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[Assistant] If you want to talk to us or engage with us or ask us questions, you can find us on the interwebs.


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[Assistant] On Twitter, I am at Jocko Willink and of course Echo Charles is at Echo Charles.


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[Assistant] Thanks for leaving reviews of the podcast on iTunes.


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[Assistant] That helps us with the rank and gets us pushed up and gets us more listeners. Also, if you, if you bought the book, extreme ownership that Leif and I wrote, jump on Amazon, throw a review up there. That helps us out as well.


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[Assistant] Well, the biggest thing is spread the word. Spread the word.


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[Assistant] Thank you for getting out there and getting after it. Cause when you make yourself better, you make the world better.


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[Assistant] If you really wanna know the light, then you gotta know the darkness.


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[Assistant] Great time for one more. Jako.


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[Assistant] This is Jocko Podcast number 28 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink.


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[Assistant] And if it had to happen, it's a shame it had to happen to such a decent bloke. But ah, fair dinkum, don't it make you wonder what God in heaven's thinking about up there?


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[Assistant] You'd think he'd want to blo- to take a bloke like me. Who'd be no loss to no one here on earth. But no. He always seems to pick the best.


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[Assistant] There's a sort of aching here inside. I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong.


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[Assistant] But a soldier can't afford to feel this way. He's gotta grit his teeth and carry on.


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[Assistant] So how's a bloke supposed to deal with this? I know they train me well, I can't complain. But this is something you don't learn about when they teach you how to play the Soldier's Game.


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[Assistant] They teach you how to shoot and how to kill. You even learn which enemy to hate. But nowhere in their training do you learn how to live with the loss of a real good mate.


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[Assistant] From a poem called, he was a mate by a man named Lachlan Irvine. Was an Australian guy, served in Vietnam.


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[Assistant] As part of the 3RAR, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment.


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[Assistant] And you know, you look at the Vietnam War and there was definitely some major advances in terms of technology because they had now things like helicopters and


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[Assistant] Even with all those technological changes, the basic principles of combat remain the same.


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[Assistant] Obviously in Vietnam there was a massive anti-war movement in America and around the world. And in America, a lot of the troops were draftees.


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[Assistant] Now this is something I have to explain all the time and I have explained it on here before and that is that Seals and Soldiers and Marines are not robots. They're people. And even though


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[Assistant] SEALs for instance have always been a volunteer force and today all the military in the US is all volunteers. They're still free thinking.


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[Assistant] But what's interesting is when you look at the leadership principles used


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[Assistant] To effectively lead troops today, it's the same leadership principles to effectively lead the draftees in Vietnam.


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[Assistant] Draftees or volunteers, conventional forces or special operators or civilian teams and companies, an organization, the fundamental leadership principles used to actually lead.


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[Assistant] And there's a great example of this. And again, we're going back to a guy by the name of Colonel David Hackworth who wrote about face. We've talked about him before in this podcast. That book is, it's actually my favorite book of any category.


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[Assistant] But definitely within the realm of combat and combat leadership.


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[Assistant] About Face by David Hackworth, Colonel David Hackworth is at the top of my list.


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[Assistant] But he actually went into even more detail about one particular episode of his career.


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[Assistant] And that was when he took over a battalion in Vietnam that was in pretty rough shape.


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[Assistant] And he wrote about that particular experience in more detail.


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[Assistant] In a book called Steal My Soldier's Heart.


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[Assistant] The subtitle is The Hopeless to Hardcore Transformation.


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[Assistant] Three times before 1969, I'd made the same 18 hour trip across the Pacific to Southeast Asia. Nothing had changed.


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[Assistant] The plane was full of FNGs. Fucking new guys. 19 and 20 year olds. Pink chick. Chaked. Dry mouthed. Wide eyed. Eager. But scared.


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[Assistant] I couldn't help wondering which one of them, the KIA travel bureau would be bagging up for their return trip home.


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[Assistant] Even the lucky ones, the ones who made it out alive, would never be the same.


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[Assistant] And he talks about arriving in, in the headquarters. Guy named General Yules headquarters. And you've heard me talk about this before, about how some of the bases in Iraq, they were really, really nice. All built up, they had Starbucks on them, they had swimming pools, they had nice gyms, they had movie theaters.


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[Assistant] On bases in Iraq, I know, it sounds crazy for people that didn't go there.


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[Assistant] But that's what America does. We have awesome logistics. We have awesome support. We have a really well funded and you know what? We're going to build a big base over there. We're going to make it pretty nice. And it's the same thing here that


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[Assistant] Hackworth rolls into it in Vietnam. And here we go, back to the book. I walked off the pad and jumped into a jeep with a kid behind its wheel waiting to run me over to General Yule's headquarters. The ride was an eye-opener.


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[Assistant] Nearly 10,000 rear echelon motherfuckers.


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[Assistant] Remphs, to the grunts out on the line, were stationed in Dong Tam surrounded by all the creature comforts.


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[Assistant] I saw a miniature golf course and a swimming pool.


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[Assistant] I caught a glimpse inside a barracks decked out with clean beds under mosquito nets.


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[Assistant] These guys pulled down the same combat pay as the soldiers in the bush who lived in the mud, watched their feet rot, burning leeches out of their crotches and laying down their lives.


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[Assistant] Comes from Vietnam, rear echelon motherfucker. Obviously, Leif and I named our business Echelon Front because we wanted to be, that we wanted to be perfectly good at everybody, that we were not.


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[Assistant] Talking about leadership from the rear. We're talking about leadership from the front.


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[Assistant] So Hackworth goes in, he spends a half an hour with General Yule and he kind of gets told what's what.


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[Assistant] And then he kind of gives his assessment of what he's heard. He says, pragmatically, I could do nothing about the chain of command and the tactical operational stupidity of Dong Tam.


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[Assistant] I'd be out of yules and hunts eyesight soon enough and worrying about how combat operations were being handled from above was a waste of time at best and got men killed at worst. There'd be ways around that.


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[Assistant] The reason I highlighted that paragraph is because a lot of times I get asked questions from, from troopers out there that say, hey, you know, I got this issue with my boss, my boss is doing this, my boss is doing that.


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[Assistant] This is what I try and tell them. Look, it doesn't really matter.


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[Assistant] You know, you gotta get out there in the field and you make some space and then you execute how you execute. You know, I'm not saying you're gonna disobey, but


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[Assistant] People can't control you. And as long as you're accomplishing the mission, you're finding the best way to do it, you're gonna be fine.


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[Assistant] So don't get all caught up in exactly what the boss is saying. Let's figure out what the spirit of what the boss is saying. Let's see what they want to get accomplished and then you go out and make it happen.


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[Assistant] Because no boss should be telling you something that's completely out of sync with what your goals are. I mean, damn sure, in the military, you shouldn't be getting told something like, hey, get your guys killed, or give up sensitive information, or lose the war. No one's gonna tell you to do that. They're gonna tell you to keep your guys alive. They're gonna tell you to make progress on the battlefield.


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[Assistant] When you get that, sort of, when you pull that commander's intent out of people, and you know what it is that they want you to accomplish,


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[Assistant] Go forward and accomplish it. Don't get all caught up in the little details that you might not agree with. They're not gonna make that big of a difference out there.


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[Assistant] Now, as I, as I said, this, this book is actually about the transformation of the 4th Battalion, 39th Infantry. So he, he's flying out and he talked about this in about face and we actually covered on the podcast. This is a little bit more detail. So I find it, I find it to be more, uh, cover some details that's needed.


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[Assistant] But he's flying out to this battalion which really was having a hard time. And...


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[Assistant] The guy brought him in, the general brought him in because they knew that, that Hackworth was a hard ass and that he was a good performer, that he, if anyone could get this battalion turned around, it would be him. So they brought him out there.


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[Assistant] And this is his first impression of the bass where he's heading.


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[Assistant] When I landed, I couldn't believe my eyes or nose. The whole base smelled of raw shit and rotting morale.


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[Assistant] Toilet paper blew across the chopper pad, machine gun ammo was buried in the mud, and troops wandered around like zombies, their weapons gone red with rust.


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[Assistant] These were the sloppiest American soldiers I'd ever seen, bar none.


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[Assistant] Unkempt, unwashed, unshaven, their uniforms ragged and dirty, hippie beads dangling alongside their dog tags, their helmets covered with graffiti.


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[Assistant] Not exactly what you're looking for in a good, squared away military organization.


