II he I think he goes to Southern
[01:41:36] California he tries to be an actor doesn't work out and then he you know turns to drink
[01:41:42] and a series of bad decisions please to a series of worst decisions and I think he starts robbing
[01:41:46] banks he's one of those guys that you know he just isn't able to reintegrate into society he
[01:41:53] had been a ranger officer one of the you know guys in charge and here he is he's not able to you know
[01:41:59] um uh reintegrate into you know polite society and ultimately I can't remember how he dies but I
[01:42:08] think that some combination of alcohol and um yeah some combination of alcohol robbing banks guns
[01:42:16] just get after it you know this you know this it's pretty good you got to kind of ask yourself
[01:42:25] and I had a conversation with someone the other day about you know that just like modern times and
[01:42:32] all this who's gonna fight the worse yeah right who is going to put freaking black paint on their
[01:42:42] face and pick up a weapon and crawl across the beach and start killing enemy like that's a
[01:42:51] certain type of human being right that's the type of human being that may not correctly reintegrate
[01:42:57] into society this dude might end up robbing banks when he gets back let's it's the Martin Watson
[01:43:03] problem yeah it's the Martin Watson problem which we'll get to but but we do have to think about that and
[01:43:11] when you have guys you know we we talked about obedience as a characteristic being look it's it's
[01:43:18] good to have some obedience yes it is and was Darby maybe too far on a spectrum of being too obedient
[01:43:24] yes but then you get some other guys that are on the other end of the spectrum that's you want
[01:43:27] you want to have someone that's gonna be the handle care what you tell me to do I'm gonna go
[01:43:30] attack this machine gun nest get out of my way you want to have some guys like that now hard to control
[01:43:36] but if you get rid of these guys you get rid of the Charles Chunchrums and the Watson's you get rid of
[01:43:41] those guys your military's not going to be able to function in my opinion that's not gonna be able to win
[01:43:47] I said okay yep you're right it's not it's gonna be able to function probably going to be able to function very
[01:43:51] effectively in a peace time environment so my question you commanded these guys how how I mean what
[01:43:57] what's the answer how do you how do you you know take the strengths of a of a chunchrum or a Watson
[01:44:04] but how do you make sure that they don't go off the rails yeah you what you have to do is you have to put put the
[01:44:09] put the guard rails in place and you have to and it's not here's the the interesting thing about this
[01:44:14] isn't that hard this isn't where you've got to be costly monitoring every single thing that they do
[01:44:21] you have a good relationship with your guys then when you say hey listen here's the line we're not
[01:44:25] crossing it guys go yep Roger that and they know you're not playing around the you haven't
[01:44:31] you haven't uh uh shown them where hey you know jockel says this but he doesn't really mean that no it's
[01:44:38] like when I say something this is what I mean and this is what we're gonna do this is what we're not gonna
[01:44:42] do and and look I mean I had guys that were definitely actually I want to have guys just like I just
[01:44:50] said I want to have guys they were saying hey if I can get if I get the chance to do this in a high
[01:44:55] progressive way I'm gonna do it you you may chance to kill the enemy I'm gonna do it that's what I'm
[01:44:59] here for that's why that's why I was born dude I told you Friday you know Tony a Friday
[01:45:04] Tony was uh Patoon Chief in Charlie Patoon task in a bruiser if he would do anything to be able to
[01:45:11] go out and kill the enemy and he would also never cross the line of like oh okay hey we're not doing
[01:45:15] that cool that's what that's the line and that's exactly what you want um and and what so so
[01:45:22] the question that you posed to me how do you do it what you do is you have a good relationship with
[01:45:27] the guys you explained to them what we can do what we can't do and then you explain why we can't do it
[01:45:33] and there was um uh I used to go and brief the jockey classes the the junior officer training classes
[01:45:39] and and briefed mine okay well there you go one of the things that I used to tell these guys was hey
[01:45:46] listen when it comes to when it comes to the rules of engagement when it comes to the law of
[01:45:52] arm conflict you have to not just do what you think is right you have to do what you think it what
[01:45:59] you have to do not just what is you think is right but what is legal and here's the reason
[01:46:04] and and Lave had to have this conversation Lave had a senior officer in the room when I was
[01:46:08] explaining this to these young guys like yourself that what's what people think is right what you
[01:46:18] you take 16 seals and you say you give them a case example of is this right in your own personal
[01:46:24] moral code you're gonna get 16 different answers you're gonna get so as I said oh yeah this this
[01:46:30] this person's uh in surgeon we'll kill him or this person's in surgeon oh well we shouldn't
[01:46:36] hurt him because we can reform them you can have all these kind of wild different answers
[01:46:41] so what you the only thing you can actually follow isn't what an individual quote thinks is right
[01:46:48] you have to follow what is actually legal and I made that I always made that very clear with my
[01:46:54] guys hey listen this is what you can do this is what you cannot do and here's a why and of course
[01:46:59] in any leadership situation it's important to explain the why and you know for instance in
[01:47:03] Romadi there was a bunch of reasons why you can't go out and shoot an innocent person well first of
[01:47:10] all yeah it's morally wrong second of all everyone would know about her immediately so it's not like
[01:47:15] it's not like I could have a sniper going oh you know I'll sneak in a shot over here and no
[01:47:19] it's gonna know no we're in a city with 400,000 Iraqi civilians that we there's a mayor there's a police
[01:47:25] force there's a there's a governor there's a whole there's teachers and doctors inside that city
[01:47:30] you kill an innocent civilian everybody's gonna know about it and by the way all those Iraqi
[01:47:36] government officials they have relationships with the brigade commanders with the battalion
[01:47:40] commanders with the company commanders we're all talking so if you think oh I'm gonna shoot
[01:47:46] some innocent person get aware that you're never gonna get away with it's not happening and
[01:47:51] on top of that we are now losing the war when you go out and kill an innocent civilian you're giving
[01:47:57] you're giving propaganda to the enemy and you're creating more insurgents by killing an innocent
[01:48:05] person so you have to not just explain hey legally you can't do this but it also here's why you can't do it
[01:48:14] I was speaking to a group of army leaders one time and I said hey in any in any
[01:48:21] platoon you're gonna have a sociopath in there you have somebody that's you give them the opportunity
[01:48:25] to kill or maybe even you don't they they might take advantage of that they're gonna look for an
[01:48:30] opportunity to kill they're gonna look for an opportunity to torture someone they're gonna look for an
[01:48:33] opportunity to rape a woman like you take a platoon you're gonna have that in there and I got some
[01:48:39] looks from the crowd kind of like oh that's not that's not realistic and and no kidding two weeks later
[01:48:45] I was doing a podcast with Jordan Peterson and before we started recording I said hey let me
[01:48:51] ask you a question here's what I told this group of army guys I said in your platoon you're gonna
[01:48:55] have at least one person that's a sociopath is that an accurate statement and he's just how many
[01:49:00] people in a platoon well in a platoon 40 50 and he goes oh you know and I won't try and imitate
[01:49:07] your footage but you know he basically oh yeah definitely and and then he said because it's like one
[01:49:13] in a hundred in normal society that you have a sociopath but the the army or the Marine Corps
[01:49:21] is not normal society you've already screamed out a bunch of people that are definitely not sociopaths
[01:49:28] and so to have you probably actually have two or three sociopaths inside your platoon and
[01:49:35] and then look you also get some guys that just you know like like shun shun shun
[01:49:41] strum he's not necessarily a sociopath but you know who knows how this guy was raised maybe
[01:49:47] okay so somebody gets smacked around you know occasionally you beat someone up
[01:49:53] violence is part of you know culture in some parts of America and some families in America
[01:49:58] like that's what you grew up with so that's what you get so to once again to answer your question
[01:50:04] you got to put you got to put the very clear guardrails in place that said hey look this is
[01:50:08] what we're doing this what we're not doing and then you have to have the the consistency that
[01:50:13] when you say something the guys know that you are not playing around and that you are going to fall
[01:50:18] through with whatever it is you say and and and I think where guys get caught sometimes from a
[01:50:23] leadership perspective is they don't put out those guardrails and then when Ben crosses the line
[01:50:29] and you do something you weren't supposed to do I feel kind of bad because I didn't even tell you
[01:50:33] not to do it so I'm looking at you on well I guess I'm going to you know send you to court
[01:50:37] marshal now and you're going wait a second you know we killed three guys on that last operation
[01:50:42] and four guys on the operation before that now you're mad at me because I killed somebody
[01:50:46] well what were the circumstances well you didn't talk to me about any circumstances well you
[01:50:50] got to know the rules of engagement well I know the rules of engagement that seemed like that
[01:50:52] way to me so you see where I'm going with this I have to be very clear about what the line is
[01:50:59] and why we cannot cross it it also seems like like an extreme team environment like I
[01:51:07] said like in football it seemed like there was some sociopaths there too and actually no of one
[01:51:14] who's I think he's still in jail right now but he in an extreme team environment it's like people
[01:51:21] who are just normal people who are I'm down for the team they get influence just to do stuff
