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[Assistant] And that's one of the reasons why I heard so many quotes about SLA Marshall is while we were getting trained people would refer back to SLA Marshall and when I ran training I knew I had to bring it up sometimes because I'd say look here's what's going on. We need to think about this and I'll get to some of those points later.


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[Assistant] But training his methodology when he wrote this book, part of the focus is like, hey, we need to train people differently.


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[Assistant] And, and what he says about training is 100% valid. 100% valid.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. He needs to be taught the nature of the field as it is in war and as he may experience it someday. For if he does not acquire a soldier's view of the field, his image of it will be formed from the reading of novels or the romance written by war correspondents. Of which he was one, by the way.


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[Assistant] Or from the viewing of, or from viewing the battlefield as it is imagined to be by Hollywood. One of the purposes of training should be to remove these false ideas of battle from his mind. Totally agree. Absolutely.


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[Assistant] To give the soldier a correct concept of battle is a far different thing from encouraging him to think about war. This is, so think about what I just said. To give the soldier a correct concept of battle is a far different thing from encouraging him to think about war.


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[Assistant] The latter is too vast a canvas. It includes too much detail, which is confusing to his mind and immaterial to his personal problem. He's like, don't think about this big picture. You need to think about what's happening.


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[Assistant] Actually when Leif took over the junior officers course coming out of Buds, it was very focused on the big picture stuff. And it wasn't helping these guys being prepared to be in a seal platoon. And Leif was like, no, I gotta change this. You can still talk about the stuff and it's important to. You don't throw it out.


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[Assistant] You gotta teach people what the human experience on the battlefield is. And that's what Leif tried to do. And that's what I tried to do when I took over training. And my training was further along when I took it over. You know, we were already moving in that direction. It already reflected that. But a lot of the stuff that Leif was being taught in Leif's course was not


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[Assistant] The human experience on the field of battle. Leif tried to get that in there and he did a good job of it. Back to the book. The price for failure.


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[Assistant] So he's talking about to train these people correctly. The price for failure is paid all up and down the line. Men go into action the first time, haltingly and gropingly as if they were lost at night in the deep woods. Lives are wasted unnecessarily. Time is lost. Ground that might be taken is overlooked.


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[Assistant] They did a great job when I was going through my work ups. They did a great job of doing that. When I took over and was running training, we brought it even to the next level. It was freaking mayhem out there.


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[Assistant] And I had many people, and we're gonna have some guys that are retiring in the future that are coming on the podcast that went through my work ups. They will tell you, being an actual comp, that was easier. It was easier. And that's what my goal was. We want this training to be so chaotic. And when you think about this right here,


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[Assistant] When you think about law enforcement training, it should be the same way. You want these guys completely tested. You want it to be harder than anybody they ever have to deal with. You want the situation to be more stressful than they're gonna deal with in real life. And that's how you get them prepared.


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[Assistant] Is to relate the man to his fellow soldier as he will find him on the field of combat. To condition him to human nature.


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[Assistant] As he will learn to depend on it when the ground offers him no comfort and weapons fail. He talks a lot about human nature. I talk a lot about human nature.


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[Assistant] Yes, but it was, uh, You know how there's two sides to every story? It seemed like,


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[Assistant] To me, until I read about FACE, and I was like, okay, there's the actual side. There's the actual side. Because, you know, Hackworth said, look, this is what he actually did, here's his military records. So, but up until I read about FACE, it was kind of like, oh, SLA, oh, there's some weird stuff about his career, but you know, yeaah, kind of, what is it, grey area.


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[Assistant] But not everyone, some people would talk about him like he was the man. Without any demerits against him. Without any question against him.


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[Assistant] That was a crazy thing. I mean, when Hackworth was just talking about opening that I read, this is something that is just, when you read it you go, oh god. So, he's saying that, Hackworth is saying that, basically,


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[Assistant] Uhm, Slam had a lot of power, so he's just gonna stay on his good side. And then he's saying, how many other guys were doing that? How many guys were just staying on SLA Marshall's good side? Cause they wanted to continue their career, and in order to do that, they're like, oh you know, I'm not gonna say anything about it. And that actually bolsters his power, cause Hackworth at this time,


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[Assistant] Right, if you get a blessing from Hackworth, it's like, that's real positive. Remember what, remember what Mook, Jim Mukiyama said about Hackworth? He's like, everybody knew Hackworth, everybody knew him. He was Mr. Infantry. Coolest nickname ever, by the way.


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[Assistant] But when you got Hackworth going, oh yeah, yeah, I work with Slam, good guy, right? That's a little, oh, that's Hackworth saying that. So it's, it's like, and now there's other generals are saying this because everybody just wants to protect their little career. And he's saying he was opportunistic. This is Hackworth coming out straight up, calling himself guilty.


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[Assistant] And it doesn't work and you get blacklisted by SLA Marshall and now you don't make rank and now you're not in charge and they shove you off to some billet over in wherever.


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[Assistant] And now you have no, no more influence. Did you do a good job? Did you make a right call? If you play the game and you just go along with it and you try and get yourself to a position of power where you can actually have more influence than you would have had and you had to, you had to bite your tongue. Was that the good move?


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[Assistant] That's why you gotta be, that's why you gotta be tactful. You gotta think about what's going on. You gotta think about the long term consequences of what you're about to do. That's why leadership is challenging. And that's why playing these little political games, which you have to play in every different organization. People don't think there's political games in the military. No, it's a big political game. It's a big giant political game. And same thing in companies, corporations.


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[Assistant] Especially if you don't have a dog in the fight. I have to look at what the, what, what is this person doing that's benefiting anyone. If all they're doing is screwing people over, I'm gonna say something for sure. Yeah. If, if this person, if this individual is somehow


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[Assistant] You know, running a big charity organization, right? Right? Like that's a legit thing, right? That could happen is donate money or getting people to donate or whatever. Maybe I'd try and...


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[Assistant] Here's a, here's a situation that could unfold. If you call this person out, now that no one, now they stop whatever form of income they have, now no one that they owe money to is actually gonna ever get paid back. Right. So that could be problematic.


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[Assistant] But I don't like people taking people's money. So I'm gonna have a problem with this person.


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[Assistant] And I think the weird thing is social people, they don't, they don't, they don't, they don't be coming around me if they, I kind of give off the vibe of like, hey, you don't want to be acting that way around me. Yeah. So I don't have a lot of people like that hanging around.


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[Assistant] Only when human, rather than material, aspects of operation are put uppermost can tactical bodies be conditioned to make the most of their potential unity.


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[Assistant] So the human being, he's saying that human beings are more important. It is beyond question that the most serious and repeated breakdowns on the field of combat are caused by failure of controls over human nature.


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[Assistant] We all grant that the soldier must be trained for initiative and encouraged to think about what is problem while in combat.


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[Assistant] At the same time, our observation of the battlefield's reality makes it clear to us that we need men who can think through their situation and steal themselves for action according to the situation.


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[Assistant] So we don't want automatic response, we want people that can think. The thinking soldier, the man who's trained for self-starting, cannot be matured in a school which holds to the vestiges of the belief that automatic action is the ideal thing in the soldier.


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[Assistant] I hold it to be one of the simplest truths of war that the thing which enables an infantry soldier to keep going with his weapons is the near presence or the presumed presence of a comrade.


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[Assistant] The stranger was not introduced to his superiors, nor was there time for him to feel the friendly interest of his immediate associates before he was ordered forward with the attack. The result was the man's total failure in battle and his return to the rear as a mental case.


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[Assistant] So it is far more than a question of the soldier's need of physical support from other men. He must have at least some feeling of spiritual unity with them if he is to do an efficient job of moving and fighting. This is very important and I work with companies all the time. So you take an army unit.


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[Assistant] Because he doesn't under, he doesn't know anyone else. And he goes more into detail in this, in the, in the book. But that happens with companies, where they have someone new, new person check on board. They get hired, they check on board, no one meets them, no one greets them, no one becomes friends with them, they're in their own isolated little world, the pressure starts to come, and they bail. Or they break.