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[Assistant] Now one of the guys that he brings in, he brings in one of his guys to be the senior enlisted there to be his, his command sergeant major and it's a guy named Robert Press. And here's what he says about, about Robert Press.


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[Assistant] We'd also served together in the states as well as in Vietnam and our partnership went all the way back to the same unit during Korea. Lean and mean, press would be my new battalion sergeant major, the non-com's chief ass-kicker and new role model.


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[Assistant] You get a, you get a good impression of what that guy's like. This is a... This is a gunny highway scenario.


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[Assistant] And here's what press had to say about the local, about the troops. This is from press. I looked around and see no one wearing helmets. No one carrying their weapons. Everybody in the CP, that's a command post, group was sleeping above ground. Sleeping above ground means if they get bombed they're gonna get killed.


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[Assistant] I didn't see a foxhole anywhere. Sir, this outfit stinks worse than we thought.


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[Assistant] So that's their first impression going into this obviously bad, bad situation.


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[Assistant] Again, these are draftees, and it's even, I gotta keep reminding meself, myself that too. Because the whole time I was in the military, it was an all-volunteer military. And sure, you get some slackers and some knuckleheads, but at least people had volunteered at some point to be there.


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[Assistant] These people are being pulled against their, I mean, I think you're a better example of this than me, Echo. Echo, imagine when you were 18 years old.


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[Assistant] Imagine when you were 18 years old and them coming at you, where were you when you were 18? In the University of Hawaii? Yes. Playing football? Yes. Now what if they came to you and said, hey Echo, you have to go in the military, you're going to Vietnam. How would you feel about that?


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[Assistant] And you as a disciplined football player, that's an athlete.


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[Assistant] You're gonna be ten steps above someone that's, you know, out on the streets of, you know, hate Ashberry, smoking dope.


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[Assistant] So sure, you would get some kids that were getting drafted from, you know, Iowa, a farm kid that's like, hey, it's my turn to fight, I'm gonna go do it.


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[Assistant] Yes, and you can't have that attitude. You have to shift that. Like when I went through officer candidate school, officer candidate school is like boot camp but it's a little longer. And I had already been in the military for 8 years when I went to officer candidate school and you know they're yelling at me about the way my underwear is folded and yelling at me about looking at my food when I'm eating and yelling at me about my


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[Assistant] About my socks not being rolled upright. So I'm a grown man, been in the SEAL teams for like 8 years at this point. And this happened, you know what I did?


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[Assistant] Measured four by four inches when it's folded up, I will correct that now and make it four by four inches.


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[Assistant] I made it into a game that I played with my full intention of winning.


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[Assistant] They make you yell everything at officer candidate school. You have to yell every word that you say with the drill instructors or with your friends or whoever. It's not your friends, but with the other candidates you had to yell everything.


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[Assistant] And so, I made everyone yell one- because I was the class president. I made everybody yell 100% of the time.


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[Assistant] So for instance, the upperclassmen had a little closet that they would sell food out of. You know, candy bars and sodas, right? And we had to line up if we wanted to buy something. So I told all my people


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[Assistant] You know, when you go in there, you maintain your ballistic voice at all times.


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[Assistant] And it took about ten people going through and finally the upperclassmen came out and they said, hey, you guys when you come in here don't be ballistic. And of course I said, request permission to speak.


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[Assistant] And they just were looking at me like they wanted to kill me, but they couldn't say anything because I was correct. So that's the kind of thing. And that was a victory for my class, you know, cause that was the upperclassman.


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[Assistant] That was like a cool victory for the class and everyone was all laughing and fired up, you know, like we're going to be so perfect that people are going to get angry with us. So that's what I did.


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[Assistant] Now going back to the book here, he kicks this one off. This is directly out of about phase two there and it's also


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[Assistant] Well, this one says, there are no bad troops, just bad officers.


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[Assistant] In the book Extreme Ownership by Leif and I, we have a little chapter in there called No Bad Teams, Only Bad Leaders. So it's the same thing. And that axiom goes back to Napoleon, who said, you know, no bad regiments, only bad kernels or something along those lines. So then he talks a little bit about


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[Assistant] The guy that was previously in command, a guy by the name of Colonel Lark, and that's a pseudonym, so.


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[Assistant] But here we go. After six months under Colonel Lark, the 439th had suffered the equivalent of nearly 40% casualties without ever meeting a significant enemy force in open combat.


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[Assistant] Rockets, mortars, booby traps, and friendly fire had done most of the damage.


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[Assistant] Same thing in Iraq. That's what most people were facing in Iraq. Rockers, rockets, mortars, booby traps, which is IEDs, friendly fire. That's where you're getting most of your casualties from. Of course in Iraq it was mostly IEDs, but then mortars, rockets, and then you get your gunfights. You know, blue on blue definitely makes up a section. Not a huge section.


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[Assistant] And, but of course obviously it's something that, that we experienced.


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[Assistant] Back to the book here. All armies prefer high ground to low and sunny places to dark. Sun Tzu wrote over 2500 years ago.


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[Assistant] Low ground is not only damp and unhealthy, but also disadvantageous for fighting.


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[Assistant] If you are careful of your men and camp on hard ground, your army will be free from disease of every kind, and this will spell victory.


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[Assistant] I don't think General Westmoreland or the U.S. commanders running the war in Vietnam knew Sun Tzu from Sonny and Cher.


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[Assistant] And here he talks about what the damaging effects were of being in the low ground. In just 48 hours and soaking jungle boots, foot rot set in. Mosquitoes zapped them with malaria, leeches sucked onto their balls and even up dicks and morale vaporized before Charlie fired one shot.


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[Assistant] Luckily we've covered Sun Tzu on here. So no, nobody that's listened to the podcast is ever going to be out there thinking of, without thinking about the basic principles that Sun Tzu taught.


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[Assistant] Most of the 439th soldiers knew that each time they took a step, they risked the ugliest of wounds.


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[Assistant] A bullet makes a hole. A chunk of shrapnel may take off an arm. But a mine turns a soldier into a splattered shrapnel punctured basket case.


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[Assistant] Many troopers in the battalion had concluded that waging war consisted of crossing a field, hitting a mine, calling for a medic, patching up the wounded, getting a medevac, then moving out again and hitting another mine.


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[Assistant] They also did the math and figured out that not many of them would be lucky enough to make it through 365 days it took to rotate home.


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[Assistant] It's a horrible view of war. You know what we're gonna do? We're gonna walk around in the bush until we hit a mine. Some of us are gonna get blown up, we're gonna call in a medevac, we're gonna get them out of there the best we can if they're not dead, and then we're gonna keep walking until it happens again. Back to the book. The wounds were vicious.


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[Assistant] Young men blinded, legs and arms and dicks and balls ripped off, bodies punctured with dozens of bleeding holes.


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[Assistant] For the VC, mines and booby traps were economy of force weapons, easy to deploy, cheap to produce.


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[Assistant] Besides causing heavy casualties, they produced a lot of psychological stress.


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[Assistant] Soldiers never knew when they would lose a foot, a leg, or a life.


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[Assistant] And the frustrating part was there were few ways to fight back.


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[Assistant] Which means you stepped on a pressure plate or you pulled a trip wire. Something that you did made it blow up. There's no one to fight against. No one to shoot back at.


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[Assistant] The tally of back to the book, the tally of needless death in the four 39th.


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[Assistant] Was well established before Colonel Lark took command.


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[Assistant] Lark's immediate predecessor, a gung-ho lieutenant colonel, drove the troops like endured, indentured servants.


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[Assistant] One steamy day, a company working its way across a rice paddy was plodding through several feet of water and muck while overhead in the command and control chopper, the colonel kept screaming, faster, go faster.


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[Assistant] It was never going to happen. The troops were already moving at max speed.


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[Assistant] In a lather, the colonel landed. Jumping out of his bird, he sprinted to a paddy dike and then leapt on top of it to make his point. A supreme Mekong Delta no-no.


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[Assistant] And when the almost instantaneous explosion blew him 20 feet in the air and he died immediately and needlessly, the ultimate ego trip, I was told the grunts cheered.


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[Assistant] The reason I highlighted that is because when we start talking about Hackworth and what he does, you're gonna see that he's gonna, like the terms he uses here is uh,


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[Assistant] Gung Ho Lieutenant drove the troops, right? You're gonna hear-


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[Assistant] You're gonna hear Hackworth doing the same thing, but there's a difference in the way that he does it.


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[Assistant] He understands what he's doing. He's not just doing it out of ego and out of pressing the guys for no particular reason.