[01:51:25] good and bad just because of the team environment do you find that a lot 100% where it's like I mean
[01:51:33] actually you know it now that I'm thinking of like the massacres certainly yes for sure I mean I'm
[01:51:38] asker that's definitely what happened like although that's what we're doing okay we're ready for
[01:51:42] you know I've been talking a lot about this lately is just the fact that people human beings are so
[01:51:46] so their brains are so applyable you can program a person so easily to believe whatever and by the
[01:51:52] way it's happening all day long right now with all these people out there that are looking at
[01:51:55] their social media all day long that's they're getting program you're receiving information
[01:51:59] you don't even know what you're you're seeing and it's happening right now you know the the
[01:52:04] propaganda that's coming out from both sides from from Ukraine right it's like all you have people
[01:52:08] going high into the right on whatever image that they saw and you gotta take everything that's coming
[01:52:15] out of there where the grain is salt but what it's showing you is how easily influenced human beings are
[01:52:21] and that's a really negative thing but it's also really positive thing because you as a leader have
[01:52:25] the ability to say hey here's what's going on here's what we need to do here's why we need to do it
[01:52:31] here's why we can go to this line and we can't go past it and those are the rules that's that's
[01:52:38] what you need to do if you start to allow slack and then you develop a habit of allowing slack
[01:52:47] you're gonna have a freaking issue you're gonna have you're gonna you're gonna end up with issues
[01:52:50] if you don't have the ability to say hey listen dude just not we're not doing that
[01:52:54] uh one thing that's interesting in the in the seal teams is most of the guys want to do a good job
[01:53:00] and have a good reputation so when you say hey hey Ben we're not doing that or hey Ben it
[01:53:08] looks seem like you were thinking about doing something let me tell you why we're not doing it
[01:53:11] you don't go rules bullshit no you go they had got it boss thanks for explaining that to me it's not
[01:53:16] that hard but if I'm weak and you know that you end up with that dynamic in the military where you have
[01:53:22] a really strong personality or really strong yeah really strong in a brand new officer yep and
[01:53:30] if that that can that that's a classic scenario right that's the that's the damn platoon right that's
[01:53:37] the the movie platoon right you have you have Barnes and you have whatever that officer's name was and
[01:53:43] he just gets run rough shot over by Barnes and that's a perfect example that's a perfect example hey
[01:53:50] you're a new guy shut up you don't know what you're talking about this is the only way to win this okay
[01:53:54] well yes or yes yes sergeant Barnes and then you have a guy like alias who is saying hey but what
[01:54:03] what are you doing but he doesn't have the strength to back it up to into to get his platoon officer
[01:54:11] on board with what's happening so to classic thing to watch out for 100%
[01:54:16] um all right let's jump back into the book here go a little bit more forward going to chapter 4
[01:54:25] chapter 4 draper Kaufman and the course that cracked the Atlantic wall then laid the first bricks
[01:54:32] of the legends of navy the legend of navy special warfare so there you go um and this would just
[01:54:40] really you should have you should have saved that dramatic intake for the last chapter that's the
[01:54:48] longest of the they they they get there's only one that's short there's only one more that's coming
[01:54:52] that's short um i'm gonna read a little chunk from the book here landing at 0625
[01:55:01] one of the earliest crews to arrive Gregory and the army engineers had dragged their rubber boat
[01:55:07] into the surf lashed it to a wooden stake and run for the farthest belt of hedgehogs
[01:55:14] it looked impossible to be there without being hit one of karnowski's men remembered afterward
[01:55:22] it looked even worse without a helmet despite the chaos karnowski and the demolition years
[01:55:28] laid their charges ran out their primer court tied in and blew their charge the first shot
[01:55:34] was magnificent remembered one man after it nothing else was as soon as the charge blew machine guns
[01:55:41] opened up from everywhere and men pushed their bellies into the sand conrad millis a quiet california
[01:55:47] carpenter made chief petty officer for the example he had set during training grabbed the primer
[01:55:53] grab the primer court real and sprinted for the next row of obstacles he was identified later
[01:55:59] by the pack of explosives around his neck with a big hole in his chest
[01:56:05] as the waves of infantry landed the demolition job grew even more complicated
[01:56:09] terrified soldiers either did not notice the purple smoke warnings swirling around them or did not
[01:56:16] care i thought i'd never get one of the infantrymen out from behind a piling a demolition
[01:56:20] year confessed later he moved out just in time and our second shot went off
[01:56:26] as obstacles blew apart the army and navy sections began working together mingling as a single
[01:56:32] team regardless of the advancing tide lieutenant gregarie having destroyed the tank crippling
[01:56:38] hedgehogs at the far end of the beach turned away from the enemy and splashed back into the
[01:56:43] surf like a man possessed he waited or swam to each remaining stake where he waited until someone
[01:56:49] threw him a charge then using the lessons taught to him by the ncd use stretched his arms as far as
[01:56:56] they would reach and placed his bomb next to rommels then blew them to nothing
[01:57:08] so d day you you talk about this being the most consequential day in in the history of NSW
[01:57:18] there's a hundred and navy a hundred and ninety navy demolition years 32 of them are killed 65
[01:57:26] or wounded so that's a total number of casualties being at 97 this is 51 percent 51 percent
[01:57:34] casualties yeah i mean just in contribution or just in sacrifice it's uh um
[01:57:40] right i'll match as any other tragedy or uh that NSW has experienced it's far far exceed anything
[01:57:51] it'll at least in any single day experience and this happens mostly in the space of of around three or four
[01:57:58] hours uh gap assault teams um three and fourteen eleven they're all destroyed even before i'm
[01:58:06] right eleven destroyed as soon as it's ramp drops three and fourteen or destroyed uh
[01:58:11] destroyed before the ramps even drop there they would mourn mortars and just about everybody
[01:58:16] and all of a board is killed um it's the it's the most important day of the 20th century i mean it's
[01:58:25] the day that determines um whether or not Hitler's going to be removed from the continent um and it's uh
[01:58:33] uh it's tough to you know write this chapter and not make it you know out China everything else
[01:58:38] it's a um it's too much the chapter was twice as long when i you know when i finished the first
[01:58:44] draft it was i i wanted to i didn't want to leave anything behind i wanted you know every every
[01:58:50] gap assault team every every NCDU to you know have full representation i think there's 21
[01:58:56] um gap assault teams that that land i ultimately had to you know cut cut cut cut cut cut and try and
[01:59:02] you know consolidate as much as possible just so it was a readable chapter and i also had to like
[01:59:07] figure out what the hell am i trying to say in this thing you know i i expected that um
[01:59:13] writing history of the seal teams or writing how the navy had you know been the first to create this
[01:59:18] type of unit i always expected that it'd be tough to justify how i put the you know the army
[01:59:23] or a marine court chapters and it wouldn't be tough to you know justify the navy chapters
[01:59:28] the navy chapters would just sort of write themselves i just had to say what happened just say what
[01:59:32] happened i found the opposite to be true because you know it was you know what the army chapters
[01:59:38] and the marine court chapters all you really just you know trying to show like why these units failed
[01:59:42] or why they um why the you know they're uh senior leaders pulled the rug out from under them
[01:59:48] the navy chapters you're you're having to you know show how um you know a unit like the
[01:59:54] NCD use which is you know created just a solve one problem and that problem is the obstacles
[01:59:58] in France where the obstacles on the coast how did that why is that relevant you know to the
[02:00:03] ultimate creation of go anywhere you know enable commandos so i um it took a long time and it
[02:00:10] took multiple draft before i realized that the point of this whole thing or the the relevance to
[02:00:15] that story is not so much um you know the fact that they were uh you know just blowing up obstacles
[02:00:22] it's the fact that they left such an impression on the navy leaders after that you know there's
[02:00:28] you know there's you know all these um you know episodes of of naval bravery you know there's the
[02:00:33] experience of the uh uh the the the the the the the destroyers that ultimately save the day
[02:00:39] that pushed the army ashore these destroyers you know they're um they're on the outskirts of uh
[02:00:44] of the battle until um Admiral Hall uh uh uh the army the army is looking at what's happening on
[02:00:50] on a mobile beach there's there's there's successful landings on gold sword Juno there's successful
[02:00:54] landings at Utah beach everywhere the you know the you know the the you know the the landing to get
[02:00:59] troops ashore on dda is going well except here at Omaha Omaha you know the army commander's like
[02:01:05] i we might need to pull our troops off they might need to do something they've never trained to do
[02:01:10] which is a full scale evacuation in front of the enemy at Mohal who has um made it a point to make
[02:01:18] sure that he's in charge of the invasion until uh forces are firmly established ashore says no
[02:01:25] we're not doing that and he does what you know nobody has done up to that point which is push uh
[02:01:30] destroyers right up to the uh to the the as close to the coast as possibly pushes them 800 yards away
[02:01:36] uh from from the coast that's the same destroyers they they come in a flank speed and as soon as
[02:01:42] they get to about uh where their poles are about three feet off the bottom they all turn left
[02:01:47] and they all start going right along the coast so you have all this bravery that happens as