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[Assistant] He talks more about this in Chapter 4, which is called Combat Isolation, and there's a quote that it starts off from Major General Charles W. O. Daniel, and it says,


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[Assistant] Complex systems fall by the wayside. Parade ground formations disappear. Our splendidly trained leaders vanish.


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[Assistant] The good men which we had at the beginning are gone. The raw truth is before us.


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[Assistant] Law of Combat, number two, keep things simple. That's exactly what he's talking about. You gotta keep things simple. But, he's also saying that everything that you come up with, these complex things, they're gonna fall apart in combat. That's what happens.


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[Assistant] And now we're talking about the name of the chapter, Combat Isolation, and he starts talking about...


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[Assistant] What it's like when these soldiers get on the battlefield, he's talking about the battlefield's cold and the, and it's harsh and it's empty and there's, it's, it chills a man's soul is what he's saying.


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[Assistant] And then when the fire starts, here we go back to the book, he finds himself suddenly almost alone in his hour of greatest danger. And he can feel the danger, but there is nothing out there, nothing to contend against. It is from the mixture of mystification and fear.


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[Assistant] That there comes the feeling of helplessness, which in turn produces greater fear.


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[Assistant] That is what green troops are up against. Time and again I have heard them say after their first try at combat, By God, there was never a situation like it. We saw no one. We were fighting phantoms.


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[Assistant] And as frequently they have, and as frequently they have added this, though their convictions about the matter were wholly at odds with the fact of the situation, we had to do it all alone. We got no support on either flank.


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[Assistant] So he's talking about the fact that, well you feel alone on the battlefield.


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[Assistant] And that, that's what he's talking about. He goes on. The enemy, now he's talking about a firefight situation. The enemy fire builds up. It's aim becomes truer. The man spread, the men spread further and further from each other, moving individually to whatever cover is nearest or affords the best protection. A few of them fire their pieces.


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[Assistant] At first they do so almost timidly as if fearing a rebuke for wasting ammunition when they do not see the enemy. Others do nothing. Some fail to act mainly because they are puzzled what to do and their leaders do not tell them.


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[Assistant] Others are wholly unnerved and can neither think nor move in sensible relation to the situation. Such response as the men make of two enemy fire tends mainly to produce greater separation in the elements of the company, thereby intensifying the feeling of isolation and the insecurity of its individuals.


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[Assistant] The junior leaders are affected as much as the rifle files.


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[Assistant] Again, this can apply to the battlefield, this can apply to the business world. When chaos starts, people start to focus on their own little world. And...


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[Assistant] The more you focus on your own little world, the more separation there is, the less unity there is in your unit to make something happen. Now he goes on, back to the book. Could one clear commanding voice be raised, even though it be the voice of an individual without titular authority? They would obey.


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[Assistant] Or at least the stronger characters would do, would do so and the weaker would begin to take heart because something is being done.


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[Assistant] There's situations where, uh, one situation in particular where there's no voice. No one's taking charge. Finally someone steps up and takes charge and it's like boom, everything changes.


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[Assistant] But clear commanding voices are all too rare on the battle, on the field of battle. So they wait, doing nothing, and inaction takes further toll on their resolve.


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[Assistant] More grievous losses will no doubt come to this band of men in time. But as a company, this is the worst hour that they will ever know. So it's a downward spiral. If no one steps up and starts making calls, you start taking casualties. Now if people panic even more, they get more in their own little world. They become more detached from each other. Less unity of what you're trying to make happen.


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[Assistant] One must not come to rest on Klaus Witt's gloomy warning that


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[Assistant] So, that's Klaus Fitts talking about training. You gotta get people ready for this chaos and mayhem. You've gotta get them ready for it. You've gotta get them ready. You gotta show them that when people panic and people are getting separated, that one commanding voice, one leader stepping up and leading, will have a massive impact on the situation.


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[Assistant] Now he talks Chapter 5 is called Ratio of Fire.


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[Assistant] And here we get into his little hypotheses. Not gonna waste a lot of time on it, but I'm gonna bring it up.


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[Assistant] Now, I do not think I've seen it stated in the military manuals of this age or in any of the writings meant for the instruction of those who lead troops.


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[Assistant] That a commander of infantry will be well advised to believe that when he engages the enemy, not more than one quarter of his men will ever strike a real blow unless they are compelled by almost overpowering circumstances or unless all junior leaders


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[Assistant] Constantly ride herd on troops with specific mission of increasing their fire.


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[Assistant] The 25% estimate stands for even for well-trained and campaign-seasoned troops. I mean that 75% will not fire or will not persist in firing against the enemy and his works.


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[Assistant] These men may face danger but will not fight. So that's his hypothesis and actually the beginning of this book has a forward in it that I'm just gonna touch on.


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[Assistant] The forwards are written by a guy named Russell Glenn and he, he points out some of the disputes against this.


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[Assistant] So here we go, back to the book. This is the introduction, so this isn't S.L.A. Marshall, this is from the introduction.


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[Assistant] Marshall's ratio of fire values did not go unchallenged even when they first appeared in 1947.


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[Assistant] General James M. Gavin, World War II commander of the 82nd Airborne Division, discounted the low estimates, as did Harry W. O. Kennard, who served in the 101st Airborne Division in every one of its combat actions during World War II, and later commanded the 1st Cavalry Division in Vietnam.


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[Assistant] The legendary general Bruce Clark, commander of the U.S. forces that defended St. Vith during the Battle of the Bulge, flatly discounted Marshall, finding his values ridiculous and dangerous assertions absolute nonsense.


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[Assistant] Another combat veteran, British author George MacDonald Frazier, instead questioned Marshall's explanation for why soldiers failed to engage the enemy.


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[Assistant] Frasier had served. So one of the things that Marshall says is that


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[Assistant] People aren't, aren't, are, are taught not to kill, and you know, it's against the commandments of God, and it's bad to kill, and so that's one of the things. We have a moral, an inherent moral objection to killing.


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[Assistant] And so, so this guy, Donald Frazier, Frazier had served in Burma as an infantryman. Though he recognized that moral upbringing might influence men's behavior, his first-hand experience failed to support Marshall's rationale.


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[Assistant] Frazier wrote that we all have kindly impulses fostered by 2000 years of Christian teaching. Gentle Jesus and love thy neighbor.


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[Assistant] But we have the killer instinct too. The murderous impulse of the hunter.


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[Assistant] And so the introduction of the book goes on and talks about many vets that just outright deny this. And I do too. And I never saw


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[Assistant] I never saw or felt any hesitation or saw anyone that I was with


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[Assistant] Hesitate in any way to engage. In fact, quite the opposite. Most guys were more than ready to get after it. And I'm not just talking about SEALs, I'm talking about Army infantrymen, I'm talking about Marines. The, the, the guys are, guys are not hesitating.


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[Assistant] I mean, broadly, you could never make a statement like this. Could you make a statement that some people hesitate? Yes, you could make that statement. But, to broadly say that only 15-25% of people are gonna actively engage the enemy, from everything I saw, that's patently untrue.


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[Assistant] Now, the advantage in, in what we had for an advantage, and Marshall kinda claims this too,


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[Assistant] Is that once World War II is over and they started training us to shoot at, one of the big objections he has that, that guys were getting trained to shoot bullseye targets, right? So you're training to shoot a bullseye, when you first see a man, you're like, oh no, that's a man.


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[Assistant] I barely ever shot a bullseye target. We did that when we had to qualify with a rifle or a pistol. Every single other time we shot, we were shooting.


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[Assistant] A man shaped target. I mean, we would shoot little round targets, what were they called? Head plates. Right? We're shooting at heads. We're shooting body shots. We're shooting, that's what we do all the time. And...


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[Assistant] We'd shoot, so we'd shoot targets with pictures on them, with faces on them, that look like people.


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[Assistant] And then on top of that we did force on force training where we're actually shooting paintballs or some munition at other human beings and we're gunning them down.