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[Assistant] And then the other side of the spectrum, you get this guy Lark. When Lark took command.


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[Assistant] He knew that he had to turn things around and he worked hard to do so, but with zero combat experience and not enough time with the troops his good intentions meant less than nothing. Even the basics were ignored.


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[Assistant] He wore an army green baseball cap instead of a steel pot. Really cool.


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[Assistant] Except that the troops who followed his model and neglected their helmets wound up in Doc Holly's surgery with their brains running down their necks.


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[Assistant] He was a, he was into good guy, fraternizing, to build morale. A well intentioned notion.


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[Assistant] But it made for bad news in the field. So you see the two extremes. You get the super hardcore guy that's just a maniac pushing everyone hard. You must do what I say. And then you, then the next guy comes and he's on the other end of the spectrum.


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[Assistant] Lark sent his A company on a three day sweep of a wood line completely empty of VC.


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[Assistant] But a Ho Chi Minh wet dream of booby traps and mines.


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[Assistant] That was the day Sergeant Tom Aiken lost 17 of the 29 in his platoon without hearing a single shot.


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[Assistant] All we were doing was tripping booby traps, he recalls, his voice trembling slightly.


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[Assistant] There wasn't any enemy, there wasn't any enemy in there. No gooks at all. We knew it. But Colonel Lark kept saying, sweep the wood line, sweep the wood line.


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[Assistant] More than 30 years later, Aiken made a list of the men in his platoon killed under Lark's command.


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[Assistant] When he finished writing it, his wife asked him, how could you remember all those names after all these years? His answer was simple. How could I forget them?


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[Assistant] Now here's another incident that takes place just before Hackworth arrives and takes over.


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[Assistant] The VC had planted an American-made claymore mine alongside the road.


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[Assistant] The world blew up suddenly in smoke and fire, Evans recalls in Doc, Platoon Medic, that's another book. His blood and guts memoir of life with the 439th.


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[Assistant] A wall of super stonic steel balls blasted the passengers shredding metal and flesh.


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[Assistant] From the bush, rockets swish down, lifting the jeep and trailer up into an expanding fireball that tossed mangled soldiers all over the road.


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[Assistant] Automatic gunfire stitched every square foot of the road as those few GIs still able to ma- made a run for an adjacent water-filled ditch. Those left behind screamed and wailed and cried out.


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[Assistant] They crawled and pulled themselves around in the middle of the road like crushed bugs with limbs and pieces of their bodies missing.


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[Assistant] Teddy Creech used his elbows to claw his way across the road like a mangled worm. His hands were mutilated beyond recognition.


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[Assistant] His leg had been severed from the hip, except for a tether of bloody skin and flesh.


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[Assistant] The jagged end of the detached bone kept digging into the road and staking him in place.


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[Assistant] He fumbled out his knife and, in the way that a trapped animal will gnaw off his own foot in order to escape, cut himself free of his own leg.


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[Assistant] Richard Forte lay with a bullet hole in his belly.


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[Assistant] His bloated gut signaled heavy internal bleeding.


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[Assistant] His face was the color of old ivory. That's something I've seen before where someone's gut shot.


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[Assistant] There's not a lot of blood coming out of them, but you can see their stomach starts to fill up because they're internally bleeding and they turn super pale because it's like they're bleeding out but they're just bleeding inside of their own stomach and it's really obvious what's happening to them.


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[Assistant] Thinking of others when they themselves were dying. And what did they get in return?


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[Assistant] The VC picked us off one by one, he recalls, one by one, day after day.


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[Assistant] The 439th was helpless and demoralized against a superior army of ghosts that could do to us what it wished.


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[Assistant] Just an absolute disaster. And can you imagine what the morale is like day after day you're going out?


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[Assistant] As we just said, going out, walking through the bush, just in order to get blown up.


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[Assistant] Undisciplined and dispirited, wondering what was gonna happen to them next. They stood like characters in a police lineup where every participant was a perp.


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[Assistant] With silver blades gleaming in the sun, a flock of brightly Simonized Hueys drop from the skies over Dizzy. Dizzy is the area where they're staying.


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[Assistant] One by one, starched army brass with an entourage of photographers strutted across the LZ. General Yule leading the way, their fatigues pressed, their sleeves precisely rolled up above their elbows into four inch folds, their shoes polished to great ground perfection.


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[Assistant] To the grunts, they must have looked like aliens from outer space.


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[Assistant] I stood soldier straight and watched those from on high pay absolutely no attention to the assembled troops. The men from their battalion, their division.


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[Assistant] For them, the boys on the line were beside the point. More pawns to be ignored. It disgusted me.


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[Assistant] In the 9th division, the gap between the brass and the grunts looked unbridgeable.


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[Assistant] Hackworth was a grunt. He, he came as an enlisted guy. He was a junior army person and he came up through the ranks. So when he sees this behavior of these senior leaders, which he already knows that they're back with miniature golf courses and pools,


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[Assistant] And now he sees them show up, they're in their starched camis, they're looking all perfect, and they don't even pay attention to these troopers.


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[Assistant] Even if they were to say, look, you guys look like crap, what is wrong with you? Get it together. Even if they were to say that, at least it'd be recognition.


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[Assistant] So he takes over and he says time for shock therapy.


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[Assistant] As I, as planned, I fired the incompetent S3, that's the operations officer, and the heavy drop battalion sergeant on the spot. And replaced them with Bumstead and Press, those, one of the guys I talked about earlier, Press and Bumstead's one of uh, Hackworth's other kind of prodigies.


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[Assistant] A thousand other changes needed to be made. But I didn't want to bury the company commanders or our staff on the first day together.


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[Assistant] If I ordered all shortcomings squared away immediately, I'd have sent these leaders into overload.


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[Assistant] Starting now, we're gonna follow the two-rule plan, I said.


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[Assistant] I'll tell you what the two new rules are, and you make them happen. Once your troops have mastered the first two rules, we'll add two more, and we'll keep doing that until we're squared away. First we'll court crawl, then we'll walk, and then we'll run. Just stay with me. Because we're gonna run faster and faster every day. They shot me, approve it. Look.


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[Assistant] So you can see hack is going into a little prioritize and execute, right? He knows that people can't, he's not going to change everything immediately. He's got to do it in some steps. And that's the same thing you do with any, any situation that you face where you got multiple problems that are, that you're looking at. You can't, you can't change them all at once. You can't fix them all at once. You pick the biggest problems. You start with those.


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[Assistant] And here he's starting to establish himself and his men and his and his leadership team.


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[Assistant] As to what their attitude was with the troops. A few days later, after finding a very small soldier who told me his feet were killing him because he couldn't get any boots to fit him. They were all too big. I had a little conversation with the good S4. S4 is the supply element in the military, in the army.


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[Assistant] Hack went ballistic, Johnson recalls. He chewed out his chain of command from his squad leader to his company commander and then he got a hold of me. He made it very clear that I better get that man a pair of boots or all kinds of horrible things were going to happen to me.


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[Assistant] The army did not make a men's boot small enough to fit this little guy. We scavenged the country and found a pair of women's boots that fit the bill.


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[Assistant] This taught us all an important lesson. That hack cared for the lowest of soldiers and he expected his commanders and staff to damn well look after them.


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[Assistant] This is how hack goes on a campaign to change people.


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[Assistant] Now he's continuing, he's starting to tighten things up more. I finished my first session with a set of orders that stunned the commanders.


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[Assistant] Here's the drill. I told them we're shrinking the perimeter tonight. I want you to recon your new positions. When it gets dark, each company will pull back.


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[Assistant] You'll maintain your old positions with half your force and by midnight I want those holes filled in.


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[Assistant] I want nothing left that the enemy can use, particularly holes that the VC can hop into if they attack.


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[Assistant] All your people will be at 100% stand 2 ready to fight in the new positions by midnight. I expect total light and noise discipline.


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[Assistant] Remember, nothing happens other than reconing until after dark.


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[Assistant] You've gotta, you've gotta always remember that the enemies out there in the bush watching our every move.


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[Assistant] And he's always looking for a weak spot to knock your cock stiff and close down the show.


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[Assistant] You call me at midnight from the new positions. Midnight. Understood?


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[Assistant] The commanders went out to brief their troops. My orders went down like an iron kite.


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[Assistant] Preparing a fighting position is hard, sweaty work. Moving a fighting position is even more of a bitch because you have to fill in the old hole before digging in again. It sucks in any circumstances.


