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[Assistant] We as leaders needed to understand, hey, we don't have that full relationship. We don't, people don't understand things as well.


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[Assistant] So, you have to watch out when people start trying to guess what the implied communication is. I don't want you to guess.


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[Assistant] My guess is that you're doing this, but I don't want to guess. I want to actually know.


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[Assistant] So, if you're thinking something, that's my responsibility as a leader to say, hey, if you don't, if you're not sure, hit me up. Hit me up. Yeah.


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[Assistant] To the book, another way speed gains from experience is the development of lateral communications.


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[Assistant] If all communication is up and down the chain of command, action will move slowly. If commanders and leaders at every level communicate laterally, if we as leaders talk directly to other leaders, action moves much faster. Lateral communication is not a natural consequence


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[Assistant] Of mission orders. It must be practiced in training.


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[Assistant] A good example of lateral communications comes from aviation. Dave Burke. In the air, the pilots of a flight of aircraft


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[Assistant] Communicate laterally as a matter of course. A pilot who...


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[Assistant] What parameters are you given where it's like, okay, you do need to run it through the chain of command. Is that like, hey, I'm going out of the AO.


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[Assistant] Like, I'm leaving, I gotta depart the area, something like that.


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[Assistant] And on the ground, it's real easy, it's real easy. Hey, we're gonna go across this line, this limit of advance. Do we have, can we do that?


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[Assistant] I want to hit a building that wasn't on the target list. Can I do it? And you know what's interesting is, again, Leif and Seth, they like, they just knew what


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[Assistant] I don't think ever Leif did something where I came back and said, you shoulda asked, or Seth, where I said, hey, you shoulda told me what was going on, or you shoulda asked me what was going on. Those guys knew, again, implicit communications.


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[Assistant] Hey, I'm leaving. I'm going across this limit of advance. I'm calling Jocklin. Just let him know. Or hey, I'm gonna hit this building. I'm gonna go- Or hey, I'm- I'm-


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[Assistant] Doing this different for the first time on an operation.


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[Assistant] And there was, and there was not a lot of times where they were telling me something where I was like, dude, come on, of course, go do it. Like, both those guys had such a good feel for


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[Assistant] And they might err towards letting me know, of course, which I think is the good way to err, you know? Hey, occasionally maybe I'd be like, yeah man, no problem, of course. But I would never say, dude, just do it, what's wrong with you? No. I'd rather you lean towards letting me know what's going on.


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[Assistant] He's got the tactical control over that situation and he's the guy in charge. And also I'd say this.


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[Assistant] When you, when you talk about asking me quite, like asking, like how often did Leif or Seth or one of the other junior officers say, hey,


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[Assistant] For giving me the opportunity to negate if, you know, if they said, hey, I want to go to move across this limit of advance, gives me the opportunity to say, do it, or negative, there's already friendly forces in that building, hold what you got, whatever.


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[Assistant] So yeaah, there was not a lot of asking me what to do.


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[Assistant] And was there early on? Sure. The further along we got, the less and less those guys asked me anything.


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[Assistant] This position may be with a main effort, a supporting effort, or in the rear. A commander who is forward can instantly influence the battle as the situation develops. For the same reason, a commander may choose a position at a crucial crossroad during a night movement, or where the unit is pushing supplies forward, or where a counter-attack force is in the defense may be sighted.


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[Assistant] The key is to be where we can best influence the actions of our units. As marines, we believe in leading from the front, since that is where most friction points occur. But they may occur elsewhere.


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[Assistant] Louis B. Chesty Puller believed that Marines had to lead from where the fighting was. This command quote


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[Assistant] Post-business. This command post-business will ruin the American Army and Marines if it isn't watched.


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[Assistant] He said while he was the commanding officer of 1st Battalion 7th Marines at Guadalcanal, as a battalion commander, Puller usually positioned himself directly behind the point element of his battalion and his headquarters element directly behind the lead company so that he could best influence the actions of his unit.


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[Assistant] He put himself behind the point element of his battalion.


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[Assistant] That's bi- not, not in the point element because then he's the guy shooting his freaking rifle. Right. Not making decisions.


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[Assistant] Is it a workload issue? Why, why, why do they do it that way?


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[Assistant] Uhm, it's, in other words, if I plan every single mission, eventually I just can't, don't have the capacity to plan them all. So instead, you plan the next one and that way I can get some rest or I can, you know, be ready.


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[Assistant] This endurance is made possible through physical and mental fitness. Physical fitness develops not only speed, energy, and agility to move faster,


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[Assistant] But it also develops the endurance to maintain that speed for longer durations. With endurance, we not only outpace the enemy


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[Assistant] Mental fitness builds the ability to concentrate for longer periods of time and to penetrate below the surface of a problem. For this reason,


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[Assistant] Fitness plays an important part in the life of every Marine. Patton once said, High physical condition is vital to victory. And here's the conclusion of this chapter. We must be faster than our opponent.


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[Assistant] This means we must move fast, but more importantly...


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[Assistant] We must act faster than our enemy. The aim is to tailor our tactics so that we can act faster than the enemy force can react.


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[Assistant] We have just discussed ways to improve our speed. Readers of this publication may think of additional ways to be fast. When you find one that works, tell your fellow Marines about it so they can use it too. Anything that works to make you faster is good, even if it is not yet in the books.


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[Assistant] We're not doing real good on this podcast right now because we are now, I don't know, something like three hours deep.


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[Assistant] The fastest thing, but we are going deep and we're getting into it.


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[Assistant] How many times did we talk about jujitsu today? I don't think it's an overwhelming number of times, but it's definitely there.


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[Assistant] So, jiu-jitsu, Brazilian jiu-jitsu, if you're not training in it.


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[Assistant] There's no real good reason not to trade in it. I get asked a lot, hey, well you know I'm 52 years old, should I start jujitsu? Yes. Yes.


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[Assistant] And she gets uncomfortable around people. Should she do jiu-jitsu? Yes. You get where I'm going here. Yes. So, you're gonna change some jiu-jitsu. If you're gonna train some jiu-jitsu, you're gonna wanna get a gi. Cause you're gonna wanna do gi and no gi jiu-jitsu. OriginMain.com This is our jiu-jitsu company.


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[Assistant] And we're not just making geese, we're also making rash guards.


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[Assistant] Apparently, Echo likes the joggers. I tried them on one time, it was hilarious. They are not for me. But you know what are for me? Jeans. Origin jeans, made in America. They have a little bit of stretch. A little bit of flexibility.


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[Assistant] When you see them, you have to kind of break. Actually watch the, watch the, uh, video that Pete made. That kind of, he turns the jeans inside out and shows you what quality looks like. That's something that's, that's important to see. Otherwise you don't understand it. And then we got supplements too, at originmain.com.


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[Assistant] Joint Warfare, Cri-Loyal, Discipline, and Discipline Go, of which Dave partook again.


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[Assistant] Like clockwork, we're about to, I'm about to say good evening and he's taking a discipline go. Yep. Getting it in the gullet.


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[Assistant] You know, that's, uh, we have, you can get subscriptions.


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[Assistant] To our, to our gear at originmain.com and that's one.


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[Assistant] That's, I think that's the highest subscription rate.


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[Assistant] So joint warfare, krill oil. Krill oil is another like a universal.


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[Assistant] Just universal goodness. And I haven't not taken krill oil and joint warfare in so long. I can't even tell you.


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[Assistant] Like what it feels like to not take them. I'm not going there.


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[Assistant] Which apparently according to our last podcast, you're just, you're on the strawberry milk train.


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[Assistant] The thing that I love about all the flavors of Malk is


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[Assistant] Even then I'll get home, I mean I'll eat a, eat a, you know, a 22 ounce tomahawk ribeye. Bless that thing. Beautiful. I'll destroy that thing. I'll get home and I'll be like, you know what, I need just a little hitter.


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[Assistant] Are not trying to literally give our children poison. In the form of sugar.


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[Assistant] So, get your kids those strawberry or chocolate warrior kid mulk haters. So they get stronger and faster and become better human beings. And don't forget about that white tea.


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[Assistant] I'm trying to think of Echo, he normally covers this part cause he's more, he's got the science down. Triple plat, placebo, triple blind study has been done. And then we have a store, it's called Jocko's Store.


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[Assistant] Where you can get, you can get t-shirts, rash guards, truckers hats.


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[Assistant] And if you don't know this, if you support.