[02:01:52] as soon as they get you know to a point to the end of Omaha Beach you think all these ships
[02:01:56] are going to turn um and some of them do some of them have enough uh um um um depth where they're
[02:02:02] able to turn around the ships that don't they just they just reverse reverse uh and they just
[02:02:08] are going backwards and they're blasting uh away at these uh pill boxes and structures and some
[02:02:14] in some cases they are um they're blasting underneath uh the pill boxes so the pill boxes full of
[02:02:21] Germans just start tumbling off the uh uh off the escarpment um um so in all that I think I've seen
[02:02:29] that represented no it's like in saving private Ryan or anything like that no and everybody
[02:02:36] thinks 100 yards off the beach is freaking close everybody walks away or everybody you know
[02:02:45] comes away from you know the reading of Omaha Beach as this um as this victory of uh American
[02:02:52] infantry over you know the German obstacles um and that's true but there's also another truth and that's
[02:02:59] the um uh that's the commitment or that's the force that the Navy brought to bear on that day and
[02:03:04] then and the army would not have gotten off those killing fields or other killing beaches without
[02:03:08] the contribution of the US Navy but what I found was the point of this chapter was that with all of
[02:03:15] that with all of the the the the the contribution that the Navy had made with all the bravery um the
[02:03:22] the Navy walks away from that battle uh with knowing that the the greatest contribution that they'd
[02:03:30] given that day was with the naval over with with the NCDUs with the naval combat demolition units um
[02:03:36] they are awarded you know some this six Navy crosses um more silver stars and you can check a
[02:03:43] stick at they've got they they award the NCDUs only one of three uh presidential unit
[02:03:49] citations that are awarded from uh a naval unit on Omaha Beach um right so the reason that that's
[02:03:55] so important is because uh when the Navy when the dust settles uh and the the Navy is looking at you
[02:04:01] know they're entire contribution uh at Omaha Beach they know that uh they know how important the
[02:04:06] NCDUs contribution was and more importantly they know how important uh the the curriculum was
[02:04:12] the created these units and that curriculum I don't know if anybody uh in charge of Omaha Beach
[02:04:19] had realized what curriculum had created them but there are people that know and that curriculum
[02:04:25] is now um validated because of uh of everything the NCDUs did and that curriculum as you know
[02:04:33] you know develop a driver coffin yeah and the main part of that curriculum is hell weak
[02:04:38] yeah the the crucible of that curriculum is hell weak and then and the reason that it's it's
[02:04:45] developed is because you know it's the closest thing of the least draper coffin it ever uh
[02:04:51] coming contact with two combat I mean it's a um it at least it matches the experience the draper
[02:05:01] coffin it had when it came to uh combat he'd been you know we can get the draper coffin but um
[02:05:06] um it prepared the guys that went to Omaha Beach uh for exactly what they experienced you know they were
[02:05:16] they were wet they were cold I mean they'd spent almost 48 hours on on ships that were you know
[02:05:21] often some of these ships were sinking of prior to they were so overwhelmed with uh with water and rain
[02:05:27] and um uh that you know they went into battle cold hungry um often you know nearly all of them
[02:05:35] receasic they're all wretched their gut sounds they don't have anything in them when they hit the
[02:05:39] beaches um and then the uh the chaos that unfolds around them is uh they've they've gotten at
[02:05:45] least a taste of it uh on the beaches at Fort Pierce they you know they you know the you know the
[02:05:49] the so-solly day I mean they've been uh peppered with all these bombs going off around them um
[02:05:55] they were probably better prepared for what uh what they encountered than any other troops on Omaha Beach
[02:06:01] yeah the the hell week thing is definitely interesting um because it is it's shocking when you
[02:06:13] when you you look at it and you know the kind of people that show up just the numbers of people that show
[02:06:18] up I mean a class will start with a couple hundred people and by the time they're done with hell
[02:06:24] week they'll be down to 10 15 20 percent of that and these are people that enlisted in the navy
[02:06:34] that had a goal that told their families they were going to be navy seals that dedicated six
[02:06:40] years of their life to signing that dotted line they trained they worked they went to boot camp they
[02:06:45] gave up whatever other possibilities they had in life and they've poured all that into this one singular
[02:06:51] dream without a fallback plan to with no with the crappiest fall there's a fallback plan it just sucks
[02:06:57] sucks but I mean it's not like if you go to the marine court like and you don't you know get into the
[02:07:00] arms like you can still be a pretty awesome marine you're freaking infantrymen in the marine
[02:07:03] court which is a beautiful thing and it's the same thing with the army special operation so you don't
[02:07:06] make it through special forces training okay cool you're a freaking ground pounder which is awesome
[02:07:11] the navy you don't make it through seal training and if you have the mindset where you want to be
[02:07:16] some kind of a machine gun toten badass well guess what you don't make it through seal training
[02:07:23] you are literally not going to be a machine gun toting badass at all and and and that's a horrible
[02:07:30] horrible fate for these young guys but they know that that's their fate and yet with that fate
[02:07:38] they still bring that bell and people from every background people that were division one
[02:07:45] athlete so if every division one athlete wrestlers football players you name it swimmers runners they
[02:07:53] all quit people that were you know raised with a silver spoon in the mouth that went to ivy
[02:07:59] schools they quit people that were raised in the ghetto with really hard lives they quit some
[02:08:03] of them make it some of them quit same with the ivy league some of them make it some of them quit
[02:08:07] it's a crazy crucible and and we still don't even understand it we don't understand who's
[02:08:14] going to make it now I think the only thing that we we really know is where it came from that's about
[02:08:18] it and we don't and I mean as much as draper cough been wrote and I came I mean when I so I
[02:08:26] went to his daughter's house in indiana and she let me have you know two days just to go through
[02:08:35] this entire this humongous file cabinet he kept everything and I there was letters I mean tons of
[02:08:40] the letters between you know him family and friends one thing that he never really kind of
[02:08:46] talked about at least contemporaneously he only really talked about it in his oral history was this
[02:08:51] you know this hell week that he invented I mean and nobody really I mean all the guys that went
[02:08:56] through it talked about it he didn't even talk about you know his own experience going through it so
[02:09:01] after he created hell week and he didn't really create hell week all he did was compress you know
[02:09:06] that that curriculum that you know fill buckloom and all those other scouts and raiders they
[02:09:11] established it all draper coughman did was like okay I like this this is eight weeks long that's
[02:09:16] great let's put it let's make all this five days it's like I can do that well you're just going
[02:09:21] to cut out all this stuff you don't need like you know like sleep well just you know keep keep
[02:09:26] you keep it guy and he did it himself I mean he now lead you know it creates this he put
[02:09:30] himself through the training at 32 years old yeah 30 10 years old and he's a terrible athlete he's a terrible
[02:09:35] athlete just terrible swimmer he can't he can't qualify me his his eyesight he can't even qualify
[02:09:40] for the standards that he sets for himself or for sets for the program like he would not be he would
[02:09:47] not qualify for you know the course that he creates and he does it you visited you visited where
[02:09:56] Omaha Beach you visited four peers yeah how is that with the with the breadth of knowledge that
[02:10:02] you have when you're down there it's incredible it's um there's nothing quite like you know
[02:10:11] going to the places that you're writing about I could have gone I wish I could have gone to
[02:10:15] every single place that I wrote about I've kind of made it a mental mandate for me of a future
[02:10:20] book I'm never going to write about anything unless I go to the place um the uh there's a way to
[02:10:27] Omaha I mean there's a way to you know all of all of Normandy and I mean you I'm not sure
[02:10:37] which point you you should go to the cemetery at Omaha Beach if you should go to the cemetery first
[02:10:43] before you go to the beach heads and before you go to all the battlefields and point to Hawke
[02:10:46] or if you should go see the battlefields and point to Hawke and everything and then go to the cemetery
[02:10:51] either way um you're going to that cemetery and you're going to walk around it and the one thing
[02:10:56] you're going to see and there's a poem by Robert Frost when you before you go to that cemetery and
[02:11:01] it said something like you know uh don't talk um just listen just look and uh note the dates on
[02:11:13] these headstones note how young they were and they died for you and it's it's overwhelming
[02:11:21] and then to take that and then to go see the places where all of these guys were you see
[02:11:25] dog grain dog red and all the all the beaches and then you go to point to Hawke you can't even look
[02:11:30] over the cliffs I mean you see where these rangers they climbed up like and then I mean
[02:11:37] the Germans at the top are cut and ropes and they're throwing grenades and they're leaning over
[02:11:41] the cliffs and they're machine gunning them off the ropes and still they came um and the
[02:11:47] the section that you read of uh karnowski uh he dropped his helmet in the water before you know
[02:11:54] the operation even started before the you know the um for the ramp even dropped he did not have
[02:12:00] a helmet and you you know spent a ran you know from you know and and where was he going to get
[02:12:05] a helmet everybody else needed their helmet there's no other helmets to take and he you know ran