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[Assistant] And now he does the same thing with his, with the, with the leadership element.


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[Assistant] Which works in what's called the TOC, the Tactical Operations Center. He says, and all the TOC personnel, regardless of rank, were ordered to dig in individual foxholes around it. They'd live there when not on duty.


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[Assistant] My talk order had a two-fold purpose. Having a bunkered command post made it much harder for Charlie to take out the battalion ops center with a one well-directed round, which remarkably, he hadn't already done.


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[Assistant] And if Charlie hammered the battalion with incoming fire or penetrated our outer line, we'd have an inner perimeter of staff we need to hold off the enemy while we fought the good fight and called in supporting fires.


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[Assistant] Plus, the staff would be setting a positive example for all the line soldiers.


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[Assistant] We'd live exactly like the Grunts. We'd sleep on the ground like Stonewall Jackson did during the Civil War. No one would have a plush deal anymore. Common theme, we've heard that one before.


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[Assistant] And they've basically changed their positions to what the enemy saw during the day. During the day, the enemy saw where they were. Once it got dark, they moved to new positions, they dug in, they filled in their old holes.


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[Assistant] Mortar rounds, recoilless life, rifle, rifle fire, machine gun fire, and RPG rounds screamed in, chum Roberts recalls. Then all hell broke loose. Strobe lights, they had just become an SOP at Hacks commanders meeting that afternoon, flipped on around the perimeter. The VC were hitting us hard, but we were ready now.


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[Assistant] Wow, I thought. Stay close to this guy and you'll be alright.


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[Assistant] Then another guy that hack overheard as they're getting this attack and they survive it and they do well. No one gets injured.


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[Assistant] He hears a guy say he's a mean son of a bitch, but he knows what he's doing. Again, this is part of the campaign.


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[Assistant] Dawn, back to the book. Dawn was breaking and press walked the perimeter.


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[Assistant] Sir, some of the troops are saying that you have your shit together. He reported.


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[Assistant] They're talking about how you pulled them back. Maybe I'd made a few converts that night.


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[Assistant] But I knew I was a long way from convincing the grunts that they could hit Charlie harder than he was hitting them.


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[Assistant] Over the next four weeks, I talked to every swing and dick in the battalion. I told all the soldiers, all the sergeants, all the lieutenants and captains in each platoon and company what was expected of them and why we were going to be the best.


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[Assistant] So, so just to reiterate what he just did, he's going around and personally talking to all the leadership and all the soldiers, everyone personally talking to them all and telling them what was expected of them and why they were going to be the best.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. When I spoke to the troops, I promised I'd take care of their butts and be right out there with them when things got hot.


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[Assistant] I wanted to get it into their heads that by stealing a page from the enemy's book, we could take the war to Charlie rather than waiting for him to strike.


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[Assistant] Now he talks a little bit about the VC. He says the VC were very detailed planners, but strict adherence to their plan was also their Achilles heel.


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[Assistant] They almost always stuck to this scenario even when things turned to shit.


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[Assistant] So that's great. You're a good planner. That's great. You came up with a really solid plan, but when things start going sideways and you maintain that plan.


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[Assistant] You don't make any adaptations, you're gonna get crushed. And that was, he's saying, the VC's biggest weakness.


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[Assistant] I also had all our leaders read a pamphlet of combat rules and tips from articles I'd written that I'd put together as the battalion combat leaders guide.


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[Assistant] I wanted them to get in their heads both how Charlie fought and an, and thought and how I fought and thought.


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[Assistant] I wanted to build an offensive team to make Charlie react to us instead of calling the shots as he was doing all over Vietnam. I stressed how we'd find him.


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[Assistant] By being hardcore and agile using stealth and cunning and how he could turn his very own tactics against him.


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[Assistant] The other things that he had all this people read was...


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[Assistant] Mao's Little Red Book, which was the, the communist, you know, sort of manifesto about fighting.


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[Assistant] And then, Vietnam Primer, which is another book that Hackworth put together.


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[Assistant] So he'd have everybody, he was, he was educating the troops, he was educating the leadership.


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[Assistant] Not just on how he was gonna do things, but on how the enemy thought.


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[Assistant] And this is a rehash from about face, but let's just go ahead and rehash it. I brought back saluting, a sign of military discipline that had been swallowed up by the rice patty mud. Then I added a twist.


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[Assistant] When a soldier saluted, I required him to sound off with a loud, hardcore recondo, sir.


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[Assistant] To which the officer would reply, no fucking slack.


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[Assistant] The salute, discipline aside, also built unit pride.


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[Assistant] The name Racondo, a combination of reconnaissance and infantry doughboy came from the rugged hands-on training of the 101st Airborne Division practiced at Fort Campbell.


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[Assistant] Training modeled after the British Commando and American Ranger courses.


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[Assistant] Hank Emerson had named the first brigade the Racondo Brigade to make the unit feel elite, like an airborne outfit.


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[Assistant] Hitchhiking on this idea, I named the 439th the Hardcore Racondos.


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[Assistant] Bob Press hired a machine shop in Saigon to make small black metal recondo arrowhead pins, which the men quickly began wearing.


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[Assistant] We painted the Racondo insignia on the sides of our helmets. And on all of our vehicles just below the windshield. Along with a large white hardcore.


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[Assistant] We painted the same insignia on company battalion signs at the fire bases and back at our rear area in Dong Tam.


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[Assistant] We also had sharp looking hardcore Rokondo stationary printed up and gave it to the troops and all outgoing mail was stamped with the Rokondo logo. All of this said, we're different. We're not just plain old infantry. We're the best. Hardcore Rokondos.


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[Assistant] We drove the point home that in infantry combat, the team, the squad, platoon and company was the primary instrument and inspiration. We stressed pride in itself, pride in unit, and never let a buddy down.


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[Assistant] Rifle company designations were changed from the conventional Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, and Delta to Alert, Battle, Claymore, and Dagger, which went down as Mickey Mouse until the troops got into it and began to think it was very cool.


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[Assistant] Ripped off, emulated, stole from Hackworth when, when I was a task unit commander and the


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[Assistant] You know, the, the designations for the task units are alpha, bravo, charlie, delta, sometimes, sometimes delta. When I was in it was alpha, bravo, charlie.


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[Assistant] And so obviously I said, uh, we're not going to be Bravo. We were assigned the name Bravo, but we immediately changed that to Bruiser.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. Hardcore soldiers wouldn't look like bums anymore either.


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[Assistant] They'd shave every day, wear their gear properly, and always be in camouflage when on ops.


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[Assistant] And the leaders made it happen by setting the example and being hard but fair.


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[Assistant] This was all viewed as chicken shit at first. And I was considered to quote Doc Holly, the original GI Joe lifer sent from hell to burn their hides with fire and brimstone. So.


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[Assistant] If you don't know this, lifer, the term lifer in the military, especially during Vietnam.


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[Assistant] You know, that's the opposite of a draft, you know, a draftee that does, just wants to do his time and get out. The opposite of that is a lifer, someone that's totally into it, someone that's totally gung ho and fired up and they call him the original GI Joe lifer.


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[Assistant] As Claymore Company's Jim Robertson put it in a February letter to his parents,


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[Assistant] Our new Colonel is nuts. It would take a week to tell you all the nutty things he's done. So I'll make it short. Line companies are offering $1,600 for his dead body. He won't last long. He'll get zapped. He's stark raving mad.


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[Assistant] Nobody liked hack, alert company's Tom Aiken recalls.


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[Assistant] I remember the guys from B company talking about we're gonna kill the son of a bitch and we're gonna put a bounty on him.


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[Assistant] And I'm telling you the truth, if I've ever told in my life, I turned around and glanced at one of them said,


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[Assistant] One of them, and I said, I'll throw in the first $20.


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[Assistant] But each time they saluted, they gave themselves a little subconscious commercial of brainwashing that they were hardcore, and after a while, I knew they'd begin to believe they were the meanest mothers in Vietnam.


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[Assistant] The men of soon to be hardcore battalion hadn't seen anything yet. Threats are no threats, I continue to issue them a di-


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[Assistant] Daily basic brown shoe army ass kicking and tighten both the discipline and standards more and more.


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[Assistant] Of all the many traits needed to survive and win on the battlefield, discipline is number one. Without absolute discipline, you lose.


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[Assistant] And these guys still had virtually none.


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[Assistant] And again, I gotta point out that the original, remember the original guy that was super hardcore and


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[Assistant] Very similar. The difference being number one, he cares about the guys.