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[Assistant] That's, we appreciate, cause that's, that's how we make this podcast, is through your support. To this podcast. Which if you want to subscribe to it, you can do so. Because.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well if you listen to it, you should subscribe to it. And Echo thinks that people don't subscribe to it. Is he paranoid? Should I be more paranoid? Should I be freaking out? People aren't subscribing!


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[Assistant] How often do you listen to the Warrior Kid Podcast with your children? Dave Burke, go.


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[Assistant] I didn't consciously say, you know what, I gotta, that's just like, I was just like, okay, I'm talking to kids. Yeah. Hey kids, this is the warrior. It's like, that just came out of me. I didn't say, okay, need to think about, need to get into warrior kid podcast character. No, that's just what I'm talking to, trying to engage a bunch of kids. You gotta give it a little bit of that.


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[Assistant] Little bit of that thing. Absolutely. Little bit of that. Little bit of that. So yea, Warrior Kid Podcast, if you want to check that out. And don't forget to check out IrishOaksRanch.com for young Aidan that's making soap on his farm.


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[Assistant] YouTube channel, the, the YouTube channel is called Jocko Podcast.


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[Assistant] And there's videos on it of this podcast. If you want to see what Dave Burke looks like, you can see. If you want to see what any of the guests or if you want to see what I look like, then you can go to there. And if you want to get small excerpts that Echo Charles made that he thinks are legit, you can check out, you can subscribe.


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[Assistant] To the YouTube channel. And it got psychological warfare. Couple tracks.


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[Assistant] So that you can overcome moments of weakness, and we also have flipsidecanvas.com, that's Dakota Meyer. Listen to podcast 115. Yes. Listen to podcast 115.


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[Assistant] Just listen to podcast 115. Dakota Meyer. Hear his story. Hear what he has done. What he's been through. His life. And I talked to Dakota on a fairly regular basis and


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[Assistant] Just check out flipsidecanvas.com. That's all you really need to say.


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[Assistant] On it dot com slash jaco if you need some.


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[Assistant] Workout gear. I have the word fitness there. If you need some workout gear, so you can jerk some steel, check out OnIt.com slash Jocko and get some gear for yourself. And we got some books. Dave, what do you think of the books?


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[Assistant] And then there's Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which is a book that I wrote, and it's...


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[Assistant] Answers a lot of questions that I got asked a lot about my own personal kind of operating system, I guess for lack of a better word. What to eat. How to rest. Workouts. And, I guess the more impactful part is what I'm thinking about.


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[Assistant] So you can check that out. And then there's extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Which...


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[Assistant] When did you read Extreme Ownership for the first time, Dave?


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[Assistant] And then we got Ashley on front, where Dave Burke goes in with the rest of the team, and what we do is we...


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[Assistant] We talk about things that we talked about today, but more important, we give the actual pragmatic, hands-on instruction.


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[Assistant] Leadership inside of an organization is actually moving in the right direction from a strategic perspective and that everyone is on board and aligned and got that. If you need, if you have a problem in your organization of any kind, it's a leadership problem.


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[Assistant] And we can help you with your problems, all of them. Echelonfront.com for details on that. We have EF Online, which is a


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[Assistant] It's a tool, it's an interactive leadership training tool where you will not just


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[Assistant] Get some repetition on the information, but more important, you'll start to absorb it in a different way, in a more comprehensive way. You'll be put into leadership scenarios that you have to unfold and unwind and make decisions in, by the way, this is interactive online leadership training. You have to make decisions.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and the way technology is now, I mean, there's so many advantages to it.


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[Assistant] For instance, you're in a classroom with 170 people at your event.


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[Assistant] And you're taking notes on something that Dave Burke just said and then all of a sudden you look up and you missed his next little topic. That's not happening with EF Online. You're pressing pause. You're re-rewinding it. You're watching it again. You're submitting a question. You know, you've got that going on. You're going to the Q&A. You're watching.


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[Assistant] You're, you're trying to make decisions based on what you just learned. When you don't make the right decision, you're having it explained to you why that decision wasn't the best decision for you to make at that time. So yea, it's, it's, uh, it's a great training tool.


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[Assistant] Live stuff from me on social media for instance. It got, it got, I still do it, I need to do it a little bit more often. But it gets a little crazy because there's people that are.


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[Assistant] What they want they might not want to ask talk about leadership, which which is fine, which is great You know, I get that that's there's a broad audience out there. But if you are on EF online Yeah, you can ask me a question about


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[Assistant] Your particular situation. Yep. And you know how many questions I get when I go online and do a, do a Facebook live or a, or a Instagram live or a, or a Twitter, what's it called, a Periscope live. I mean, there's literally, there'll be a thousand questions in, in 20 minutes.


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[Assistant] When I did it with, I was with Pete and, and Brian, and we were in New York, and they're like, you gotta do, do an Instagram Live, you know, Q&A. I said, okay, who's got questions? And they break it down, uhm,


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[Assistant] How old the question is? So like, this question came three minutes ago. This question came four minutes ago.


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[Assistant] Five and ten questions? No, I think it was between like three and six questions. Every second. So we'd say there'd be six questions and this question came four seconds ago.


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[Assistant] And so it just wasn't feasible. And then, and then I got to sort through all those. So with EF Online, you're getting that narrower, you're getting a group of people, what are they interested in? They're interested in learning about leadership. There's, it's a closed group. So yea, check out EF Online, that's a good point.


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[Assistant] The muster. Chicago's done. Uh, next up is September 19th and 20th. Denver. It's, it's gonna sell out. They've all sold out. If you wanna come.


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[Assistant] Register now. Go to extremeownership.com for those details. And then of course we have EF Overwatch. Which... What do you think about EF Overwatch Dave?


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[Assistant] The, the idea that we've talked about on the last podcast, and we brought up a little bit today, but you're overlaying what you know, right? We're not, we're not taking and imposing, hey, well this is how we did in the military. No, no, no, no.


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[Assistant] And this, we talk about this with our, with our candidates that we place. It's like, hey, you don't impose, you take what you know and what you understand, you overlay it onto what this company's trying to do. The leadership principles are going to be the same. But.


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[Assistant] We take your knowledge and your experience and you have so, like these, these guys that we're getting to fill these slots, they have so much, they have so many overlays to place that they've seen this before. They've done this before. Maybe it's not, hey, it's not the exact same thing. It wasn't in a manufacturing plant.


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[Assistant] It was as a troop commander. It was as a battalion commander. It was like one of these situations where they're going, okay, oh yeah, I've dealt with this situation before, here's how we can fix it. Here's where I see a lack of decentralized command. Here's where I see priorities not being set.


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[Assistant] If you are not sick of Dave and I yet talking, which you can see, we can talk, especially when it comes to these subjects. But if you want to talk to us a little bit more about it, you can find us on the inner webs on Twitter, Instagram, and on the face.


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[Assistant] And to all the service members out there, in the Army, in the Navy, in the Air Force, in the Coast Guard, and yes, in the Marine Corps.


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[Assistant] That have worn the cloth of this nation. Thank you for making the podcast possible by upholding


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[Assistant] Freedom and democracy in the world and of course to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all the first Responders out there. You also make this podcast possible by providing the safety of


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[Assistant] Guilty when we're idle. Never waste time. And never be content.


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[Assistant] Things I gotta do now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So.


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[Assistant] I was saying, when you asked about had I read these, and I read them, we got handed to them in a stack of pups, so all the Marine Corps manuals is probably a foot high stack of these white books, these little booklets. And at the time it was a chore.


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[Assistant] It was like something I had to do to pass a test. I didn't look for any real content. I was looking for the answers of the test and that was about it. It wasn't until I went back and looked at them again with a totally different set of eyes and how.


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[Assistant] I guess there's a tiny little bit of nuance and some of them be a little bit different.


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[Assistant] But it, it almost as if the same person, I know it's not one guy, but it's the same thing all the way through the same theme. And there's not one chapter in there that is, oh, this is too complex. So this doesn't really get to the point. They're all, they're all the same. And what you described, I've been in some of those meetings, not, not to write a publication. Everything's done by committee. You get, you get.


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[Assistant] Five guys in a room and you do this and somebody defers to somebody else but


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[Assistant] There's a vision on this from the first word to the last word that is throughout and it requires actually people recognizing.


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[Assistant] I mean, what in life that you do that matters isn't characterized by those words. Something that's actually important, yeaah.


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[Assistant] Yeah, we see businesses that, they'll lay out a plan, they'll have this big strategy, this is how I see things going. And the ones that stick to that and refuse to adjust and recognize that their environment is changing, they force themselves around that initial plan and don't adjust, they fail.