[02:12:09] a shore and um wasn't able to get a helmet you know for almost 24 hours you finally finally
[02:12:19] found a helmet there wasn't a task to somebody that uh he was able to take but yeah and how
[02:12:25] about four pierce four pierces really something then we can talk about four four pierces
[02:12:30] a bit later either there's a uh recently went to four pierces were their annual muster
[02:12:36] and um but yeah I four pierces one of the first places I went and um I didn't I didn't quite
[02:12:43] understand like uh what the island was like with the what the separation of Hutchinson Island was
[02:12:48] because four pierces the actual town it's on the mainland where Hutchinson Island were act you
[02:12:53] know that's what we call we'll call or that's what we call you know four pierces it's actually
[02:12:58] two separate islands there's it's an intercoast all uh island that separates you know from the
[02:13:02] Indian river and the Atlantic Ocean Atlantic is you know kind of a crushing surf and you can see
[02:13:06] all the rocks that are there I mean um the the idea of rock portage and everything like that we all
[02:13:14] you know we you know we always think of it as you know right there at the hotel del
[02:13:19] yeah you know you get this fairy tale hotel you know and and these you know you know you
[02:13:23] know you know humongous you know rocks they have the exact same rocks right there for pierce
[02:13:30] and they did the exact same rock portage you know it's just as dangerous then as it is now um
[02:13:35] but you you you you can see it I mean you uh you can see you know this is the birthplace this is
[02:13:40] where it all happened and it wasn't just the birthplace of you know the NCD used in the scouts and
[02:13:44] raiders but it was the birthplace of you know kind of uh American special operations thinking
[02:13:49] everybody took a turn at four pierces anybody was gonna do any sort of amphibious training any
[02:13:53] special unit was going to take a stop at four pierces the raiders the uh uh the army raiders
[02:13:59] that you know you know uh one of the subwoofer on the Dallas they all everybody everybody
[02:14:05] took a turn through four pierces it was the um um it was the garden bed of uh uh uh
[02:14:12] of special operations thinking at the time so um yeah and if you you might just mentioned the
[02:14:19] the UDTCL museum which is down there in four pierces and that's freaking unbelievable it isn't
[02:14:24] awesome thing that they're continuing to build down there yeah um couldn't have done the book
[02:14:30] without it oh really like as far as them given you information important you in the
[02:14:34] art direction you know it was the first place that I went to and it was um um this was I went there
[02:14:41] before I even knew what an archive was and their archive is um it's not it's not really an art
[02:14:49] I mean it's a it's a it's a room with a bunch of file cabinets and the first time that I went in
[02:14:54] there you know nobody um uh nobody told me what I couldn't look at I mean I just I just went
[02:15:02] in there with a camera and you know I got to work I didn't know where World War II was and
[02:15:06] where Korea was Vietnam but it's all in there and I was gathering stuff that you know um I
[02:15:14] didn't know what I was looking at I took a thousand pictures away my first day at an archive and
[02:15:18] it took me a month to go through them and just to sort of you know figure out this is this this is
[02:15:22] that you know this is an operations plan for Okinawa this is a you know this is an operator for
[02:15:29] you know a trained demolition raid in Korea something like that I mean um but yeah that was the first
[02:15:36] time that I you know really kind of got the evidence of the cold case mystery that I was trying to
[02:15:42] sort out um all right let's move on to and again I've already told you
[02:15:52] if you're listening to this to buy this book and to do it as quickly as you possibly can
[02:15:56] we're literally just hitting wave tops on this stuff there's so much incredible information
[02:16:01] obviously D-Day I mean I read one I read two paragraphs about D-Day there's an entire incredible
[02:16:06] section about all of it about draper Kaufman who we covered him a lot on the first the first time
[02:16:14] you were on because he's such a inc such an incredible character he's not the guy that you would think
[02:16:21] created or was one of the one of the lead role players in creating this organization that we have
[02:16:28] he's a guy you know you know you pointed out on that first podcast is he's a guy that was
[02:16:37] didn't really want to be he didn't want to be some kind of commander he wanted to be a
[02:16:40] a naval officer that wasn't charge of a ship and it just what wasn't gonna happen for him as I
[02:16:44] say it was bad it wasn't gonna happen and he just made things happen he looked around and said
[02:16:50] all right well what can I do and what does the military need what does the what does the what does
[02:16:57] the the the fighting people need because he wasn't necessarily gonna work for America either
[02:17:01] is I who's fighting I'm in yeah I think that's an important I mean for anybody who's trying to
[02:17:07] be a seal right now I mean whether you succeed or whether you don't I mean there's so many ways to
[02:17:11] serve your country I mean here's a guy who spent four years that naval academy hoping to fulfill
[02:17:15] his dream to be a destroyer sailor he wants to just be on a destroyer that's all he wants and it's
[02:17:21] you know the rugs pulled out from under him right at the moment he's he's ready to take the fleet
[02:17:26] and he's got to come up with plan B there's an old plan B he's gonna be but he doesn't you know
[02:17:31] let that paralyze him he when he doesn't see a way to contribute to his country he makes one up
[02:17:41] and he makes one up again the thing that just keeps the his guiding star in that whole process
[02:17:48] it's just like I want to be useful I want to you know help and I want to be as close as I can to
[02:17:54] you know to that to that help and if I can you know if I can't fight then I'll carry
[02:17:59] all carry stretchers I'll be an ambulance driver if I can't be an RAF pilot or if I can't be on a
[02:18:05] British ship then I will dispose the bombs that are landing in central London if I can't be a ship
[02:18:11] driver in the US Navy then I will teach the rest of the Navy how to dismantle bombs I'll do whatever I can and then
[02:18:17] money's anyway yeah that's it's an incredible incredible story that it's just crazy it's a crazy
[02:18:27] thing he's a he comes a French ambulance driver and then becomes a British naval officer and then
[02:18:34] finally they eventually led him into the US Navy that's crazy yeah I mean if you want to like for
[02:18:40] somebody and his dad is one of the most famous destroyer skippers in the Navy and his dad I mean
[02:18:46] who clearly loves the sun I mean you see the you see the paralysis and you know like we talked
[02:18:53] about last time the paralysis and the letters between the two like he knows that the sun's
[02:18:58] going to be committed or sent on these you know terribly dangerous missions it's never been done
[02:19:03] before like when before draper coffin heads out with UDT5 to scout the beaches for a
[02:19:09] side pan his dad knows that these guys are going into combat with nothing and the letters are
[02:19:16] you know he signs them off you know just the same way you know anybody any any other dad would you know
[02:19:21] love you lots and lots of luck and that's all I can do like it's all I can do for you it's not going
[02:19:27] to be a second or see it on a sun's behalf craziness chapter five the evolving contest that
[02:19:37] created the merman of war world war two is only indispensable special operations unit so we we
[02:19:46] we have that controversy about the merman yes we don't really like that term we don't but it's
[02:19:52] out it's what got used right well yeah yeah they used it I mean that's the I think that was the
[02:19:58] the rigley spirit mack gum hour that was on the radio I mean that's where it came from they called
[02:20:05] they came to merman of war yeah unfortunate little puppy's history but we can't change it
[02:20:12] all right going to the book here real quick and the in the late summer of 1943 right about the same
[02:20:17] time that draper coffin was putting himself through hell week U.S. commanders in the Pacific were
[02:20:21] about to initiate two campaigns with one ultimate objective the invasion of Japan blocked by a
[02:20:29] swath of ocean five times the size of the sahera and whose every atoll had been turned into a
[02:20:34] Japanese fortress the strategy to accomplish this objective was wanting which the allies would leap
[02:20:40] frog most islands especially the most robustly defended let them wither on the vine said Douglas
[02:20:47] MacArthur and sees a handful upon which they could build airfield substantial enough to support
[02:20:53] the long range four engine bombers needing to need it to soften up the next handful on the way
[02:21:00] to mainland Japan in the south Pacific this path would progress from the mountainous jungles of
[02:21:06] guadal canal to a nearby group of similar islands many well chartered and populated and all
[02:21:12] of them battle fields large enough for the U.S. armies and MacArthur's ambitions in the central
[02:21:19] Pacific this path would start some two thousand miles west of Hawaii in the Gilbert island chain
[02:21:25] the first Lily Pans large enough to support bomber sized airfields but so small so remote
[02:21:32] so daunting that their volcanic spines of white sand and green palms could almost be mistaken
[02:21:38] for the rigid backs of a thousand sea monsters and there was only one branch of service
[02:21:45] that could lead the hunt against those the same branch that would go on to break hitlers at
[02:21:51] land at wall but employing in altogether different kind of method indeed a method unlike any
[02:21:59] in military history so you're setting us up pretty strong there right
[02:22:07] for this to make them for the merman true true this is the first time the navy is kind of
[02:22:15] the master of the battle space first time in history and that's gonna play into a significant role
[02:22:22] because we need to get on to these islands we need to figure out how to get on to these islands
[02:22:29] and there's this weird little gap this weird little gap of information this weird little gap of
[02:22:34] tactical control that no one really knows how to fill what's the what's the myth behind
[02:22:47] Taurua the Taurua is every history that I'd ever read about the seal teams