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[Assistant] So there's a lot of conditioning that we had that maybe that's why we were so much more apt and able and willing to shoot, but


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[Assistant] From, you know, you can see from what these other vets said and these other leaders said in my personal experience, uhm, and you'll find that I think SLA Marshall, like I said, I think he just had a hypothesis he wanted to talk about and threw it out there without really good facts behind it.


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[Assistant] So I'm not going to waste a bunch of time talking about that and I'm going to go into the next chapter. Fire is the cure.


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[Assistant] Finally, it is the volume of fire that counts.


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[Assistant] They go hand in hand, which actually, he says.


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[Assistant] I mean, okay, if you want to say that you're maneuvering so that you can maneuver so you can fire even better, that's, that's technically true. Or you're maneuvering so you can break contact, but you could say that.


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[Assistant] Here's another quote. Let us not think of mobility in an army, General Charles P. Summerall once said, unless we think of mobility accompanied by violence.


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[Assistant] That's cover move. That's firing maneuver. That's what we're talking about.


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[Assistant] Combat can, cannot ever approximate the conditions of field maneuvers. Fears of varying sort afflict the soldier in battle.


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[Assistant] The unit commander soon comes to realize that one of his difficulties is to get men to leave cover because of enemy bullets and the fear they instill. In training, there being no real bullet danger, even on the courses which employ live ammunition, every advance under a supposed enemy fire is unrealistic.


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[Assistant] Two, in training, the soldier does not have a man as his target. He is not shooting with the idea of killing.


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[Assistant] There is a third vast difference in the two conditions. The rifleman in training is usually under close observation, and the chief pressure upon him is to give satisfaction to his superior, whereas the rifleman engaging the enemy is of necessity pretty much on his own, and the chief pressure on him is to remain alive if possible.


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[Assistant] When the infantryman mind, when the infantryman's mind is gripped by fear, his body is captured by inertia, which is fear's Siamese twin in an attack.


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[Assistant] The idea that in training you're shooting it, you're not shooting with this intent to kill, and we, that's what we did all the time.


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[Assistant] I mean, that's just how we rolled. In fact, they make targets where like, blood comes out. You shoot and balloon blows up and like, you see blood. So they're trying to condition you. And they talk about this with video games too, right? That these young kids come up killing all the time in these video games, which are very, very realistic. And therefore, they get conditioned to killing. And they don't think it's a big deal anymore. Which...


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[Assistant] Like I said, for me, all I ever shot at, basically, was human targets, things that look like people. And, again, I've seen video games, that, they are so realistic, it's unbelievable. And so that's another good form of conditioning, to get you over the, if you have any moral objection to killing. Now, the, the,


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[Assistant] Some people, no, if you're not a soldier, that's probably a bad thing I would say.


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[Assistant] Well I'd say if you're a kid that's like got some major issues and you're thinking about doing a school shooting and then you're sitting there playing these video games and you're killing people over and over again.


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[Assistant] It's conditioning. Yeah, yeah, that's what I mean. You put anyone in a, you know, you get someone that works in a slaughterhouse, they don't think twice about killing a pig or killing a cow or whatever, that's what they do. They don't think a millisecond about it.


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[Assistant] Whereas you take someone that's never seen an animal killed before and it'll be disturbing to them.


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[Assistant] You know, a bunch of videos of something being killed, you would become conditioned to it. And if you play a game where you kill people all the time, you will become conditioned to it. I don't think this is even debatable.


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[Assistant] Well yeah, I mean, and let's face the fact, there's millions and hundreds of millions of people that play video games all day long. And they're not going out there and have no intention of going out there. But okay, so yeah, I see what you're saying. If you start thinking that way, and that becomes your intent, then it is conditioning.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and again, we would get, this is one of the things we get quoted on SLA Marshall, was this stuff about how as the targets got more realistic, it encouraged people and made them more comfortable with shooting and killing. That's the point.


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[Assistant] And I believe, yeaah, that's true. It's true. It's the way it is.


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[Assistant] Uh, going back to the book, as another experiment, unwilling riflemen may have, may be switched to heavier and more decisive one-man weapons. This sounds like a paradox to expect greater response to come from increased responsibility. This is good, this is good. So he's saying you got a rifleman that doesn't want to shoot, give him a bigger, more effective weapon.


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[Assistant] Self pride and the ego are the touchstone of most these remarkable conversions. A man may fail with the rifle because he feels anonymous and believes that nothing important is being asked of him. So that's pretty cool because I talk about this all the time.


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[Assistant] And last if we are to strengthen sound training principles and establish mental attitudes which are essential to the understanding of the decisive importance of fire in tactics.


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[Assistant] We will be well advised to cease talking about fire and movement as if the latter were separate and apart.


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[Assistant] And there did not exist an automatic and unbreakable connection between them. So now he's saying the same thing that I was saying earlier. Fire is not more important. They're the same thing. Fire and maneuver, cover and move have to happen together. That's what he's saying.


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[Assistant] Fire is the key to mobility. To fire is to move. So, it goes on. Now, this next section, again, this is great because


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[Assistant] Next section is called the multiples of information. The multiples of information. And what's great about this is he's no longer talking about, he's no longer talking about tactics of fire maneuver and this percentage of fire and all that because he's out of his element there, to be quite honest with you.


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[Assistant] This one he's going to get into his element, which is, well, I'll go to it.


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[Assistant] I consider to be of utmost importance that keeping informed of our men as to current situations so that each man may perform his duty with understanding of its importance. And that's Sergeant David Tebolt in a letter written from the African theater. So you gotta keep your people informed.


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[Assistant] Having started to call this chapter Communications, I decided against it for fear


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[Assistant] And that use of that rather formidable word might interfere with my communicating to the reader what I regard as a vital but frequently overlooked principle of minor tactics. If a word comes to mean too many things, it frequently misses fire at the critical point. That has been the fate of the word communications.


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[Assistant] It has become another military catch-all, and because it means so many things, it is quite frequently means nothing.


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[Assistant] To illustrate, a regimental commander asks the company commander, how are your communications? And the latter replies, excellent, because his telephone line is working and his supply is coming forward.


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[Assistant] And at the same time, he is at the point of despair because he hasn't had anything worthwhile, any worthwhile intelligence from his flanks for hours.


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[Assistant] So there's a difference between communication, like I can talk to you, and actual communication, you're telling me what I need to know.


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[Assistant] One would imagine that whenever on the field of battle he made contact with a friendly element, that fact would flash a red light in his brain causing him automatically to raise the question, have I established full communications? Do I know the strength and intentions of the force now helping me? Do they know my strength and intentions? But indeed, such is not the case.


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[Assistant] Information is the soul of morale and combat and the balancing force in successful tactics.


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[Assistant] And what the problems are. So information is super important. Here's some of the problems. One, there is a lacking...


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[Assistant] There is lacking a general recognition of the supreme importance of the lateral flow of information. Two, command at the lower levels is too often neglectful of the principle that it is not a channel of information only but a distribution point. So you gotta pass the word.


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[Assistant] Three, commanders at the lower levels tend to be arbitrary judges of what information deriving from a source lower would be highly useful to the other elements lower down instead of abiding by the rule. When in doubt, pass it along. So when in doubt, pass along. Now I do have to throw out.


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[Assistant] That there can be a dichotomy, there's a dichotomy there, cause you can communicate things too much, you can send too many emails, you can send too many messages, you can do that.


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[Assistant] And he actually talks about that dichotomy a little bit, so he's just talking about how much you should communicate, and then he gets to this point. Back to the book.


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[Assistant] They were literally tired to death of having the battalion commander insist on having a fresh progress report every 15 or 20 minutes. And the battalion commander, poor devil, was only passing on the pressure which he had in turn received from a regimental commander who was trying to placate division.


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[Assistant] Yet one would observe that unless a battalion commander is wholly lacking in judgment or intestinal fortitude, he should be strong enough to take this on his aching back and not pass it down to the headquarters, which is at grips with the enemy. This happens all the time in the military for sure.


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[Assistant] During the invasion of the marshals, one of these prodding demands for more progress raced from division right through lower headquarters to a platoon which had been stopped cold by Jap fire coming from spider holes arranged in great depth along the beach.