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[Assistant] And they just haven't seen that yet. They don't understand that the discipline that he's teaching them.


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[Assistant] He's not making him do things just to make him do not, he's not, he's not using discipline just to be authoritarian and prove that he can make him do it. That's not his goal, that's not what he's doing.


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[Assistant] He truly is. The reason he's trying to impose discipline on them is to keep them alive because he cares about those guys.


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[Assistant] And it's gonna take a little bit of time for them to recognize it, but once they recognize it, they're gonna be on board.


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[Assistant] The leadership inside the battalion. If you take care of your soldiers, they'll take care of you.


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[Assistant] According to Battle Company's Lieutenant Carl Olson, an OCS draftee who is sharp as a Hinson custom knife.


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[Assistant] The rules were simple. Check weapons, check feet, show that you care, and let the troops know if we get into deep shit, help will be on the way.


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[Assistant] I used every second, every day to train and instill discipline.


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[Assistant] Beginning with something as basic as making sure every man wore his steel pot and carried his weapons at all times.


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[Assistant] We trained in the fire base. We trained on the ambush patrol. We trained sweeping a large patch of jungle. We trained searching for Charlie. I stress to all the unit leaders that all of the drills must be executed over and over again until they become automatic.


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[Assistant] I wanted these soldiers to roll into a firing position or take counter ambush action even in their sleep. Close combat allows little time to think. Do it right in training.


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[Assistant] And you'll do it right when the incoming slugs flash by.


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[Assistant] But sacrificing and suffering together gave them pride in taking all that crazy bastard could throw at us. As Lieutenant Taller described it.


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[Assistant] So now you're starting to get them unified a little bit just in fighting against the man. You know, against Hackworth. That's very similar to what happens in boot camp or in officer candidate school.


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[Assistant] The, the drill instructor or the drill sergeant sort of becomes the enemy that you're fighting against. You know, you wanna, you wanna, you wanna beat him.


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[Assistant] You don't want them to find dirt. You want your room to be squared away. You want the platoon to be squared away. And so you start to unify as a team. But the only reason you're unifying as a team is because there's someone to unify against. And then a vent.


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[Assistant] Hot chow. Routine under lark was now a blurred memory from softer days.


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[Assistant] My idea of looking after the troops is not to spoon feed them, but to make them as hard as forged steel, deadly in their kill or be killed trade.


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[Assistant] Eating sea rations, everyone knew could easily, everyone knew hot food could easily be flown in, made the point better than ten lectures.


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[Assistant] The ways of the past were over. That's something I didn't talk about. Lark would fly, would have hot food delivered on a daily basis and there's risk and there'd be convoys that would get blown up and hack words. No, we're going to eat field food.


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[Assistant] The ways of the past were over. Stay alert and stay alive.


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[Assistant] You can't make a unit proud by praising it, and you can't make a soldier proud by telling him how tough or good he is. That's superficial stuff.


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[Assistant] And not just for the grunts, all the battalion support personnel, cooks, clerks, supply drivers, were to be soldiers first.


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[Assistant] Important stuff. Your unit doesn't become good just by you telling them that they're good. In fact, I always think that sets them back. You're good to go. Oh, you're doing great.


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[Assistant] They get the satisfaction and their ego starts to think, I'm doing great.


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[Assistant] Regardless of my heavy schedule, I made sure to talk to every replacement to welcome them to the hardcore before they went out to their units.


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[Assistant] At night, I'd come back from operations late and Sergeant Major Press would have the replacements assembled and waiting.


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[Assistant] I stretched to each new man how important he was. How important it was to follow the basic fundamentals of the infantryman's trade.


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[Assistant] With the zeal of evangelists, all hardcore leaders drilled into new guys that when they joined the hardcore, they were joining a special brotherhood.


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[Assistant] I made the code for the, these leaders simple and clear. Fight smart. Never be in a hurry.


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[Assistant] Lead from up front. Set the examples. Take care of the truth before you take care of yourself. Keep the good commo going.


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[Assistant] Follow the Vietnam Primer and the Battalion Combat Leaders Guide.


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[Assistant] That's it. Simple, clear instructions for his leadership.


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[Assistant] Many combat vets come to think they know it all and start taking shortcuts. They blow off the basics and neglect the little things that keep them alive because they get cocky or think it's better for their men's morale.


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[Assistant] They build a fire at dusk, smoke at night, walk on trails, don't carry their weapons, goof off on security, don't safe their grenades or weapons, wear mosquito repellent on ambush or patrol, don't send out flank security on operations. Shortcuts get you killed.


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[Assistant] The troops continued to bitch, but that changed when they saw the tough love was for real.


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[Assistant] One day Murdner, one of his leadership, one day Murdner saw a soldier wearing jungle boots with the toes worn out and immediately gave him a pair of his own, which happened to be the right size. The story spread like wildfire. Finally, someone cared.


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[Assistant] Not long afterward, Murgner went down in the CNC chopper to pick up a wounded soldier, uh, soldier wounded by a mine.


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[Assistant] As the medic slipped the wounded man on the chopper floor, he looked up at Mordner, grinned, saluted, and said, hardcore recondo, sir. A new gung-ho attitude started to take hold.


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[Assistant] And that's the opening of the book. And then you get into the combat that they went through, which was


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[Assistant] Just a great, great stories and lessons you can learn from understanding the tactics that they use, the leadership, the pressure situations that they went through.


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[Assistant] And it's definitely a book that you should get and read so you can absorb all that information. But I'm gonna go to the end of the book, to the afterword. And it's something that Hack wrote basically right after he had got done.


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[Assistant] Right after he got done being the battalion commander and he led him through a bunch of combat. He changed him from the hopeless to the hardcore. It's a fantastic display of leadership.


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[Assistant] Then it's, you know, it's like the boat crew story in, in our book.


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[Assistant] You know, when they, when they changed the boat crews from the boat crew six team is in the last place on all the races and, and broker two is winning all the races and they just switched the leaders and all of a sudden.


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[Assistant] It's the same thing here. You have a battalion that's horrible. That's the one of the worst. It's got the worst record in Vietnam and sure enough, you put in a new leader and they become the best battalion in Vietnam. Leadership is the most important thing on the battlefield.


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[Assistant] So from those, from that experience, he goes into this.


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[Assistant] The command of an infantry or tank platoon is the most demanding and dangerous job in the armed forces. Yet the army's senior brass consistently failed to recognize this reality and provide lieutenants with practical hands-on training they need.


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[Assistant] As a result, platoons too frequently wind up under their command of, under the command of the least qualified, most inexperienced leaders in the military.


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[Assistant] The average infantry lieutenant who joined hardcore in 1969 was simply not prepared to lead a rifle platoon.


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[Assistant] Because the army's approach to training had failed to ready him for the reality of combat in Vietnam, he was extremely weak in troop leading, practical knowledge, and small unit combat operations. And was almost without actual field experience.


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[Assistant] The old saying, good judgment comes from experience, and experienced is gained from bad judgment, was certainly applicable in the hardcore.


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[Assistant] And this is something that if you're a leader in a leadership position, you have to let your subordinates lead and you have to let them exercise their judgment and you've got to let them see the consequences of bad judgment.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. Besides technical and tactical incompetence, the next biggest shortcomings of new infantry leader replacements were a failure to be demanding and a reluctance to ensure that their men carried out the basics that would keep them alive on the battlefield. Lack of discipline.


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[Assistant] One of the reasons for these deficiencies was that many of the social values were diametrically opposed to what's expected of a combat leader.


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[Assistant] To take a single case in point, I had to constantly deal with a civilian instilled value that drastically conflicts with the combat leadership principle, popularity.


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[Assistant] By the time these young men entered the army, they'd been brainwashed for at least 20 years about the importance of being a nice guy.


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[Assistant] After four years of college, ROTC or military academy training or about a year of basic infantry and OCS, they were supposed to be well-prepared leaders who always placed the welfare of their troops just below the accomplishment of the mission.


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[Assistant] Wrong. The average new lieutenant who joined the hardcore had an almost Pavlovian instinct for being popular.


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[Assistant] So the definition of welfare was up for grabs because he had to be a good guy


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[Assistant] He'd become a joiner instead of an enforcer. Instead of a leader. Become part of the pack. Need to step up and be a leader.


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[Assistant] In Vietnam, good guys let their people smoke at night and take portable radios to the field. Good guys allowed night ambushes to be set up in abandoned hooches so they wouldn't get wet and left only one guard by the door so everyone else could get a good night's rest.