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[Assistant] The connection from combat to business, we make that connection all the time. And it's the exact same thing as your plan is going to change, your world is going to change quickly and you better adapt. And if you can, you'll be, you'll be fine. You'll be successful. And if you can't, it's not going to work.


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[Assistant] We used to teach at Top Gun, I talked about this a lot, when we would have, uh, you'd have a tactical situation. SOPs for, for your actions is when you didn't know what to do.


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[Assistant] Paul closes the distance between the two views and moves the airplane from the piece of sky that you're in to some other piece of sky and makes the closure happen as fast as you can to try to minimize the distance. What you're trying to create is separation. So if I get separation from you, I can attack you. And I, if I'm the defender, I want to close that separation and bring that fight down as close as I can.


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[Assistant] And as soon as I do that, I need to engage my brain and think, okay, now where do I need to really go? Which is maybe up and act or some other reaction.


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[Assistant] The SOP in an airplane was that maneuver, which is no different than dump your mag.


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[Assistant] It was to close the gap of time until you actually figured out


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[Assistant] And I, I see that you're in a position to employ a weapon against me. I actually want to close the distance between you and me as fast as I can to get inside your weapons range as quickly as possible. Cause if I extend away from that or do nothing, you get more opportunity to get to a more advantageous position.


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[Assistant] But me pulling directly towards you isn't the right answer. I don't know what the right, if I knew what the right answer was, I wouldn't be here in the first place. So my SOP is I have to close the distance right away. And the good pilots, the amount of time sometimes would take a half a second for they adjust that maneuver. But that immediate action, that SOP is lift vector on a pulling an airplane.


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[Assistant] Depending on who you're fighting. If I'm fighting someone who's not as experienced and hasn't seen this before and doesn't have that Rolodex of can't anticipate because he hasn't seen it.


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[Assistant] I'm never reacting. I'm never reacting to what he's doing. I'm always not just out in front of him. I'm moves out in front of him. But if I was fighting against a guy who was at my level or better, there are times he would do things that I had to react to. And the timeframe that takes me to react to an SOP to the right thing, the shorter that timeframe, the more likely is I'm going to be successful.


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[Assistant] And if I don't know what to do and I just spend the entire fight lift vector on and pull, I'm going to lose. Uh, and that SOP was something that eventually you actually got past and almost never had to do it because you weren't there in the first place. You were thinking moves ahead to get there.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that's the guy you were talking about before. And both of these things...


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[Assistant] Should realize that these are both learned things. The ability to anticipate is not just...


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[Assistant] Some sort of magical vision that you're born with. It's, they talk about reps over and over again, but even this idea of improvising, it's what the, what is learned there is a recognition is,


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[Assistant] Hey, my skill set here, my bag of tricks, I don't have what I need to actually make happen what I need to have happen. I understand the intent and I don't have the resources at hand. So I actually need to recognize this is the time to improvise. And it's that rigid, conscientious thinking that doesn't allow you to see, you know what? I just need, and it's not just totally winging it. It's not just on the fly. It's recognizing.


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[Assistant] I need to come up with a creative solution here because what I have available doesn't work. And those rigid leaders, and I know who you're talking to, I've seen them throughout my career, they simply don't have that place where they can go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The good leaders, that's the creative piece that they need to be able to tap into in their career.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and sometimes to that pattern recognition, that is a good thing, like you described, tells you, oh, I need, I need this, I need air support here. I need heavy machine guns here. Okay. I have the answer. It's like, well, guess what? You don't have that resource today. That thing that you say you need, it doesn't exist.


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[Assistant] So, so what are you gonna do now? And that's when you see, you can see people panic in those situations because they don't think there's a solution available to them.


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[Assistant] And the reality is there is if you can do what you just described, but they think pattern recognition situation dictates this is what I use. And if that tool that they are used to having doesn't exist for them there, that's when they, they panic. And that's when that's the worst case situation for them is they don't think there's an out. You can actually surround yourself with people that can help you there.


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[Assistant] You know, you can actually have other people say, hey, I saw this on our way in. I think there's a solution here. And that's where the humility piece requires is, hey, what do you see?


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[Assistant] I see this and somebody else can actually lead you down that road instead of just


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[Assistant] Refusing the budge from your position and setting your whole team up to fail.


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[Assistant] And when you're emotional about the situation, yeaah, it's really hard to see that when you're emotional.


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[Assistant] That's in this book. It's in this book because it's hard. As simple as that sounds. Build a plan and have a whole bunch of options available to you when your plan doesn't work. That's written down in the Marine Corps Tactics Manual


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[Assistant] The goal should actually be is to tell them what to do the least amount of time and give them the most latitude possible. That should be your goal, to let them figure out what it is you're going to do. That comment, that latitude comment is something that's so critical for leaders. Give your folks latitude to do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We talk about this in business all the time, this idea of simple. It's one of the laws. We talk about it and I'll ask the question, I'll have key leaders that'll bring us in and we'll work with them and I'll say simply,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they won't really know the answer. And they'll think, well, it helps. The reason you want everybody to understand the plan at the lowest level is that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if they don't understand what to do, the simple thing is that they, they won't know what to do. And you'll be stuck solving all the problems all day. And that's what we see these leaders. I'm constantly answering questions from all my people. It's like, cause they don't understand what to do. And they're at the point of friction and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They need to just understand what you're trying to get accomplished and let them do the work.


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[Assistant] And for them to be confident in themselves as well that they can actually, actually do that understanding the big intent and that they can do that themselves. This book is making, this manual is making the connection between the need to be creative and the need to let your people be creative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And centralization and giving them too much detail actually stifles the thing you need from them the most, which is creativity and latitude when they're at the point of friction, which you can't be as a leader all the time with them. They're gonna be there on their own more often than not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you actually have to cultivate that well in advance or they are going to freeze and they're gonna, they're gonna have too much friction. They won't know what to do when it matters the most and you won't be able to help them. I'm sure you saw that all the time as a, as a mission lead at Top Gun, I'd have six different elements dealing with six different problems and I couldn't be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Usually not at any of them. Maybe I could be with one if I was happen to be at the right place at the right time in my airplane. But if something happened critical 60, 70 miles away, I can't influence that. I can't help them with that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This idea of creativity, that's the confidence that you're talking about in them being able to solve their own problems and when you see it,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a leader, that's what allows you to step back. It's awesome to watch when leaders figure that out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, you, you just, you trained them and just let them do their job and it worked out. How'd that make you feel? It's awesome.


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[Assistant] It's funny because as you, as you were going, what you just described, I was thinking about Top Gun. I started thinking about jujitsu. I was thinking about our time in Ramadi. I was thinking about business, all that, that thing you just described, that template fits in all those different places at the same time. And it's, it's really how I was describing that, that immediate action response that SOP was do this until you figure out what you're supposed to do. You, you said something, you said it twice. People can learn to be creative.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I have had people work with me and say, I'm not a very creative person. I'm better at this. So I have an operations officer. I'm not a real creative thinker. I think like, you know, I'm a, immediately put that person in a position where he's uncomfortable.


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[Assistant] Not so much that he can make a mistake that's going to be catastrophic for the squadron. I wouldn't put him in a situation that is so far out of his comfort zone that he can make a decision that will hurt the team so bad that it's not recoverable.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you described it, people can learn and have to learn how to be creative. And the really short answer is, what do I do once I get past that initial move is, I think.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's creative. I look at it and think, what do I need to do? I take all those different pieces together. The more experienced I am, the easier it is. And I figure out, okay, I need to stop this. This has been a good intermediate answer, but it's not the right answer. And now I need to move in this other direction.


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[Assistant] Pull in some other resource, tell another airplane what's going on, call a ground, whatever that answer is, the answer is different every single time. The answer is actually think.


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[Assistant] The beauty of what you just said is the immediate action in an airplane that I described earlier, that lift vector on and pull. That's what allows you


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[Assistant] To stick, to take a step back and think. Because that maneuver, that movement requires no brain power. You just turn your airplane and pull back in the stick. It's like the first thing you ever learn to do and that's what allows you to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cameras over your shoulder, cameras in the front of the plan, the crams are everywhere, and the radar screen is on the right side of almost every Jedi Fluid, it's over on the right side, and you would see guys' heads.


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[Assistant] Just take your, take, take a, you can't take a step back into an airplane so you can just lift your, just lift your head up and look around.


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[Assistant] Is a move that requires no real brain. It doesn't require you to do anything other than the maneuver.


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[Assistant] And during that time is when you take a step back, you look around the big picture, and then you make a decision from there.


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[Assistant] Looking all around. All the time. Yea, all the time. They, they never stop moving, they never stop looking around, and they talk very little.