[02:22:54] starts with a vineet about Taurua and that Taurua is this meat grinder battle in 1943
[02:23:07] in which the Marines they take this island and the central Pacific and in three days
[02:23:17] the Marines lose as many men as they've lost in the entire six month battle for Guadalcanal
[02:23:22] it's it's it's the first time that Americans realize that this is going to be this is going to be
[02:23:30] something this is like the Shiloh moment in the Civil War where Americans realize this is going to be
[02:23:36] everybody's terrible it's going to be a monster and you're going to have to do this on island
[02:23:42] on every island across the Pacific to get to Japan if we're going to carry this you know
[02:23:48] FDR's policy of unconditional surrender against the Japanese this is going to be a bloody
[02:23:55] bloody battle or bloody way to do it and so the idea is that you know part of the reason the
[02:24:03] Taurua was such a meat grinder is because the landing craft couldn't get past the coral reefs
[02:24:08] which is true the landing craft couldn't get past the coral reefs and that's going to be a problem
[02:24:13] on every subsequent battle but the Marines had already anticipated that the Navy had already
[02:24:18] anticipated that and they had fielded a new technological solution to overcome it which was the LVT
[02:24:23] or the amphibious tractor it wasn't landing craft as much as it was you know a tractor that could
[02:24:29] float and it certainly got to a coral it would just crawl right over it I think they brought 125
[02:24:37] Tatarua there I think there's only a handful left by the end of the first day the rest are
[02:24:44] technologically they're broken so the subsequent days the only Marines that can land to support
[02:24:53] her you know they're kept on the outskirts of the battle by this coral reefs so they have to
[02:24:58] you know drive up the Higgins boats they drop their ramps the Marines rush out into the coral
[02:25:02] and they jump into the lagoon and then they got this 3,000 yard wave to shore where they've got to
[02:25:07] you know deal with mortars the sheen gunfire and there's a you know pilots that are flying above
[02:25:12] this tragedy and and they the the record is that you know this lagoon this you know pristine blue lagoon
[02:25:20] it never it's never free of red I mean it's just it's a it's a see a wash with red the entire three days
[02:25:29] and and it's it leaves an impression on everybody encounters it just because of the
[02:25:36] you know the Marines that are being pulled from this lagoon for the next three days they can
[02:25:39] play there just know they don't have hair they're completely swollen it's a it's a crime scene every
[02:25:43] every single person in there that's a crime scene so the you know the myth is that because of this
[02:25:51] you know the navy decides that they have to on every subsequent battle they've got to
[02:25:57] creating unit that can destroy the coral so the landing craft can get in there which is true sort of
[02:26:03] the landing craft you know the the the coral is a problem and it does need to be destroyed
[02:26:07] the bigger issue that creates the UDT which ultimately creates a seal team is not so much the
[02:26:15] coral as it is the fact that the navy is at this point in the war they're not given access to the
[02:26:24] Marine Corps special units because the Marine Corps like I said in chapter one they have elevated
[02:26:30] their status to such a point that they are now on parity with the navy so up until that point the
[02:26:35] Marine or the the navy had this impression that the Marine Corps was at subservient service and on
[02:26:41] every battle navy add rules could trump Marine Corps generals but at this point in the war Marine
[02:26:47] Corps generals they're just as they're they're on they're on par with their their navy add
[02:26:54] rules so if the navy wants to send out reconnaissance troops a special reconnaissance mission or
[02:27:00] if they wanted to conduct a raid or anything like that they've got to go through the Marine
[02:27:03] Corps because they're the only guys that are there they only service that has a unit that could do
[02:27:08] any of those things so when Turner Turner is the the commander of the fifth amphibious force
[02:27:15] he does not he hates this policy absolutely hates it he's the he's the biggest I describe
[02:27:23] Ms. the the first a personification of an actual life aab and the pacific theater he is he's the
[02:27:31] biggest the biggest dick that's ever served in the the the surface navy he's a he's a he's a
[02:27:38] he's a tyrant almost and he absolutely hates the fact that he does not have control of the
[02:27:44] Marines in the way that he anticipated having control of the Marines so he's not as concerned about
[02:27:50] destroying the coral as he is with having his own unit that he can control that he can send out to
[02:27:56] find out information and either find it out cut it out whatever that's why he creates the UDTs
[02:28:03] it's not a it's not a issue of coral as it is a control yeah one of the characters
[02:28:13] that you cut I guess James Jones from the recon company what's this guy all about James Jones is
[02:28:22] so one of the options that the navy had prior to this sort of re-alignment or reassessment of
[02:28:28] Navy of Marine Corps authority would would have been the back recon company the the the
[02:28:33] the back fifth amphibious force VAC that would have been a unit that Kelly Turner Admiral Turner
[02:28:41] would have had access to to send on special special missions special assignments including missions
[02:28:47] to destroy coral fine coral things like that but now that the Marine Corps is you know has the
[02:28:54] status that it does you know it doesn't really have access to this unit anymore but it's a it's sort of
[02:29:00] the the replacement for the Marine Corps Raiders it's not as big as the Raiders were intended to be but
[02:29:06] they they they sort of formed us unit around James Jones he's a he's a really interesting character
[02:29:13] he was a tractor salesman in Africa before the war and just by being a tractor salesman he
[02:29:20] manages to pick up multiple languages is a really really interesting guy and he was one of the initial
[02:29:27] guys that put in charge of the of the observer group which was the unit that ultimately became
[02:29:32] the scouts and Raiders is a side note he is the father of James Jones the national of
[02:29:43] Obama's first national security advisor. Great father or grandfather father wow he's a father
[02:29:50] and I so when I was doing my initial research for this I was trying to get an interview with with him.
[02:29:57] No no dice I was close I had I was going back back and forth with his secretary he has a
[02:30:08] not a non-profit but like a strategic thing thing thing and I was going back and forth with his
[02:30:13] secretary couldn't make it work so no dice you're right no dice no dice and well then what happened
[02:30:20] with the with the back with them the back re-con company they initially they they have some
[02:30:31] a pretty pretty impressive raids right around the time of tarua they they raid a little island of
[02:30:40] apamama that's you know it's kind of a it's a similar make an island style raid they use the same
[02:30:47] submarine that they the Raiders use for making island they they it's it's kind of a textbook
[02:30:56] island raid you know navy and marine core cooperation but after after that they they don't really
[02:31:05] do much until the battle of Okanawa and the reason that they're important is because they're kind of
[02:31:10] once the UDT are created you can see how important the UDT become and how less important every
[02:31:17] other unit becomes and at one point the back re-con company doesn't really have a mission so they
[02:31:23] assign them to the UDTs and so they take every marine that's in the back re-con company that can swim
[02:31:28] and they plug them into a UDT do they actually get transferred to the navy or no no they don't get
[02:31:35] transferred and by Okanawa they they separate themselves from the UDT again and they're back
[02:31:41] to doing their sort of island raids but until Okanawa there's not a lot of other like little
[02:31:45] satellite islands to do the things that they they were trained to do and then what about the USS
[02:31:53] Burfish recon of of YAP this was a UDT UDT 10 operation what was going on there yeah that was one of the um
[02:32:06] that's in August of 44 there's a series of sort of secret um reconnaissance so after the Tinian
[02:32:16] reconnaissance which draper coffin leads um it's a it's a combined reconnaissance between uh back
[02:32:23] recon so the marine recon and UDT swimmers um the navy really sees the potential of doing these
[02:32:31] night secret reconnaissance of various islands so the next group of islands that the uh uh specific
[02:32:39] planners are hoping to capture are in the pull out so pelaloo that whole episode in the war so one
[02:32:45] of the satellite islands of pelaloo is this island of YAP and uh so the USS Burfish with a contingent
[02:32:54] of UDT swimmers half of whom are uh not haven't really been trained in the traditional UDT curriculum
[02:33:03] which they established at Maui but um half of them are actually OSS maritime swimmers they send a
[02:33:10] combined uh recon team ashore at YAP uh three of the swimmers get separated from their boat the boat
[02:33:17] ends up paddling back to the uh the U.S. at Burfish which is the submarine uh they come back
[02:33:22] out the next night trying to recover uh the swimmers hoping that they've managed to stay alive ashore
[02:33:27] and not get captured um but they uh after the second night they realized they're not going to be
[02:33:32] able to have a link up and uh three swimmers get left behind and they are three they're the as far
[02:33:39] as I know they're the only three missing um well there's there's a couple of others but um
[02:33:44] they're three on accountant for and SW members out there we still have not recovered their bodies
[02:33:50] we think um based off of the research of one uh archivist at uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh
[02:33:58] the national archives uh who's also uh Moonlight says a historian himself named patch he's put together a
[02:34:03] pretty uh pretty convincing argument the the bodies are probably a bubble through app um they're
[02:34:10] buried with uh handful of other uh captured American aviators but we have not not found them there's
[02:34:16] an effort right now uh by project recover uh to try and track their bodies down
[02:34:24] alright um but like likely they were captured they were bounced around the Japanese tried to