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[Assistant] The lieutenant got the message and crawling forward to his most advanced rifleman told him to get up and go on.


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[Assistant] The boy screamed, so the whole goddamn army wants me to- wants to kill me, does it? Okay, Lieutenant, here I go, but watch what happens.


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[Assistant] That incident seared deep into the brain of every man who witnessed it. It was final judgment on the futility of that kind of leading.


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[Assistant] Decentralized command who's gonna make a better call somebody back in the rear or this lieutenant that's there on the beach


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[Assistant] Back to the book. The all too frequent consequences of such pressure are lying.


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[Assistant] So, lots about communication being important. Next is the riddle of command.


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[Assistant] Many headquarters people become strangers to the front and cannot speak its language or understand its tribulations. Okay.


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[Assistant] You don't know what's going on in the front lines, if you don't have any idea if you can't even speak their language anymore, you need to get down there. You need to find out what's going on in the front lines. Businesses, that means you too.


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[Assistant] The diabolical effect of even such a relatively simple instrument as the field telephone is that it may come to command the commander.


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[Assistant] The phone actually gets control of you. It chains him to a system of remote control. At first he sees it only as a successful, as a useful channel for quick communication and combat. Then he fears to leave it lest it should require his presence in headquarters the moment after he leaves to go forward.


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[Assistant] This state of mind in turn creates its own illusion, fostering that


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[Assistant] are somehow sundered by the new technology of operations.


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[Assistant] I mean how, how poignant is this for what we live in today, right? Everyone thinks they can just send a text message and the problem solved, make a quick phone call and the problem solved, and actually the reality is sometimes you need to get down there.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you know, I don't forget things a lot. So that doesn't really happen to me a lot.


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[Assistant] But yea, I would say if I left my phone somewhere, I would be like, oh dang, I wonder who's trying to call me right now, I wonder if there's an emergency going on.


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[Assistant] Yeah, there was no internet. I was telling my kids the other day that when I was a kid there was no internet. That was not a thing.


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[Assistant] Like a holy book filled with- my mom had a- had a- had an OED Oxford English Dictionary.


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[Assistant] But my mom had one that was big. I mean it was big. It was six inches thick.


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[Assistant] Some kind of bible, like some kind of, it just seems so filled with knowledge. And if you didn't know what a word was, you just had to go look it up in that thing.


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[Assistant] You didn't know what a thing was? You look it up in the encyclopedia, you go to the library and look it up in the encyclopedias. Nowadays, you're three seconds away. You got that Google.


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[Assistant] I've had to look some things up on Urban Dictionary a couple times. I'm trying to think of a good example right now, but I can't think of one. Next time I will, I will, I will note. Yeaah. That it, cause you know, I got teenage kids. So sometimes they got some words. Yeaah, you gotta know that. Or they were saying something a couple years ago. Hi-fee. No, I don't remember that.


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[Assistant] Well, I'll tell you one thing that is kind of a bummer, and I...


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[Assistant] You know for a long time I responded to like everybody that reached out to me And and I just can't I mean I can't do it. I just it's physical I would be doing nothing but sitting around doing that and it's really cool man. I get letters and emails and Facebook and


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[Assistant] DMs on, you know, and I just don't have time and I feel bad. You know, I read most everything, but it's been getting crazy.


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[Assistant] It is man, I feel bad when I can't get back to people, but I appreciate them reaching out and letting me know that


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[Assistant] They're getting good information, right? Whether it's work related, whether it's individual person related, their kids, whatever, warrior kids, I mean all kinds of good stuff. And I'm so stoked, but like you said, it's


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[Assistant] Sometimes life gets a upper hand and you gotta go, you gotta attack.


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[Assistant] And that's why I was feeling this weekend, I was like, cause I've been on the road, we went to Maine, didn't get a lot of work done in Maine cause we were working in Maine. We were rolling and then we were working and recording podcasts and interviewing and all this other stuff. So didn't have a lot of time out there, got a little bit behind.


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[Assistant] Life got the upper hand on me, and so I was kind of feeling it on when I got home.


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[Assistant] And then what I said was, oh, you know what I'm gonna do? So Sunday, I just, I'm just gonna work all day. Just get, just get busy. Get the upper hand. Cause people were talking to me about the kids podcast.


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[Assistant] So, so I got after that, recorded some of that today, but.


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[Assistant] I had to go like, okay, this is what's going on. So if you start feeling that little, will life get in the upper hand?


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[Assistant] If you, if you let it continue to maneuver on you, it's gonna get worse. If you go, oh, oh, you think you're gonna get the upper hand of me? Watch this. I'm gonna get aggressive. I'm gonna knock out so much stuff in the next 24 hours, you're not even gonna know what just happened. Son.


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[Assistant] And the team starts to get the little upper hand and then they just, they can start taking a little bit more risks. They get a little bit more confident. Yeah. And they get the momentum. Yeah. They get the momentum and they start going and that's productive, right? That they widen that score, run up the score, boy. And so that's


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[Assistant] Oh, okay. So, the communication thing. So here's the other thing that happens with modern communications. Text messaging. Emails.


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[Assistant] You start losing that little personal touch, which is important. Here we go back to the book with this characteristically warm humor. General Eisenhower has commented on the value of the personal factor in the commander's relation to his men under the conditions of modern war. I found that it did a great deal of good to get down to my troops in the combat area.


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[Assistant] My presence relaxed them and made them feel more comfortable about the situation. But I was not deceived as to the reason. I knew what was running through their minds.


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[Assistant] They were saying to themselves, there must be less danger than we thought or the old man wouldn't be here. Yeah, get down. Talk to the troops.


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[Assistant] Here we talk about this is a part of the nature of the combat soldier. Once he loses that faith, it becomes very difficult to resolve it. He will lose it very quickly when he sees that casualties are wasted on useless operations.


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[Assistant] Or when he begins to feel that he is in any respect the victim of bad planning or faulty concepts.


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[Assistant] Then he responds to that principle, which was once well stated by General James Harbord. Discipline and moral influence.


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[Assistant] The inarticulate vote that is constantly taken by masses of men when the order comes to move forward.


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[Assistant] Winning order comes to move forward. A variant of the crowd psychology that inclines it to follow a leader. But the army does not move forward until the motion is carried. Unanimous consent only follows cooperation between the individual men in ranks.


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[Assistant] By rough approximation, 60% of the art of command is the ability to anticipate, 40% of the art of command is the ability to improvise.


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[Assistant] To reject the preconceived idea that has been tested and proved wrong in the crucible of operations and to rule by action instead of acting by rules. That's a good one.


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[Assistant] You can't just say someone, hey, anticipate harder. Like, anticipate more. It's hard to say to that someone. Someone's gotta have experience. Someone's gotta have the mindset for it. They gotta, they gotta free their mind and open their minds so that they can.


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[Assistant] You can't be down in the weeds or else you can't anticipate anything because you're getting knocked around in the dust and the dirt.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. During war it often time happens that one company by trial and error finds the true solution for some acute problem which concerns everyone.


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[Assistant] But when that happens to a company, I can assure you that is the exceptional company officer who takes the initiative and passes it.


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[Assistant] Passes his unique solution along to his superiors even after he has proved in battle that the idea works.


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[Assistant] A good company idea in tactics is likely to remain confined to one company indefinitely even though it would be a benefit to the whole military establishment. This is just dealing with silos. It happens in the military. It happens in the civilian sector. Somebody figures something out and they keep it to themselves.


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[Assistant] The fundamental purpose of all training today should be to develop the natural fac, uh, faculties and to stimulate the brain of the soldier rather than to treat him as a cog which has been fitted into a great machine.


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[Assistant] Loyalty in the masses of men waxes strong in the degree that they are made to believe that real importance is attached to their work and to their ability to think about their work.


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[Assistant] So, you gotta get people engaged and people gotta understand and believe that what they're doing is important and they gotta have some kind of say, they gotta have some control over their own fate.


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[Assistant] It weakens at every point where they consider that there is a negative respect for their intelligence.