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[Assistant] They don't say very much. They're just, and, and at some interval, they'd make one call. Sweet went to flow north.


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[Assistant] And all of a sudden there's a whole formation which, and cause they would see whatever's happening and he can make these massive amount of influences into what's going on in the fight by talking less than everybody else because he's spending 90% of the time just watching and go,


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[Assistant] There's some friction creating over here, nobody's responding to it, I'm gonna get my guys to maneuver the way I want them to.


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[Assistant] And that's why as a mission commander, we talk about, you know, dogfighting against another aircraft and how fun that is and how much you...


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[Assistant] That's no different than being in hand-to-hand combat when you're trying to lead your battalion. It seems like a lot of fun, and don't get me wrong, if the opportunity, if you had to do it, you do it. If that's required, of course you do that. But really, the best leaders in an airplane were the ones that shot the least, said the least, saw the most, and made the right calls and right influence because they were detached the whole time.


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[Assistant] I'm sure that makes a deal. No, you don't get what a big deal that makes. They all had perfect vision and they could see more than the enemy could see. That was the difference maker. It certainly wasn't how good the machine was. We've talked about this a bunch of times. The machine wasn't that good at all.


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[Assistant] The big advantage they had is they could see more. Literally see more. They could see things sooner, see things better, see things more clearly and make decisions based on that and how much of an advantage that was.


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[Assistant] It doesn't, that attribute doesn't matter as much. The visual acuity doesn't matter as much. But the principle is exactly the same. It's just, what do you, what do you see? And you know what you don't see when you're staring at one thing? You don't see anything else.


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[Assistant] So we cleared out this room, uh, uh, cleared out all the rooms in the building and we had essentially accomplished our primary objective, which is clear everybody out, separate the men and the women to try to figure out if we could find the guy we're looking for. And they asked me to just go sit in the main courtyard, the main front of this, of this building and just secure the door.


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[Assistant] That's right, first mission I went on. These guys have been there almost a year. I went with them to support with their.


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[Assistant] Turns out when we got inside this building, there were more rooms than they thought, so I had to do some room clearances. So I wasn't expecting it. We did it. It was fine.


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[Assistant] Down the stairs, probably 20 feet in front of me, an old Iraqi woman, she's probably in her 70s, maybe older, she's less than 5 feet tall, she's a tiny little thing, and she is screaming, pointing her finger, yelling at me, and I'm alone in this room because we think this room is secure.


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[Assistant] It's close to the outside so I can talk to air, and she starts coming at me, and she's pointing her finger, screaming at me in Arabic, and she's not with her hands, but her body...


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[Assistant] She's so aggressive that she's, I'm backing up. She's moving me backwards. Uh, and I literally don't know what to do. So I just start backing up, up against the wall.


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[Assistant] It concluded she got to about, I don't know, maybe six or seven feet from me and over my right shoulder was the entrance to the outside and the platoon commander in charge of this whole thing walked in. He either heard it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, or was just coming back in to see what was going on and you heard him. He came in and, uh, he literally just raised his weapon, screamed at her to stop and, and disrupted the situation. He was pretty aggressive and got her to stop and she stopped. That was it. Uh, I was literally doing nothing. And I was, when you talk about, you describe this really this.


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[Assistant] My little mental repertoire of all the things I had, all the resources available to me, I was out of ideas. I didn't know what to do. No weapon. I did not know what to do. So guess what? I didn't do anything.


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[Assistant] What I needed to do was recognize that the chaotic environments that I'd been in the past, the lessons applied there too. I needed to spend time thinking about


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[Assistant] What was this different environment going to look like? And what did I already knew and understood? Could I leverage? And that's what I failed to do. Had I seen middle-aged Arabic women in training or not?


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[Assistant] That's not what I look back and say. That's what I regret. The regret for me was not recognizing I'm gonna be out of my comfort zone very early on. I've been out of my comfort zone before. I have to remember what that feels like and apply those same lessons and I could have handled that situation a million different ways.


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[Assistant] It'd been a while since I was out of my comfort zone in an airplane and I got pretty complacent with it and I didn't think about what that was going to be like the very next time I was carrying a rifle clearing rooms. I just didn't think about it.


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[Assistant] Thank God it worked out on that first mission, because I carried that with me the rest of the deployment. Because believe me, I was in a lot more uncomfortable situations for the next seven months, but I never found myself without understanding what to do moving forward, ever, because of that experience. I lucked out on that one, but like you said, it applies everywhere.


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[Assistant] And the confidence it takes a leader to be able to do that, that's significant too.


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[Assistant] And that could be a death sentence. That's a death sentence in business. That's a death sentence in combat. And it's actually what we want to do because we think we're helping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I wanna, I wanna get in their help and it actually takes a ton of confidence as a leader. And you talked about that feeling of losing control. I remember getting to Ramadi and I had this vision of how it was gonna be. As soon as I got there, I had to break up my teams. I couldn't operate as a 13 man team. There's too much to do. And I remember probably day three.


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[Assistant] One of my junior lieutenant or captain got in this Humvee with his four guys and drove away. And I was standing there and I watched the vehicle drive. I'm like, high five, go get some. And as soon as he left, I, I, and there's a moment of, I have, I won't talk to him until he comes back.


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[Assistant] That the command and control, the definition of control in that decentralized command is control is, control is bottom up. The control comes up to the commander, not from the commander down. You know, the command, the mission, that can be top down, but the control and how many leaders we work with, that is just completely counterintuitive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How things actually should operate is the control comes from the bottom, from the point of friction up to the leadership. So they can incorporate all that and make big picture changes for the team.


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[Assistant] There's so many things to talk about, you could talk about this for days, but that idea of perfect discipline, the immediate response to my orders, it's built on a depth and a level of trust that's so powerful that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The obedience isn't out of fear of not responding to you telling me what to do. The obedience is the recognition that what he's asking me to do is actually what's in the best interest of, whatever it is, this entire team that we're talking about.


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[Assistant] The stories of, of guys charging machine guns nests weren't waiting for the commander to come down and say charge the machine gun nests. You're actually, if you have that level of trust, you are so far out in front. I don't need Jocker to tell me that because I actually know you may, I know you may come down and tell me, but I know that's going to happen before you come down and tell me men.


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[Assistant] Get online. We are gonna charge this machine gun nest.


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[Assistant] Don't think of it as you do what I say or this is the consequence that's going to happen to you. It's the recognition that what I'm asking you to do immediately right now is what is in the best interest of everybody to include you. Although I might as a commander you might have to make that decision of


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm gonna, there's gonna be loss here. I'm gonna lose some of my men to do that. And that burden of doing that, think about how much trust is required from the leadership side to cultivate a response from my subordinates who know their men are gonna die. And perfect discipline is that description of


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[Assistant] There's no other way for us to be successful unless we do this. And if I actually push back and say no, what I really would like to be able to do is say, no, I'm doing this instead, which is going to accomplish what you asked. So I don't have to take the time to talk to you about it in real time. That, that comment, if people think Marine Corps people follow orders,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the, the self-discipline that's imposed on those Marines at, at that age, uh,


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[Assistant] It only works with trust up and down the chain of command that is so much more powerful than words can really describe and how important that is.


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[Assistant] Imposed discipline will prevent the things you have to do, which is be creative, uh, operate in it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you got it right. There's, there's, later, there's boundaries there and at different places you'll do different things. That thing I described doesn't apply. If you're at 25 miles away, you have different responses. You're spot on, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bottom line is, you gotta, well, you just have to know where you are. It may be in a fight, three feet or fight. There's a range and you have to know if you're inside or outside that range. Whatever the range is, it's certainly different than an airplane than in two people fighting. But you actually have to know where you are. Cause if you make a decision inside of that range, you'll get yourself killed. If you try to run,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In an airplane and you're in a place where you can't, you'll die. Period. No different. And if you're inside that range and you try to close the distance, that will actually keep you alive by getting closer. And you just have to know where you are.


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[Assistant] We weren't talking, I was just watching her. She took the bottle, drank a sip of his strawberry milk, and she closed her eyes and looked up at the sky with her eyes closed and just said to her, to herself,


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[Assistant] To prep me for having my head in the game, which I want on this podcast. Actually, I want to be in the game all the time, to be honest with you. I can't think of any place where I don't want to really be in the game.


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[Assistant] If I'm gonna do something that requires me to think, I'm taking them.


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[Assistant] To include this podcast. You can feel it.


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[Assistant] Because I watch how they react to the lessons they learn in the podcast and the books they sink in.