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[Assistant] They let their men leave their boots on for several days and didn't inspect their feet, resulting in immersion foot.


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[Assistant] They didn't make sure their men kept their weapons and magazines perfectly clean, or protected themselves against mosquitoes, or took their required material, uh, malaria pills.


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[Assistant] Good guy lieutenants ended up killing their men with kindness.


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[Assistant] Even, I mean this is, you know, we're talking about combat here, but if you're in a leadership position in a business.


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[Assistant] And you're not helping your troops by enforcing, by teaching, by holding the line, by disciplining them. If you're in charge of a group of people and you're not doing that, you're, they're not gonna perform the way they're supposed to perform.


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[Assistant] They're not gonna, then that means your business isn't gonna perform the way your business is supposed to perform. That means your business is gonna go down.


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[Assistant] You're, you're actually doing the worst thing for them. You're killing them with kindness.


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[Assistant] You know what, I don't want to push you too hard. Would you rather just go for lunch with me? Would that be nice? Would that make me a good guy? What should you be doing if you're a good leader? You should be saying, look, get on the phone.


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[Assistant] You got bills to pay. You got a mortgage to pay. You got kids you want to send to college. Get on the phone and start dialing. Make it happen. Let's go. Let's do this.


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[Assistant] Are you, are you a better leader if you do that? Or if you go, let's just go ahead and go to lunch.


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[Assistant] Twist on that term of killing people with kindness. Cause I actually use that, you know, when someone's being a jerk. Oh, what should you do? I always say, Oh yeah, you know, kill them with kindness. And I literally mean it, but this is a different way of doing it.


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[Assistant] While the, back to the book, while the run of the mill lieutenants had a vague idea of what was required, he didn't have the experience or good sense to enforce the rules.


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[Assistant] When push came to shove, he preferred to turn his head the other way rather than come down hard on slackers.


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[Assistant] He overlooked deficiencies such as dirty weapons and ammunition, improperly safe weapons and grenade, incorrect camouflage technique and the improper use of terrain, not using natural cover to provide protection from small arms fire.


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[Assistant] And without an ass kicking company skipper or demanding NCO.


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[Assistant] The soldier's habits became sloppier and sloppier. Carelessness ruled.


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[Assistant] And of course the result was casualties that could have been prevented had the lieutenant demanded the small things be done well.


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[Assistant] My own experience has been that soldiers in combat will do only what's required of them.


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[Assistant] Under weak, nice guy leadership, they'll try to get away with everything they can. Violate every basic rule in the book.


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[Assistant] At the same time, because they know they're wrong and that this behavior is placing their lives in jeopardy, they'll respond to the demands of a positive, ass-kicking leader.


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[Assistant] The result will be fewer casualties and developing respect for the leader who cares enough for his men to make them do it right.


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[Assistant] So that's important to think about. This is not, some people hear this kind of talk that I'm saying and all of a sudden they want to turn into a super hyper aggressive person that's going berserk on everybody and trying to enforce every little uhm,


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[Assistant] Every little order and every little discipline so hard that it, it breaks the guys down. And again, that's why, that's why I focused on that in the beginning. That guy, the first guy was super hardcore. You could imagine that. He probably had people salute him in the field too. He probably, you know, was, hey, you come to attention when I walk in the room. He was probably super hardcore on stuff, but it was stuff that didn't


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[Assistant] And so there's a fine line and he makes a great, a great point here of pointing out.


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[Assistant] That your troops, they know what's right. They know that you're there to help them. They're gonna take the easiest way possible. But when you actually step up and lead and you explain to them why this is important and you explain to them why this is, why this is gonna keep them alive and why it's gonna make the company more successful, then you will actually get traction.


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[Assistant] Cause when you keep these guys alive, they become loyal to you. When you get your salesperson to, to sell more and do more, they're going to be loyal to you.


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[Assistant] When you get your manufacturing team to produce more and do it faster, because you push them a little bit harder, they're gonna respect you. They're gonna thank you. They're gonna follow you.


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[Assistant] Another, back to book, another serious shortcoming was the failure to teach leaders the importance of supervision and the techniques of supervising.


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[Assistant] The average small unit leader in 1969 seemed to take for a granite that his will would be done and that he didn't have to follow up.


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[Assistant] To people understand what it's about, what you're about as a leader.


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[Assistant] The nature of combat in the Mekong Delta and how we operated in the hardcore greatly extended this problem because small units normally operate on a widely decentralized basis in bitching terrain.


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[Assistant] This restricted regular visits from the company and battalion leaders prohibiting more experienced senior officers and NCOs from checking the platoons and passing along tips of the trade.


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[Assistant] Without an experienced, demanding leader, these carelessly led platoons were headed for a world of hurt.


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[Assistant] The infrequency of heavy combat compared to World War II or Korea in 1950 and 51 and the prevalent all is cool attitude had a tendency to lull soldiers and leaders into a false sense of safety.


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[Assistant] The more alertness and security went slack, the greater the danger of an enemy attack became.


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[Assistant] We played right into the enemy's hands. As Sun Soo put it, so well, when the enemy is weak, attack. So in World War II in Korea, you know, 50 and 51 in Korea,


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[Assistant] They, they were fighting so often that everyone knew they had to be squared away.


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[Assistant] But here you might go some time, you know, nothing happened yesterday, nothing happened the day before, nothing's happened for the last week. Maybe I don't need to clean my weapon tonight. Maybe I don't need to dig into a new fighting position. Maybe I don't need to wear my body armor.


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[Assistant] I had to inculcate the hardcore leaders with the burning need to keep their people alert and never let down their guard.


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[Assistant] I had to instill in them the need to supervise the troops 24 hours a day to make sure that the fighting positions were adequate. Soldiers knew the mission, the situation and where the LPs were. Proper field sanitation was being practiced. All battlefield debris was destroyed to deny the enemy a source of supply.


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[Assistant] The troops were all sleeping undercover and protected from first round hits and fire support bases or camps. Subordinate leaders were heads up and demanding that their men were alert and tightly controlled. And never ending list of the little things.


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[Assistant] Rifle magazines cleaned, weapons test fired, grenades safed, LPs and claymores out, sectors of fire known, salt tablets, malaria pills, jungle rot, all monitored by the medics, stand twos frequently conducted.


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[Assistant] I had to get every leader to follow this adage. The best fertilizer in the world is the boss's footsteps. They make things grow.


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[Assistant] So just, I mean, that was just a giant list of all the little things. You know, we talked about this when we talked about Chechnya.


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[Assistant] And some of the lessons learned there and how it all started to fall apart for the Russians when the guys stopped shaving.


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[Assistant] And this is the same thing that Hackworth is saying. You gotta hold the line on the little things. And I will tell you this. You need to hold the line.


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[Assistant] And you need to hold the line by explaining to the troops why it's important.


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[Assistant] You can't expect just to say, hey I told you to clean your weapon. Because if I'm not coming back for another week, you know that.


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[Assistant] You're gonna clean it on the sixth day. One time. What happens if you get contacted on the fifth day?


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[Assistant] And your weapon's not working now. So I gotta explain to you, hey look, this is what's going on. This is why it's important. You could get contacted at any time. You need to have your weapon ready at all time. Most important thing to me, Echo, look, I wanna take you home. I want you to get home to your family.


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[Assistant] And the only thing that's gonna keep you alive in a firefight is this weapon you have right here.


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[Assistant] And although we may go two days, three days, five days, five weeks without getting in a firefight, we don't know if it's gonna happen in the next 30 seconds. So you gotta keep that weapon ready so you're ready at the moment of truth. You understand what I'm talking about? That's when you explain people why they're doing what they're doing.


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[Assistant] Jocko told me I better get this thing clean. This is important. If I wanna stay alive, I need to keep this weapon clean. Boom. Guess what you're gonna do? Break out your field cleaning kit and you're gonna get it done.


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[Assistant] Not gonna work. You know what, it'll work for, for two days. You know? Maybe. Maybe. I can do the bare minimum. Yeah, you might do the bare minimum. Slack. Just do a little bit.


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[Assistant] But if you explain to people why, I mean, in your room, why you gotta clean your room?


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[Assistant] It needs to be represented well. If you're looking like a slob and I have one of my clients come by and they see that my own kids can't be disciplined enough to clean their room.


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[Assistant] And you think they're gonna hire me to come straighten out their company? No. Wrong answer.