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[Assistant] This rule applies whether a man is engaged in digging a ditch or in working up a loading table for an invasion.


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[Assistant] What did I just say? Things are gonna happen and it's no one's fault. Does that really...


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[Assistant] Does that really marry up with the idea of extreme ownership? Well, not really, right? Cause I'm taking ownership of anything. However, keep listening. War is aimed at destruction.


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[Assistant] The fire and general purpose of the enemy are directed against one's own personnel, material and communications with the object of keeping one's own design from coming into play.


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[Assistant] Small plans miscarry because the wrong man happens to be hit at the critical moment or the guns which were counted on are knocked out of action.


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[Assistant] There is no system of safeguards known to man which can fully eliminate the consequences of accident and mischance in battle. Hence the only final protection is the resiliency and courage of the commander and his subordinates.


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[Assistant] So what does that mean? When something goes wrong, when something bad happens, you adapt, you adjust, you, you alter your plans and you continue forward. You own it!


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[Assistant] All over and over again. And how do you do that? How do you do that in the civilian sector? Right? Prepare your people. You role play with people. You give them hard problems. You make them figure things out.


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[Assistant] You put them in tough situations so that they become accustomed to it. But how to do it, I would say...


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[Assistant] Even though such a revolutionary idea would put the army somewhat ahead of our civilian education.


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[Assistant] That's a common thing that gets said in military training is teaching people how to think, not what to think.


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[Assistant] And this is a good, the test of fitness of command is the ability to think clearly in the face of unexpected contingency or opportunity. Improvisation is the essence of initiative in all combat, just as initiative is the outward showing of the power of decision.


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[Assistant] Think about this when you're raising your kids too. There's a good little something to think about. You want your kids to be able to think.


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[Assistant] Think! That's why you gotta have him doing some creative stuff.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. The darkest hour for the novice in war comes with the recoil after the unit has been had badly hit.


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[Assistant] It is then that the young commander has greatest need of the friendship and steadiness of his superior or of any other officer whose judgment he respects. Criticism or tactical counsel are of no value at this time.


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[Assistant] They can be given that later if necessary, but in the wrong hour, they add to the hurt.


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[Assistant] Let him get out his crying towel.


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[Assistant] When he is told how it happened, the important thing is that he be given a pat on the back and insurance and assurance that he did his full duty and some little reminder that while he may feel that his losses are excessive, such incidents are unavoidable feature of combat and do not keep one from coming back in the next round.


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[Assistant] In Siegfried Sassoon's memories of an infantryman, the young lieutenant tells of emerging from a bloody trench raid and meeting his colonel.


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[Assistant] This was Colonel Kinjak I'd never met before. And it was the first time I had ever shared any human equality with him. He spoke kindly to me in his rough way, and in doing so, he made me very thankful that I had done what I could.


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[Assistant] This is a very important, especially for folks that are in the military or in services where you can take losses. And that is, when you're in charge, it's the time is not then to provide tactical counsel. Right? That's not the time.


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[Assistant] First you gotta let the person get over the emotional hump, help them through that. And if you gotta go back and debrief them later, that's what you do. I think everybody needs to pay attention to that.


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[Assistant] And I mean, you could say the same thing for businesses, you know, if somebody makes a big mistake and they feel bad about it and it hurts them or they get people fired or they cost a bunch of money or something like, you might not want to jump on their back immediately.


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[Assistant] A man remains a man after he puts on a soldier suit. Death in the company is like a death in the family. Talk relieves tension.


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[Assistant] Okay, talk relieves tension. This is a tough one, because guess what? Some people, when something bad happens, you know what they want to do? They want to be left alone.


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[Assistant] And, and, and yet, it's talk that relieves tension and getting that out of them, which I agree with, but,


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[Assistant] Complex sentence, but what he's saying is like when you make sure when your people do something good You tell them because there's a lot of times where people don't


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[Assistant] People don't understand what they did and how big of an impact it had and that's bad.


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[Assistant] Here's a good one, in combat nothing succeeds like success. The knowledge of victory is the beginning of a conviction of superiority.


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[Assistant] Just as truly the savor of one small triumph will wholly drive out the bitter taste of any number of demoralizing defeats. Nothing succeeds like success. Now we get into the section Tactical Cohesion. Important. We're gonna think about that.


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[Assistant] You know, there's a story in Extreme Ownership about the boat cruise and the boat crew doing well. And sometimes people will say, well, you know, what did the guy that do, do different? What did the new leader do? And I always say, well, what he got the team to do.


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[Assistant] And you'd be surprised how often I see companies, I see businesses, I see military units where people are not rowing the boat in the same direction at the same time.


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[Assistant] So that's what tactical cohesion is. Tactical cohesion is how can we get people to be working together.


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[Assistant] And here we go, getting the troops to that cohesiveness back to the book. It may be done through one bold individual standing erect and saying to a few others, follow me, we are going on.


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[Assistant] If this same individual advances alone but says nothing, it is unlikely that he will have any followers. One word! Come! Makes his action tenfold as effective as if he plunges gallantly ahead in silence.


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[Assistant] The act of moving is initiative. The act of coupling motion with speech is thinking initiative.


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[Assistant] The majority of small unit leaders do not take any steps toward restoring control from which alone can come unity of action. Some try to contact their men by voice or by relay of voice during an action while the men are prone, the voice will rarely carry more than 25 feet. This means that unless there is a relay of all hands,


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[Assistant] Under and all hands understand what is being attempted. The voice method is ineffective. In the SEAL Teams?


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[Assistant] It's just, that's what you have to do and we're so well trained at that. That's one of the few tactical things that you learn in basic underwater demolition seal training is you better pass the word.


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[Assistant] Coming under fire literally begins its engagement by falling apart.


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[Assistant] So when you start getting shot at, guess what you do? You get down. You can't see anyone else.


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[Assistant] Military, police, firefighters. This is important. Think about this.


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[Assistant] After the thing, after the engagement starts, the overriding problem of the commander is the reunification of his elements.


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[Assistant] Proper fire support and direction are com- are among the tools which he uses in bringing about cohesion. But the fundamental means is communication. Getting his men to link up by talking to one another and sending a long word of what they are doing and what they have seen.


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[Assistant] Now this is a very simple thing. It is so simple.


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[Assistant] That it recalls the warning from Colonel G.F.R. Henderson. In war, the simple things are the most difficult.


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[Assistant] We say that we seek initiative in our men. That is the American way of fighting. We say that we want men who can think and act. We are just as steadfast, however, in pro- in proclaiming that the supreme object in training is to produce unity of action.


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[Assistant] These two aims are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are complementary halves of an enlightened battle discipline. So, did you catch that? We want our people to act


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[Assistant] But the various curious part of it is that la- is that training largely ignores the sole principle which makes these two basic ideas fully and finally reconcilable.


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[Assistant] We do not teach our men from the day they first put on the uniform that speech in combat is as vital as fire in combat.


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[Assistant] Out of speech or from the written word, which is its substitute, comes all unification of strength on the battlefield.


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[Assistant] And from the latter comes decisive action. This applies to two men serving together on an outpost. It applies equally to the battalion or the regiment.


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[Assistant] Right there. If you can't communicate with the other people, and people don't spread the word, and your team doesn't communicate well with each other, you're not gonna be able to join these two halves.


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[Assistant] Which is acting and being decisive and being, using initiative and cohesiveness of your unit.


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[Assistant] And how may troops be, might, might be taught to distinguish between the two, right? So could a person on your, in your platoon take so much initiative that it hurts? Oh yes they can. I've seen it many times before. Many times before I've seen that.


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[Assistant] So the question is, how do we know how much, there's a dichotomy, right? We want people to have action, but we don't want them to take too much action.


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[Assistant] And here's his way of trying to define that. Is the soldier acting on his own?


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[Assistant] To advise others of his tactical situation or conveying any other information which may be of general benefit in furthering the tactical situation of the company or in enlisting the aid of others in carrying out any action which will benefit the tactical situation of the company.