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[Assistant] This is Jocko Podcast number 182 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. The insertion was flawless.


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[Assistant] We were in the wood line and on our way for a general area reconnaissance.


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[Assistant] This time, we played it by the book. Moving 10 minutes, then waiting 10 minutes.


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[Assistant] In this target, the vegetation still made me a tad on edge, as it had a second canopy in some areas, but still gave us long lines of sight, something we weren't used to.


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[Assistant] As darkness approached, we looked for a good spot to RON.


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[Assistant] With the flat terrain, finding a good RON became really dicey. Ordinarily we'd look for high ground, dense vegetation, or an area far from any trail. Finally we found one, and Sal set up a perimeter, set up the watch rotation, and oversaw the placement of extra claymore mines.


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[Assistant] In one area where the vegetation was thin, Bubba placed a couple of tow poppers in the ground. I couldn't sleep. The flat terrain played on my mind.


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[Assistant] Before first light, the entire team was awake, alert, retrieving the claymore mines and preparing for our move out of the RON. After a night on the jungle floor,


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[Assistant] I wanted an R&R anywhere with firm beds, clean sheets, and cold drinks.


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[Assistant] Because I insisted on carrying the PRC 25, there was little room in my backpack, except for essentials.


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[Assistant] At night, when I slept on the ground, I did so without an air mattress or hammock.


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[Assistant] The sole item of comfort was an army issue pullover sweater that buttoned up to the neck.


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[Assistant] Whenever I put it on at night, I was always worried about Charlie hitting us when I was pulling the sweater over my head. It was one of the few creature comforts I allowed myself or had room for in my rucksack.


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[Assistant] Shortly after first light, the Green Hornet's CNC aircraft flew into the edge of our AO for a routine commo check.


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[Assistant] I gave him a quick team okay and prepared to move the team out of the RON.


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[Assistant] However, the CNC crew told me to wrap up the mission. There was another problem that he couldn't discuss on an open frequency. We knew the NVA monitored SOG FM radio transmissions and had radio direction finding equipment.


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[Assistant] The CNC pilot told us to find an LZ and let, and to let him know when we'd be ready for extraction.


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[Assistant] A few minutes later, the green hornets roared into the new LZ, picked us up, and returned us to base.


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[Assistant] The reason we were yanked from the field this time, stemmed from a tragedy in the Prairie Friar area of operations on 30 November.


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[Assistant] An H-34 King Bee was shot out of the sky during an eldest son operation. Seven green berets from FOB-1 and FOB-4 were killed when an anti-aircraft round struck the Sikorsky chopper and ignited the ammunition on the aircraft, killing everyone on board.


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[Assistant] One of the men killed in that ill-fated King Bee was Staff Sergeant Arthur E. Bader.


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[Assistant] On my last night at FOB1 before shipping out to FOB6, I played in a poker game where he won a lot of money. The longer we played, the more money Bader won. The more money Bader won, the more morose he became. At one point, I asked him what was wrong.


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[Assistant] He was winning, and he was ahead several hundred dollars, but kept complaining that he'd never spend the money.


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[Assistant] His response was that he had a premonition that he was going to die.


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[Assistant] And that men about to die often win a lot of money, money that they would never spend. We all tried to josh him out of his dark mood, but failed.


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[Assistant] Vader was a unique Special Forces Green Beret.


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[Assistant] He had earned and lost three separate fortunes in between three terms in the service.


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[Assistant] He was in his thirties but still enjoyed SF, spoke fluid German and a few other languages and merely wanted to accomplish any mission assigned to him.


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[Assistant] On the flight, on the long flight back to Phu Bai, I kept hearing him talk to us at the poker table that last night.


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[Assistant] And back with us again to talk about war as the author of that book.


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[Assistant] And of another book called On the Ground and of a series of books called The Sog chronicles a man who has seen more than most and who has had more close calls than any man should have.


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[Assistant] John the striker, Meyer. And if you haven't listened to podcast 180 and 181 yet, go back and listen to them.


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[Assistant] First, to hear the background of this hero, this warrior, special forces soldier, and leader of RT Idaho.


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[Assistant] A recon team from MACVSOG working missions across the border from Vietnam into Laos and Cambodia. John? Good evening, sir. Good evening. Thanks for coming back again.


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[Assistant] We just had so much fun I can't say no. That's happened, that's, that happened. That's both, that's how you ended up here again. Every time you walk out of here I go, I wanna hear you talk more.


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[Assistant] Hear more about what you've done. And yeah, no, it's been awesome and the response from people have been hitting me up. They've been, uh, just...


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[Assistant] Just enthralled with what you've been talking about and hearing you tell these stories.


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[Assistant] Has been, has been interesting, and you haven't seen this, have you heard of a movie character named Jason Bourne?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have you heard of this guy? Okay, yeaah. So I posted a picture of you when you were 21 or 22.


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[Assistant] I know we, that first excerpt that I just read was from Across the Fence and I wanted to go back to your other book for a little bit. The book On the Ground and


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[Assistant] Then I just wanna, I got a bunch of things I wanna just ask you about and talk to you about, but I wanted to cover one more section of this book on the ground. I was reading through it again yesterday and...


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[Assistant] It's just, again, one of these situations where


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[Assistant] You had guys that, you had some guys that had seven, eight, nine purple hearts.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and you talk about in Saw Chronicles Volume 1, what was it? 16 guys went out, 16 Special Forces soldiers went out, and they got 33 Purple Hearts in 4 days.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And probably could have gotten more. Sure. Ridiculous. It's crazy, yeaah. Alright, we're going back to On The Ground.


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[Assistant] Here we go. The Hueys lifted off, made a gentle lazy turn and pointed their noses northwest. Once everyone was settled, I allowed my mind to wander as I looked out in Marford and how beautiful the landscape was from several thousand feet up in the air, up where it was open and cool rather than closed and muggy.


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[Assistant] There was also a sense of inner peace and pride. This is what I had volunteered and trained so hard for. This chance to run top secret missions behind enemy lines, dangerous missions that made a difference.


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[Assistant] Like most special forces types, I couldn't stomach the monotonous routines of camp life. The ash and trash detail stuff, the petty rules, regulations, formations, and egos.


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[Assistant] More amazing yet, here I was at the ripe old age of 22, sporting the exalted rank of E4, and the 1-0 of a SOG recon team. 22 years old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Young and dumb. Yeaah. 22 years old and you had been bus- if you hadn't been bus- you got busted down once or twice.


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[Assistant] So as soon as you accomplish your time in rank, you-


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[Assistant] You would rather be out in the field. Oh yea, it just drives you nuts.


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[Assistant] Check. Alright, here we go, back to the book. I had been with RT Idaho for seven months now. By dent of hard work, lots of mission experience, and simply having survived, I was now a team leader.


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[Assistant] At a moment's notice, I could have millions and millions of dollars worth of air support assets, some of them manned by majors and lieutenant colonels, all doing my bidding.


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[Assistant] All giving their courageous best to save my bacon. I'd come a long way since flunking out of college and doing a stint as a garbage collector in Yosemite National Park.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we would get, I guess kind of similar, is we'd be driving to a target, right? Being in a Humvee. Yeah. You know, sometimes the targets are an hour, sometimes two hours. You know, we did some long, long transits, but you would get time to sit there and think about stuff because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you're, you're, you're sitting there being transported. There's not too much you can do. Uhm, you know, you're scanning, you're looking for, but you're in a helicopter. There's nothing to do but think, really.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It sounds like you recognized this. When you were doing these operations, you kinda knew that this was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't know, I guess I'm gonna use this word. You were lucky to be there. Oh, clearly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cuz I 100% when I was in Iraq and I only did two deployments to Iraq


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[Assistant] I 100% knew every day that I was there. I knew that this was...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, my time. This is what I'd been, this is what I lived for. And I knew that. It wasn't like I looked back and said, I really wish I would have appreciated those days. No. When I was in them, I completely knew it and appreciated being there. Like, every single day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Going back to the book, as we approached the LZ, the team crowded the two doors of the helicopter. I was on the right, half standing on the skid. Sal was kneeling behind me, his hand on my shoulder, ready to follow me out the door. Next to him was Hep.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My 1-1 John Bubba Shore, along with Fuck, our Point Man, and Tuan, our Grenadier, got ready to exit out the left side door. We all kept our eyes riveted on the looming jungle, scanning for any signs of movement in the treeline surrounding our LZ.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The top of the triple canopy growth of trees, vines and other vegetation was at least a hundred feet off the jungle floor and the opening into which we were descending reminded me of the mouth of a long dark tunnel at the bottom of which resided things Alice never dreamed of when she tumbled into that rabbit hole of hers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As we were swallowed up and the darkness increased, a cold chill ran down my spine.