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[Assistant] Your teeth will fall out. Yeah, you gotta show them the nasty dental pictures.


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[Assistant] When they're five years old and then they turn into like, uh, obsessive, compulsive teeth brushers. So use caution. Use the medium level of, uh, of nasty looking teeth rot. Just the medium level.


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[Assistant] Don't find the crystal meth people that have their teeth falling out. Don't show them that. It's a little too extreme. They'll brush their teeth too much.


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[Assistant] We'll check out the dental hygienics here in a few years on the, on the children's. We'll make a decision. Back to the book.


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[Assistant] The principle was to learn so that we didn't keep making the same mistakes again and again.


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[Assistant] To do this, we copied the VC technique of ruthlessly examining every operation. An exercise that was a lot easier for the VC because they weren't as rigid about rank as we were.


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[Assistant] When rank rules, people say yes sir, when they should say no fucking way.


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[Assistant] Don't get me wrong, when I told the men to do something, I wanted it done. BUT.


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[Assistant] I also wanted an atmosphere where no one would be afraid to sound off and speak the truth.


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[Assistant] This is the dichotomy, this is the balance. You don't want, and even Hackworth, as strict as he was, and he wanted everyone to do all these, to keep all these small things, he wanted them to have a rebelliousness in them.


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[Assistant] To say, you know what hack? I don't think we're doing this wrong. Or you know what hack? I think that's the wrong way to do it. Or you know what hack? I think you should have pushed us over there or left us back over here. Or we're not gonna do this. It's stupid. That's what he wants.


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[Assistant] And that's something that a lot of military people have a hard time with. Cause they get offended by someone.


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[Assistant] of junior rank stepping up to them and saying, hey boss, this is wrong. You can't have that attitude. You've got to welcome and encourage.


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[Assistant] People that check you and test you and question you. That's what you want.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. After every operation, we'd sit down at the squad platoon and company level and work up a detailed critique that spared no harsh words. It was, Tom, you had your machine gun in the wrong firing position. Bill, you're right, you're, you triggered the ambush early. Hank, your go to hell plan sucked.


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[Assistant] War is so simple, yet the military school system tries to make it so damn complicated.


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[Assistant] Probably they need to promulgate a mystique in order to protect their turf.


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[Assistant] But the bare bones bottom line to winning in battle is simply to sneak up on your opponent and belt the shit out of him from behind as hard and quickly as you can before he figures out you're in the neighborhood. And then beat it the hell out of there.


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[Assistant] The best form of welfare for the troops is first class training, for this saves unnecessary casualties.


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[Assistant] First class training means hard work and sacrifice.


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[Assistant] General Bruce Clark's adage, the more we sweat on the training field, the less we bleed on the battlefield is one I've followed ever since I was a teenager and I'm convinced it keeps the casualty list short. Everybody knows those two. Does everybody follow them? Not always. Not always. You see it with the military, with police, with fire.


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[Assistant] Are you putting your troops through realistic training that's hard and making them sweat and making them think are you doing that? You need to.


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[Assistant] Cadets and new leaders who show ineptitude and little leadership ability, such as that walking atrocity Lieutenant William Calley of the Mile Massacre Infamy.


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[Assistant] Should be immediately eliminated. And I left this in here because this is an important part. William Callie, he's the guy that did the horrible massacre of my ally in Vietnam. Murdered a bunch of civilians.


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[Assistant] Callie was recycled three times at infantry OCS after being found wanting in leadership before finally being commissioned in order to show a low attrition rate to higher headquarters. A bad mistake with big consequences. They had a guy, they knew he was a weak leader. He was showing weak leadership in his position going through officer candidate school.


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[Assistant] And what do they do? They recycle him three times. So he failed three times. They keep pushing him through, keep pushing him through, keep pushing him through. They finally make it through. He goes out and commits a horrible atrocity. Cause he's a weak leader.


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[Assistant] More than any major enemy victory, the shame and horror of my lay caused the American people to withdraw their support from the war effort.


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[Assistant] Once they saw what Cali had wrought, they said, enough is enough.


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[Assistant] In small unit leaders, confidence like fear is contagious. Troopers can feel it, see it, and smell it. And it will rub off on shoulders from a platoon to a division as quickly as a good rumor rumbles out of the latrine.


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[Assistant] Confidence produces courage. Most leaders or soldiers aren't born with a double basic load of guts.


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[Assistant] The average leaders are as scared as the next guy in their first or 100th firefight.


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[Assistant] But if they are confident that they're tactically proficient, that their unit's squared away, team motivated by a strong sense of duty to accomplish the mission, the courage that's needed to do what many will view as impossible will be there.


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[Assistant] Mouths may go dry, guts may churn, and hands shake, but when the slugs start snapping, the prepared leader will be as cool on the outside as Clint Eastwood.


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[Assistant] And no one will know he's really scared out of his brain.


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[Assistant] So if you're going into combat and you've never been there, you're in a leadership position or not, you're nervous. It's okay. No big deal. Be nervous. Do your job.


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[Assistant] Besides being one hell of a job, leading men into battle is the ultimate responsibility.


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[Assistant] On the battlefield, decisions such as go left or go right or go straight ahead or made in a split second and right or wrong, good or bad, people get killed.


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[Assistant] Leaders carry the scars of those decisions for the rest of their lives.


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[Assistant] Later, battle scenes play back deep into the night like an old movie. Why didn't I wait?


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[Assistant] Why didn't I bring in more fire? Why didn't I go myself? Why didn't I go to the left?


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[Assistant] Questions that will haunt the blooded combat leader until he's six feet under.


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[Assistant] Good preparation, training, knowing your job and attention to detail will keep the nightmares and any casualties to a minimum.


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[Assistant] To be a combat leader in the profession of arms is one of the most noble, most deadly jobs going.


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[Assistant] It's rough and tough and its rewards are few.


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[Assistant] And I know that's something that, something that I definitely felt.


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[Assistant] Through my whole career, especially once the war started was, I always felt like everything I, I need to do everything I can to have these guys ready. Everything I can to have these guys ready. And when I was in charge of training,


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[Assistant] And I was sending platoons overseas, I felt the same way. This training is what they're relying on to keep them alive.


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[Assistant] And do you sit there and look back and say, ah, well, you know.


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[Assistant] Why didn't I wait? Why didn't I bring more fire? Why didn't I go myself? Why didn't I go to the left? All those questions, yeaah.


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[Assistant] You're gonna have those questions, but those questions are quieter.


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[Assistant] If you know that you did everything you can to prepare the guys for the situations that they're going into.


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[Assistant] This book obviously, like most of the books we bring on here, I mean there's just so many lessons to learn, there's so much knowledge to gain.


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[Assistant] I mean, I wish, I wish I would have learned them. And you know, I think part of it, and you, you talked about this the other day, you were talking about how when you know jujitsu,


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[Assistant] If you know Jujitsu, then you can, you have a certain context that you can learn Jujitsu. So if you know Jujitsu already, you can make sense out of things. Like you can watch a YouTube video or you can read a book and you can look at it and you can say, oh okay, I, I can do that. You can, you can apply it.


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[Assistant] But if you have no experience with jiu-jitsu.


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[Assistant] It's very difficult just to look at a YouTube. You can do it, but it's gonna take a lot longer. Cause you don't have the context.


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[Assistant] Of the moves. And so you're gonna need somebody to show you, you're gonna need to experience it yourself so that you can understand it. And that's one of the things that I kinda think of why people like this.


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[Assistant] Podcasts? And it's sort of like what I have to offer?


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[Assistant] Is I've seen a lot of these things from a leadership perspective.


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[Assistant] From being in platoons myself, from growing up in the teams.


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[Assistant] And then going into combat and then training platoons and then going into the corporate world and seeing what leadership is like there in the context of that. And I think, I think one of the reasons that people like this is because I can just sort of help them put these things in the context a little bit better.


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[Assistant] And then they can take them and put them into context in their own lives. But,


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[Assistant] It's nice to have that little bit of help, but you can do it yourself. Everybody has been led.


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[Assistant] You've been led by people. Most people are, have been in some kind of a leadership position.


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[Assistant] Even if they're in charge of one other person or five other people or a hundred other people, but you've either led or you're being led.


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[Assistant] Open them and read them and then when you read them, try and read them from a perspective of balancing or, or,


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[Assistant] Not balancing, but try and read them from the perspective of overlaying your own experiences on top of them.