[02:34:30] you know do a cover up of their execution they said that they were put on a transport uh
[02:34:35] bound for the South Pacific back to the Philippines uh based off of the research the night patch
[02:34:40] did it looks like that was all just manufactured and they were killed right there
[02:34:45] so that that chapter kind of kind of brings the the underwater demolition teams sort of how
[02:34:51] how we really got the traction going on the underwater demolition team's and then in chapter six
[02:34:56] you start going into just the the uh totally different aspect of warfare i mean a totally
[02:35:04] different aspect of warfare chapter six is called the contest for gorilla war in China and the
[02:35:10] organization that had no damn business fighting it the US Navy's army of soldiers and this is definitely
[02:35:19] one of the wildest um sections in the book all pretty much sentinel centered around this this guy
[02:35:27] miles um who this is like a whole book onto itself of course i guess i say that over again
[02:35:36] for all your characters but this guy's insane no i mean i literally at the end i guess he is insane right
[02:35:42] i mean the effort breaks him it completely breaks him he's uh he's committed uh to a mental
[02:35:51] institution uh it takes him several months to and part of that's drug induced i mean he's self
[02:35:57] medicating by the end of the war um taking an incredible uh cocktail worth of medicine just
[02:36:02] to you know either stay awake go to sleep and then uh deal with the the pain uh that he's
[02:36:08] deal with the in the fever too he's got almost constant malaria throughout the entire war but yeah i
[02:36:13] mean of all the guys that i i mean i say there's kind of a um uh a horse race uh in my head for who
[02:36:19] is the weirdest character in the war and miles is definitely leaning for the tape i mean he's like
[02:36:25] yeah i mean he's he's fascinating in um in the sense of how unremarkable he seems like when you meet
[02:36:32] miles like he seems like any other ship officer that you would encounter just like a few
[02:36:37] you know did a visit or any of the you know uh other guys you know he's he's not a physical
[02:36:42] specimen he's kind of you know nerdy looking he's just forgettable he's totally forgettable he's not like
[02:36:48] he's not like a exotic person he's not like uh he's not like a Lawrence of Arabia type character at all
[02:36:55] and yet he does every i mean what he contributes to the war is every bit as remarkable as
[02:37:00] as a Lawrence of Arabia yeah i mean we we were on over the figures on the last time you were on
[02:37:04] this podcast but he ended that there this massive gorilla force that he ends up running
[02:37:08] with no business doing with no business doing that and that's what that's from the title
[02:37:12] no damn business that comes from another navy officer one of miles friends he's like
[02:37:16] we have no damn business doing that i found the letter like if if you know one of miles
[02:37:22] as friends thinks that you know we the navy has no damn business then what hope did we really
[02:37:27] ever have yeah and yet the impact that they had was completely strategic they end up killing
[02:37:32] um someone in the neighborhood of twenty five thousand i think enemy japanese soldiers but more
[02:37:37] important tying up a million of them but only lost a handful of Americans i doesn't account for
[02:37:45] the number of chinese lost i mean yeah but yeah right i mean the the chinese contribution is you know
[02:37:50] it's unaccounted for and you know significant but yeah only i some six six american
[02:37:57] uh six american deaths in the entire effort which is a you know the effort you know stretches
[02:38:02] from nineteen forty two to all the way to nineteen forty five i mean it's it's absolutely right
[02:38:08] there should be a book written about this and when i when i got into this i didn't want to
[02:38:11] write this chapter i was so tired of not so tired but i was like i was so anxious to be done with
[02:38:16] world war two when i finished my UDT chapter and i was so ready to move on to Korea i just want
[02:38:21] a different scenery different a different a record group with the national archives uh when i got
[02:38:26] to this point what i mean all i wanted to do is leave and i was just trying to like
[02:38:30] take this china stuff and kind of stuff it into like an introductory section of my Korean war
[02:38:35] chapter and i couldn't do it one chapter or one page became two pages and became three pages and
[02:38:40] four pages and i'm like mother mother had to write a whole new chapter and derailed my entire timeline
[02:38:46] for you know finishing the book what's the movie potential for uh for this for this i think that
[02:38:51] i mean i think you know if you have to if i was gonna say like which of these i think they
[02:38:56] could all be movies but you know if you haven't seen we've seen you know say we're private Ryan
[02:39:04] we've never seen a uh a representation of a real war like what happened in china and world
[02:39:12] war two it could totally it miles as such a you know interestingly an interesting character he could
[02:39:18] be like i mean he's interesting in the fact that he's so boring but he does i mean he's i mean
[02:39:25] survives 40 assassination attempts he's uh he's a naval officer who's involved and and probably
[02:39:32] more ground combat than anybody else uh in history yeah including a freaking cavalry charge on
[02:39:38] camels yeah it's nuts it's nuts the whole thing is nuts but yeah that the movie potential of
[02:39:44] chapter six is high i think the movie potential of you know the UDD chapter is just as high too
[02:39:49] i mean that's i mean the i mean the emergency or i i can see a movie of you know these guys you
[02:39:55] know totally you know going into battle with just knives and you know fins and masks let me
[02:40:01] pretty need you have another character that you bring in here uh going to the book at 60 years old
[02:40:07] thick jowled and with white hair parted just off center wild build dawn event a nickname he had
[02:40:13] earned as a volunteer leading soldiers through mud gas and death on the western front looked in
[02:40:19] his uniform nothing like the head of an insatiable unconventional warfare organization and more
[02:40:26] like an overweight toddler playing dress up for signs of the former one had to look elsewhere first
[02:40:34] to his left breast where he had humbly affects a single ribbon his metal of honor in effect saying
[02:40:41] to his peers that no other awards mattered and second to a career as an attorney as a new
[02:40:48] York attorney and politician occupations that it introduced him to everyone from movie stars to
[02:40:53] Mussolini and taking him farther around the world than most presidents he had been to cyber
[02:40:58] it aside as a bolster vix to the far east a hunt down business Ethiopia to toward the Italian
[02:41:03] front the balklands turkey and Spain as a presidential presidents unofficial envoy in past ages
[02:41:10] a hero milionaire like donovan could have responded to a world crisis simply by raising his own
[02:41:15] regiment equipping it and leading it into battle in the 20th century such impulses had been curbed by the
[02:41:22] increasing complexities of modern warfare and a corresponding bureaucracy that recognized the limited
[02:41:28] value of eccentric amateurs metal of honor not now blocked from commanding regular troops donovan
[02:41:35] courageous entrepreneurial imaginative and most of all unstoppable had set his sights on the
[02:41:42] only field of action whose battle lines had not yet been drawn and on the one man who stood in his way
[02:41:53] what's up with donovan dude well it's an it's an impossible contest i mean
[02:42:01] donovan is when i when i set out to write this not this chapter but when i i i set out to write
[02:42:09] an OSS chapter and i i was attracted to it just because of donovan he is a i mean there should be a
[02:42:18] donovan movie he's i mean all the you know the stories about jad or Hoover you know dressing up
[02:42:25] women's clothes these are rumors that donovan started i mean he's responsible for so much and
[02:42:33] you know what when you say that you mean he actually was responsible for starting the rumors about jad
[02:42:38] or Hoover jump dressing up in women's clothing he yes that's what we're saying i'm saying yes he is
[02:42:43] responsible i'm not saying that this isn't hypervaly this is what this guy did no in the reason he did
[02:42:48] that is because at the time the OSS and the FBI were in some sort of competition for the international
[02:42:56] intelligence mission and one of the two across dresser he wanted to delegitimize his rival is
[02:43:01] best as he could i mean and and at the same time jad grouver was he was putting rumors out there
[02:43:09] that donovan was having an affair with his daughter and law so they were both at each other from like
[02:43:14] so is there any truth through the rumor of jad grouver dressing up in women's clothing i don't know
[02:43:17] about that but i think there is suspicion that donovan was actually having an affair with his daughter
[02:43:21] and law that's not the life yeah that's that's pretty uh and so how does he play into our
[02:43:27] story here for for the development of the seal teams so donovan's important because donovan
[02:43:32] sees what the navy's doing in china any once it he doesn't think the navy should have anything to
[02:43:37] do with this uh donovan has established himself as the uh the head of the international or head
[02:43:42] of the u.s intelligence organization which he has understood uh to include all sorts of special
[02:43:49] programs um so if there's going to be a guerrilla warfare effort in china o s s is going to be
[02:43:55] in charge of it so he comes to china um so first uh he tries to uh rope miles into the o s s and
[02:44:04] he establishes miles as an o s s not operative but uh head of an o s s program problem is um
[02:44:10] um donovan also wants to send all of his uh o s s folks uh to support so soko um but miles
[02:44:21] miles starts to receive these guys and they're all you know um a lot of these guys are you know
[02:44:28] they're you know pretty interesting guys but miles doesn't want anything to do with them
[02:44:32] they're like wannabes i get that it's for the wannabes it's for like they because because
[02:44:36] of his mile boondoggers he was who miles is getting is marine co officers like primarily right
[02:44:41] he's getting marine co officers in the beginning but what he really wants are people that don't