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[Assistant] So you need to take action, you need to take initiative as long as it's benefiting the company.


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[Assistant] In the army of the United States, we act towards speech as if it were mortally, as if we were mortally afraid of it. We tell our men to think, yet we never tell them that if in combat they remain dumb, it is slow suicide. Slow suicide.


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[Assistant] The period between wars was an age of rapid advancement in communications technique. Radio was born. The telephone was vastly improved. The teleprinter appeared and television waited just around the corner. It all came so fast that we were struck dumb by our own magic.


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[Assistant] Bec- not becoming good communicators because they're not interacting with people enough. Because instead of talking to them, they're sending them a text. Instead of talking to them, they're- they're sending them an email.


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[Assistant] But you know that that's a great thing to talk about raising kids to make sure you talk to your kids I work with someone once that had a kid that had like a speech impediment


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[Assistant] This speech impediment, or the, it's not so much the speech impediment, cause you didn't overcome it, you still had it.


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[Assistant] But guess what? I was going to talk your ear off. I was going to sit down and act professional and convey his message.


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[Assistant] And the response was, got him to talk to people all the time.


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[Assistant] And, and made him talk to people. And so that's what you do.


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[Assistant] Have conversations with your people on your team. How's that?


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[Assistant] Cause you get to hear conversations between people cause you're not hearing them otherwise.


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[Assistant] Here's, he's saying, uh, this is just good advice. This is for all you folks that are thinking about joining the military. Here we go. When you prepare to fight, you must prepare to talk.


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[Assistant] You must learn that speech will help you save your situation. You must be alert at all times to let others know what is happening to you. You must use your brain and your voice anytime that any word of yours will help.


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[Assistant] You or others. You are a tactical unit and you must think of yourself that way. Don't try to win a war or capture a hill all by yourself. Your action alone means nothing or at best very little.


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[Assistant] It is when you talk to others and they join with you that your action becomes important.


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[Assistant] This is, Leif tells a story about me telling him to use verbal commands. And we've got that story over and over again because I've done it with so many different people. Like, you need to, you need to use your man voice right now. Like, you're not being loud enough.


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[Assistant] And that was a classic example of that. You know, Leif trying to communicate over the radio and people aren't really listening because it's noise in your ears. There's all these things happening. You know, you hear a little voice.


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[Assistant] And in the SEAL teams, like I said, we're so trained to repeat those commands.


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[Assistant] And I'm like, Leif, you gotta try using verbal commands, bro. You gotta try it. And he kinda looked at me like, man, I'm giving the perfect brief over the radio right now. My man will respond. And, uh, so finally, you know, he was, you know, angry Leif came out, and he's like, aww, I don't need everyone, and he yelled, and everyone repeated. And everything happened.


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[Assistant] You know, it's one of those things, and it's, I mean, this is, what, 10 years ago? 50, 12 years ago?


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[Assistant] It was definitely, we all had radios on. Everybody, every single person had a nice radio.


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[Assistant] It, it shuts off the sound so when you're shooting your gun, there's no sound coming and now you don't hear whatever's being told to you.


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[Assistant] Check. Alright, one final statement on that. Men governed by words. Speech galvanizes the desire to work together. It is the beginning of the urge to get something done. So, learn how to communicate. Read. Study English.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Learn how to write. It's gonna make you a better communicator. Alright, now we go to why men fight.


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[Assistant] When a retrograde movement becomes necessary in combat, it is an invitation to disaster to move before the men are told why they are moving.


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[Assistant] If the pressure has made the fact that, that fact obvious, then they still must be told how far to go and the line or point to which they are withdrawing must be made clear and unmistakable. Otherwise they will keep moving and all control will be lost.


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[Assistant] The spoken word is the greatest of steadying forces in any time of crisis. Think about that.


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[Assistant] The spoken word is the greatest of steadying forces in any time of crisis.


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[Assistant] An excited lieutenant shouting, get the hell out of here and follow me to that tree. Follow me to that tree line on the far side of the creek. We'll succeed.


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[Assistant] Though a perfectly calm captain, trying to bring off the same movement, but keeping his voice calm, keeping his voice down with the result that the men do not hear him, will fail. That's obvious.


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[Assistant] Formal language under these circumstances is almost unknown in the army of the United States. In fact, get the hell out of here has virtually established itself in our jargon as the customary order.


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[Assistant] Is the best safeguard to solidarity of troops under fire.


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[Assistant] Even so, the soldier will forget or discount much that training has taught him as the danger mounts and fear takes hold. It is then that the voice of the leader must cut through fear to remind him of what is required.


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[Assistant] The reason ex- the reasoned explanation of why this is true has never been more clearly stated than by Staff Sergeant Pete F. Dyne of the 17th Infantry Regiment after he had won the Silver Star for taking over the leading of a demoralized platoon during the Burton Island fight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew they were afraid because I was aware of my own fear.


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[Assistant] Then I asked myself why it was that we felt fear in each other and I realized it was because all of the leaders had quit talking.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew then that the only way to get confidence back into the platoon was to talk it up as a man might do in a football game.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I continued my own attack on the enemy shelters and spider holes, but there was a difference.


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[Assistant] That now begin, yeaah, that I now begin yelling to others. Watch me. This is what you're supposed to do. Get at it. Keep working. Keep your eyes open.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Soon the platoon became collected and began to operate methodically. But I kept talking until the end because I had learned something new.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leaders must talk if they are to lead. Action is not enough. A silent example will never rally men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get at it. In battle, back to the book, in battle the voice of the leader is always needed to call back the men from carelessness. It is their chronic attitude in and out of danger. Even in veteran troops it is not expected


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is not the expected presence of the enemy which keeps them alert on a hostile field, but the force with which they feel pressing them at any given moment.


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[Assistant] When fire comes against them, they sense danger from every direction. Unless they are informed of the source of the danger, there is apt to occur a swift moral transition in which they become mentally pinned by the mere incidence of fire. I like that term mentally pinned. You just don't know what's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This was interesting. On seven occasions has been my part, part of my duty to investigate the sources of panic along the battle line, twice in the Pacific and five times in Europe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there was times where people just panicked and left the line and he had to investigate him.


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[Assistant] And he goes into, that was how each of these incidents, each of these seven incidents got its start. One or two, one or two or more men made a sudden run to the rear, which others in the vicinity did not understand.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it was the lack of information rather than the sight of running men which was the crux of the danger. For in every case the testimony of all witnesses clearly developed the fact that those who started the run and thereby spread the fear which started the panic had a legitimate or at least reasonable excuse for the action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was not the sudden motion, which of itself did not did the damage, but the fact that the others present were not kept informed.


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[Assistant] Gotta, you people gotta know what's going on. For example, a sergeant in the 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry was hit through an artery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] During the Carrington Causeway fight on June 12th, 1944. It happened in a flash. One second he was hit and the next he was running for a first aid station without telling his own squad why he was getting out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They took out after him and then the line broke. Others who hadn't seen the sergeant make his dash saw someone else in flight. They ran too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Someone said, the order is to withdraw. Others picked up the word and cried it along the line, withdraw, withdraw. It happened just as simply as that. You can see how that happened all day long, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The term control is not in this instance to be considered as synonymous with the voice of authority. Control is a man to man force on the battlefield. No matter how lowly his rank, any man who controls himself automatically contributes to the control of others. That's legit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Any man who controls himself automatically contributes to the control of others. Fear is contagious, but so, but courage is not less so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To the man who is in terror and verging on panic, no influence can be more steadying than that he sees some other man near him who is retaining self-control and doing his duty.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Personal honor is the one thing valued more than life itself by the majority of men. The lips of the dying attest how strongly this force influences individual conduct in battle.


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[Assistant] A young company runner hit by a shell at Keratin collapsed into the arms of his commander.


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[Assistant] And with his life swiftly ebbing, said Captain, this company always called me a screw up. Tell me that I wasn't. Tell me that I wasn't one this time. The Captain replied, no son, you sure weren't. And the board died with a smile on his face.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But while an army is a collection of individuals, it is also a crowd under pressure and under pressure it tends to ever to revert.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So obvious. You see with businesses, man, with businesses, you'll get a business that like people are squared away. That's how they roll. And everyone acts squared away. And you get some people that aren't. And that's the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the image, that's the culture of the company, and no one squared away.