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[Assistant] And that will, that's what I do. I'm trying to kind of explain my process and what my process has been over the past 20 years when I see something, I see a leadership situation.


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[Assistant] I overlay my own experiences on top of it and compare and contrast to it so that way I can learn something from it. I just don't sit there and blindly watch a YouTube video about jiu-jitsu without putting context over it.


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[Assistant] So that's what you gotta do with leadership, in my opinion. So, great book, Steal My Soldier's Heart, Hearts, by Colonel David Hackworth.


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[Assistant] Just have a box of warrior bars in your house. Because when you're hungry, and you don't want to eat something junk, you just open up a warrior bar, and you're basically eating a, uh, a Snickers bar. It's as good as a Snickers bar, if not better, and it's got protein in it.


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[Assistant] That's a good call. Echo, that's a good call. Did you say OnIt.com slash Jocko? Yeah, yeah.


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[Assistant] You buy what you actually need and you support the podcast.


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[Assistant] And what's good is you drill and just like Hackworth just talked about this, you drill those standard operating procedures until you train. He's talking about how you train, you train this, you train this, you train that, you train the other thing and you keep training it until he says they're going to roll out of bed.


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[Assistant] Someone starts to mount you, you have a standard operating procedures to begin to escape the mount. Someone starts passing the guard, you have, or gets past the guard, you have a standard operating procedure of the procedure that you're gonna take to get out of there. You're gonna get the underhook, you're gonna come up to a single. You know, if someone mounts you, you're gonna, you know, immediately


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[Assistant] Put your elbows in tight. Maybe try and shift your weight a little bit. Shift their weight a little bit. Get their knee light. You're gonna try and put them in the back in the half guard. So these are all little steps. If someone starts to arm lock you, what are you gonna do? You put your weight down on them. If they're trying to arm lock you from the guard, you're gonna have standard operating procedures.


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[Assistant] Just like when you're on the battlefield, you want your team to have standard operating procedures. Definitely in grappling, you're going to have standard operating procedures as well that you're going to use.


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[Assistant] The way you get there is by doing repetition. That's through drilling. But in both situations,


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[Assistant] You don't wanna have people so strict in drilling that they lose the ability to think.


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[Assistant] You, if you have a person that all they ever do is drill in jujitsu, they actually won't be able to apply it.


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[Assistant] Again, something that the military can sometimes overlook. Jujitsu people can sometimes overlook it. You have to train for creativity and adaptation. So, if you're gonna drill, don't just drill the way you think it's gonna be. Drill the strange variations that it could possibly be.


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[Assistant] You know, you know what else is a good way to do this? You fight using imposed restrictions on yourself.


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[Assistant] To bring about the different position that's not so obvious. Rolling with different people. Better than you. Worse than you. The same as you. Bigger than you. Smaller than you. Taller than you. Shorter than you. Every different variation. When you work in standard operating procedures in the field, guess what?


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[Assistant] You wanna put yourselves in different positions. Mix the squad up. Mix the platoon up. Put guys in different locations. Then you wanna get contacted. You know what? Contact front, contact left.


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[Assistant] Contact right, contact rear. Those are the basics. Guess where you're actually gonna get contacted from. You're gonna get contacted from the right rear and at the same time another guy over on the left a little bit.


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[Assistant] So that's what you want to do, you want to get that creativity working because things are not going to go as you expect them to go.


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[Assistant] Yes, standard operating procedures are important in anything that you do in a business.


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[Assistant] But in a business, like you have a, again we've been talking about sales today, you have a, you have a standard thing that customers are gonna say when they call you.


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[Assistant] And you can drill through all the standard responses that you're going to give them, but you also have to drill your people against a customer that you have no idea that's acting crazy or that has a point that you've never dealt with before. You know, any of those responses, that's what you want to deal with.


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[Assistant] You're, you're in any business, things are not always gonna go perfect the way you want them to go. So you gotta drill your leadership so they can handle


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[Assistant] The adaptation that they can be creative and still figure out solutions.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and I had a guy on Twitter ask the other day, you know, Hey, I'm in the basic, I can't make it to the beginner's classes. So I'm only in the advanced classes and now we're not drilling anything. I'm not making progress.


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[Assistant] And he's saying, should I keep training? Brother, keep training. Definitely keep training. But I think more important is


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[Assistant] Just, you don't have to, you can, you can find the time to drill on your own. I mean, it's a mount escape. Look it up on Google. Look it up on YouTube. See the mount escape. If that's a basic that you want to work on and then grab your girlfriend and say, here, sit on me like this. I'm going to do some movements with my hips. It might seem awkward at first, but I'm going to do it anyways, honey.


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[Assistant] And then do it. That's drilling, you know. Or once you get to class, show up to class or stay class a little bit later, spend 10 minutes drilling the mount escape. Spend 5 minutes doing arm locks. How many arm locks can you do in 5 minutes? I mean you can do enough to drill, trust me. You don't need to drill for half an hour.


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[Assistant] So, just know the movements, learn the movements and then just go and do a little bit of drilling.


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[Assistant] And you'll get there. But even if you didn't do that and you just rolled and you took the advanced class and you learned the advanced moves, eventually you're going to figure out the other stuff too. It's, it's like being immersed in a language, you know, just because you went and got immersed in a kindergarten class doesn't mean you would learn faster than if you got immersed in a, in a real life college, you know, or open, just normal life situation.


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[Assistant] Like he's really, really good at them. And he can almost force them.


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[Assistant] Whereas Jeffy Glover, he's really good at the basics too, but he, he's more, in my mind, he's more apt to do something creative. Whereas Dean is like, so good with the fundamentals that he doesn't even have to be creative sometimes. Of course, he is also very creative, that's why he's, uh,


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[Assistant] You know, done so well in the world. But both those guys have crazy, I mean any, not just Dean and Jeff, but any really good jiu-jitsu player is going to be awesome at the basics and then they're going to be creative. That's what makes a jiu-jitsu champion.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and Dean, one of Dean's drills, Dean will have, Dean does these same thing. He'll just call out, but he'll call out like a leg, he does it with me with leg positions. He'll be like, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And what's cool about it too is you get to learn like, little defenses.


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[Assistant] So yeaah, this is a question that I asked and I gotta, uh, answer for you TJ, who asked the question. When you are


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[Assistant] We okay so the situation is a little bit different if you're in an administrative situation or you're in a planning situation meaning neither one of those are restricted by time then of course. Get the input and by getting the input.


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[Assistant] Of course you're, first of all, your plan becomes better because you're getting input from people. You have more brains working on it. You also, when you get input, you're building a little bit of a relationship. You're building a relationship.


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[Assistant] There are the relationship, what, what are relationships are based on trust. And so trust is a requirement inside of leadership. So that's what you want to do if you have the time.


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[Assistant] In this administrative scenario where you got the time to plan, then just go ahead and take the time to plan. Take the time to get the input.


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[Assistant] Now, there are situations where you don't have time to discuss or debate a decision.


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[Assistant] And there's, you know, or times where maybe you have time, but it's going to affect or impact the ability to make an immediate execution.


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[Assistant] Which is what often times you're looking for. You want to gain the initiative and sometimes gaining the initiative takes precedence over gaining consensus from everybody. And, and.


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[Assistant] It takes precedence over coming up with the best possible plan, because we want to do the best possible plan, but sometimes...


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[Assistant] Fast action is gonna take precedence over that and, and Patton said, uh, something along the lines of a good plan executed now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What happens is in those situations, yeaah, you're gonna have to make the call. You're gonna have to be decisive. You're gonna have to make the decision. And because you've built trust with your team, then


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you do need to make that call it won't be that big of a deal and people will execute it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I've told this, I've said this before, you know, Leif and I were having a conversation with some of our clients and, and as they were kind of talking about the same thing about, you know, giving people orders and they're not listening and what do you do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That being said, although I never in an administrative or in a planning situation ever said, Leif, you will do this now, I'm ordering you because I am the senior man in the situation. In tactical situations,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's interesting about that is it didn't just, it wasn't just me that was telling Leif. Sometimes Leif was saying to me, Jocko, get the humvees moved over here, or Jocko, you need to get the element up on that high ground over there. And you know what? We had trust, we had a relationship, and I did it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We didn't care who was senior to who. That wasn't the important thing. He saw something. He was making a tactical decision. I knew he wouldn't be telling me to do something unless he needed to have it happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So if he told me, hey, move the vehicles down the road, I'd be like, Roger, moving.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and that doesn't mean that we're, if you take us to a situation where we have the time to debate.