[02:44:45] know anything about china he doesn't want racist uh miles is um that weird he's the peculiar
[02:44:52] type of officer who actually he likes the the indigenous people that he's working with he doesn't
[02:44:58] want them to um i mean he's he's a perfect character for you know you know today but at the time
[02:45:05] like nobody really understands like what's his hang up he he's in fact you wait with china he's
[02:45:10] in fact we were with the chinese he thinks that these are uh uh you know members of the most you know
[02:45:17] one of the most civilized um you know uh countries on the planet um and he uh has a respect for
[02:45:25] them in a way that other america does don't um he he totally rejects uh the the orientalism or the
[02:45:33] uh the the superior american idea in that way he's he's just like you know teelorns i mean he's
[02:45:41] he's a believer he's the worst kind of person and so i mean he's like he actually my worst worst kind
[02:45:48] of person i'm really joking he's like um to other people he's uh he's not pliable he's um um he really
[02:45:58] believes in the potential of these uh uh chinese soldiers to tie the japanese down or to actually attack
[02:46:04] them and you know donovan comes in and donovan's a manipulator donovan's been manipulating for
[02:46:08] years um he's he you know managed to he he's world himself uh into positions his entire uh you know
[02:46:15] since since he got that metal of honor he's used it to you know plow pathways through your bureaucracy
[02:46:22] and to create a unit that never should have been created to create the so as that and to and some of
[02:46:28] his schemes are completely hair-bright um but some of them are not some of them are actually you know
[02:46:32] pretty good so he when he sees donovan he's trying or when he when donovan sees miles he first
[02:46:37] wants to you know put miles under his thumb and when miles can't be put under his thumb he tries to
[02:46:43] take the whole thing and leave miles with the weather stations that's all he wants to leave miles
[02:46:46] with he wants to take this entire guerrilla army that miles is starting to build um and he just
[02:46:52] ifies that because miles is some you know like like quote in the book he's not putting scouts other barrel
[02:46:57] had fast enough and he almost does it he gets real close but the thing that stops him is the
[02:47:04] Chinese won't work with Donovan but they do like miles they can smell the intent yeah right
[02:47:10] absolutely Donovan is freaking shady it's tough to you know I mean he has he's got to be shady a little
[02:47:18] he is I mean he you know it's tough to not you know respect out of and he's he's a character like
[02:47:25] and he you know but he's a he's a he's a toddler with a with a flamethrower all right can we go back real quick
[02:47:34] there's two characters that I want to talk about from the UDT I think that okay hit him Alan Gordon
[02:47:40] Leslie I was I was thinking about the contribution of other other branches of service to the UDTs
[02:47:51] Alan Gordon Leslie is a marine that gets attached to seal tea earth to UDT five he becomes
[02:47:58] draper coughman's executive officer of UDT five for the Battle of Sipan he is he's Canadian
[02:48:07] and I was thinking about him the other day because we're here in San Diego and I was walking
[02:48:13] through the hotel del and I was looking at this you know monument to you know Victorian architecture
[02:48:19] and everything and it was there you know during World War II and Gordon Leslie he goes through the
[02:48:26] entire war he he's one of the scout snipers who ceases the pier at Tara he shoulders a a flamethrower
[02:48:33] and assaults the entire pier so that there's this there's this pier you know cutting into the
[02:48:38] the lagoon that Tara and that that that pier would have threatened to cut into the flank of the
[02:48:45] the Marines that were landing on the beach so the Marines had to take it before they landed so they
[02:48:49] sent a scout sniper put him to do it and Gordon Leslie was the guy with the flamethrower he's fighting
[02:48:54] all you know pillbox to pillbox or the in placement to in placement and you know you know
[02:48:58] using the the flamethrower to destroy guys well he's got a machine gunner to his left and they're
[02:49:04] going down this incrementally taking the entire pier he survives the Battle of Tara and it becomes
[02:49:11] a he volunteer for the UDT as sort of a Marine Corlie's on but he falls in love with the UDT
[02:49:18] and manages to stay with them and the Marine Coral completely loses track of me they don't know
[02:49:23] where he is they think they think he's a casualty he stays with UDT five throughout the remainder of
[02:49:29] the war and when he ends the war he tries to transfer from the officially transfer from the Marine
[02:49:36] Coral to the UDT he wants to stay with the frogman that becomes so controversial it goes all the way
[02:49:41] up to the common dot to the Marine Coral and Marines say we're not losing a Marine to the Navy
[02:49:46] especially to the UDT we're we're gonna keep him so he's entitled to like $4,000 for the back
[02:49:52] pay it because he hasn't gotten three years so in in retaliation he takes his $4,000 he goes to the
[02:50:00] hotel del he slaps that $4,000 on the on the front desk reserves a peninsula of rooms
[02:50:07] in the del and he throws a two week bender it's so bad the Draper Kaufman has to put up a watch
[02:50:14] bill of officers to make sure that his frogman don't leave that wing of the hotel.
[02:50:23] Good times and who's the other guy you wanted to bring up?
[02:50:26] Normons are uh C. Moro and Scamander C. Moro and so one of the one of the the great
[02:50:35] things about you know doing the research for this book is you get to discover all of the
[02:50:39] uh the characters that weren't seals or that weren't frogman that contributed to the
[02:50:45] the importance or the the success of naval special warfare and one of those one of those
[02:50:50] that's always stood out to me is Commander C. Moro and he was a destroyer skipper
[02:50:58] and he was involved in the the fire support mission prior to the invasion of Tenian.
[02:51:05] So Tenian is the greatest strategic um battle probably of the entire central Pacific
[02:51:13] uh campaign. It's the island that ultimately becomes the uh um the airfield
[02:51:20] that they uh you know fly all the uh long range bombers to to bomb Japan on.
[02:51:26] That's it's where the anologate takes off from uh to bomb Japan it's it's a perfect
[02:51:31] uh table top island um but before it can be that it has to be taken and one of the the biggest
[02:51:39] coups of the war is Draper Coffman's reconnaissance of the of the beaches that uh nobody ever thought
[02:51:44] anybody could land on but in order to sell that in order to land all those troops on those
[02:51:49] uh beaches that nobody expects uh UDT7 has to stage this elaborate um ruse uh on the south of the island
[02:51:57] uh uh at Tenian town and so um on the day of the actual invasion when all the
[02:52:05] Marines are secretly sneaking into the uh the beaches of the Draper Coffman has found um the UDT7
[02:52:11] is you know conducting a daylight you know reconnaissance and they're protected by you know multiple
[02:52:17] battleships one being the USS Colorado and I'm like Colorado has lighted self up um a midships
[02:52:23] or uh uh uh with a broadside uh to the beach um and it takes devastating um uh nail gunfire
[02:52:31] uh shore gunfire um and the guns are knocked out and the suddenly uh all the swimmers of UDT7 are
[02:52:37] exposed and they're they're about to uh the Japanese are about to switch their guns away from the
[02:52:42] ships they're defending them two of the swimmers in the water now see more ons is the brother and
[02:52:46] law of Draper Coffman he sees what's happened he sees that the Colorado's guns have been knocked out
[02:52:52] and he commands his ship without orders he commands uh the Norman Scott to get between the
[02:52:58] Colorado so one the Colorado can escape and two so he can also protect uh the UDT swimmers that are
[02:53:04] in the water suddenly uh the USS Norman Scott becomes the center of all Japanese uh nail gunfire
[02:53:11] and it's destroyed uh i think 47 sailors are killed in the process uh including seymour owns but
[02:53:19] he does it because he knows how important it is to draw the Japanese attention away from those beaches
[02:53:24] in the north damn um we're doing we're doing we're doing uh i'll tell you i were doing
[02:53:36] we we're we're gonna stop for today uh that's the end of World War II right um and again um
[02:53:45] that's the end of World War II we hit some of the wave tops we hit there there's so much more
[02:53:49] incredible information in the book um get it but what we'll do is we'll just we'll just record
[02:53:55] another podcast um actually we'll just do it after this one so people can stay in the groove on it
[02:54:01] but i think that's about it for today because we're looking at we're already at three hours bro
[02:54:07] or at least real close to three hours so uh thanks for coming out Ben appreciate it um echo
[02:54:15] but what do you think any any major you know things you need to bring up
[02:54:19] oh no nothing major it's just interesting to hear all these all these stuff that was going on
[02:54:25] under my nose the whole time under your nose under all of our noses the whole time
[02:54:29] uh a if you want to support the podcast you can do it i'm i'm drinking some go right now
[02:54:36] probably how's that go taste and i use the set if i was in the middle you were in the middle of uh
[02:54:40] telling the cool stories and then you you said it's delicious you got mango mayhem right there
[02:54:44] you know that's echo Charles has got his own signature flavor that's how cool echo Charles
[02:54:48] thanks he is thank you to my first time i think i've ever had a
[02:54:54] energy drink well you know it's starting to get to the you're probably not going to sleep up on
[02:54:58] chapter drink that bad way so if you need some of that stuff get some jockel fuel jockel fuel dot
[02:55:02] calm uh that's where we're selling this stuff also vitamin shops got it going on
[02:55:07] wall walls got it going on for the drinks you know we have we have uh ready to drink milk coming
[02:55:14] that you're able to go into a store and just grab a cold milk out of the fridge salted caramel
[02:55:21] ever heard of that ever heard of the caramel's deadly a thing we got chocolate vanilla
[02:55:28] banana cream so the perfect milk we got a mix coming your way so we got that coming
[02:55:34] uh don't forget about your joint warfare and whatnot acrylic what else or to new essay