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[Assistant] When you're going into these spots, so you had pre-identified this LZ prior to, is that correct?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Did the cubbies fly the area of operations before you inserted? Like a day before or anything like that?


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[Assistant] And that's just because they were, they, that was given away. You know, we used to ride on logistics error.


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[Assistant] Going back to the book, as the chopper neared the jungle floor, Bubba and I executed our first standard operating procedure which was checking the LZ for tripwires or booby traps while the rest of the team searched the surrounding jungle for any signs of trouble.


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[Assistant] After giving the all clear, the team was out the doors and on the ground before the skids firmly touched down. How long would you hover there and look at the LZ for?


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[Assistant] Oh, not long. Like a matter of 10 seconds, 5 seconds. It would go in, touch down, get out. Sure. Yeah, we used to just jump out, lay down.


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[Assistant] Like the helicopter would just touch and take off. We would just jump out, lay down right there. We wouldn't move away from it. Just jump out and lay down.


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[Assistant] Yeah, yeah. We quickly headed to the wood line and set up a provisional perimeter where we could wait and listen.


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[Assistant] When again we saw and heard nothing suspicious, we burrowed deeper into the jungle where it was both denser and darker. Like some furtive predatory animal, we were looking to hide ourselves. After ten minutes of no threatening sounds or movements,


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[Assistant] I radioed Covey and gave him the message he had been waiting to hear. Team okay.


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[Assistant] He and others could take up breathing again, at least for the time being.


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[Assistant] The deeper we moved in, the deeper we moved, the darker and more claustrophobic things became. Moving through the foliage was an excruciatingly slow and painful process, with sweat stinging one's eyes, bugs crawling and feasting upon exposed skin, and visibility cut to mere feet.


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[Assistant] It could be also be disorienting, especially when the maps we were given were so useless.


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[Assistant] And here was RT Idaho looking for fuel lines some bright eyed covey rider had spotted in directed airstrikes against.


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[Assistant] Intelligence reports said there was a second pipeline in this AO as well, regardless of how many, any pipeline we found we were going to destroy.


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[Assistant] What were the map, would you have 1 to 50 maps? Is that what you had?


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[Assistant] Now, I've gone into triple canopy jungle before with one, you ever seen a 1-24 map?


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[Assistant] Claustrophobic, you use that word claustrophobic quite a bit in this section. Is this jungle just tight?


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[Assistant] I know I saw a picture, I was looking at the pictures in the books, I saw a picture of one of the indiges, some of those guys were really small. Oh yea. Really small.


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[Assistant] Alright, going back to the book, but I had more immediate and pressing concerns. The adrenaline rush that always accompanied an insertion had pretty much worn off, and another characteristic sensation had begun to take its place. It was a feeling of familiarity and comfort combined with an eerie sense of foreboding. Both were a product of experience.


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[Assistant] I was comfortable because I was surrounded by extraordinary, well-trained and fiercely devoted team that knew what it was doing.


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[Assistant] Yet we also had stepped in enough accidental shit and had encountered so many hostile enemy units that it was impossible to not feel serious anxiety.


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[Assistant] In fact, I figured that when I stopped being scared shitless, I would be on my way to buying the farm. Cockiness had cost more than one life.


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[Assistant] You get that little mixed feeling of comfort but fear and anxiety at the same time.


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[Assistant] Especially because you guys would hit so many times you would insert and immediately get contacted. A lot of times, yeaah.


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[Assistant] So once you be amped up going in, and then when there's nothing there, that starts to fade.


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[Assistant] And that, you know, this is a, one of the reasons I highlighted this section is, you know, just this is something that, you know, we talk about complacency all the time. I know there was a, one of the Marine Corps units we were with, uh,


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[Assistant] The three eight in Ramadi, they had a, they had a sign, they had signs around their compound, complacency kills. Oh yeaah. For sure. But this idea of


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[Assistant] Anyway, I also talked to young military guys, young SEALs that


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[Assistant] You know, they're scared of this, they're scared of that. It's like, I always sound good. You know, you should, you should be afraid. Cause if you're afraid, you're gonna prepare more, you're gonna train harder, you're gonna, you're not gonna cut any corners, you're not gonna get complacent. And that's the same thing that you're saying here, is you'd seen cockiness cost people their lives. Cause they think, oh, we can just get away with whatever.


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[Assistant] Yeah, yeah. And then you have to overcome that though, cause you can't let that get-


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[Assistant] Get control, and we were talking before we started recording, and we were talking about a guy that was in a firefight, and there was one guy that didn't fire a shot, stayed curled up in a ball, praying.


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[Assistant] That's when, that's when fear is not good, not your friend.


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[Assistant] So you gotta balance that. You gotta be, you gotta have the fear, you gotta feel it, but you gotta deal with it. Correct.


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[Assistant] So we knew the general direction we were headed, which was to the northwest away from the LZ. We had been working our way slowly through the underbrush for about an hour when suddenly we heard an explosion behind us. It had to have been the Claymore Bubba rig to go off if anyone tried to follow us off the LZ.


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[Assistant] It's detonation signaled a profound change in the situation.


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[Assistant] The hunters were about to become the hunted.


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[Assistant] In the jungle, there are almost always animal noises of some kind and these suddenly fell silent.


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[Assistant] In the quiet, we could hear some distressing sounds to the west. Sounds that were not of a jungle kind, but those of men on the move. We were not alone.


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[Assistant] That, uh, how do you know that the claymores that you rigged weren't set off by some kind of monkey or whatever, some kind of animal? Uhm. Would you guys rig them a


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[Assistant] The coincidence would be too much and the chances are it's just NBA.


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[Assistant] Yeah, and so when there was, when there was enemy moving in the jungle, the animals would stop making noises.


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[Assistant] That the sense just so people can understand, you can only see in that thick jungle. Sometimes you can only see five feet. Sure, five or ten feet at the most. And so you patrol for ten minutes and then you just stop and everyone is quiet and you listen to see if anyone's following you to see if there's any other movement out there. That's what you're doing.


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[Assistant] This would take us up a hill that dominated our right flank. The climb was pretty severe, which was good and bad news. While it made the going rough, it also meant we were gaining some genuine high ground and high ground is the preferred position when it comes to defense. The steepness also meant the enemy would have to work as hard as we were.


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[Assistant] I couldn't tell how close the NVA trackers were or how many of them were headed our way, but I knew if push came to shove, I wanted to be looking down on them.


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[Assistant] Always take the high ground. Always. That's just military maxim. And you know, I will actually say, you take the moral high ground as well. Take the high ground or the high ground's gonna take you. Amen.


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[Assistant] When we reached the hilltop, just as dark clouds unleashed a torrent of rain, while Bubba and Sal began setting out a perimeter of claymores, I can't contact Covey and appraised him of the situation, namely that it didn't look good and that we might be calling for an immediate extraction before nightfall. Did you guys speak at all?


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[Assistant] But something like this, just so people understand, something like this, you're on patrol, you're not saying anything, you head up the hill, you don't say anything, you get to perimeter, you give the perimeter signal, you don't say anything, everyone knows what to do when you're in there, you could go days out in the field without talking.


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[Assistant] Sau, who had moved north to set out his claymore, suddenly opened fire on Full Automatic, a sure sign we had visitors.


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[Assistant] This was immediately confirmed when heavy AK 47 fire ripped out of the jungle in response in less than five seconds. The well-practiced sow had fired off all 18 rounds in his car 15 set off the claymores and reloaded his weapon while falling back to join the rest of the team.


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[Assistant] That's legit right there. Sal was making things happen. He was the man.


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[Assistant] Would you guys, you guys would be training these immediate action drills, mag changes, I mean everything that we do, right? You guys would drill that stuff. Just drill it and drill it and drill it.


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[Assistant] And when this happens, these guys are co- the enemy is co- very close to you because you can at least...


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[Assistant] Know that they're there. They gotta be what? 15, 20, maybe 30 meters away?


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[Assistant] Back to the book. Covey had heard the background shots and explosions so he was not overly surprised when I stated the obvious. We had a prairie fire emergency in progress and we wanted out ASAP. The mission was over. The fuel lines would have to wait until another day. The focus now became saving our asses. And to this...


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[Assistant] And every air sap, air asset within striking distance would immediately be vectored to our target area.


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[Assistant] The odds would soon turn, if not necessarily in our favor, very decidedly against the enemy. RT Idaho might not make it out alive, but neither would the NBA.