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[Assistant] Should the latter begin to dissolve, so should the discipline within the unit begin to dissolve, only a small minority of the most hearty individuals will retain self-control. The others cannot stand fast if the circumstances appear to justify flight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When other men flee, the social pressure is lifted. And the average soldier will respond as if he has been given a free release from duty. For he knows that his personal failure is made inconspicuous by the general dissolution.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two, it is a normal tendency in troops that they will drift rearward from the fire line unless they are being given an active direction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it is just as normal that they will reverse themselves quickly and return to their duty if given a firm order by someone whom they know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and have you ever been in a situation where you just like, put out word?


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[Assistant] Like, like, like, just something stupid. Like, uhm, like you'll be in a store or something. And people will be like, not knowing. Hey, there, just, someone will say, hey, there's a register over here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or like you're waiting in a line at a public event of some kind, you know? Hey, wrap this thing around. Wrap the line around. And everyone just does it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well it says it's the social, what is he calling it here? The social... You get the release from social duty, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But the moment the new unit came under enemy pressure, the individuals quit their ground and ran rearward or saw its cover behind, somewhere behind the combat line.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Keep that fireteam integrity. And these will be like in a sealed platoon. There's four, there's four fireteams in a task unit. You know, there's eight fireteams. Try and keep, these guys still know each other, but they're gonna do a little bit better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Though the theory is often ignored in practice, that the relationships within our army should be based upon intimate understanding between officers and men, rather than familiarity between them, on self-respect rather than fear, and above all, on uniting comradeship.


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[Assistant] They have destroyed the name and tradition of old and honored regiments with the stroke of a pen for convenience sake.


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[Assistant] They have uprooted the names and numbers which had identity with a certain soil.


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[Assistant] And move them willy-nilly to another soil. They have moved men around as if they were pegs and nothing counted but a specialist classification number. They have become fillers of holes rather than architects of human spirit.


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[Assistant] That's bold, isn't it? Yes it is. You like that one? I do. So, sometimes the army, and the army does this more than anyone else, I believe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They'll just like, take a unit that's been around for 122 years, fought in all kinds of wars, and just disband them. They're done.


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[Assistant] Just get rid of them. And just, and sometimes they bring them back thankfully, but that's not a good idea. There's a certain power in tradition, right? There's a certain power in tradition. There's a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When they formed up SEAL Team 5, they took, they, they took SEAL Team, or sorry, Underwater Demolition Team 11.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they disbanded it and basically reformed it to SEAL Team 5. But if you look at the, the symbol of SEAL Team 5, there's a setting sun and on the setting sun is the number 11. You can see it going down. Little, little fact for you. UDT. Pretty cool. But they at least kept that tradition alive, right? Yeah, fully. At least kept that tradition alive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You might not be doing a good thing just because this guy has a certain qualification. Oh, put him over there.


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[Assistant] Therein lies a great weakness and we have suffered from it through every war, for it must ever remain that acquisition of a truer knowledge of the nature of man in war will suffice very little if put to work only by the local commander on limited ground. So everybody's gotta understand that there's human beings


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That again leaves too much to chance and puts too high a premium on the virtues and talents of the average leader.


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[Assistant] What is needed primarily if we are to go forward the policies stemming from the top, which are based not upon slide rule calculations, but on knowledge of the human heart. Next chapter. The, the aggressive will. I like this little section. Morale is the thinking of an army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The way it feels about the soil and about the people from which it springs. The way that it feels about their cause and their politics as compared with other causes and other politics. The way that it feels about its friends and allies as well as its enemies. About its commanders and gold bricks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] About food and shelter, duty and leisure, militarism and civilianism, freedom and slavery, work and want, weapons and comradeship, bunk fatigue and drill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Discipline and disorder, life and death, God and the devil.


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[Assistant] Like you've got human beings, and the morale of the army is all of that stuff combined together. You have to account for it.


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[Assistant] The definition cuts through one of the oldest myths in the military book. That morale comes from discipline.


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[Assistant] The process is precisely the reverse. True discipline is the product of morale.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How's your morale? If you have good morale, you're gonna have better discipline.


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[Assistant] The soldier needs a sound and vigorous body if he is to contend in modern war. But this itself should be the object rather than the perfecting of him in drills not even remotely related to use of his weapons out of a mistaken and obsolescent notion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So doing stuff just to do it, to like improve your discipline, is not what we're talking about here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beyond the basic physical requirement, the essential is that he be given the freedom to think with a clear mind. Which freedom can be his only when he becomes convinced that the army and particularly the army as represented by his immediate superiors is doing everything possible for his welfare. You gotta care about your people, that's what


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of their training is directed toward conditioning them for unusual privation and exertion, but no power on earth can reconcile them to what common sense says is unnecessary hardship, which might have been avoided by greater intelligence in their superiors. That is awesome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're, your people do all kinds of, take all kinds of punishment for you.


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[Assistant] The more intelligent, the more intelligent the soldier, the more likely it is that he will see as a sign, see that as a sign of indiscipline up above and will answer it the same way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Nothing more radical is suggested here than that the leader who would make certain of the fundamental soundness of his operation cannot do better than concentrate his attention on his men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a bold statement. There's nothing better you can do than concentrate your attention on your men. If you want something to be successful, concentrate on your people.


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[Assistant] And working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems. These are the real basis of commander's major calculations. That's just a awesome, that whole thing. The art of leading. Dealing with humanity. Working diligently on behalf of your men. Being sympathetic with them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And at the same time dichotomy, insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems. Boom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Men who have been in battle know from first hand experience that when the chips are down, a man fights to help the man next to him, next to him. Just as a company fights to keep pace with its flanks. Things have to be that simple. An ideal does not become tangible at the moment of firing a volley or charging a hill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having already suggested that the thinking bayonets can never be subordinated by the routine methods of a discipline which is based largely in mechanical procedures, I will add that no leader will ever fail his troops, nor will they fail him who leads them in respect for the disciplined life.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Between these two things, discipline in itself and a personal faith in the military value of discipline lies all the difference between military maturity and mediocrity.


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[Assistant] A salute from a willing- from an unwilling soldier is as meaningless as the moving of a leaf on a tree.


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[Assistant] It is a sign only that the subject has been caught by a gust of wind. But a salute from the man who takes pride in the gesture because he feels privileged to wear the uniform. Having found the service good is an act of the highest military virtue.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One further fact that needs to be stressed about the character of those officers whose capacity could be measured in the efficiency of their companies. While they were scrupulous in the care of their men, they were not wet nurses. They treated their subordinates as men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They did not regard them as adolescents and they did not employ the classroom manner in dealing with them individually or in the mass. That was an important part of their hold upon the men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The men prize a commander the more if he looks and acts the part of a soldier. But the characteristic of a fine appearance will but betray him the sooner if he has no real kinship with the men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, this is dichotomy. You gotta take care of your men, but you're not a wet nurse. You don't treat them like little kids.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The characteristics which are required in the minor, in the minor commander if he is to prove capable of preparing men for and leading them through the shock of combat with high credit may therefore be briefly described as one, diligence in the care of men.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So here's the characteristics. Number one, diligence in the care of men. Number two, administration of all organizational affairs such as punishments and promotions according to a standard of resolute justice. Number three, military bearing. Number four,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Creative intelligence and physical fitness.


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[Assistant] Number six, innate respect for the dignity of the position and the work of other men. I'm gonna tell you those are some good rules. Some good things to think about if you're in a leadership position. Here's a little commentary.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was written in 1947, might still be true today. It is my belief that there is no more hurtful doctrine put before our people today than that the army should duplicate the arrangements which obtain within the civil society


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Slavishly imitating the latter's comforts, social customs, and ideas of regulating justice and insisting on no higher standards of personal responsibility for its people. So, hey, guess what? The military is not the civilian world.