[02:55:39] dot com american made stuff american made stuff in our economy going in the right way
[02:55:45] well it'd be real easy it's real easy as i said the conversation with somebody other day like oh yeah oh
[02:55:53] all right the i saw another brand like that i was like no you did no you didn't there's no other
[02:55:58] brand like this there's no one else is doing this if someone goes oh you know we're going to get
[02:56:02] into the uh jiu jitsu market cool i'd take $7,000 and i ordered some rash guards from china
[02:56:13] and get imprinted cool now you got a brand bro no that's not what i'm talking about we invested
[02:56:19] our lives into this into buying the equipment capturing the know how you know you talk about
[02:56:28] how some of the people that you would you have interviewed that have since died uh and and you
[02:56:34] wouldn't have been able to capture the knowledge we've actually had that happened at origin people
[02:56:37] that the old timers and i mean that with all due respect the old timers the people that
[02:56:42] knew how to run a loom that people that knew how to work on machines that people that knew how to
[02:56:45] weave and knit they they passed this information out some of them were losing them now so
[02:56:53] if you started a brand for you know $4,000 by ordering some stuff from china and slap that
[02:57:00] hey good for you that's fine but let's face it's not too good for you don't do that you want to
[02:57:08] support a real company an american company go to originusa dot com we're making everything you need
[02:57:14] by the way jeans boots t-shirts sweatshirts rash guards whole nine yards so check that out
[02:57:20] originusa dot com also jockel has a store a hunt gear too you know you're seeing it coming and
[02:57:26] no no I know you like to wear camouflage pants for no reason necklature also to be camouflage
[02:57:31] well i mean just saying you that do use kind of survivalists survivalists prepper you're like
[02:57:37] just in case i got to go into the jungle i'm gonna be ready rock and roll we got this pattern
[02:57:42] there's a little bit of a tribute to our forefathers the pattern that we've made for camouflage
[02:57:47] is you know the obviously primary goal is to make sure it's effective but we were able to make it
[02:57:52] effective been while still giving a little bit of a of a shout out or not to the tiger
[02:57:59] strott to the tiger stripes so you know one we got one for the one for the highlands sort of the
[02:58:04] western colors and another one for the more like the eastern colors so we got like a woodland
[02:58:11] versus a more of a highland camis but yeah a little bit of tiger stripe activity it's coming
[02:58:17] both viable for me both yeah because you know you never know what you're gonna get it through
[02:58:21] that whatever I wore them I wore the heavy the hoodie there's no boarding yeah
[02:58:26] viable viable yeah right on there you go yeah possible joc was a store called jockel store
[02:58:32] so you can represent where you get your shirts to represent just plenty of free them good
[02:58:38] other stuff just a good way to represent on the path when you see somebody else wearing this
[02:58:42] kind stuff you know you know you know it's up subscribe to the podcast don't forget about
[02:58:46] jockel underground we appreciate your support that we've got done recording one this more of it's
[02:58:50] gonna be a long day in the office today bro is sir if you want to support jockel underground
[02:58:55] jockel underground dot com check that out we got a youtube channel we got some books
[02:58:59] primary book i want to talk about by water be me for walls look ben straight up i was being
[02:59:07] straight up with me before probably not the title we would have gone with you know it's hard to
[02:59:13] say it's a mouthful we have no idea what it means did you read the you read the
[02:59:19] of course i read it i get it there's a tie back to whatever battle took place nine thousand
[02:59:23] years ago and you want to make that to be yeah plus you like it's the wordy yeah i know
[02:59:29] we're actually surprised we're actually lucky maybe that was the short version of the title
[02:59:33] oh you should have seen the options i had for subtitle yeah man scary hey let me tell you
[02:59:41] all kidding aside this is an absolute this is an incredible book it's it's an incredible book
[02:59:48] the knowledge that it will give you is phenomenal it's also it's also really funny you've got
[02:59:54] you you're got you sit over there with your little dry scents a humor and that that dry scents a
[02:59:59] humor just shines through throughout the book and it's dramatic it's funny due to like a
[03:00:05] you know i feel like a commercial for some weird summer movie you know yeah it's like funny sad
[03:00:12] you'll laugh and you'll cry and that's true honestly in this book you'll laugh you'll cry you'll
[03:00:17] learn uh phenomenal book don't sleep on this book and and you know there's there's an audio book
[03:00:23] too who reads the audio book you know some random actor some dude i can't believe i can't remember
[03:00:29] his name kk not kk it's a collale Griffith's okay i listen to i listen to the sample just to
[03:00:38] kind of see what we were doing with it freaking good to go um yeah so you can get the you can get the
[03:00:44] the audio book is well and sort of like you you won't you'll feel like you're listening to a podcast
[03:00:50] or you'll feel like it's very engaging so yeah they did a support this book uh then put
[03:00:57] seven years of his life into this book i don't know how bad your eyesight got reading through
[03:01:02] all these things but you've you've made some sacrifices to get this book done and and as i said
[03:01:07] the first time you're on there's no one in my opinion uh a non seal couldn't have written this book
[03:01:15] in my opinion um and and i think the fact that you served the fact that you're a combat veteran
[03:01:21] that you were in the seal teams is you have a perspective that that comes through that an
[03:01:26] authenticity that comes through it's just a phenomenal book so by water beneath the walls
[03:01:33] by ben milligan get that book immediately you already know all the books i've written so get some
[03:01:37] of those two um if you need some help with leadership inside your organization and what's
[03:01:42] about decentralized command let us know hashlomfront dot com and uh if you want to go check out some
[03:01:49] battlefields we do an awesome battlefield review we do get you you've been to get his bird yeah
[03:01:55] we do get his bird we're also yeah if you want to come let me know uh and we also are doing
[03:02:00] little big horn this year so if you want to check those out go to go to hashlomfront dot com
[03:02:06] next muster's in Dallas wait is that the next one no we just did Dallas next one Denver come
[03:02:13] so we got a bunch of those events we got the online training academy which you know that thing
[03:02:19] we i started this thing to i'll talk about how you can't get all the lessons learned across
[03:02:23] to everybody that you want them to and that's one of the reasons we have the the online academy
[03:02:29] extreme ownership dot com the goal the mission of hashlomfront is to teach these lessons to
[03:02:35] as many people it's we possibly can that's the goal me life jp dav steet we can't get around to
[03:02:43] everybody but you know what everybody can get online extreme ownership dot com come and learn
[03:02:49] these lessons of leadership so that you can use them in every aspect of your life every aspect
[03:02:54] of your life you can you can help you you can help yourself um if you want to help service members
[03:03:00] you want to help active active duty service members you want to help retired service members you
[03:03:07] want to help their families of the gold star families any of those if you want to participate in
[03:03:12] an awesome charity marklies mom she's got an unbelievable charity organization america's
[03:03:17] mighty warriors dot org if you want to volunteer or if you want to help out and don't forget about
[03:03:22] heroes and horses dot com mike afink keeping people out of the algarit them getting them back
[03:03:29] contract as far as echo and i go we're both on twitter we're on the gram
[03:03:34] ecos adequate tross i'm at jockel will watch out for the algorithm where what's your what's your
[03:03:39] instagram handle call sign be miligan three be miligan three i think you should have made one longer than that
[03:03:49] i'm on the twitters and the wife oh you're on twitter too yeah okay is the same thing then
[03:03:55] can you help you make a big and three benage miligan on twitter benage miligan on twitter
[03:04:01] awesome a seriously thanks for coming on again thank you appreciate it it was fantastic it's always
[03:04:06] great to be here and thanks for riding that book thanks for reading that not not like that but thanks for
[03:04:13] you know it this it took a took a lot to do this and i'm being able to give this back to the
[03:04:20] the team was, you know, this is why I'm here.
[03:04:25] So this is my contribution to that institution that defined us.
[03:04:31] 100% man, awesome.
[03:04:34] And we'll pick this up where we left off on the next podcast.
[03:04:37] Thanks all the military personnel.
[03:04:38] Past and present who laid the ground work for progression,
[03:04:44] who laid the ground work for what we were able to do,
[03:04:48] via your lessons written in blood.
[03:04:52] So thank you.
[03:04:53] And thanks to all the police, law enforcement,
[03:04:56] firefighters, paramedics, E.M.T.'s dispatchers,
[03:04:58] correction officers, border patrol, secret service,
[03:05:00] and all forest responders out there.
[03:05:02] Thank you for what you do on the home front,
[03:05:06] so that we can be safe.
[03:05:08] And everyone else out there.
[03:05:11] Man, this is a story right here that we're talking about
[03:05:14] is about opportunities about so looking for opportunities.
[03:05:17] It's about taking ownership of what's going on in your world.
[03:05:22] It's about seeing where you can help out.
[03:05:25] It's about seeing where you can fill a gap.
[03:05:29] That's what this is about.
[03:05:31] The seal team just didn't sprout up from nowhere
[03:05:36] into this fully blossomed flower.
[03:05:39] Then happened at all.
[03:05:41] It happened one piece of dirt at a time
[03:05:45] to build up into something that's worthwhile.
[03:05:48] That's the way life is.
[03:05:50] And the only way that happens is if you go out there
[03:05:53] and get after it.
[03:05:55] And until next time, this is Ben Milligan,
[03:05:58] Dendeko and Jocco.
[03:06:00] Out.