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[Assistant] So even though you have confidence in your air power, you know there's limitations. And...


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[Assistant] If things really go bad, that air power's not gonna be able to save you.


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[Assistant] Going back to the book. Call KingBees. Call KingBees. BokuVC. BokuVC.


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[Assistant] It was clear Sal and I shared similar appraisal of our situation and the same thoughts about what needed to be done.


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[Assistant] The only hitch was how to pull it off. What with darkness approaching, a storm raging, and no helicopters anywhere near us. I didn't want to add to either Sal's or the team's angst, so I didn't share my misgivings.


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[Assistant] Instead I gave Covey the direction and probable distance we'd moved from the LZ and told him I was about to throw two yellow smoke grenades to mark our location. I threw two hoping some of the smoke would somehow travel up through the thick vegetation and into the clear where Covey could see it.


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[Assistant] Covey had good and bad news. He thought he had our location, but he doubted seriously if he could get extraction helicopters to us before nightfall. Not good. Not good at all.


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[Assistant] With my ears ringing from the blasts, I thought I heard additional movement to the east, but I couldn't be sure. Because the NVA had abandoned any pretense of stealth, I soon verified they were coming from that flank as well. And there were lots of them.


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[Assistant] As these unseen forces maneuvered in for the kill, the jungle took on its most terrifying and claustrophobic reality. Not a friendly place in the very best of circumstances. It was now about the worst place in the world to be.


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[Assistant] Again, that claustrophobic sense. Can you see? Can you see this guy? In this triple canopy?


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[Assistant] Everyone was cutting loose as fast as he could in an effort to suppress the enemy's fire and drive him back. Tuan had managed to find some narrow openings in the vegetation and was shooting rounds with his M79 grenade launcher.


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[Assistant] The only sounds were the metallic clicks as both RT Idaho and the NVA locked fresh magazines into their weapons.


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[Assistant] The fight was far from over. In fact, the party was just getting started, and we were simply changing records for the next dance with Def.


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[Assistant] The jungle again erupted with deafening roar of gunfire.


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[Assistant] So that's sketchy. That's gotta be a horrifying feeling. Boom. Goes quiet, everyone dumps their mags. There's that moment of silence and in that silence all you hear is reload happening.


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[Assistant] With all the noise, I had to shove the radio handset damn near inside my ear to hear what Covey was trying to tell me. The good news, bad news routine continued. The good news was that some of the yellow smoke had finally made its way to where Covey could see it.


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[Assistant] But the bad news was, we were nowhere near the NLZ. He wanted to know if we could fight our way back to where we had been inserted. Negative. I yelled as fuck. Bubba and Hep all opened up on some NVA who had managed to sneak up from the south. There were green tracers whizzing all around me.


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[Assistant] Okay, yeaah. For us, the enemy didn't always have green, they had red. They, in fact, most of the time, well a lot of times, they had red.


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[Assistant] Well, no kidding. They learned a lesson. Yeaah.


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[Assistant] So it was, you know, they just, they got their ammo from all different sources. And so it wasn't just this, it wasn't just, hey, they're green and we're red. It was mostly red. Some green occasionally, but. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. Uhm.


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[Assistant] He inquired if we had much activity to our north. It depended, I thought, on what you meant by much and activity.


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[Assistant] I reminded him that North was where the whole shooting match got started and while I thought we had pretty much taken that group of NBA out of action, I couldn't be sure.


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[Assistant] When I finished, he said, don't worry, I have a pair of A1Es on station and I'll have the leader make a gun run and then give, and then have his wingman follow with 500 pounders.


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[Assistant] Before I could say Roger that, the first Skyraider roared across our northern perimeter, his 20mm cannons blazing away. As wood chips, dust and debris filled the air, the members of RTI Idaho did not need to be told what to do. We kissed Mother Earth and pressed against her body for all we were worth.


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[Assistant] The second Skyraider appeared and released its load of 500 pound bombs. They were so close that the concussions bounced us like jumping beans.


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[Assistant] And this is all based on the yellow smoke that you had thrown five minutes ago or eight minutes ago. Right. They're looking at a massive, this is another thing that's hard to understand.


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[Assistant] It's hard for me to understand. I remember I was a radio man when I was a young new guy and we were out in the desert and we were trying to call in helicopters to come pick us up.


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[Assistant] And, it's me calling them in, it's not we, it's me. I'm sitting there on the radio trying to call in these helicopters.


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[Assistant] And I got my air panel out. And we're in the desert. This isn't Triplica, this is the desert. And these helicopters can't see me. They're not far, they're not at altitude, they're probably 500 meters away.


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[Assistant] They're, they're looking for us. They're, they're kind of, they know we're in the general area and they're looking for us. And I'm sitting there with a signal panel, like trying to get their attention. And what you don't realize is that there's...


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[Assistant] And so, I can't imagine these guys are coming in hot, dropping bombs.


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[Assistant] Good times, I guess. Tilt. Alright. With the A1E activity to occupy us, we had momentarily taken our attention away from our southern flank. And now a wave of NVA hit us from that direction.


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[Assistant] Everyone responded with automatic fire and Bubba and I lobbed some grenades down the slope.


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[Assistant] I informed Covey of the attack and told him that when I gave the word and the team moved to the north, I wanted more A1E runs to ourself. In my heart of hearts, I also wanted more runs to the north, but we didn't have time for that. We had to get out while the getting was good.


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[Assistant] The next NVA wave could be the one to overrun us.


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[Assistant] As Bubba finished preparing explosives, Hep and I continued rolling grenades downhill toward the enemy. Sau and Phuc covered Tuan with Kar-15 fire as he set up a claymore facing south and covered it with leaves. A little parting gift for our friends.


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[Assistant] The race was on. I gave Covey the word and behind us the A1- the A1Es began bombing the shit out of whoever was back there. Fuck angled back to the north. We passed the- we passed bodies of dead NVA soldiers but we didn't have time to stop and search them for papers or anything of an intelligence value. We had only one thought in mind. Get out.


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[Assistant] It was something of a miracle that Falk and Sal actually located the spot Covey had found for us.


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[Assistant] When we finally looked up toward the hole itself, however, it appeared a long, long ways away. It was at least a hundred feet or more, and the green tunnel leading to it was narrow and dangerous. As we were approaching, I'd seen the tops of trees being whipped around by the gusting wind.


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[Assistant] And knew this would complicate matters even more. This was not gonna be an easy exit. So you guys are moving to this thing, you're looking up at the treetops and you see there's like, heavy wind. Cause it's storm, that's just weather wind, like it's wet, it's windy out.


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[Assistant] Yeah, you did. I wish you could have had them, bro. I would have totally changed this whole scenario. Oh yeah. Cause the helicopter, because the aircraft too. Sure. Cause the aircraft would be, oh yeah, we got you. Yeah, we got you locked and we'll just, you guys can just, you know, pitch a tent. Take your time.


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[Assistant] You know, the, the big motto of the insurgents, right, is that they only fight when they want to and they don't have to fight if they don't need to and you don't imagine troops that don't have to fight just keep coming after you.


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[Assistant] Just keep, you're laying waste to them, but they keep coming. That must be the value.


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[Assistant] Of capturing you all cross-border would be so high that they just must have had serious intent to try and capture.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. The Envy had not given up. Its troops were hot on our tail even though we had heard Twans claim or go off and had listened to the A1Es work them over.


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[Assistant] You had to hand it to the NVA soldiers. They were very tough and determined. I again contacted Covey and asked for some, asked for some tactical air command air support to our rear.


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[Assistant] And in a matter of minutes bombs were falling and cannons were blasting away.


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[Assistant] I'm sure I was impressed with the service as the NVA were surprised by how quickly the ordinance had been delivered.


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[Assistant] They were learning a lesson the hard way. If a recon team wasn't wiped out in the first few minutes of the fight, the NBA would pay dearly for the mistake.


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[Assistant] But more than one NVA unit had experienced this first hand. So that's kind of a crea- critical few minutes. As long as- how long did it take for air to get on station usually?


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[Assistant] Did you ever pre-plan to have coverage at certain times?


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[Assistant] But most of the time, were these, were these aircraft necessarily briefed on the mission itself? So would they know coming in, hey, this is the AO that they're working, or were these guys just coming in, they were just, they were just random pilots?


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[Assistant] And you're doing all that on the radio while you're still fighting.


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[Assistant] In wonder at hep in a dark jungle with night approaching he still had his ever-present sunglasses. We blew the charges around the trees and they were cut clean but the dense jungle refused to let them fall.