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[Assistant] In my opinion, and I do not say this lightly, the fault in our disciplinary level during World War II was not primarily that the discipline of the ranks needed to be more relaxed, but that the discipline of a considerable percentage of our officers needed to be tightened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For this simple reason, insofar as his ability to mold the character of troops is concerned, the qualifying test of an officer is the judgment placed upon his soldierly abilities by those who serve under him.


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[Assistant] You can only mold your troops if they judge you worthy of molding them. Think about that for a minute.


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[Assistant] If they do not deem him fit to command, he cannot train them to obey.


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[Assistant] Thus, where slackness is tolerated in officership, it is a direct invitation to disobedience.


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[Assistant] And as disobedience multiplies, all discipline disappears.


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[Assistant] The way in which the loss of moral incentive is reflected in the tactful behavior of troops was thoughtfully expressed many years ago by the British teacher Colonel G.F.R. Henderson.


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[Assistant] When troops once realize their inferiority, they can go, they can no longer be dependent on.


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[Assistant] If attacking they refuse to advance. If defending they abandon all hope of resistance.


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[Assistant] It is not the losses they have suffered, but those they expect to suffer that affect them.


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[Assistant] Consequently, unless discipline and national spirit are of superior quality, and unless the soldier is animated by something higher than the habit of mechanical obedience, panic, shirking, and wholesale surrender will be the ordinary features of the campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pretty harsh warning. Nothing more unfortunate can happen to the commander than to come to be regarded by his subordinates as unapproachable. For such a reputation isolates him from the main problems of command as well as its chief rewards. So you gotta be approachable as a leader.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're saying there's nothing more unfortunate than being regarded as unapproachable. It is, back to the book, it is never a waste of time for the commander to talk to his people about their problems. Here's a good people ask me, I get all the junior leaders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From the military, from the civilian sector, from everywhere. And they ask me, what am I supposed to do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To the young officer who's conscious of his own reserve and is anxious to do something about it, I can suggest nothing better than to make a habit of full physical participation. That is, instead of watching the squad or platoon work out a problem and either directing or criticizing its action,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let him pick up a weapon, relieve one man in the group, then let himself be the one commanded until the conclusion of the operation.


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[Assistant] Is this course of contact beneath the dignity of the American officer? Certainly not. So, what was that? Is it getting the game? Getting the game.


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[Assistant] Because of the effective motorization that the higher value of discipline of the road march.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In other days, that it wasn't that it hardened muscles, but that, short of combat, it was the best method of separating the men from the boys. Let's get back to a little road march action.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Best method for separating a man from the boys is the road march. This is true today.


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[Assistant] Despite all the new conditions imposed by high velocity warfare, uh, hard road march is the most satisfactory training test of the moral strength of the individual man. The great advantage of the gain in moral force through all forms of physical training is that it is an unconscious gain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All forms of physical training are going to give you an unconscious gain of moral force. Let that propel your workout tomorrow morning.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Willpower, determination, mental poise and mental control all march hand in hand with the general health and well-being of the man. Fatigue will beat men down as quickly as any other condition for- for fatigue brings fear with it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you've got people that aren't ready, doesn't matter how much you try and make them do something, they're not physically capable of doing it. That's the reality.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Extremes of this sort make men rebellious and hateful of the command, and thus strike at the tactical efficiency from two directions at once.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His courage is killed, his intellect falls asleep. Truly then, it is killing men with kindness, not to insist upon physical standards during trainer, during training, which will give them a maximum fitness for the extraordinary stresses of campaigning in a war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Once we depart from the ideal of automatic response as the condition most likely to produce unity of action in battle, the only substitute for it lies in the possibility that more and more men in the ranks can be trained to see and think through the haze of battle in unison with their commanders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can see, you can see, I mean, when you read about Face, there's Hackworth. This is what Hackworth did, man. This is how Hackworth rolled.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book. Why is the will of the military commander deemed more decisive of success than the will of leadership in any other calling? Clearly it is because the inertia, frictions, and confusions of the forces of the battlefield make all positive action more difficult.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And yet, the principles which win intelligent man-to-man cooperation apply equally in all circumstances. The same rules work on the battlefield as in an office.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's why we got a little something called Ash along the front.


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[Assistant] The will does not operate in a vacuum. It cannot be imposed successfully if it runs counter to reason. Things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They are done because they are doable. Okay, this is a really important little section. And


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, I, you know, I talk about force of will sometimes. You gotta make something happen. Force of will.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But there's a very important ca- I've called it a caveat to that, and we're about to get into this caveat. So, to say that again, things not done in war, things are not done in war primarily because a man wills it. They are done because they are doable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The limits for the commander in battle are defined by the general circumstance. When he asks, what he asks of his men must be consistent with the possibilities of the situation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That might seem like common sense, right? Hey, I can't ask you to do anything that cannot be done.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Back to the book, what can be successfully willed


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if he then gives his order and holds his men to their duty, this is the ultimate triumph of the will on the battlefield.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is to note that he exercises his will far less upon his men than upon himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Should he, on the other hand, attempt to will that which his men know cannot be done, or feel unanimously as utterly beyond reason, or should he base his order on assumptions which they recognize as false, his will becomes temporarily without power and cannot help the situation? This is one of those things where people think


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Make your goals realistic. Make them, not just realistic, but make them achievable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But has had his experience of having willing troops become suddenly unresponsive because his facts were not straight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So sometimes the troops aren't going to do what you want them to do. Even though you have this strong will, they're not going to do it. Why is that? Here we go. It happened to Lieutenant Colonel HWL Kennard during the night advance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of 1st Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry against the German-held Dutch village in September 1944, the village of Schindel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In this book is one of the most brilliant battalion actions of the war.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Beyond its outpost line when it came under machine gun and anti-tank fire, Canard heard some of the fire clipping the branches of the tree above his head and judged it was all going high.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But his personal advance had no effect. Not a man stirred.


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[Assistant] Well-trained group, and he's telling them, and he's personally leading them forward saying, go, go, we gotta go. Don't worry, that fire is high, but has no effect. Not a man stirred. Back to the book. Within a moment, he understood why he had failed. From one of the ditches, a rifleman answered him, if you think the fire is high, Colonel, come over here. We've had eight men hit in the legs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you gotta think about what is actually possible.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The supreme trial of the commander in war lies in his ability to overcome the weaknesses of human nature in the face of danger. And these are the matters which he cannot know in full unless he has served with men where danger lies.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To those that have known the firing line, it would scarcely be necessary to point out that morale in combat is never a steady current force, but a rapidly oscillating wave whose variations are both immeasurable and unpredictable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It is in this respect chiefly, the rapidity and capriciousness of its variations, that the morale, that the morale problem in the zone of fire differs from that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A regiment, fretted to utter objection by a protracted stay in the lines, may find its fighting spirit again in a six hour respite, during which the men are deloused and given a change of underwear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A battalion advancing boldly may be brought in check because its commander did the disservice of going too far forward and getting himself killed within sight of the ranks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The near presence of death and the prospect of meeting it at the next moment move men in many curious and contrary ways. Many men, many men seem to change character under the guns.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That some of the fullest and fairest days of his life have been spent at the front or that the sky ever seems more blue or the air more bracing than when there is just a hint of danger in the air.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is an important thing for leaders to understand. The man who cannot bring himself to trust the judgment and good faith of other men cannot command very long.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He will soon break under the unnecessary strain he puts on himself. Sleeplessness, nervous irritation and loss of self-control will be his...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Will be his lot until he is at last found totally unfit. The ideal relationship between a commander and his subordinate is nowhere better illustrated than in a passage from the letter of instruction wherein Grant told Sherman to proceed to the destruction of Johnson's army.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do not propose to lay down for you a plan of campaign.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But simply to lay down the work it is desirable to have done and leave you free to execute it in your own way. Some decentralized command right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is another good one. When a company is stopped by physical shock restoration of its movement becomes a problem for the battalion. When a company is stopped by psychological shock the continuing of the advance remains the problem of the company commander.