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[Assistant] We had not succeeded in making the hole any bigger, so we just have to hope the rescue ships could manage to drop the ropes down to us.


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[Assistant] And then pray the ropes were long enough. So you're trying to make that hole in the jungle a little bit bigger. Like what diameter is this hole that you're looking at?


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[Assistant] Uh, we tried to blow up some palm trees, or actually it was Leif, Leif's platoon tried to blow up some palm trees that were obstructing their view in an Overwatch position. Right. And they blew up.


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[Assistant] He's saying wha- I'm saying hey, sir, there's gonna be another controlled death, and boom. And then, sir, there's gonna be another controlled death, and then boom. And then, sir, there's gonna be another controlled death, and then boom.


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[Assistant] Alright, back to the book. With the helicopters on their final approach, I threw out another smoke grenade to mark our location, and the rest of the team began firing at the NVA who had again pressed in on us. We could barely make out, make out their shadows, but they were definitely out there as evidenced by the green tracer rounds flying towards us. Covey hadn't been able to see my smoke, so he asked for a pen flare.


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[Assistant] When I tried to fire it up through the trees, it struck a limb and bounced back.


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[Assistant] Being desperate, I told Kovio I was gonna shoot three tracer rounds, red tracer rounds, up through the hole.


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[Assistant] And before he could scream no, I had pulled the trigger on my car 15. I immediately realized what a dangerous move it was as I saw him pass overhead.


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[Assistant] So that's a, was that just like the normal little pencil flare? Yes. The little trigger thing, you click, it's almost like a 22 round that fires up, it's a tracer. Yes. Got it. It didn't penetrate through, so you decide you're just gonna fire some car rounds.


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[Assistant] Just before the rescue choppers attempted to hover and drop the ropes, I told Covey I wanted the gunships that accompanied them to work over the area around us, particularly to the south. I wanted the NVA to be either dead, wounded, or with their heads buried in the ground when we tried to make our escape.


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[Assistant] The muskets, the men from the 176th Assault Helicopter Company immediately went to work with their 2.75 inch rockets and their Gatling-like mini guns, multi-barreled weapons that could pump 6,000 rounds of 7.62 a minute.


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[Assistant] As the last rocket hit and exploded behind us, the first 101st Airborne Division slick appeared over the hull in the jungle roof and dropped sandbags with ropes attached to them. The helicopter was so high up it looked like a toy, and even its powerful rotor wash couldn't reach us.


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[Assistant] I could tell he wasn't being buffeted by the wind, but he'd somehow managed to hold steady over the opening.


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[Assistant] One of the sandbags attached to the rope had a strobe light attached to it and we watched it bounce off the limbs as it fell toward us.


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[Assistant] You guys, I guess they hadn't invented the jungle penetrator yet. You know what that is?


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[Assistant] Uh, yeah, jungle penetrator. It's a big metal kind of spear, almost spearhead. On the end of a steel cable that's tucked to a crane. And it just drops down, and that weight, and it's well-shaped. As opposed to just a random sandbag. It falls in here.


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[Assistant] And so this thing was hot. This thing must have been like 150 feet up.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. While we kept an eye on the ropes descending through the trees, the N.V.A. mounted a desperate last charge towards us. Tuan and Hep triggered their claymores, and the rest of us opened up with all we had.


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[Assistant] Somehow, in the midst of all the tumultuous activity, the four indige had managed to rig themselves a swiss seat using the six foot long pieces of rope we carried just for that purpose. Bubba and I now tried to do the same, but it wasn't easy to wrap a rope around my waist, pass it between my legs, and then finish tying it off on the right hip while under fire.


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[Assistant] Using some kind of pre-rigged, like, sit harness or something.


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[Assistant] We were getting low on ammunition, grenades, and claymores. If we didn't make it out, it was gonna be a very long night. In fact, I wasn't sure we could-


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[Assistant] I wasn't sure if we could survive the night no matter what kind of air support managed to reach us. It was now or never.


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[Assistant] No way is exactly what I thought in return. There was no way we had enough time for two attempts. There was no way I was going to split the team. Either all six of us were going out together on four ropes, or we were going to die together trying.


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[Assistant] Call it camaraderie or fear, but I was not going to leave anyone, myself included, on the ground for a minute longer than necessary.


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[Assistant] I had heard all the horror stories I needed to about what could result in, and I didn't want to be the subject of some gruesome tale around the bar at FOB1.


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[Assistant] I suddenly had a bright idea and asked Bubba if he still had the Claymore with the white phosphorus grenade taped to its front.


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[Assistant] When he nodded yes, I told him to strap it as high as he could.


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[Assistant] As high as he could reach on a nearby tree facing south. He gave me his best, are you out of your fucking mind, look. Because he knew, at that proximity, the back blast would kill us. All, when we set it off.


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[Assistant] So he hesitated, and I had to order him to do it. Once he finished the remaining two, little people paired up and hooked themselves into one of the ropes, while Bubba and I each took one of the remaining two.


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[Assistant] I wanted to balance out the weight distribution by having me on one side of the helicopter and Bubba on the other, but it was impossible to tell for sure which ropes went where. So I took a wild guess and hope for the best.


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[Assistant] Using the barrel of my M79 to shield the flash from the NVA, I used a strobe light to signal the chopper to begin lifting us out.


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[Assistant] Did the chopper have enough power? Would we be dragged through the trees? Would the NVA manage to shoot one or all of us out of our saddles? We were about to find out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As the ropes became taut, fire, gunfire erupted from the west. Sal, fuck, and I returned fire, but our bodies blocked the others line of sight. So they watched in frustration.


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[Assistant] Because my rope was longer than the other three, I was the last to leave the ground. This also gave me the additional seconds I needed to reload my empty car 15, twice.


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[Assistant] Things were happening very fast, almost too fast, and my bright idea demanded perfect timing. As we started up, Bubba reached out and ignited the delay fuse on the last claymore. The one he'd fastened to the tree.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With my feet dangling in the air, I fired around from my M79. Still gaining altitude, I then pulled the pins on two hand grenades and tossed them down onto the ground at about the same time the Claymore went off.


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[Assistant] The back blast blew under us, but we can still feel its power and heat.


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[Assistant] The phosphorus was like a giant flash bulb going off. In that frozen instant of illumination, I could finally see the faces of my enemy. They were hurting, but still advancing.


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[Assistant] With its engine screaming, the Huey somehow came up with the power it needed. It was agonizingly slow going, and we had to push our way through some branches, but we were not being dragged through them. We were being lifted straight up.


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[Assistant] The N.V.A. continued to fire at us. And I had the unsettling impression that tracer rounds were passing between my legs and the sensation that will give any man pause for thought.


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[Assistant] The team fired back on full automatic and we threw the last of our grenades. Like two fiercely demented and determined beasts, the NVA and RT Idaho remain locked in battle to the bitter end.


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[Assistant] As we finally cleared the trees, I immediately called Covey and confessed our little deception. The team is out.


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[Assistant] The whole team is out, I screamed into the handset. We came out together. Do not send in a second helicopter. I repeat, no second chopper.


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[Assistant] The muskets rolled in and pulverized the ground we had just left. The A-1Es were right behind them, and as the muffled explosion and light flashes reached me, I found myself feeling a little sorry for the NVA troops down there. They were valiant and dedicated soldiers.


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[Assistant] They would have to, they would have been a credit, a credit to any army.


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[Assistant] Those left alive would no doubt have some stories to tell.


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[Assistant] But I doubted they would ever admit that a six-man team had held them at bay for so long and then escaped their most determined efforts to wipe them out. As for RT Idaho, we were simply happy to be alive.


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[Assistant] Not something I would have bet on a short while earlier.


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[Assistant] Once you got pulled out, would they just look for a clearing somewhere to set down, get you guys in the helicopter for real?


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[Assistant] Yeah, you're freezing. Especially because you're soaking wet. And you're going 80 miles an hour. So there's an 80 mile an hour wind. Yeah, all that too.


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[Assistant] This is crazy. It's absolutely crazy.


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[Assistant] You know, I spent a lot of time on the books on the last couple podcasts. I wanted to, I wanted to kinda just ask you a couple questions. Get your thoughts on some stuff.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and I also, and I don't know, you might have to come back again, but I got Sog Chronicles here. I read that outstanding book, you know, and this is, Sog Chronicles, uh, real quick, talks about a big operation that, that, that took place that you weren't on, but you got really good descriptions and talk to people, Operation Tailwind.


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[Assistant] That's another one where helicopters are getting shot down. I mean it's completely, completely insane.